Carnifex

5/10/466 AC, Xamar Coast, Western Uhuru

"This is becoming tedious, sayidi," said the Helvetian banker representing a Tauran shipping firm, the Red Star Line. The banker looked rather like a gnome, short and stout and bearded. It was his job to negotiate the release of a dozen merchant sailors taken from a Red Star Line refrigerator ship two weeks prior. The sailors, bound and filthy, lined one corner of the sparsely furnished office near the center of the city.

Within the office tea and dates were served by tall, slender women with amazingly large, dark eyes. The women, some of them slave girls, likewise set out a tray of thin bread made from the flour of the chorley, a non-Old Earth species that resembled a sunflower that grew just above ground level, accompanied by local shoug, a mix of ground peppers ranging from "Holy Shit" to "Joan of Arc," with a very small admixture of "Satan Triumphant."

Of the women, the eyes were all that could be seen, that, and the seductive swaying even their robes could not conceal. They didn't matter though; the gnome had little use for women.

"Indeed," agreed the formidable, even fierce, looking Hawiye tribe chief seated on a cushion opposite the banker. Like the women, the chief was tall and quite slender, despite his years. "As I have told you many times, retrieving your people from these thugs costs me. It costs in money; it costs in arms; it costs in favors and in influence. I would prefer to put our relationship on a more formal and regular basis. But you people . . . "

It was all a polite fiction. The Hawiye chief, Abdulahi was his name, didn't actually ransom anyone himself, nor did he have the slightest objection to groups of his underlings seizing infidel shipping. In fact, he sent them out to do so and then maintained, for form's sake, that he was only acting as an intermediary for the return of the crews. This face-saving arrangement was workable, but far from ideal.

"I know, sayidi. And I have spoken to my superiors at length on the subject. They've finally agreed to a more . . . regularized, arrangement."

At last, thought Abdulahi. Protection money. Or "Danegeld," as my instructors in Anglia would have called it.

"Here is what I propose," said Abdulahi. "Your firm will inform me in advance of when it will have a ship passing within this area. You will pay me an amount based on cargo—"

"The displacement," interjected the Helvetian. "My principles are not going to accept allowing your people aboard to inspect cargos. Besides, we could not really be sure they even were your people without you meeting every ship."

"Fair enough," Abdulahi agreed. "Displacement. That can be checked objectively. Moreover, it has a direct, if uneven, relationship to crew size, and therefore ransom potential, as well as docking fees, which likewise bears on money carried in the ship's safe. This is fair and simple enough."

"In any case," the Hawiye pirate lord continued, "You will pay a reasonable fee—yes, we will have to agree on what constitutes 'reasonable'—in advance. I will use the money to pay off the pirates who infest our coast."

"They will, of course, be free to attack the ships of other firms," added the Helvetian. Which is absolutely necessary to us or those firms will be able to ship cheaper than we can.

"Naturally."

"The question remains, however, can you control the pirates."

Abdulahi simply laughed.