Sweet Starfire

staring unseeingly at the point where the creature had vanished. It seemed to him that Cidra had given him more than he’d had any right to take. She had welcomed him in her arms, drawn him into her with an honest, sweet passion that had taken away his breath. She had given him an intense loyalty, the kind he had learned not to expect from anyone since Jeude had been killed. Severance could not imagine any female of his acquaintance who would have thrown herself into a river full of dracons rather than have allowed herself to be carried off and used against him. But Cidra offered more than loyalty and passion. She radiated a sense of rightness, a quiet certainty that he didn’t fully understand. “Severance? Where’s the water?”
    He shook off the bittersweet mood and got to his feet. She was standing on the bank, gazing curiously into the shattered wall of the skimmer’s cabin. He grinned. “I’ll have something ready in a few minutes.” He opened the skimmer’s cargo hold. As she had said, he was good at rigging things. Fixing a bathing apparatus for a fastidious lady from Clementia shouldn’t be an impossible assignment.
    In reality the job wasn’t difficult, given the contents of the skimmer’s cargo hold. He was cutting a length of plastic tubing when he noticed the carton of sensors. The bright red COD seal was still in place. Mail still waiting to be delivered. He looked at it for a long moment and then went back to work on the bathing arrangements.
    When he was finished, he handed the bucketful of water and the plastic tubing to Cidra. “Try this. When you’re done, I’ll use it.”
    She eyed him critically. “Do you have any depilatory cream left in your travel pack?”
    “Don’t worry, Cidra. You’ll look just as cute with hairy legs.”
    “My legs are fine,” she informed him. “The cream I use lasts for a month. It’s your beard that needs work.”
    Severance touched the side of his face, felt the stubble, and grimaced. “Oh.” For some reason he was oddly embarrassed. The knowledge annoyed him, and he frowned. “There’ll be a skimmer out from Try Again at about midday tomorrow.”
    She nodded, seemingly content as she examined the bucket and hose she was holding. “What about your ExcellEx delivery?”
    “Funny you should mention it. I was just thinking about that myself. As late as it is, I’ll be lucky to collect for it.”
    She looked up, alarmed. “If ExcellEx doesn’t pay for it, don’t give it to them.”
    “It’s better for Severance Pay, Ltd.’s reputation if I deliver late rather than not at all. Besides, I’m getting tired of people trying to steal those reeting sensors. Let ExcellEx worry about them.”
    “Severance,” she said sternly, “you are not going to simply hand them over without getting paid for them. Not after all we’ve been through to protect them.”
    His gaze narrowed in faint amusement. “You’re beginning to sound like a real member of a mail ship crew.”
    Her chin lifted proudly. “I am a real member of the crew. I don’t know why you insist on forgetting that fact when it suits you. You certainly had no trouble remembering it the night you came into the Bloodsucker and announced that we were leaving on this little joy run up the river.”
    She was right. “I should have left you behind after all.”
    “Nonsense. Racer would have gotten hold of me one way or another and used me as a hostage or something. He was a very determined man, wasn’t he?”
    “Yes,” Severance said, thinking about it. “He was.”
    “As long as you were alive, you were a constant reminder to him. He couldn’t forget his actions that day in the sink-swamp, and he never knew when you might tell someone else about them. On top of that he was the one who got your brother killed. He must have known that if you ever figured it but, you wouldn’t rest until you’d settled the score. It must have eaten at him for ages before he finally decided to take care of the problem permanently.”
    “You’re a very perceptive woman at times, Cidra Rainforest.”
    She smiled. “I’ve been trained to be perceptive. Now turn around, Severance. I want to take my bath.”
    He hesitated, wanting to ask her how she really felt deep inside about the fact that he had killed a man. Then, deciding it might be better not to know the answer, he turned his back and went to work foraging in the skimmer’s cargo hold for other useful items.
    “I’ve been thinking about