Sweet Starfire

me.”
    “Isn’t there someone in Clementia who might be concerned with your notions and where they’re liable to take you?”
    She put down the all-purpose fork she had been using and sat very straight in the booth. “I am not a child, Severance. I reached the age of maturity four years ago and am fully responsible for my own actions. Just as you are.”
    “Far be it from me to give advice to someone reared among Saints,” Severance growled. “Good luck, lady. Just watch out what kind of contract you end up signing. Don’t forget to read the fine print.” He got to his feet. “If you’ve finished eating, I’ll see you back to wherever you’re staying.”
    “That won’t be necessary.”
    “It is, unless you want a scene.” He slipped a credit plate into the small slot embedded in the table. When the faint glow confirmed that the meal had been paid for, he removed the plate and reached for Cidra’s arm.
    She hadn’t argued, Severance thought later, after having dropped Cidra off at her hotel. But, then, Harmonics rarely argued, except about philosophical or mathematical problems. He remembered how his brother Jeude had always backed away from a disagreement, putting on the same mask of serene contentment he had seen on Cidra’s face that evening. Emotional confrontations with other people were very uncomfortable for Saints, Severance knew. Belatedly he reminded himself that Cidra wasn’t technically a Harmonic.
    It was easy to forget. He could understand why others such as the restaurant personnel reacted to her as if she were indeed a full-fledged Saint. There was something very serene and innately dignified about Cidra Rainforest. Perhaps it had to do with the way she wore her long, red-brown hair in that formal coronet of braids. Or it might have been the way the elegant yellow robes flowed around a body that was as slender, graceful, and proud as that of a dancer. The clothing worn by Harmonics was naturally as dignified and graceful as those who wore and designed it. The women’s high-collared gowns, with their long, wide-banded sleeves, fit closely to the waist and then flared in an elegant line from hips to ankles. The fabric was uniformly the fine, beautifully worked crystal moss. Cidra’s gown was no exception. She was not a tall woman, but her robes provided an illusion of height. She was a young woman, probably about eight years younger than himself, but her eyes held more refined intelligence than a man usually saw in a woman that age. Of course, Teague reminded himself, if she’d been raised in Clementia, her education would have been thorough and sophisticated.
    Severance grabbed a runner outside Cidra’s hotel to take him to his ship, but his thoughts remained with the woman he had just left.
    The essentially gentle quality that usually characterized Saints was a part of her, too, he mused, but in Cidra it came across differently. In true Harmonics Teague had always sensed a distant, controlled, broadly humanistic compassion. In Cidra he had seen something much more immediate, a more vivid and impulsive empathy. Severance remembered the way she had stopped to help the downed brawler in the first tavern and shook his head. It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed any special handling in the arms of a woman. Too long. Chances were that his imagination was interpreting Cidra’s actions in the wrong way. He was probably just hungry for the kind of gentleness a man sometimes needed from a woman. And, for some reason, a part of him had gone ahead and decided that Cidra could give him what he needed.
    A picture of her soft, slender body lying under him, her gilded nails clutching his shoulders snapped into Severance’s head before he could stop it. For an instant he knew a sense of self-disgust. Surely he wasn’t one of those perverts who were attracted to the cerebral and remote female Harmonics. Such men were only drawn by the sick need to despoil something they could never understand or accept.
    No, Severance reassured himself, his brooding awareness of Cidra was reasonably normal. She was, after all, by her own admission a Wolf in Harmonic clothing. And while he hadn’t been around many Harmonic women, he had met enough to know that they didn’t project any real sense of sexuality. Cidra, on the other hand, had struck him as a very sensual creature, even though her air of serenity partially masked the raw vitality in her. He had the feeling she wasn’t even aware of it