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Seventy-Eight
BETHIAH
I should be moved by Rhonda’s tears. I should be upset that she’s crying and desperate. Rhonda hates to cry. I know she does. She’s always said it makes her face blotchy and ruins her makeup, and there’s nothing she hates more in the world, so I know the tears aren’t faked.
They just don’t move me, though. Because I watch her cry, and all I can think about is when I cried, and Rhonda was unmoved. When I begged her to love me enough to stay, and she kindly but firmly told me no.
So kef her, and kef her tears.
I get to my feet and move towards the door and where Jamef stands guard. My mind is racing, tumbling with a million different ideas. How do I handle this while retaining my sense of pride? How do I manage this situation without being an absolute sucker? “New plan,” I tell Jamef as I lick my fingers clean of the sweets. “We get Dora some of those goodies. Oh, and we find whoever it is Rhonda is looking for, collect the bounty, and then ransom him back to her for double.” I beam at him, pleased at this adjustment to the original plan. “She’s got no leverage, so it’s easy credits.”
Jamef gives me an uneasy look. “Little one, I’m not sure we should take this bounty at all. You’re clearly upset.”
Am I? I don’t think I am. I mean, sure, I might want to put my fist through a wall or rip all the feathers off of the nearest avian, but I think I’m handling things rather well. “How can you tell?”
He blinks at me, unruffled. “Your tail is lashing.”
Right. I mentally still my tail (which is harder than it should be) and head back to the tray of sweets. Eating my feelings sounds like a good idea. I devour another two sweets while I compose myself. Glancing over at Rhonda, I notice she’s still on the pillows, her expression woebegone and miserable.
Ugh. Jamef is right. We shouldn’t take this bounty…but we’re going to anyhow because Rhonda will absolutely get taken for a ride if we don’t. I’m just interested in abusing her wallet, but others might not be so kind. I know of situations where a human has gone to the authorities for help and found themselves collared and sold within the blink of an eye. So even though I hate this and being around Rhonda is making my feelings a mess, we have to help her.
Jamef would want to help her if I wasn’t involved. It’s not Rhonda’s fault that it took me years to get over her.
I move back to Jamef. “We’ll take the bounty, because I don’t trust anyone else to be fair to her. I promise that if I get upset, we’ll talk it out. Okay?”
“We’ll talk it out regardless,” he tells me. “In fact, when we get back to the ship, you’re going to need to tell both me and Dora what’s going on.”
Nodding absently, I rub his arm, and I don’t know if I’m reassuring him or myself. I glance back at Rhonda. She looks very small and alone, despite the finery she’s surrounded herself with.
That could be me—well, minus the finery—if I didn’t have Dora and Jamef.
With a twinge of pity, I approach her. “Tell us who we’re hunting for on this bounty, then. Who is it that’s gone missing? Another human? A friend?”
Rhonda wipes more tears from her eyes and shakes her head. “My master. Lord Nerit il’Aiven is gone. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”
I should have known that Rhonda would be attached to someone else. When we parted, she made it quite clear that I couldn’t keep her in the lifestyle she needed. That I wasn’t rich enough to suit her, and she was going to find herself someone that was. I wait for the old bitterness to hit, the self-loathing that always comes with thoughts of Rhonda and how I wasn’t enough for her. How I’m not enough for anyone.
But somehow, I’m not as bothered as I was in the past. A little cynical, perhaps, but not bothered. Of course she found herself a new master, one with a distinctly noble name. “Homeworlder?” When she nods, I eye our surroundings again. “Rich?”
She sniffs, nodding again. “He’s a very good man and has been really kind to me. He loves me. I just worry that something awful has happened to him. That’s why I left my home and came to this station. I need help and I can’t look for him on my own.” Rhonda gives me a pleading look, avoiding looking over at Jamef. “Please. I’ll pay anything. Just bring him back.”
Yikes. “This is probably going to bite me in the tail later, Rhonda, but a good rule for working with bounty hunters is that you don’t offer to pay them ‘anything.’ Someone’s going to take advantage of you.”
