Atlanta shook her head, trying to assume the easy, regal nonchalance she had seen the Empress exercise so many times. “I left because I did not wish to intrude or distract,” she said.

“Indeed!” Skidoo’s colors brightened, moving away from purple and mauve sorrow to a more joyful blue. “We is being bound for a place we is being not knowing, for a fate we also is being not knowing. Maybe death. If you should be choosing to is being sharing comfort with another, know that we are being welcoming you with pleasure.”

For a moment Atlanta considered it. Nothing was known in the future. She could be killed at any moment; they all could. Who knew what the pirates intended for any of them? Why not take a chance to hold and be held, comforted in advance of the future’s sharp edge?

But she shook her head once again.

“If you is being fearing compromise, I am being knowing not all your customs, but among my people, alliances and intercourse is being things very different. I am being making no claim of you.”

“Why do you want me?” Atlanta said.

It was not a question she normally would’ve asked. But the frankness with which she was being approached charmed and unbalanced her. It was so different from the ways of court, where such alliances were truly alliances, and power exchanges accompanied them. The thought of pleasure simply for its own sake was alluring. It was a new way of looking at things.

“There is being experiencing the thrill of new, always,” the Tlellan said. “But it is being more than that. I am being belonging to a group who is being believing that pleasure to each other is being giving pleasure to the universe. That it is being our duty to being giving it wherever it is being desired. And because you is being young and your skin is being smooth and it would be being delightful to being discovering all the places where you is being liking to be touched.”

Atlanta put out a hand toward Skidoo. The other extended a tentacle, which coiled around Atlanta’s hand twice, its tip searching her palm, finding out the sensitive places and tracing along her lifeline.

“If we should escape the pirates,” Atlanta said, her heart hammering in her throat, “then come and speak to me about this again.”

And with that she slipped away, almost breathless at her daring. She was not a virgin, and she had known the pleasure of flirtations—particularly ones tinged with the intensity of court life—more than once. But something about this felt different. It was only about pleasure, nothing else, and that such a focus was possible had never occurred to her before.