They’d been at the Shimmerquick celebration for two hours and three minutes, but Sidra had decided forty-six minutes prior that she liked alcohol. It had no cognitive effect on her, but there was such an incredible variety of concoctions to choose from, and they all triggered separate images. As her companions and their friends got ever louder and happier, she enjoyed someone else’s memories of boats, fireworks, rainbows. She wasn’t sure how much she enjoyed alcohol’s effect on other sapients, though. Most of their behaviour was cute, even endearing. Blue had told her how glad he was that she had come to them, which was very gratifying to hear (though it lost some of its impact by the third or fourth time). Pepper was loud, but not as loud as her friend Gidge, who had crossed over from smart to sloppy. The sapients milling near their table were all various shades of inebriated as well. Relieved as Sidra had been to get a corner seat, she had reached a point where the desire for different input outweighed the comfort gained by staying put. She excused herself and walked along the edge of the party, holding half a glass of Sohep Sunset between both the kit’s hands, staying as close to the outer wall as she could. She would’ve liked to put her back to it and shuffle along sideways, like a crab, but that wasn’t how Humans moved. There was a good chance that if she had walked that way, she’d just be assumed to be drunk or high or both, but no, avoiding attention was the smarter call.
The booths near the wall were less crowded than those in the middle of the Pavilion. She passed by vendors selling light pins, cheap trinkets, and chilled cups of roe, until she came to a tucked-away booth, wreathed with strands of white globulbs and floating pixel confetti. GET SOME INK! a handwritten sign read. CAN ACCOMMODATE ALL MOST SPECIES. Inside sat an Aeluon woman, tracing a whirring implement over her customer’s arm. The patterned fabric around her waist and legs was dark shon grey, ornately wrapped in an intricate knot. Like the rest of her kind, she was covered in glitter from head to toe, but underneath that, every bit of her finely scaled skin was tattooed. Unlike much of the body art Sidra had seen since she arrived at the Port, the Aeluon’s ink was static, apparently free of nanobots. A tangled forest covered her chest, full of hidden animals and reaching vines. A multitude of images and symbols laced their way down her arms – explosions of spirals and circles, a map of Central space, a wreath of multispecies hands pressing palms. When the Aeluon turned to make an adjustment in her work, Sidra could see writing on the back of her head – something in ancient Aeluon text. Sidra had the modern Aeluon alphabet installed, but nothing from antiquity. She captured the image, and added it to the list of things to download.
The Aeluon’s subject was a female Aandrisk, looking entirely unconcerned by the harsh-looking machinery rubbing over her scales. Comparing this woman’s face to the other partygoers she’d seen that night, Sidra found it likely that she’d been smoking smash. She wondered if the Aandrisk would change her mind about the Aeluon’s handiwork once the drug wore off.
‘You looking for ink?’ the Aeluon said, never taking an eye off the Aandrisk. ‘Or just looking?’ She held a long, curved pipe between her teeth, which smouldered undisturbed as words emanated from the talkbox in her throat. The pipe contained a popular Aeluon vice known in Klip by the simple name of tallflower – or tease, as she’d heard Pepper call the stuff. Apparently the smoke smelled wonderful to Humans, but had no effect on them.
‘Just looking,’ Sidra said. ‘If I’m bothering you—’
The Aeluon’s cheeks ebbed friendly blue. ‘Not at all.’ She waved Sidra over. ‘I’d love some company, and I promise she doesn’t mind an audience. She doesn’t mind much of anything right now.’
Sidra sat the kit down in an empty chair beside the Aeluon. The Aandrisk lolled her head toward them, flashed a stupid smile, then went back to wherever she’d been before.
Smoke shot silently out the Aeluon’s small nostrils. Her talkbox laughed in tandem. ‘See, most species I wouldn’t work on when they’re this gone. But Aandrisks shed. If this is a mistake for her, it’s a temporary one.’
The Aandrisk spoke, but her words were lost before they got past her teeth.
‘Whatever you say, friend,’ the Aeluon said. She shrugged at Sidra. ‘I don’t speak much Reskitkish, do you?’
Sidra paused. Humans who spoke Reskitkish were rare, and revealing that she was indeed fluent might invite questions she couldn’t safely answer. There was no way around this one, though. ‘I do,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t understand her.’
‘Well, unless she said, “Please stop using yellow,” I’m going to assume everything’s fine.’ She pointed at her subject’s scales. ‘You know anything about scale dyeing?’
‘No.’ Sidra had no references on that custom, but she was very interested. An inky spiral pattern was emerging, blossoming outward in a sort of mandala.
The Aeluon continued working and smoking, speaking easily as she went. ‘Species with softer skin, like you and me, we can retain ink down in the dermis indefinitely. But Aandrisks are a whole different deal.’
‘Because they shed?’
‘That, and – I mean, look at this.’ She tapped one of the scales. ‘The stuff their scales are made of isn’t terribly different from this.’ She took one of the kit’s hands, and rubbed the thumbnail. ‘You can’t get an ink gun down into keratin, not easily. So this’ – she gestured with the dyeing implement – ‘is just a glorified paintbrush. Gives her scales a nice, quick, even coating.’
‘How long does it last?’
‘About six tendays. Or less than that, if she’s due to shed. Not so long that she’ll mind if she sobers up and hates it.’ She popped an empty cartridge out of the implement, slipped in a silver one, and continued. ‘I’m Tak, by the way,’ she said.
‘Sidra.’
Tak gave her an Aeluon smile. Tallflower smoke drifted up around her face. She pressed the tool against a clean scale, inundating it with dye. It caught the light of the nearby globulbs.