Sagar was horny.

He was as horny as a horny toad. What a weird expression. Do toads get horny? Are toads horny? Damned if he knew. He was a skysailor, not a seasailor, damnit. He didn’t know poodoo about toads.

He was just desperate to have sex. He felt as though if he did not have sex soon he would die. Never mind that he had never had sex with another person. That had never stopped him before–having sex with himself, when he could sneak it in in secret aboard his ship, had always had to suffice until now, and on an all-male ship he had just had to make do with it–becoming Captain and getting his own quarters had been very…handy for that.

But he had lost those. Somehow, inexplicably, he had lost his quarters when the princess had demanded that she and the engineer woman sleep in them instead, for ‘reasons of modesty’, as she had put it. And with them Sagar had lost his privacy.

Such were his thoughts as he sat on the bed in his room in this weird lodging place the Governor of Farr had put them in.

He glanced down at his crotch in his fetching piratical pantaloons. He could just take care of things himself again now. He had his privacy back in here, after all.

But for some reason he found that part of him didn’t want to do that any more. Now he found that he wanted to be with a woman instead. And not just a pretend woman in his imagination or on one of the filthy playing cards that he had ‘confiscated’ from Arf, his now deceased first mate, but a real woman. A real, living, breathing woman who would feel things in reality in response to him. Of course, it wasn’t like he hadn’t wanted to be with a real woman before, the option just hadn’t been available…

The princess. This was all her fault. It was her fault that he had lost his privacy aboard the Wanderlust and gotten out of the habit of taking care of things for himself. It was her fault that as a result of that he was so incredibly horny now. It was her fault that he was feeling so generally frustrated in this area.

The princess had promised him ‘gold, gemstones, and beautiful women’. Fair enough, she had delivered on two of those, giving him an enormous chest of Manolian-minted gold pieces and precious non-magical gems as a reward for his safe delivery of her to Manolia and as a deposit to guarantee her further monthly payments while on this ‘quest’. He kept the chest under lock and key and slept above it in his hammock in the common sleeping area.

But the ‘beautiful woman’ part she had just outright tricked him about. True, there had been many beautiful women in Manolia, just like the princess had said, many beautiful warrior women, and Sagar had not failed to notice their excellent breeding, their strong and toned physiques, their disproportionately wide hips, and their tremendous breasts. But how many of them had been assigned to him in polygamous marriage, or given to him as bedslaves as a reward for his safe delivery of the princess to Manolia?

Precisely none, that’s how kuefing many!

Instead, he had been offered the chance to stay in Manolia with the many beautiful warrior women, but with no guarantee of compulsory sex with any of them, or to enlist his services and his ship for the cause of this quest, where he could be around just two beautiful women–Nuthea and Elrann.

And they were beautiful, to be sure, each in their own particular way. The princess in a very obvious, proud way that she wore like he wore his Captain’s Coat, and the engineer-woman in a more unconventional, less direct, way that made him feel a bit uncomfortable but, if he was honest, was no less appealing.

The problem was, there was no particular guarantee of sex with either of them either. Maybe he should have been more specific in his original clarification of the terms of his reward. The princess had placed him around ‘beautiful women’, the term they had used in their original bargain; there was just no guarantee of his having any kind of intimate relations with any of them. And now he was beginning to question whether he had made the right choice or not. Maybe there would have been more of a chance of successfully having intimate relations with a woman if he had stayed in Manolia. The initial monetary reward had been sizable enough, after all…

Rrrrr, he growled in his own head. Lately his growl had become so commonplace, such was his frustration, that he didn’t even need to use his vocal cords to produce it.

Well I’m not going to stand for this! he thought, standing up. Wait. I mean, ‘I’m not going to sit for this!’ I’m going to stand up and go and get what I want!

He crossed his room and left to go to find the princess.

As he walked through the hall and up the steps to the floor above, imaginations of what he was going to do when he got to her room filled his mind.

He would bang on her door, demand that she open up, announce what he had come for, then sweep her up into his arms, take her to the bed, or the floor, whichever was more convenient, and then ravish her. She, being herself absolutely desperate to have sex with him and just too shy to have mentioned it yet, would be relieved and thankful that he had come and only too happy to oblige.

Wait. He didn’t want to disturb the others and announce what they were doing, as they might interrupt him, and while he was reasonably sure that the princess had the hots for him (come on, who wouldn’t?), if he was more honest with himself he wasn’t completely sure, and she had been giving the Pup some oddly long glances lately…

Instead, he would knock on the door, ask that she open up, suggest that they have intimate relations, then, when she probably agreed, he would make sure that the door was shut, discretely take her to the bed and have his way with her.

Wait. As he got to the top of the steps, he remembered that although he had played out these sorts of scenarios in his head thousands of times before, he had never actually succeeded in putting any of them into practice… And if he was completely honest with himself, he was no longer sure that the princess was into him in that way at all. Sure, they had shared some banterous and flirtatious conversations in which her body language had been warm and she had done things like place her hand on his arm while she laughed along with one of his comments, and he was dashingly handsome, he knew that much, but he didn’t have any solid evidence that she fancied him. Who knows, the princess could just as well have been laughing at him as much as with him. And she had all that Oneist religion nonsense, which probably made her a prude and uptight about sex. And er, well, there was still the small matter that he had never actually been with a woman in that way before, other than in his head.

Instead, he would tap on her door, suggest that she open up, then as politely but confidently as possible request that he go to a tavern with her so that they could become better acquainted, while personally harbouring the intention that this be with a view to them becoming romantically involved with one another and perhaps, one day, eventually, having intimate relations.

He was in front of her door. Its oak wood stared at him like a monster from the Earth Temple he could not defeat with his wind powers. The knots in it seemed to contort into mocking faces before his eyes.

Sagar shook his head to clear it.

He raised his finger to tap on her door, then lost his bottle and found that he could not do it. His throat was dry and his palms were clammy. He could not even move his index finger to tap on the door.

Damn it, he thought. His crew, when he had been alive, had all thought he had been a serial womaniser, or at least he had hoped that they had based on that he had cultivated. Why can’t I live up to my reputation, or at least the reputation that I want to have? I bet Dad never had these problems…

“Sagar!” someone said behind him. “What are you doing here?”

The skypirate started, then turned. The Pup. This just got worse.

“What does it look like, pup?” Sagar said with a sneer. “I’m here to talk to the princess.”

“No you’re not. I’m here to talk to the princess!”

“Well I was here first. I beat you to it. Bad luck. Now run along.”

The boy bristled, and for a moment he looked like he was considering fighting. In spite of himself, Sagar’s stomach gave a little lurch. He had been licked by the boy’s flames before, and he didn’t want to be again.

The princess came up the stairs behind the pup.

“Sagar?” she said first. “Ryn? What are you doing here?”

“I came up here to talk to you,” Sagar announced, getting there first again. Be confident. By the pirate skycaptain. Don’t let them see how you feel underneath. “I don’t know why the pup’s here,” he lied.

“I wanted to talk to you too, Nuthea,” the pup said, like the wet little schoolboy he was, using her proper first name like some sort of manipulative sap.

The princess frowned, seeming genuinely puzzled. Is she so unaware of her own glory? “Oh?” she said. “What about?”

This was it. This was the moment. Neither of them said anything for a heartbeat, just looked at the princess.

Then both he and the pup spoke at once so that neither of their words were audible. Sagar didn’t even hear what he said himself, he just spoke automatically. Their sentences fizzled out simultaneously like the dying fumes of an airship crash.

“Pardon me?” said Nuthea, her frown deepening.

“I was wondering if you would like to go to a tavern with me sometime?” said Sagar. Yes! Got there first again! Death and glory!

“So was I!” said Ryn. “I was wondering if you like to go to a tavern with me too!”

Stupid pup. Now you’re just copying me. Get lost, you wretched little scamp.

Nuthea looked from Sagar to Ryn, then back again. Her frown deepened.

“Why? What for?”

Now Ryn and Sagar looked at each other.

Don’t make me spell it out, princess. Damnit, I guess they don’t do things like this in her country…

While he was still thinking, this time Ryn beat him to it. “We each wanted to ask you to go to a tavern with us to explore whether you would consider starting a romantic relationship with us! I mean, independently! Not like a romantic relationship with both of us at the same time, but with one of us!” The pup used accurate words, but he also sort of shouted them. It was quite weird. That must be a point in my favour.

“Oh,” said Nuthea when he had finished. She looked at them both again. Her frown broke and her golden eyebrows raised high, her blue eyes went wide. “Oh!” For once, she seemed to have no idea at all what to say. “Boys…wow… well that’s… that’s very flattering of you both… but… but I’m afraid with the urgency and seriousness of our Quest”--she said the word ‘Quest’ in the sort of way that made it clear that for her it had a capital letter–“I’m afraid there’s just no way I… no way I can even consider the possibility of…a ‘romantic relationship’ at this time. There is just too much… too much else to focus on and too much going on at the moment… and I only lost my mother very recently… I’m very flattered, honestly, but that is not something I would even consider at present.” She said that last sentence with an air of finality, as if it had taken her whole answer to get over her surprise and work out what she actually thought.

The wind went out of Sagar a bit. Ah. Well, I tried. We tried.

The pup though, for some reason, kept going.

“Well what if it wasn’t with a view to a romantic relationship?” he said. “What if we just went to a tavern to get a drink together (the two of us, I mean), without any other agenda?”

Clever bastard, thought Sagar. He’s luring her into thinking it’s just a friendly meet-up in the hope that sex will develop organically.

“Hey!” he said aloud. “Yeah, that’s what I want to do too!”

“You both still want to go to a tavern for a drink with me?” said the princess. “Without it being with a view to exploring any kind of romantic relationship?”

“Yes,” said the pup.

“Yes,” said Sagar, not wanting to be left out.

“Independently,” the pup clarified.

Nuthea licked her lip, then bit it, her eyes going off to one side for a moment. “Well… alright then, I suppose that would be okay. We do have seven days until the tournament for the Earth Emerald begins. Just so long as you both definitely understand that these are drinks in a tavern without any view to exploring a romantic relationship.”

“Got it,” said Ryn.

“Totally clear,” Sagar lied.

“Which one of us should go with you first?” said Ryn.

What a stupid thing to say. “I should go first!” said Sagar, raising his voice. “I was here first, after all!”

“I should go first!” the pup protested, and the air around them grew a fraction warmer. “It was my idea! The whole it-not-being-with-a-view-to-a-romantic relationship-thing, I mean! In fact, Nuthea, forget the whole tavern-thing–I was exploring the city earlier [was he?] and I found a poster advertising a play by a performing troupe that you might enjoy! Perhaps we could go and see that together instead? ”

“Hey!” said Sagar, air rising around him. “You never mentioned that before! Now you’re changing the terms! I want to take her to a play without it being with a view to exploring a romantic relationship, and I want to do it first!”

The princess put her face in her hand.

“Hey, what’s all the noise out here about?”

Sagar looked round. The engineer woman had appeared in the doorway to her room.

A thought occurred to him.

“Nothing important,” he said. “Hey, woman, would you like to go for a drink in a tavern with me sometime?”

Elrann looked him up and down. “Sure. So long as you finally stop calling me ‘woman’. Yntrik knows I could use a drink.”

She slammed her door shut again.

Yes! thought Sagar, inwardly celebrating. Still got it! Not that I ever had ‘it’ before, but she doesn’t need to know that.

Nuthea and Ryn were looking at him, their mouths hanging slightly open, like he done something odd.

“What?” Sagar said.

“Do you still want to take me to a play that Ryn found?”

Oh poodoo. “Er. Yes?”

The princess turned to the pup. “I look forward to going to the play with you, Ryn,” she said, then went into her room and shut the door behind her.

Ryn stared swords at him.

“What?!” said Sagar. “Piss off, pup!”

“You really are a piece of work,” the pup said, and walked off, leaving Sagar on the landing to think about his success in asking out a woman.

After a while he went back to his room and took care of himself.