There were good days and bad days, and recently the bad days had started to outnumber the good. This was a mediocre one. Schneider could walk around without loosing his equilibrium entirely and he only occasionally had to stop and surrender to dry heaves. He hated the ocean. He would never ever sail her again, once this dreadful little fiasco was over and done with. He didn't even know if he wanted to keep the villa by the sea. He didn't want to hear, or see or smell the salt water again. He mooned over Yoko. He imagined the softness of her skin, the limpid gaze of her brown eyes after she was satiated from lovemaking, the sharp sting of her tongue when she wasn't pleased. He even missed that. He would very much like to have her yelling at him right now. Anything but the constant lapping of waves against the hull and the incoherent jabbering of the pirate crew, the majority of which did not speak a civilized tongue.
He went where he wished on the ship. The crew did not try to stop him, probably on orders from the captain, maybe out of a sense of self-preservation. Regardless, his way was unbarred where ever he chose to roam. It was not a tremendously large ship, built more for speed than cargo capacity. She had a large crew of fighting men to carry out her picaroonish activities. There was little free room to spare. But there was one cabin down the hall next to captain Amir's that no one stayed in. He noted it because the captain usually visited there once a day, taking brass key out of his shirt and speaking a word of unlocking to pass what was obviously a spelled as well as locked door. It spurred Schneider's interest. He had nothing else to do, save keep a totally unsociable and generally unconscious, Kall-Su company. Little mysteries perked his curiosity.
After strolling the deck one morning, and ignoring the solicitous nod the captain, who was at the wheel, delivered him, he made his way down to the lower deck. He bypassed his and Kall-Su's cabin and proceeded down to the spell locked door. He paused before it, looking up the passage for any sailor that might appear to catch him at something he was certain captain Amir would not approve of. Not that Schneider particularly cared what the captain thought or feared what might be done in retaliation, it was more a reflexive caution. He spoke a word of unlocking, and since he was not feeling too sick, the spell actually responded with alacrity the first time. The lock clicked and the warped plank door swung open.
The little cabin had no port. It was dusky and dark within the cramped confines. He summoned a witchlight and found himself amidst stacks of crates, chests with bold brass bands, rolled charts crammed in barrels and open boxes displaying various items of particular wealth. The captain's private store room for the fruits of his raids. There was gold, and jewelry, fine bolts of cloth, casks of perfume and what might have been rare spices. A pittance. Schneider had seen more offered at his feet in supplication in a day than what was gathered here in this dingy cabin. Privateering was not that profitable a profession he decided in disgust.
A small chest caught his eye. It was made of polished mahogany and banded with burnished brass. It sat in a place of distinction on the one small table in the cabin's far corner. Nothing else was clustered around it. Something about it drew his attention. He reached a hand for it and encountered the faint static of a warding spell. A very strong aversion spell. He curled his fingers, frowning. This spell was of a personal nature. It was linked back to its caster, most likely the captain and if tampered with, it would sound alarms in the mind of the sorcerer responsible. He could break the ward easily, but he'd have Amir down here in a heartbeat.
Pride almost made him do it. Some bit of reason made him pull his hand back. He still cast the protected chest a thoughtful, curious stare before leaving the little treasure room, and resetting the spell lock behind him.
It would be quite a while before he thought about the chest again, but for the time being, he put it out of his mind as inconsequential. The sea grew rougher, he grew sicker and retreated to isolated misery
The days passed. Kall-Su got worse. He wouldn't eat or take water -- he barely roused from troubled sleep and when he did, he was sick to the point of delirium. Amir offered relief or at least oblivion in the form of a small vial of unidentified liquid.
"It's a good recourse for those who do not react well with mother sea."
Schneider did not even ask what it was. He sniffed disdainfully at the vial, dismissing it with an airy wave of one hand. "You want to drug him"
"Better than what he endures now, is it not?"
"No. How much longer till we reach a port?"
Amir merely smiled mysteriously. Schneider ground his teeth in irritation. He was feeling distinctly green today. The wind was rocking the ship as much as the waves she rode upon. He had passed over breakfast and lunch and the thought of dinner was making the bile rise in the back of his throat.
"You might wish to use a little of this yourself, no?" Amir offered helpfully.
"I might not. How do you become a brother of the sea, anyway? Is it learned? Sacrifice? What?"
"Do you wish to become such?" Amir lifted both brows, amused. The dark captain was amused much to easily for Schneider's tastes. "You cannot, you know. A man is born with the sea in his blood. Perhaps one of my ancestors had congress with a spirit of the ocean. Who knows? But she has always spoken to me. Blessed me. She always watches over her own, you know?"
He didn't know any such thing. He thought once he got Amir on land they'd see how well Mother Ocean protected him.
Another week and they were hit by a fierce sea storm that even Amir's connection with the ocean could not sway. Schneider, under better conditions might have been able to send it elsewhere. He had retreated to the cabin as soon as the ship started rolling over angry waves, sick and dizzy. He almost wished the storm would sink the damned boat and get it over with. It would be almost worth it to have the sea claim the smug captain.
Kall-Su curled into a ball, moaning as if he were dying. Even Schneider's sense of pity was pricked and he slipped out of the hammock, which he had found he did not dislike, and onto the bunk, taking the younger wizard into his arms to share the misery. Kall sobbed into his shoulder, clutching weakly at the material of his tunic, mumbling incoherently.
Schneider shut his eyes, braced with his back against the wall, with Kall's warm weight on his chest, and drowsed. Lurid fever dreams plagued him. He dreamed of drowning, of struggling for air that was not there. Of Yoko calling for him from somewhere and him not being able to find her. The dreams turned darker and more poignant. Shadows descended over a landscape that was featureless and eternal. He felt himself dwarfed by them. He tried to force them back, but in the dream, he could not. They washed over him and took things that he loved and destroyed them. Then the world closed in and there was nothing but walls he could not breach. For some reason he thought he might be trapped there an eternity and he screamed --
-- And jerked awake, wild eyed and gathering power to throw against something that was no longer there. Light came in from the porthole. The deck was not tilted precariously beneath him. His back was against the wall, one arm trapped under Kall-Su. He lay for a while, trying to remember the details of the dream. Dreams that potent always had meaning. But the recollection fled tauntingly.
He took a moment to gauge how he felt. A little fluttering in the pit of his stomach. A vague thickness in the head. Both would be multiplied once he got up. It was getting to the point where he didn't want to. It would almost be easier to hibernate until landfall. Just put himself into a numbing stasis and sleep away the storms and the sea sickness and the frustration. But that would put him and Kall at the mercy of the pirates and he wasn't so miserable yet to do that. He decided to just lay where he was for a while, sequestered with Kall's quiet warmth.
His lids fluttered shut and he drifted back into a dreamless doze. It was good to merely lie there and do and think nothing.
There was a sharp rap on the cabin door a split second before it opened. Captain Amir stuck his head in, a white grin splitting his dark face.
"Ah, you're alive after the storm. I'd feared the sea sickness had taken you once and for all."
Schneider's eyes snapped open. He cast the captain a dangerous lazy glare. "Get the fuck out."
"But I came to invite you to see a most wondrous thing."
"What thing?"
"You must come to see. A treasure I have found and just only discovered the magic of."
Schneider thought about the mysterious warded chest and his curiosity was pricked. He gently shifted a shoulder out from under a heavily sleeping Kall-Su and climbed over him to reach the floor. A touch of dizziness assaulted him when it was only his two feet supporting him and he took a moment to try and clear his head.
He shut the door to the cabin behind him and Amir proceeded him down the narrow passage to the captain's cabin at the end of aft of the ship. Inside was a relatively large sized room, as rooms went on small ships. It was crowded with carved chests and wardrobes, silken and brocade pillows on a low, wide bunk. Ornate tables cluttered with all manner of junk. A railed dinning table with various charts spread out upon it and sitting on the bed what looked like a rusted out, dented portable radio player from the time before. Schneider stared at it for a moment in disinterest. The thing was too big to have fit in the spelled chest. Therefore it was not deserving of his interest.
"That's the treasure?" He jerked a chin at the battered radio.
"It is. I found it in the treasure house of a foreign lord. I only just discovered its secret."
"It makes noise." Schneider guessed wryly. "Probably static, obnoxious noise."
"It does." Amir said in surprise, both dark brows lifted. "I thought it some sort of cursed object, until this very morning, when I touched a certain spot and the most melodious song sounded forth."
He went over and pressed the play button and a tinny sounding female crooning began. One of the speakers was gone entirely, the working one was almost shot.
"I'm thrilled beyond words." Schneider said, letting his gaze wonder around the cabin. There was a round globe with various tubes protruding from it, brewing on the table by the bed. A sweet smoke drifted through the air.
"Ah," Amir saw his gaze and explained. "One of my pleasures. Have you ever experienced the euphoria of the white flower?"
"Another drug?"
"Not one to shutter the senses. But to expand."
"Whatever." he waved a disinterest hand. Amir chuckled at him. Schneider scowled, fingering a scuffed and much used hilt of a saber lying against a chair. Most of the things here had a well worn look about them.
"Pirating isn't a particularly profitable line of work I take it." He managed to get a lacing of contempt into his voice.
Amir plopped down on a pillow by his bunk, using the bed as a back rest. He picked up one of the tubes and sucked in a lungful of flavorful smoke. After holding it in and exhaling a broad, content smile spread over his face. "It is quite profitable, my friend. Perhaps you seek the trappings of luxury here? I need them not when the sea is all the comfort I shall ever require. All the lover. All the comrade."
Schneider snorted disbelievingly. "Then why do you do it?"
Amir grinned at him. "What would life be without adventure?"
It was not an answer that he could find immediate fault with. He might have given it himself on various occasions during his career. The static sound of the one radio speaker annoyed him. He sat down on the edge of the bunk and took the thing in his lap. Amir almost opened his mouth to warn him to be careful with such a precious artifact. Schneider banged a fist on the faceplate of the working speaker and fiddled with the volume dial. Amir winced until something clicked and the static dissipated, revealing a much clearer, more appealing sound.
"Ah. You do have the touch." The captain sighed. "She sings like an angle?"
"Do you even know what she's saying?" the language was precarious at best, even for Schneider who'd been around long enough to have at least heard a fair sampling of dialects.
"It doesn't matter." Absently he handed the smoking tube to Schneider.
With a shrug, Schneider took it, and experimentally took a small drag. He'd tasted worse things. it sort of went straight to his head, bringing with it a certain calm. Almost it settled his stomach. He held the tube away from him and stared at it, impressed. "What is this, again?"
"Smoke of the white flower. Opium."
"Oh." He shrugged and took another hit.
"This ship is not all I have to show for my profession." Amir admitted, quite talkative in the arms of the opium. "I have a beautiful house on the shores of the Blood Sea. I have many beautiful slaves awaiting my pleasure should I return to land. And many beautiful things."
"I've got houses to spare." Schneider said, more than a little garrulous himself for much the same reasons. "And I don't need slaves. Women throw themselves at me."
Amir laughed. "I imagine they do, Jamad ja'da. You will fetch such a high price."
"In your dreams, sea rat."
Amir leaned forward conspiratorially, a lascivious look in his dark eyes. "So do have jima with the ajmal djinn?"
"What?" Schneider took another lazy drag off the tube. The stuff felt damned good. He felt remiss for never having discovered it before.
"Ah -- how do you say it politely --? Do you have sex with the pretty golden djinn?"
Schneider sputtered and glared. "No, I do not. As if its your business. God, when we get close to land I am sooo going to sink this ship."
"Hummm, pity." Amir took a drag. Whether it was a pity about sinking his ship or not having sex with Kall-Su he did not clarify.
"So what's in the warded chest?" Schneider asked, just to be nasty and to catch the captain as off guard as the man had caught him.
Amir blinked at him, then his dark eyes narrowed warily. "How do you know of that, prying land snake?"
Schneider shrugged lazily and noncommittally.
"It is not for you to know." Amir snapped, suddenly out of good humor. "I would keelhaul a man of mine who ventured beyond the locked doors of my private storeroom."
"Oh, try it. Please." Schneider suggested.
Amir thought about it, then his face relaxed and he ventured one of his broad white grins. He reached out and patted Schneider's knee. "It is okay. I would look myself if I were in your position."
Schneider looked down at the hand lingering on his knee. With the captain's comment about Kall so fresh in his mind, such a gesture could only be taken in the most dissatisfactory light. "We could sink the ship right now?" he suggested civily. "Or you could get your hand off me. Your choice. I'm game for either."
Amir tsked and moved his hand, settling with his back to Schneider once more. "You foreigners," he muttered. "So prudish. So boring."
Never having been called prudish or boring before, Schneider was not sure how to formulate a comeback. He settled for drawing in another lungful of opium smoke. One had to admit, with the white flower in one's system, it was much harder to take offense at otherwise mortal sleights.