Schneider was annoyed at him. Schneider was annoyed at him. As if he'd been the one out of line. As if he'd been the one pushing propriety to its limits and beyond. Propriety and Schneider? Ha! Those were two contradictory terms if ever there were.
Kall-Su could hardly focus he was so perturbed at the notion. He picked at the folds of his robes and glowered icily at nothing in particular while he brooded over Schneider's deliberate disregard. At the complete absurdity of Schneider's reasoning. Reason. Another word that hardly served as a descriptive one when contemplating Schneider.
Asininity was a better one. And stubborn. And lecherous. And recently growing a fixation upon him that was - - - frightening - baffling - - disturbing. It made his stomach churn and his palms sweat thinking about it. Thinking about what had almost happened in that cabin before Amir had come in and interrupted it. About what he had almost let happen. But no, he would have stopped it. He would most certainly have come to his senses and put a halt to it. Beyond what was right and moral -- he owed it to Lily. Lily was a far better excuse than the former two. After a century or so of living as a wizard and no peaceful one at that for most of that time -- right and moral lost a bit of their meaning. Loyalty didn't.
"Are you listening?" Schneider's voice cut through his musings. Sharp, imperious voice usually reserved for idiots and enemies. Kall-Su blinked and stared at the map Amir had spread out on the table in the center of his cabin.
"What? Kall-Su asked, looking to the captain for a civil answer to the question.
"In two days the Black March and their army will be here, in this valley. It is a fine place for an army to set up camp, for the highland surrounding it cuts off the desert winds."
"And?"
"and --" Amir took an impatient breath, obviously having said this once. "It will be possible to slow them down if we could divert some of the Nile's flood waters that way. Its the season for floods anyway, and with a bit of creative damming, we could cause Ramlah's army a great deal of discomfort.
Kall tilted his head, running a finger down the snaking line that was the great river. Less than a pinkies width away was a broad body of water.
"What's this?"
"the Red Sea." Amir said, then clarified. "No help there, its a hundred miles away.
"Oh. And this tributary? It seems to run from there to here almost?"
"Ah, that. A hatchling river. The earth shifted some thirty years past and that was created. It bleeds into the sea."
"I don't see how getting their feet wet will benefit us." Schneider sipped at his wine, directing his words to Amir, hardly even looking to Kall-Su at all. "I thought you had something a bit more radical in mind."
"It will give us time to evacuate the people from the villages in their path."
Schneider sniffed, disinterested in such a humanitarian act.
"Not our concern. It doesn't get me any closer to wiping Ramlah off the face of the earth."
"Don't confuse your concerns with mine." Kall-Su said coldly. "I refuse to let them blindly wipe out those towns and cities when Lily may in one of them."
Schneider lifted a dark brow scornfully. "Oh, I had forgotten the range of your morality. Of course, once you find the baggage your interest in saving innocent lives will be exhausted, will it not?"
"You are craven and selfish." Kall spat, driven to anger now, as only Schneider could manage.
"Me selfish? You're the one with the agenda" Clam and cold. Schneider was not angry at all. Schneider was out for blood and scoring wounds on a regular basis.
"We've veered off topic here." Amir cleared his throat, glaring at the both of them.
"I've veered off nothing." Schneider said, tilting his goblet again. "I'm exactly where I want to be."
Kall-Su hissed, pushing himself up. Exasperation ate at him like acid. And there was only so far a body could go to expel it at Schneider without provoking appalling consequences. He escaped onto the deck, had to stop and gain his balance as he always did when the sight of so much rocking water assaulted his vision. It wasn't as bad as the sea. God -- not nearly so terrible as that, but it was ungainly and uncomfortable and he doubted he'd ever gain sealegs. At least the water surrounding him was fresh and did not hold for him the overwhelming suffocation that the ocean did.
He couldn't fight with Schneider. He'd never been able to fight with Schneider and win. It tore at his nerves and his self-confidence until he began to doubt the validity of his own cause. Keeping his wits about him was hard enough after his narrow escape from the Black March. After -- Ramlah. And to have Schneider pounce on him before he'd gathered abused defenses -- was beyond his capacity to easily deal. He cried loyalty to Lily -- and would be true to her till the day he died -- or more accurately and dismally, the day she did -- but for a while back there in that cabin -- he'd forgotten all about her, overcome with the amazement that Schneider wanted him. Wanted him! And maybe that was the thing battering most strenuously at his emotional shields -- maybe that was the thing that had him starting arguments and throwing angry words about like petals in the wind. That for a while there, Lily hadn't mattered. That for a while there, he might have let himself drown in something that had never before been offered -- something that he'd always before been on the outside of and desperately yearned for. Not the sex part, perhaps -- though he honestly couldn't sift through the welter of his confused emotions as a young man growing up under Dark Schneider's tutelage to truly know, but the other -- the needing -- the physical desire for his presence as something other than a tool or a means to an end -- that had been an overwhelming realization. To know that Schneider wanted him -- and badly -- god, it robbed him of reasonable thought.
He gripped the rail and stared blindly at the dark water. Vaguely, he heard the sounds of the sailors moving around him, of the refugees on deck. He couldn't deal with it. He couldn't deal with the utter coldness Schneider was presenting him with now, after being rebuffed. It hurt, even though he tried to pretend that it didn't. He needed something to divert his attention. Somewhere to channel his energies.
He caught sight of the little brown guide, Abu and his attention was momentarily distracted by a familiar face.
"Hello, great Dijin." Abu smile his oily smile and slithered up. "I had feared for your death."
"You managed to survive."
"Yes and was most wonderfully blessed by discovering the other most honorable wizard.'
"Honorable?" Kall-Su lifted a brow. He supposed he ought to be grateful, regardless of recent agitation's. He stared at the far shore with its muddy banks and lush greenery. At this juncture, with this moist air and abundance of fresh water, his powers were great. Amazing that less than a mile from here and the desert would rob him of fuel for the most intrinsic of his magics. He thought about Amir's hopes of bogging Ramlah's armies down with diverted floodwaters from the Nile and doubted it would work. Doubted anything so miserly would hinder the Black March. It would take more. Much more. Though water was the key. The March abhorred it.
"Abu, I was shown a map of this river and somewhere ahead of us there was a tributary that split off from it leading towards the sea. Amir said it was created when the earth shifted many years ago. Do you know of what I speak?"
"Yes. I know. It feeds a portion of the desert that had never been fed with fresh water before."
"Can you show me?"
The little man shrugged. "I could. We will pass it soon enough."
"Sooner." Kall said and called the winds. Abu let out a little shrill sound of startlement as his feet left the relative stability of the deck. He breathed a prayer or a curse that Kall-Su couldn't understand, then there was nothing but water under them and that far below and he said nothing in fear that Kall-Su might relinquish his hold on him and drop him to his death.
They sped far ahead of the boat, bullied by the wild wind currents that Schneider had called earlier to fill the sails. Past the mud flats and into canyons that towered over the river and beyond that to the broad mouth of a tributary that spit from the winding Nile and bled east.
"This is it?"
Abu nodded speechlessly. Kall sat him down at the juncture and told him to stay. It would be faster, easier traveling without his weight. Abu watched miserably as he was abandoned. Kall had more care for the tributary. There was a narrow swatch of life around it, a miniature version of the greenness given life by the Nile. A channel opened by some intrinsic weakness of the earth. He could feel the unstability when he plunged his senses below the water and into the ground. Not only did the water flow above, but there were also channels of it below, encased in stone. How far they reached towards the sea would remain to be seen.
He had a glimmer of a plan though. One better than Amir's. Tenfold better, if it worked.
Kall-Su had gone without a word to anyone. The superstitious refugees all whispered about demons and black magics and gestured skyward in the retelling of the departure. That he'd left without bothering to offer an explanation was an aggravation. It didn't quite border on worry. If he ran into trouble the resonance of magic in the air would be warning enough. It merely annoyed Schneider that Kall had avoided his ire by simply flying away. When Schneider was going out of his way to be pissed at a body, he found it infuriating to have that body flee his efforts.
He sat on the railing at the bow of the ship and brooded. Winds partially of his making whipped his hair about his face, obscuring vision, hiding the darkness of his expression. The sailors and the refugee's kept their distance, giving him all the seclusion he wished. Even Amir left him be, after the disheartening response to his plan. Besides, Amir only intruded upon him when he was intent on more serious business, and there was none of that likely to occur what with Kall-Su avoiding his cold shoulder.
Annoying little prude. More frustrating than Yoko when she'd refused to give in to the inevitable. It had been a rather amusing chase with her. Not even once had he contemplated striking her down with a high powered spell merely to have his way with her. Of course she'd never taken a pledge of loyalty to him, never promised the obedience of a vassal to a lord, so one had to give her leeway. Kall-Su had, on more than one occasion and it was perfectly irritating to be so thoroughly rebelled against. Arshes Nei had never once denied him what he wanted --well, except for the Gara thing, but he'd decided grudgingly to forgive her that. One really would think the Ice Lord would have at least as much loyalty as the Thunder Empress.
There was a minuscule flicker of power from the south. Schneider followed the source lazily, identifying it and relaxing back into his slouch when it proved familiar. He waited, as lazy and indolent seeming as a cat in the grass watching a sparrow. The wind brought Kall-Su with it and the ice wizard sat down on the deck with the little native guide in tow. He sent the man off below decks with a word, his own ice pale eyes finding Schneider at the prow, clearly worked up over something. Well, as clearly as Kall ever habitually showed his emotions, which wasn't a great deal and only notable to someone who knew him well enough to spy the differences.
Schneider ignored him, preferring to watch the rippling water as the ship cut through the current.
"I need to talk with you."
"Humm. Maybe later." Schneider waved a hand at him. "I'm not in the mood now."
"It's important." Kall's voice was rigid with forced diplomacy.
"Our notions of important often vary. Go away -- boy." He added the last just to let Kall-Su know his present estimation of his status.
Kall let out a frustrated breath and snapped back. "You are the one acting like a child. A spoiled one at that! This is im - - -"
"Don't --" Schneider hissed and whirled off the railing so fast that Kall-Su never saw the blow coming and staggered back from an closed fisted, backhanded blow, into the bole of the forward mast. "- - Take that tone with me. You want to trade insults? Find someone who won't make you eat them raw."
Kall-Su glared, trying to keep his balance when the coiled rigging at the foot of the mast tangled with his feet.
"You forget who I am. Have I become so indolent that I give the impression of someone who placidly accepts slander? Do you forget -- with your carelessly sworn false oaths -- who you're sworn to first and foremost?"
He was angry enough not to bother shielding the swirling power that rose in response to his emotional turmoil. He could feel the surge of Kall-Su's answering magics. He stepped closer, using every bit of his height to his advantage, using every bit of his indomitable force of will, every bit of his absolute assurance of his own justification. Kall-Su never had been able to stand up to all three combined. Not for long at any rate.
He dipped his head marginally, an unwilling act of submission. It took a moment for him to gather the calm to speak. "No. I have not. Forgive me my insolence -- my lord." That last came out a hiss that in no way indicated the need for absolution. He lifted his head, swiping away the trickle of blood escaping from lips smashed against teeth. He didn't quite shoulder Schneider out of the way in his efforts to stalk away. His shoulder did just manage to graze Schneider's chest in the movement. Just enough physical contact to kindle offense with the alpha male dwelling inside.
Kall really, really should have known better. There'd been a time when he'd been so good at placating Schneider with his diplomatic grace. He seemed sorely lacking that of late. The wolf in Schneider let him get through the hatch and below decks before it pounced, not wishing the annoyance of all the frightened sheep on deck. Caught him halfway down the hall towards Amir's cabin. Grasped his arm and swung him into the door of cabin so hard the wood the hinges were bolted to shattered and the door crashed inwards into a dark and tiny space. First or second mate's quarters maybe, for there was a small table with an unused oil lamp, a hammock and a locker to store personal effects. There was no port. When he kicked the door shut behind him and cast a furious and hasty spell to seal it into place it plunged the room into darkness. Wizard sight pierced it.
"I don't think you're sorry at all."
"Goddamnit, DS --!!" Kall-Su's back was to the table. He practically glowed with leashed power. It radiated from him, a cool blue aura so very different from the red hot zeal of Schneider's power. "Stop it! We'll sink this ship."
"Think I give a fuck?" He lunged, smashing Kall-Su backwards, shattering the table and sending the both of them down amongst the ruins of it. Kall got an elbow up and slammed it into Schneider's throat, got a knee in his gut, a combination that momentarily robbed him of breath until his magic reflexively soothed the injury. He didn't even have to think about such minor things -- his healing faculties were that good. Kall's had never been honed so well. Kall gasped as the shards of a broken oil lamp gouged his back, cried out when Schneider's weight pressed the glass into his flesh deep enough to do real damage. Reflexively he lashed out in response to the hurt. A huge explosion of ice that flared up into Schneider's face, turning his hair and skin frigid, blasting out a good chunk of the ceiling over their heads and putting a hole in the deck that leaked sunlight down into the dark little cabin.
A terrible gouging hurt that kept him from gaining proper breath. That sent screeching fingers of agony up from his lower back and straight into his brain. He hadn't had the sense to pull that spell. It had come tearing out of him unbidden. At least it had gotten Schneider off him.
Not for long. The furnace of heat that blasted through the cabin made the air unbreathable. Kall-Su choked on the blistery heat and curled on his side, putting up shields to protect himself -- wondering how in hell he was going to get past Schneider without blasting a hole in the side of the ship. He truly did not want to sink this ship with all the innocents and allies they'd found upon her. And this little argument dearly needed to be taken outside.
Wood was smoldering. Kall pushed himself up and screamed. "You fool, you'll burn the ship down."
"You're the one who put a hole in her deck, idiot!!" Schneider snarled and advanced, all violence and barely contained magical fury. Kall scooted back, got his shoulder to the wall, desperately trying to think of way to stop this madness that had sprung out of nowhere and gotten so thoroughly out of control. Bending knee to him might be infuriating when Schneider was in this irrational frame of mind, but it was better by far that fighting with him when they needed their strength to combat the real enemy. Not that fighting would gain him anything but eventual defeat. He never been able to take Schneider when he'd been at the height of his powers -- there was little chance of it now.
"DS -- please. I'm sorry. I mis-spoke. It is nothing but nerves --- this place and this thing we face -- it takes its toll on both of us."
"You think I'm afraid?" An indignant accusation.
"Yes." He whispered it, because he thought it was true. Because he was. Because maybe that intolerable fear was the insidious root at the cause of Schneider's insanity. Dark Schneider wasn't afraid of anything, because there was nothing that existed as powerful as he -- until now. Schneider glared at him silently.
"You're not a fool." Kall said softly, tasting blood in his mouth. "You've never been a fool. It's terrifying, this power they possess. More so because it differs so vastly from our own. They've beaten us both. If we can't find something beyond our magics to aide us, what makes you think they can't do it again and I for one -- would rather -- die -- than end up at their mercy again. They have none."
That did it. That triggered the bit of possessiveness Schneider had for him.
"You won't. I will see them back in the ground."
Diffused, Kall thought. Successfully disarmed. He leaned his head against the wall and tried to gather the stamina to reach around and pull the shards of glass out of his back.
"I believe you this time." Schneider informed him loftily. "Look what you've done to yourself."
To argue the point of blame would have been useless. Schneider put one knee to the deck and pulled Kall-Su forward against him, while he plucked out the glass as if he were picking lent off a tunic. It hurt enough to clot lashes with unwilling tears. Then Schneider ran his fingers over his back and the pain went away. God, he had such a soft touch when it suited him. Kall shut his eyes for a breath, digging his fingers into Schneider's tunic, thinking that the insanity had as much if not more to do with him as with anxiety over the Black March. Angry at him. Furious at him -- stymied in his wants and hating it.
"Why -- why couldn't you have pursued this half a century ago?" he whispered into the folds of cloth. The hands on his back paused. The healing was done, Schneider was banishing the blood from the robes.
"Would you have been receptive?" Curious.
Denying it would have been self-deceiving. Even Arshes knew. Perhaps that intuition on her part had fueled the sublime hostilities that had existed between them for practically all their long lives.
"Probably."
"Ah." A delighted smile radiated from Schneider. Quite the stunning, white toothed smile that made him none the less dangerous in appearance, perhaps even more so. "Let me fix this." A thumb pressed against Kall's split and swelling lip an instant before Schneider's mouth did. The soft/rough muscle of Schneider's tongue pressed against the torn flesh. His mouth sucked at the blood. He'd rather gotten himself into this, Kall had the presence of mind to think. He'd manipulated peace from violence and now paid the price. Schneider was still powered up enough in the magical sense that violent rebuttal might bring the violence back.
The kiss wasn't that bad, really. Rather intoxicating, when a body wasn't too shocked, or too angry to truly appreciate Schneider's unequaled skills in the area. It was like standing in the tide and letting the power of the waves pull your body this way and that and having very little power to chose a direction of your own liking.
It wasn't until he felt his back hit the floor and the heat of Schneider's very obvious arousal was pressed against his lower belly that rational thought came back.
"But ---" He turned his head to gasp and Schneider's mouth moved to his jaw, to a juncture of his throat that Lily had already discovered to be a sensitive spot.
" --- not --" Schneider had a hand under one of his knees, pulling his leg up so that he could settle between Kall's thighs. The hand drifted down the back of Kall's thigh to his rear, fingers digging into the flesh there with enough strength to make Kall groan and forget his line of thought. Only for a moment though.
"--Now. But not now. I can't now, DS. Lily. I can't betray Lily."
"What she doesn't know, won't hurt her." Reflexive and very distracted reasoning.
"And Yoko? Does the same apply to her?"
Schneider paused, canting his head to stare down, eyes hardly rational in the heat of desire. "Yoko didn't say I couldn't do you."
"You talked about it?" that came out a bit panicked. He shoved at Schneider's chest to get him to move.
"No, we didn't talk about it. She said no women."
Kall gaped at him. "Get off."
Schneider smiled down like a grinning wolf. "No."
"Even if -- even if I were willing and I'm not -- I wouldn't -- do it -- on the floor of a cabin we've just demolished. And -- and there's a hole in the deck and just anybody can see down if they look,"
"God, you sound like a woman."
Schneider had him well and truly flustered, a fact which pleased Schneider to no ends, that was very clear. It pleased him so much that he actually rolled off. "Okay. We'll go the captain's cabin."
"NO!"
"Yes."
"DS -- I'm serious."
A string of furious curses broke into the negotiations. A brown, bearded face appeared in the gaping hole in the ceiling.
"What have you done? You crazy, foreign devils, you've blasted a hole in my ship. Are you trying to kill us all?"
"Live with it, Amir." Schneider suggested pleasantly.
Amir gaped. Amir cursed under his breath and finally hissed in frustration.
"By Allah, just fuck him and get it over with. You'll destroy us all with this cursed foreplay otherwise."
Actually speaking with civility to anyone after that grievous embarrassment was -- difficult to say the least. Kall-Su entertained thoughts of actually sinking the ship his self for some while after Amir's repugnant observation, which might not have been half so bad had several of his sailors, Abu and a handful of the bravest refugees not also have crept up to peer down the hole in the deck as he was saying it.
He might have stalked off to the darkest, deepest cubby in the ship to work off the embarrassment had Amir not blatantly given him pause by asking, "Abu says you dragged him all the way down river to look at that tributary and had some sort of new notion?"
Kall had glared with every iota of incivility he possessed at the man's audacity to even speak to him, and even curled his fingers into fists where power gathered like moths around light -- when Schneider clapped a hand on his shoulder and seconded the question in a most cheerful tone of voice.
"What notion?"
Which efficiently forced him into a more constructive mode of thought.
"Not here." He glowered at the crowd gathered round the hole in the deck. Amir shrugged and gestured towards the hatch. Back below deck then, past the shattered door and down the corridor to Amir's cabin.
"That tributary leads to the sea," He stated without preamble. "Which is less than a hundred miles away from the river not far from here. Flooding of the river is not enough to deter the Black March no matter what you think. Bringing the sea in might be."
Amir blinked at him, baffled. Schneider tilted his head, interested.
"And how might such a feat be accomplished?"
Kall took a breath and traced his finger along the almost straight line of the tributary. "This was created when the earth shifted a few decades ago. The earth is still unstable, I sensed it. Near the coast very much so. Underneath the tributary is an underground freshwater channel. A very large one, if that was expanded enough, the plates will shift and the band of land separating the tributary from the sea will be torn asunder, creating in essence a new strait. The sea will rush in and with a bit of proper urging, follow the tributary, enlarging it as it goes until it reaches the Nile."
Amir was still blinking. "But -- but how? The power it would take to move such a vast expanse of earth -- it is impossible."
"Freezing water expands." Schneider said dryly.
Amir was silent for a moment, then his eyes narrowed as understanding dawned. "By Allah -- can you do such a thing. We're speaking of miles and miles of river?"
"I can." He put every bit of confidence he possessed into those words. He wasn't really sure. It was more than thirty miles of underground river that would have to be frozen solid to accomplish what he wanted. Not an easy task in any sense. "My question to you is, can you, with your ocean magics, manage to channel the rush of the sea when it hits the Nile. We need it to go to that valley and not dissipate out into the river flooding everything but."
Amir took a breath, not so quick to overestimate his abilities. "Perhaps." He said finally. "Perhaps I can. I will not know until I try, will I?"
"Its going to be noisy." Schneider said, with a slight cold smile on his lips.
Kall took a breath and looked at him. "Yes." He agreed. "And it'll take a while for the water to travel from the sea to the valley."
"They'll need to be distracted."
"Seriously distracted."
"For how long?"
"More than a hour." Kall said slowly. It had taken considerably less for Ramlah and his minions to beat Schneider the last time they'd tangled. What he was asking for now, might very well be a death sentence. He didn't want to ask it, but there seemed so little other choice. And no one was as equipped to handle the task as Dark Schneider.
Schneider sat there, one knuckle slowly caressing his jaw, eyes shielded by too long black lashes. It had seemed such a brilliant plan when he'd thought of it, yet now, when it came down to the decision of whether it was feasible or not -- he found he'd rather not take the chance. The prince might be more than he was willing to pay -- innocent lives or no.
"We don't have to do it." Kall said.
"No. Its a good plan." Schneider said. "I remember now why I trusted you with so many of my forces. You have moments of sheer brilliance. Is he honorable?"
"What?" Kall blinked, caught off guard.
"Ramlah? Is he honorable enough -- that if I call him out for a one on one -- he'll do it?"
"He -- he's honorable -- but only towards his own, maybe -- we're outsiders, not of The People, so he might not stick to his word."
"He's right," Amir said. "Some of the desert nomads are so fiercely tribal that anyone not of the tribe is hardly even considered human."
"Okay. That answers my question. You just make sure you can do what you say you can, Kall. I'd hate to waste my time for nothing."
"You'll have the harder job." Kall said softly.
"Yes, I imagine I will. I expect a reward."
Kall opened his mouth. Shut it. Glanced at Amir and felt a blush rising. Amir shrugged and sipped his wine.
"You survive this -- and I promise you shall have it."