[Log] Talking Reason
Who: K'del, Tiriana
When: Day 13, Month 7, Turn 19
Where: Living Cavern, High Reaches Weyr
What: Tiriana and K'del, round... what number are we up to now?
Living Cavern, High Reaches Weyr
Stalactites hang high above this enormous cavern like a jagged chandelier or an inversion of the Spires themselves, but shadows cling to them instead of light. Below lie great tables arranged in rows, each large enough to serve a fighting wing, while in the nooks and alcoves around the cavern's edge sit more sensibly-sized tables, from six- and eight-seaters down to intimate spots for just a couple of diners. The only really open space is around the kitchen entrance, smelling of food and rarely quiet, and by the nearby serving tables with their long buffet of the day's offerings.
Tapestries on the smooth walls -- some faded and others newly woven -- only slightly mute the sea of sound when a meal is in full swing, but they add cheerfulness augmented by the glowlight from wall sconces and the centerpieces of each table. Still, shadows always creep along the ceiling and into the mouths of the exits -- the myriad small hallways at one end of the cavern and, at the other, the twisting tunnel to the bowl near an array of coathooks and and hatracks -- and late at night, when the glows are allowed to dim, the chamber can seem very dark indeed.
Contents:
K'del
Obvious exits:
Inner Caverns Kitchen Bowl
It's still early for dinner, but not so early that the caverns staff aren't prepared for it, ensuring that earlybirds can take their pick of the evening's fare. K'del is one of those, picking through the trays of roast meats for the juiciest slices, a process ably (if unncessarily) assisted by one young kitchen staffer who insists, "I can find some more, if these aren't good enough, Weyrleader. Or something else. If there was something else you want?" Like maybe her boobs, pressed as they are, as close to him as she can manage without touching him. "Er. These will be fine, thanks, Emela."
There are girls hitting on K'del, and we can't be having that, now can we? Tiriana, also early to dinner, spots K'del's tall self quickly, and rather than ignore him absolutely--her (and Iovniath's) usual method of coping--this time she heads straight over, quite willing to abuse her big knot to cut in line. "They're not that impressive," she announces, with a disdainful look at Emela's well-displayed cleavage.
Emela turns instantly and brilliantly pink, and, after a little gasp and a glance that shifts from K'del to Tiriana and then back again, she turns on a heel to flee. "You scared her off," says K'del turning towards the Weyrwoman with a sadly shaking her head. "She was harmless. Really wasn't necessary, whatever you think of me." He stabs viciously at a piece of meat with the serving fork, and adds it to the pile on his plate, then moves on to the potatoes, and vegetables - though he takes distinctly less of these.
"Oh, did I?" Tiriana covers her mouth with a hand and looks after Emela, as though she's shocked that the girl disappeared so quickly all because of /her/. But Tiriana can't keep up that facade, her smirk peeking out as she leans over to snag herself a plate and load it up. "I thought it was completely necessary," she informs K'del without looking at him. "I won't have /my/ Weyrleader trying to pick up every eighth-mark whore that wants to throw herself at a big knot--/any/ big knot."
K'del schools his expression under the weight of these retorts, and busies himself with the potatoes instead. Maybe he will take one more, after all. "As it happens, /I/ had nothing to do with her advances; did you see me accept? No." He sets the spoon back down again, and hesitates, looking thoughtful. And then: "Nice little brunette visited me the other day. Yuli-- the Crom one. Your friend. She was delightful." If-you-know-what-I-mean-and-I-think-you-do.
"Oh, well, in that case you're doing /great/," Tiriana says as she continues loading her plate, pausing to give K'del a flat look. "You didn't do her in the middle of the table, such self-control." Her eyes roll, and then she's finishing gathering up her meal, a comparatively light one. "Yuliye," is the correction then. And Tiriana starts off toward the tables like she expects to be followed, calling back to him, "Isn't she? Did she get you all hot under the collar, leave you hanging, K'del?" Because it's real hard to guess Yuliye's MO. "I told her not to fuck you, you know."
"Didn't invite her to come find me later, either," points out K'del, clearly working very hard not to react; look, it's even a smile! He starts off after Tiriana as she goes, shrugging with deliberate disinterest at the correction to Yuliye's name, which, surely, hardly matters. "So she told me. Not that it made much of a difference. Actually, we had a lovely time. She had an interesting proposal for me."
"It didn't?" says Tiriana, canting her head back. "What, you didn't want to do her? Are you really /that/ emasculated after me and Iovniath? Is that why you're not chasing that tramp from a minute ago, either?" She tries to look pitying, but it just doesn't work with her smirk as she sets the plate down on a table. "You could always go check the junior's weyr for your balls if you wanted. I mean, the staff cleaned up it good, so I wouldn't count on it, but if you're desperate--." A shrug, and she settles herself into a chair. Business proposals? The good of the Weyr? Backseat to sniping at K'del, of course!
K'del matches Tiriana smirk for smirk, though his has a set of raised eyebrows, too: the implication could be that Yuliye ignored what Tiriana told her, or, then again, perhaps he's just being, you know, kind of dumb. Go figure. "Believe me, I don't need to bed some tramp of a kitchens girl." Okay, so, the hand on his fork, now that he's joining her at the table, is just a little white with tension, but that's surely got nothing to do with biting back a sharper retort, right? "If you're quite done? I wanted to hear your thoughts on Crom's proposal."
Tiriana doesn't believe it for a moment, leaning back in her seat and snickering at him. But since he's going to be so businesslike, she'll indulge him--of /course/ it has nothing to do with getting bested by his lack of temper display. "His proposal," she prompts.
K'del's expression says 'thank you for acting like an adult for once', or something like it; it would be withering, maybe, to a very small child. He sets down his fork - still yet to take a bite - and takes a deep breath. "Crom has some land they aren't using. The suggestion was that, in an effort to make ourselves more sustainable, we could use it, grow some things for ourselves. It would remain Crom's land, and they'd get a proportion of the harvest, to pay for the use. I can see some appeal to it." His head tilts towards hers: well?
Tiriana is unwithered, perhaps, but her expression is thoughtful as K'del starts to explain. Pursing her lips, she frowns, leans forward to poke her fork at her food while she mulls this. "What's the catch?" she wants to know.
"They wanted to split the harvest sixty-forty. Their way. I said fifty-fifty; Yuliye's taking that back to Crom, to see what they think." K'del, finally, picks up his fork, and spears a piece of meat. The forkful hovers near his mouth as he adds, "It'd need some work, to get it ready for planting, too, apparently. But with dragons... And it'd be a Harper registered agreement. No sliming out of it." Look! Talking like adults!
Adults! Right up until Tiriana declares, "That damn weasel'll find /some/ way to fuck us over." Her eyes narrow with suspicion, and she shakes her head. "He's planning something already, I know it. I hate that man. And he hates me and my Weyr, too. What's wrong with this land he just wants to give away to his mortal enemies?" That's the most obvious question, even if most people might not phrase it /quite/ that way.
At least, for once, the enmity isn't aimed at K'del - who might look quite grateful for it, if he weren't busy shovelling food into his mouth. "Right," he agrees, swallowing. His fork gets waved around as he continues, though at least it's empty and not sending food flying everywhere. "We'll need to look at it, first. Get it inspected by a farmcrafter, who can tell us what problems there'd be. Don't /trust/ Aughan, but it could be a good opportunity." He sounds so... hopeful.
It can't last, the momentary truce. Tiriana is thinking hard, brows furrowing as she tries to run through everything her naturally paranoid mind can come up with that might be wrong with this deal. Finally, it rounds on K'del. "Fifty-fifty. What are you thinking?" She huffs, just shaking her head like he's the most incompetent negotiator ever. "The only reason he wouldn't be using land is because it's crap land. Nothing worth mining, can't even grow stuff there. And he expects us to do all the work, too, I bet. Should be sixty-forty /our/ way, and he ought to be grateful for that much."
Damn. But K'del draws himself up, and shrugs. "Still his land. His land, our labour. That seems fair to me. We haven't signed anything, remember - no agreements are made. If the land is useless, we won't proceed. If it doesn't end up working, well, fifty percent of nothing is still nothing; we just won't expend the effort on it. Whatever." He sounds distinctly tetchy, though, like he's only barely managing not to scowl at her.
Tiriana snorts. "So what? He's not doing anything with the land, so he ought to be happy to get forty percent off it," she announces. "And after all the trouble he's already caused us? He's going to have to court us better than /this/ if he expects us to be doing him any favors." She is scowling, of course; the thought of Aughan's name is enough to do that to her, let alone actual discussion of his motives. She stabs at her food, quite vicious.
"And turning this down, or insisting on taking more and more - that's really going to help relations between us. /I/ would like to not have to worry so much about fucking Crom. We can be wary, but please - don't be an idiot. I already said fifty; he may not even accept that." So too bad, is the unspoken conclusion to K'del's statement. He smashes a potato with his fork, then scoops it towards his mouth.
"What are you so worried about?" asks Tiriana, cocking her head. "Pathetic, really. What, are you worried he's going to spank you if you're not a good little boy who bends over when he tells you to? --I am not giving him an inch." And she nods once, sternly, to emphasize that point. "He's just... he's testing us. And if we back down for one second, he's going to pull something on us like Telgar again. That's the only reason he's bringing this up /now/, to /us/. He never would have dared to on N'thei." No mention of not trying it on Satiet, either, though.
"You don't have a diplomatic bone in your body, do you?" It's outright snark - K'del lets go of his control, and really does scowl, now. "I'm not an idiot. Quite possibly, yes, he's testing us, because you're well known for being a bitchy little girl, and I'm obviously a fool, easily malleable. So we have to prove them wrong, be canny. We're not N'thei and Satiet - but we're not fools, either. Unless you'd like to be?" He drops his fork, letting both hands rest upon the table, as he glowers at the Weyrwoman.
Tiriana doesn't look impressed with the lecture, her brows arching as if to say, 'really?' "No, I don't," she says, flatly. "And I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I'm not going to play his little games and dance around everything with him. You think we can outsmart that asshole? After he already managed to get two experienced Weyrs at each other's throats?" She shakes her head, glares at him. "If he thinks he just can lean on us a little, talk nice and get his way, he's got another thing coming."
K'del's hands are fists on top of the table, and forget about the rest of his food. Flatly, "So you think we should say no, we're not interested in this very interesting opportunity, we'd rather spend the interval doing nothing at all than dirty our hands with 'real' work." His brows are raised: yes? No?
"You can't talk reason with you," Tiriana says, rolling her eyes as though K'del's the stupid one of this party. "I never said we /won't/ do it. I said if we're going to do it, we're going to do it on /our/ terms. Not his. No letting him walk all over us--him /or/ Yuliye. Tell me, did you actually think this proposal through or do you just get distracted picturing the messenger naked again?"
"Look who's talking," says K'del, rolling his own eyes. "That's what I was /saying/. I'm not just going to say yes to everything; we're going to check it all out. No signing anything until we're satisfied." Does he turn slightly pink at mention of naked Yuliye? A little, a very little. "Fine. Good. We'll wait until we get an answer, and then we'll start inspecting."
Tiriana's mouth spreads into another smirk as naked-Yu gets to him (how could it not?). But she moves on with a flippant wave of her hand, noting, "With our /own/ farmcrafters. And if I let /you/ handle this--not like you have anything else to do, with the wings or anything--but you had best keep me informed every step of the way." Because she is nothing if not nosy and intrusive.
K'del sets his mouth into a hard line, evidently trying to maintain a professional demeanour despite the temptation to retort. "Of course. Our people, and our Harpers to write up any contracts that may eventuate." He makes a twitching motion with his face at being 'let', but continues, instead, "Of course. Communication is important."
"Not just /our/ people, the people here," Tiriana is quick to suggest, another suspicion given voice. "For all we know they came from Crom. Or he bought them off. Or they just... Anyway, we're going to have to vet them all. Thoroughly. Before we let them see this land and check it out for us." And she nods firmly. Paranoid much?
K'del gives Tiriana a dubious glance, clearly surprised by the level of paranoia, but he nods. "We'll be careful. Of course." His plate gets pushed away; his appetite seems to have abandoned him. "If you'll excuse me, I have some things to do. Visitors. You know." Probably sexy ones.
"I'm sure," says Tiriana. "Go on, then." And she waves a hand, dismissive.