Chapter Text
It was like watching the horse you'd bet on streak across the finish line. It was like pulling the lever on a slot machine and watching three cherries pop up. It was like finding a sack of gold in the street and no one taking it away from you.
It was like breaking out of jail!
The desert stretched out as far as a guy could see in all directions, and when you reached any of your pick of horizons the next horizon would still be an expanse of sand- sand with the free wind flying across it and screaming, and spraying grit like spit in your eye.
The night air that should be chilling him to the bone was bracing, and the currents tearing through it bore him up though he had never been much of a glider, not really, he always felt a sense of impending doom if he were too still in the air and would start flapping again before going into any kind of glide, and to go into a dive he'd better have a life or death reason or a life or death paycheck at the end of it. But tonight he was sitting on the wind like floating on water, like an albatross or one of those other famous first-rate flyers!
And then the wind dropped out.
See! Even a bird couldn't trust the air. At least he had a good set of wings on him.
Once he started flapping Iago found that the cold and the buffeting of the wind had made his muscles sore and stiff. He coasted in to land on Cassim's shoulder in an awkward flurry of feathers.
"You seem to be enjoying the ride," Cassim said, with that little smile of his- it was so much like Aladdin's but older and with the 'punk teenager' weathered out of it. "May I ask what is so amusing?"
Iago had been laughing. He hadn't even noticed- though an incomparable screecher and incontestable master of loudness, that wind had him beat. A bird's body could fit a lot of air for its size, but not all of the air over the entire Seven Deserts.
But he'd been laughing for some reason. Now he was out of breath, his throat was dry and probably had sand in it, and he had no idea what was funny.
With a brief, vague thought about pillars of salt, he looked over his shoulder. No golden spires of a palace that had cherished him like a viper in its bosom for ages and then spat him out like a chicken bone. Not even the glow of the city lights of the society of accident-prone toddlers, grimy pickpockets and cheating marketplace barkers that was Agrabah.
The laughter bubbled back up from somewhere in his heaving chest and he tamped it back down- Cassim would think he was crazy. And he'd be right! What the heck was so funny?
Cassim was still waiting for an answer.
"Oh, you know," said Iago, after clearing his throat a few times, "it's an inside joke for birds, you wouldn't get it."
"Ah, I see." Cassim kept his thoughts pretty close to the vest but he got the feeling the King of Thieves didn't buy that weak answer. Too bad; he didn't have a better one.
Iago had the sudden urge to take wing again, and he thought it was because the horse, which was already, to begin with, quite a bit slower than a motivated parrot, had slowed even further. Iago was no speed demon and a firm believer in conserving energy. What had gotten into him? Sand mites?
He settled for shifting restlessly on Cassim's shoulder. "Why did we slow down?"
Cassim patted the horse's thick, ropy plank of a neck. A parrot sitting on a guy that was sitting on a horse, they must look like one of those mouse-on-a-cat-on-a-pony acts. "I don't want to tire her," said Cassim. "We have many miles yet to travel."
"Oh, sure. Good idea." A thoughtful guy, that Cassim. Iago didn't know a lot about horses himself, but this horse had better not give out on them in the middle of the desert.
How long did that horse have to hold up, anyway? "You have any idea where we're going yet?" Iago asked. "Because let me tell you, I've been dragged all over the known world, I know every good spot in the entire Seven Deserts, and I never forget how to find a place, so you just talk to me."
Cassim nodded, and Iago thought he kinda sorta looked appreciative. "I may take you up on that. I do have a final destination in mind, but we'll need places to stop along the way."
"I am a master of stopping along the way." That was how a parrot traveled; you flew a little way, you found a snack, you took a little break... that was the sensible way to travel. Aladdin and his pals ramming through the desert for twelve hours were the unreasonable ones...
"No regrets, I hope."
He snapped back to the present. "What was that?"
Cassim looked serious, and Cassim didn't look serious over nothing. "Soon we may be too far away for you to fly home."
Did he want to get rid of Iago or something? What was this? "Why would I go back?"
"Why do you stay?"
Because he'd gone nuts! Happily nuts- more like he was high, really. Like the time he'd eaten a whole poppy without realizing what it was, but without the puking and near-death experience. So far.
"Because," Iago said, instead of bringing up the poppy, "I like money, and you like money. I think we understand each other." A human had this little elbow-nudging gesture that conveyed 'I like you but not enough not to knock you around' very nicely- a bird didn't have elbows, just cute little wings, but he tried the nudge as best as he could. Cassim would probably just feel a brush of feathers against his neck.
Cassim smirked at him. "I understand perfectly, you little turkey."
What Iago didn't understand was the note of affection in his voice. Sure, he'd helped Cassim out, but he knew better than to think that that made a guy like you.
"But," Cassim continued, "I meant what I said- no more thievery."
Iago wondered exactly how easy this guy thought that was going to be. It wasn't like Cassim was some shmuck, he was the King of Thieves, and you didn't get that kind of title from being bad at your job, especially in a field where everyone was literally trying to steal it from you. And when you were good at something, really good, it was hard just to give it up. It would be a shame to give it up, even.
But okay, sure. "I didn't say stealin'," he said. "There are a lot of legitimate ways to get filthy, stinkin' rich for a smart guy who knows his way around, you know what I'm sayin'? And safer, too." It had not been pleasant, to live in the palace under the threat of execution upon discovery. And it was all well and good for that guy to talk about a formal beheading; a big rock was all you needed to get rid of a parrot. Actually, a foot with a shoe on it was all you needed to get rid of a parrot. "If you don't steal it to begin with, nobody knows you have it to steal it back from you. Me, I always consider stealing a last resort."
"Is that so."
"Oh, yeah." It was true, really- the only thing was that what Iago considered as his standards for justifying the 'last resort' weren't always the same that a given human might be using. Aladdin, for example- sometimes stealing to keep yourself from being hungry was okay and sometimes it wasn't, and for some reason whether you'd last eaten two hours ago or three days ago mattered? What was that about? Hungry was hungry.
"What do you have in mind, then?" Cassim asked.
"There's all kind of treasure and riches out there. It's ancient. People forgot about it. It's just sitting there and your kid couldn't be bothered to go and get it." And now they could go and get it without Aladdin getting all judgmental and then taking the reward to give it to a princess whose father had an entire treasure room.
"I will confess that I am intrigued."
"Just show me a map sometime and I'll show you all the treasure spots I know about." Humans were so weirdly helpless sometimes. Iago didn't need any map but Cassim sure would need the map, his kind didn't even know which way was north without using some gadget.
"I'll make a note of it."
The cold was settling in now and Iago wondered how long it was until sunrise. The stars and the moon were bright enough to make the sand seem to glow blue, but they gave no warmth. Cassim might have an inkling, but he seemed to be done talking and Iago wasn't such a pain in the neck that he would nag the guy with 'Is it dawn yet? Is it dawn yet?'
He'd gotten real close to believing his own line. The fire in his blood, the dizzying giddiness that was making him act like a moron, that was all just greed, right? Not that he'd ever felt quite like this before, when he'd had plenty of opportunity to explore greed in every form, but this was... advanced greed, or something.
His beak opened and he blurted out: "You've never heard of a guy named Jafar, have you?"
Cassim must have answered right away, but it felt like time dragged on forever while the fever that was 'advanced greed' rose past laughter and crossed into a choking breathlessness, with little pressuring pains inside to go with it. He'd seen a dissected pigeon once, in a jar in Jafar's lab, and it was full of pouches that- Jafar explained as Iago retched and whined- served the function of filling a bird with air and making it light enough to fly. Ergo, Iago was full of hot air, in a very literal and functional sense, which was no end of amusement to Jafar, who was way too into puns.
So why did Iago always feel like he couldn't get any air?
"No," said Cassim, now, and his voice was so light, like it was nothing! "I've met a person or two with that name, of course, it's not an uncommon one, but there was no one memorable." Like it was nothing, like they were talking about the weather. Like Jafar was nothing. Like he wasn't even real. "Ought I to have heard of him?"
"No, you shouldn't have heard of him!" The feathers around his neck were all fluffed up in a vain effort to protect him from the wind that shrieked a wail of mourning across this dunes.
These dunes that he'd crossed once before.
Twice.
Three times.
"That's quite a wind," said Cassim, "it sounds like a woman crying."
Why a woman? Why did they always talk like only a human could have something to cry about?
The stars above, the scents in the sand, the winds themselves and the faint tug of the earth were all shouting at him.
Cassim's horse plodded along the route that a burning trail of light had traced out for another human on another horse. The stars that had seen the Cave of Wonders spelled out its location like a middle finger in the sky. Iago's own treacherous, greedy little heart was throwing itself against his ribs in an attempt to escape that would just leave it cranky and still trapped.
The horse stopped.
"Why are we stopping?!"
"What on Earth is the matter?" Cassim asked.
Iago realized that he had not so much asked the question as screeched it. "I- I don't like stopping in the desert," he said, "there are marauders."
"Ah, yes... it's true enough. We won't be stopped long. I have to water the horse."
"Oh. In that case. There's a well just over that way."
He pointed with his wing and quickly had to draw the wing back again before the wind could rip it off of his body.
"There's a well," he repeated uselessly. "Been there before."
"Aha. That's quite a stroke of luck."
"Yeah. Luck."
The horse ambled towards the well with a rocking, trotting motion that wasn't kind to a nervous stomach.
"Your good spirits seem... deflated," Cassim said.
"I don't do 'good spirits'. That was manic energy and now I'm tired."
"I see. If you can find a secure perch, feel free to sleep- I don't need you to drive the horse."
"What a concept. Thanks."
There was that stinking well. "Wait a minute," Iago cried, and he flew to it- the wind had gotten gusty, and a flight of just ten feet was a tricky affair.
He perched on the freezing stone edge of the well and looked down into it. Nothing. Blackness. No lamps, no genies.
Iago was careful climbing down to the ground and finding a sheltered spot by the well. That wind could pick him up and throw him around the way the ocean tossed a piece of wood. It could throw him in the well, too, and it'd be a hard job flying a straight vertical to get out.
He watched, shivering, as Cassim tied the horse, picked up the bucket, lowered the bucket... all things his big old human arms did without any hesitation at all. There was a trade-off, of course; five of Iago could fit in that bucket the guy was tossing like nothing, but Cassim would never fly.
Cassim hauled the bucket back out of the well and set it down. He took a swig or two from his canteen, then dumped it out and filled it up fresh. He let the horse drink from the bucket. Iago stood on one leg to tuck the other one up into his warm feathers.
Wait, had Cassim said something? "Huh?" Iago yelled.
Cassim raised his voice over the wind. "Do you want to make camp?"
"Here? No!"
"You seem entirely unnerved, my friend. There are no marauders here now!"
"It's the sand," Iago said. The miles deep of choking sand, buried alive. "It's the wind." The wind that didn't know why it was screaming but screamed with all its might anyway. "I don't like the desert!"
"Still," said Cassim, "you'll feel better after a rest, and it's unlikely we'll be able to leave the desert before we must stop."
"It's a bad idea. You'd never make a fire- it would scatter. And staying still, we'd freeze. And don't you think bandits know there's water here? If that horse can still carry you, you'd better make it go!"
"Hmm. There's some sense in what you say." Cassim looked thoughtful. "I'm not accustomed to fearing bandits. I used to have thirty-nine bodyguards, you know- but now I don't. Perhaps I should take the advice of a creature that knows how to stay alive without them. A few more miles, then, the horse can handle it."
"Yes! He sees sense!"
"But if we are moving on, you'd better take a drink."
"Oh, yeah. I guess so." They were in the desert and he was parched.
Iago crept closer, staying low out of the wind, and used the hanging handle of the bucket as a step up onto its edge. He leaned over and took a beakful of water. It tasted like lamp oil.
No it didn't! It didn't taste like anything, it was too cold to taste.
Get a grip, he told himself, with an agitated flip of his wings- this, unfortunately, created an opening for the wind to slap at him, and yet- instead of tumbling in a ball across the sand and whacking into the stone well, his back hit with a firm thump against a warm human palm.
Aladdin? No. Right.
"You're shaking!" Cassim said, with a note of alarm, as he gently steadied Iago on his perch.
This was a surprise to him? "Yeah, it's cold! I'm an icicle over here!"
"Well, so you are. I apologize, Iago, I had not given a thought to that."
Iago turned to get a better look at his face. Cassim had a slight, concerned frown. "Of course you didn't think of that." Why should he give a thought to Iago's comfort? Why was he apologizing for not thinking of it? "Look, I'm used to it-"
"Someone your size could get hypothermia in an instant," said Cassim.
"I could, I could get pneumonia, too, but that's fine." He bent down to drink.
"You ought to have said something sooner."
Iago swallowed the water that did not taste like genie lamp, and said: "Well, it's not like you can do anything about it. You can't heat up the whole desert."
"I could carry you in my cape out of the winds. It seems an easy solution."
"You would- you'd do that?" That would put him in real close contact with Iago and the small down feathers that came loose from his body at regular intervals and his loud voice and any ticks or mites he might have- but didn't have. But no one ever took it on faith that he wasn't covered in fleas.
"It would hardly be a chore," said Cassim. "You're not heavy. I've seen men freeze to death at night in the desert, I don't believe a bit of caution is unwarranted."
"I- I guess," said Iago. He didn't get a lot of offers to cuddle, even in a strictly utilitarian sense. "I am pretty cold. I guess it's not any... weirder than riding on your shoulder."
"Excellent." Cassim was holding out a hand to him. Iago just stared at it, like an idiot. "Come here, then." He beckoned, as if this was just a normal thing to offer.
It wasn't weird, so Iago shouldn't make it weird. "Yes, sir." He stepped onto the offered hand. Cassim picked him up and tucked him into the folds of his cape, as promised. It was cozy in here, tucked against the King of Thieves' broad chest. Quite an improvement over being blasted by winds.
Don't tire the horse, don't let the parrot get chilly. Cassim was a bit too nice, maybe. It bore keeping an eye on. Could be a problem. But at the moment, not a problem. He wasn't going to complain about not being allowed to shiver in the cold.
"Is that better?" Cassim asked.
"Yeah... much better. Thanks, boss."
Cassim did not reply until after a moment or two had slipped by, and then he said: "Very well, then... onward we go."