A/N: I forgot to put a disclaimer on one of my stories, and you know what? Nobody sued me! How do you like that? But I'd still like to say that any idiot who's read the Tamora Pierce books knows that these characters aren't mine, and I know it, so don't sue me!

I was sorry to see Onua leave an hour later. Human companionship is something I never miss until it's gone.

I was able to find the next three items on my list fairly easily. Two days before my arranged pick-up, I flew toward the castle for what I hoped was the last time.

It was early in the morning, and there was nobody in sight when I landed outside the back door. At that moment, I made my biggest mistake of the mission. Once human, I saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye before I ducked into the shadows of the entrance.

I had been seen.

Breathe, I told myself. It was probably just a gardener, and he thinks I'm a servant. No catastrophe.

Would a gardener duck behind a wall to avoid being seen by another servant? Had the man seen me change from hawk to human? Before I found out the answers, it would be too late.

Determined to finish my mission and get out of Sinthya before the man could do anything about his discovery, I headed directly toward the clerk's offices without scrying my surroundings. This was another mistake.

As I turned a corner, strong arms caught me and covered my mouth with a foul smelling cloth. I knew the sharp odor was bad news, but didn't even have time to hold my breath before my vision went black.

I fought back into consciousness and found myself in a small, bare stone chamber. At once I was thankful that I had memorized my mission sheet; I hadn't been carrying any papers of importance.

I felt for my Gift and felt nothing. Looking around more carefully, I saw magical runes scratched into the walls. I was in a cell that disabled the Gift, like the ones Ozorne kept in Carthak.

Footsteps and low voices echoed down some corridor, coming closer and closer to my prison.

"And here I am, helpless," I whispered to myself.

The footsteps halted and the door opened, revealing two were mages with whom I had studied in Carthak, and one stormwing. My two former friends, Sieran and Galor, smiled unpleasantly.

"Hello, Draper," Sieran sneered, walking slowly toward me. "I see you've been busy betraying your country."

His face was inches away from mine, smiling scornfully. I glared at him and opened my mouth to give an angry reply and he shoved something in my mouth.

Whatever it was, it tasted worse, if that was possible, than what they had used on me earlier. I tried to spit it out, but it had slipped down my throat. The mages and the stormwing laughed.

"He'll be unconscious in a few minutes," Galor told the stormwing. "He'll awake ready to tell everything." Sieran seized my arm and dragged me out of the cell.

The second I felt my magic return, I shifted into a hawk. Sieran cursed and made a grab for me, which I dodged.

"Did we know he could do that?" Galor asked nobody in particular.

The second I had assumed the form, I realized it was a bad idea. Whatever drugs they had given me were taking hold fast. I should have become a larger animal, I thought belatedly.

The dungeons around me began to swim in my vision. I clumsily took flight toward the only light I could see. Galor chased after me, but as fuzzy as my head felt, I still managed to avoid him.

My heart pounded in my ears as I found a window and flew into the bright sunlight. "Get your nation out looking for him, now," Sieran ordered the stormwing. "Do not let him get away!"

I concentrated with my entire mind on getting away, just flying away from the castle. A few minutes later, I heard the stormwing nation take off. They could fly faster than I could, and soon they were too close for comfort.

By this time I was having trouble flying in a straight line. The head stormwing, the one whom I had met in the dungeons, took advantage of that and flew in close. It was all I could do to keep from bumping his razor sharp feathers.

While I concentrated on avoiding the head stormwing, I didn't notice another sneak up behind me until he seized my wing in his claws. I tried to wrench it out of his grasp and felt a sickening snap as the delicate bones broke. The stormwing held on tightly as I struggled, until I snapped at his face with my beak. He let go of me, and I plummeted down into the trees.

I couldn't tell which way was up until I hit the forest floor with a gasp and another crack of my wing. Craning my neck to see the sky, I saw that the stormwings had organized into search parties. A lone hawk sitting on the ground was an easy target. Trying to separate the swirling blots of color I saw into clear objects, I spotted a hollow log and carefully crawled inside.

I couldn't tell if I had stopped moving or not. The dizziness from the drugs and from the broken wing were turning my world on its ear. I wasn't aware of much until I felt something pull me out of the log.

Why was I in the log? I wondered. Oh yes, I remembered, the stormwings. I looked up at my captor and concentrated on him or her with great difficulty. The face would not come into focus, but in some corner of my mind I realized that I was not being held by the cold steel of stormwing claws. It was this realization that held back my cries when whatever held me did something that caused great pain to my wing. I was content to trust this person's good intentions. I would not know the wisdom of this until later.

Weak, huh? Well, whatever. Now I have less creative liberty so it's going to suck, but I'm trying. Really. So review!