Lela-of-Bast: I actually hadto get off my lazy hide and do some research for that so I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Nativewildmage: They would never had protested. The only two people who haven't realised thay're in love is themselves.
Sonnet Lacewing: I love writing fluffy chapters like that, ones with lots of thoughts and feelings. There's some action coming up, first time I written something like this so con crit will be useful!
A/N: Disclaimer: It all belongs to Tamora Pierce so don't sue me!
Chapter 15 – Mothers
Daine, Numair and almost everyone else present in the room at the time of Onua's announcement searched the palace thoroughly. No sign of Kitten was to be found.
"Where was she when you last saw her?" Numair queried Daine who was looking extremely upset.
"She'd gone with Tkaa for the evening. I thought she would have been at the banquet, but I just assumed that she and Tkaa had been caught up in learning some new trick…" Panic was now starting to set in.
Numair looked around for the basilisk. "Where is Tkaa?" he demanded, somewhat impatiently.
"He's coming!" The king called from the back of the growing crowd.
The tall immortal walkedintothe room, deep concern flooding his eyes.
"Have you seen Kitten?" Daine called to him, her voice penetrating the noisy room.
The basilisk shook his head. "I asked Onua if she was in the hall with you, that's when we realised she was lost. She left the kitchens awhile ago to go to you, just before the banquet began," Tkaa informed them.
"So she's gone missing in the space of one hall way – between the kitchens and the banqueting hall," Numair said in a low voice. "Jon," he called to the king. "Can we meet now in your room?"
The king must have agreed as Daine felt gentle hands lead her to the king's study. Alanna, George, Onua, Harailt and Thayet joined them.
"What's happened to her?" Daine asked, tears filling hr eyes.
"I think she's been taken," Numair said softly, his hand not leaving hers. "Daine, you and I can shape-shift. We can cover the ground much quicker that way. I doubt anyone will have gotten far with our Kitten," he reassured her.
Jonathan nodded at the young woman with smoky-brown curls. "Kitten is highly important to us all, Daine. We on the ground will start to search for her. We'll keep in touch with you and Numair."
Daine nodded and stood up. "Let's get started then," she said numbly as she exited the room, Numair close behind her.
Daine took owl shape as she flew over the palace grounds, her sharp eyes picking up any slight movements. Numair followed. His eyesight as a hawk was also good, and his presence comforted Daine. She called to the other night creatures and birds around her and asked them to help her locate Kitten. Just before Daine felt as if she could go on no longer, she heard the voice of a male nightjar speak to her. Practically dropping straight to the ground, she managed to steady herself enough to listen.
The dragon is near the big lake, the bird told her. She is where the red berries grow at the end of summer. Daine thanked him gratefully. Shifting her head to human, she relayed what he had said to Numair. Almost in tandem, they landed on soft ground, Numair by a tree, where he regained his human form, staying hidden so that Daine was spared blushing. He sent a speech spell to Alanna.
"Daine," he whispered quietly from behind the large oak's trunk. "We'll fly there. When we get there do you think you could shape shift into a lion or a tiger, for example, and hinder the person who's taken her?"
Owl-Daine nodded, hooting her agreement loudly. They resumed their flight, the wind assisting them in the correct direction. Daine caught sight of her dragon being carried by a tall, dark-haired man. Her sharp owl ears could hear Kit's cross screeches and wails. He must have drugged her to get her away from the palace, Daine thought as she swooped down, there's no other way we wouldn't have heard her.
Rapidly changing her form to that of a female tiger, Daine began to silently pursue the man. She realised that she was going to have to be cautious, as there was every chance that the man would be a mage. Kit had fallen silent, and Daine wondered if she had noticed Daine's presence.
"There's a good dragon," she heard the man say, "The master will be most pleased with me for bringing you!"
Staying in the shadows she began to creep up close to him.
"He is no mage," she heard in her ear. Numair had managed to send her a speaking spell. "I can't detect any gift."
Her hind legs prepared to spring upon him. In a flash the man was face down on the ground, a heavy tiger pinning him onto the floor and growling deeply at him. Daine allowed Kitten to wriggle herself free. She was seemingly unhurt, just very, very cross and upset. Daine fought the urge to go to her and hoped Numair would be able to get to her soon. The young dragon had a bond with the mage that was second only to the one she had with Daine.
Daine heard the man whimper and pray to the Gods for assistance. She growled louder and deeper than she had before, venting her anger at him with the noise. She needed to keep him pinned down until Alanna or someone got there. Surely she should be here soon, Daine thought, impatiently.
It felt like an eternity until Alanna arrived with a group of the Own. Daine was able to release the kidnapper into the arms of Raoul and nuzzle Kitten with her tiger's muzzle, not wanting to lose shape and be naked in front of all the people now there.
Numair appeared, now dressed and bearing a pile of clothes. He deposited the clothes behind a large spruce, informing Daine that they were there for her to change into. He picked up the small dragon, tenderly holding her close to his chest and murmuring soft words to her. Daine found herself transfixed by his actions, it opened up a whole new realm of thought in her mind. She stopped seeing him as a great war mage, as an academic mind and saw him purely as a man. When he stepped towards her, once she was fully clothed, and handed her Kitten this new realisation overwhelmed her. Numair was a man who should one day be a husband and a father, like Jon, like George; and Daine, clutching a quietened Kitten tightly to her, no longer felt like the little girl from Galla, and she wondered if she could be in that part of Numair's future.
"Are you alright?" he asked her, gently stroking Kitten's back. Daine felt her lip quiver and tears spill rapidly down her cheeks. Numair pulled woman and dragon into his arms and held them, letting Daine cry herself out.
"It wasn't your fault," he said in her ear. "Tkaa kept her in the kitchens until the banquet started. They were seeing what magic she could do around food. She went out in to the hall between the kitchens and the hall where Arvid," he pointed to the man now being tightly held by the Lioness, "fed her some sweets which I think must have contained something along the lines of dreamrose, and then he took her."
"Why?" Daine asked, angrily, "What would he want with Kitten?"
"We're not sure yet. I imagine Jon will find out when they get him back to the palace."
Daine snuggled closer into Numair. She could feel Kitten's heart and Numair's heart beating almost in chorus. "I'm not letting her out of my sight again!" she said, some anguish still echoing in her voice.
"Don't be silly, Magelet. It really isn't your fault. Cloud's here with Spots. She'll take you back. Then you need to go to bed and sleep," Numair reassured her again, his lips gently brushing the top of her head then leading her to the horses.
Numair took Daine and Kitten straight to her rooms, wishing for the hundredth time that they could simply go back to his where he could look after them properly. He turned his back as Daine changed into his old shirt that she had used for sleeping in since she had had unicorn fever. She slumped into her slim bed, holding Kitten to her. Numair hutched up beside her and found himself stroking her curls absent-mindedly. Her head was resting against his chest and her eyes were half closed.
"Is Kitten alright?" he asked her, breaking the gentle silence that held them. "She seems none the worse for wear now she's back with you."
Kitten wriggled out of Daine's grip and went to Numair, squeezing in between him and Daine. She cooed lowly at him, her colour quite returned to normal now.
"She's fine," Daine smiled up at him. "Enjoying the fact that she will get a fair bit of attention for the next few days. I really don't want to think about what would have happened if we hadn't found her."
"You don't have to, Magelet. You did find her," Numair watched her, guilt still unnecessarily straining at her face.
"I was lost once when I was a boy," he chuckled. "My mother probably wasn't as glad to get me back though!"
"What happened?" she asked Numair. He rarely said much about his childhood, appearing to have discarded it when he changed his name from Draper to Salmalin.
Numair continued, happy to take her mind away from Kitten's possible fate.
"My father," Numair began, "Took me into town one afternoon as my mother wanted various bits of material buying to make a new bedspread that someone had ordered and I was probably getting in her way, trying to use magic to make it quicker than she could."
"I can imagine that! I have sympathy for your mother," Daine interrupted.
"My father had a penchant for ale, which was why my mother was carrying on the business and not him, and he decided before we went home that he was going to spend a pleasant hour in his favourite inn. He took me with him, gave me a glass of juice, ordered me to behave myself and then he went to sit at the bar and poured out his troubles to the barmaid," Numair rolled his eyes. Daine knew by now that Numair had very little respect for his father, although words of praise coming from him had been what he had clung to.
"This was not an unusual occurrence by any means. As he became increasingly inebriated I became ever more bored. So I slipped off into the town and into a rather esoteric book store where I spent an interesting few hours immersed in some rather illuminating books," Numair smiled at the memory of the books.
"So when did your da realise you had gone?" Daine prompted as Numair's eyes glazed over, recalling the books he had read.
"He didn't. He completely forgot that I had ever been with him and happily stumbled home, also forgetting the bag of material my mother had sent him out for. When he did arrive home, he was duly berated by my mother and told to go back and fetch the material from the inn. She hadn't noticed that I wasn't there, she was overworked by running the business on her own with no support from my father, so she had probably just assumed that I had gone straight upstairs to read. The poor shop girl, whose job it was to lock up at night, took me home once the shop had closed. She found me curled up under a pile of books, reading about the use of baneberry as an alternative to wakeflower, and its dual usage as it can also be used as a poison…"
Daine smiled at his ramblings. He caught the smile and realised its meaning. "The girl let me keep the book as I think she felt sorry for me. When she had heard why I had left my father she seemed quite upset for me."
"What did your ma and da say when you got in? Weren't they worried about you at all?" Daine asked, knowing if that she had gone missing as a small child her mother would have been sick with worry.
"They were cross that I hadn't stayed where I had been told and my father gave me the beating to end all beatings. I was six at the time, and they knew, of course, that I had the gift; it was decided then that I would go to the university as soon as possible. My poor mother wept a river afterwards."
Daine smiled up at him, her hand squeezing his thigh in sympathy as well as for the joy of touching him. "For some reason I always thought that your parents adored you and spoilt you rotten. You make it sound completely the opposite."
"Oh, they did adore me in their own way. I certainly didn't want for anything. I was never given much attention; they were too busy dealing with their own problems to focus much on me and I suppose they didn't really know what to do with children either, especially me. I was bright and had the gift, which almost built a brick wall between my father and I from an early age," he explained to her, trying not to concentrate too much on the effect her hand was having.
"You write to them, don't you?" Daine asked quietly, trying to not disturb Kitten who was now asleep.
"Yes, but never about what I actually do. I tell them more about the people I'm with, like Jon and Alanna, things that they can relate to. I think they'll be happier when I marry. That will be something they could really grasp and approve of then. Although I will never take after my father in how he's been as a husband and a father," Numair laughed lightly, patting Kitten's back soothingly.
Daine had a million and one question swimming in her head to ask him about. Mainly about who he would marry.
"So you do want to marry and be a da yourself one day?" She asked in a tired voice.
"Hopefully, Magelet. With the right woman," he kissed the top of her head tenderly as she began to fall asleep, wishing her peaceful dreams.
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