A/N: OK, so I'm actually a little hurt at all these insinuations that I might actually kill off Daine. I'm not a bad person:D I'm not going to kill off Daine. It's just Numair being melodramatic. If you read the last paragraph of chapter 2 carefully, you will notice a clue to that effect. I am, however, very flattered and touched that people are liking this story and following it with such devotion. So, thank you all:)
Disclaimer: Still not mine, still Tamora Pierce's.
3: Truth and Reconciliation
The women hear the outer door crash open and heavy steps without; they turn from their tasks to see Numair in the doorway, dark eyes opened wide in shock. His already pale face goes the colour of a tallow-candle; his hands clutch at the doorframe. His lips form a strangled, soundless "No!"
Alanna, too drained and tired for diplomacy, shouts at him: "Out, Numair! Out, now!" But it is only too clear that he is beyond hearing her. "Gods damn it, Numair …"
She sees his eyes roll ceilingward. A net of purple fire catches him as he falls and eases him gently to the floor. Then, with a sigh, Alanna returns to her patient. The worst of the tears she has already healed, but not before more blood was lost than Daine can easily spare.
"How is he?" she asks Sarra, who is now cooing at the baby, confident that her daughter is in safe hands.
Sarra brings him closer to the bed, and they regard him fondly. His eyes are tightly shut, his small pink mouth working.
"We should wake her; they'll both be better off once he's nursed a little," Sarra says.
"Of course. But I don't want her waking to see that." Alanna jerks her coppery head at the recumbent mage. "Let me just—"
Wiping her red-streaked arms on a towel, she steps over Numair, trots across the sitting-room, and leans out into the corridor. "Steward!" she bellows. No steward is forthcoming, but there is one of the younger pages, a lad of no more than eleven or twelve, padding down the corridor twenty feet away. "You, the page!" Alanna calls.
When he stops and turns to bow to her – awe and not a little fear in his expression for the famed Lioness – she addresses him impatiently: "No need to bother with all that, youngster. What I do need is that you carry a message to Duke Baird in the Healers' Wing. Can you do that?"
The boy nods vigorously.
"Say that he's needed here, with one or two strong men, as soon as he can possibly manage. It's a matter of urgency – I wouldn't summon him at this hour else."
"Yes, sir – ma'am," says the page. "I understand." And, bursting to have his errand over and relate it to his friends, he takes off running.
Alanna hauls Numair bodily out of the bedchamber, and closes the door, signalling to Sarra to wake Daine out of her witched sleep. She is more worried about her tall friend, now, than about his wife: He should have come to by now. But with luck he's just sleeping off whatever Gods-curst foolery he was up to yesterday …
Reclosing the door behind her, she steps back into the bedchamber, smiling to see Daine – though still pale and sleepy-looking – sitting up in bed, entranced with the babe at her breast. "You see, Alanna?" she says softly, raising shining eyes to her friend. "A boy, just like I said. Isn't he just the most beautiful little man you've ever seen? And so quiet … remember how Sarra howled when she was born?"
Alanna smiles at her; then she looks around the room, puzzled. "Where did she go?" she asks. "Your ma? She was with you when I—"
"They had to go back," Daine explains. "They ought to've gone when the sun set, but Ma wanted to see us safe before she left. But you know how it is …"
"I'm glad she was able to stay so long," says Alanna truthfully. "It was touchy for a time there, youngling. Your fine boy, there, gave us a scare."
"What happened?" Daine looks up sharply. "I remember bearing down – but – "
"He'd got the cord tied in an overhand knot, somehow," her friend tells her, "and put his little foot through the knot. We had to – to pull him out. Your ma made you sleep. I don't like to spell a labouring woman asleep – it's not healthy for mother or babe – but we thought it best this time. I feared you'd faint, when we weren't expecting it. Then I let you sleep while I healed the worst of the tearing."
There are sounds on the other side of the bedchamber door now: heavy footsteps, whispered orders, a thud, a muffled curse. Daine seems not to hear any of it, for which Alanna is duly grateful.
"Lucky for me you weren't off adventuring!" Daine smiles. "Is it because Ma spelled me that I feel so – so dizzy and tired?"
"You laboured nearly all day, Daine. And you lost more blood than you ought, and needed a lot of healing. But a few more days' rest and good food will set you right."
Daine groans at the thought of a few more days confined to bed and sofa. But all is well – she has her little one safe and sound – and, when all's said and done, there's little enough to complain of. Except …
"Wherever has Numair got to?" she asks, frowning. "He hasn't fallen asleep on the floor out there, or something, has he?"
"Well, in a manner of speaking …" Alanna tries to dissemble – Why upset her now? – but Daine's frown deepens and she gives in. "He came in here, earlier," she says at last. "There was quite a lot of blood, and you were out cold …"
"Alanna." Daine's voice is urgent. "Alanna, what did he see?"
"What did he see?" Puzzled. "Just us – your ma and me. She was holding the baby. And you, sleeping. He – you'll laugh when I tell you, a great brave war-mage, fainting at the sight of a little—"
But there is no time to finish her sentence, because Daine, white-lipped with panic, babe in her arms, is struggling to get out of bed.
"Oh, no, you don't, young lady!" It is not easy to disobey a firm order from the Lioness, especially when one is exhausted and weak from loss of blood; but Daine is furiously determined. In the end Alanna has to hold her down.
"You don't understand, Alanna!" She gives up the struggle and folds in on herself, tenderly cradling her now-sleeping son. Her eyes are huge in her pale, pale face. "Where is he? Is he out there? You have to tell him—"
"Duke Baird and his people came and took him to the Healers' Wing," Alanna interrupts. "He'll be fine there, he—"
"No," says Daine with deadly firmness. "He won't. You must find him, Alanna, and tell him I'm – we're – all right."
"Someone will tell him, Daine. I'd rather not leave you alone."
"He won't believe them. It has to be you – you were here. Please, Alanna."
"Daine." Alanna takes her by the elbows. "What is this about?"
"He had a dream. What he saw, when he came in here – Alanna, he thinks we're dead. If you don't go to him and tell him we're not, I'm afraid he'll – he'll—" She can't bring herself to say the words, but there can be no mistaking her meaning. "Send me a trainee healer if you want to, but just please go!"
And, silently cursing mages who won't do as they're told, Alanna goes.
Numair wakes in a strange, narrow bed in an unfamiliar room – a bright, tidy chamber flooded with morning sunlight. His first, comforting thought is that it was all another nightmare, dreamed after falling asleep in the corridor. But George would not have been in his dreams, would he? No – it must really have happened.
Daine.
A hot hammer-blow of grief.
Sarra.
The clutch of panic round his throat.
I'm not dead, then. More's the pity.
He does not weep – his despair is too profound for tears – but sits perfectly still, long arms round his knees, staring blindly at the sunlit wall.
He does not hear the sparrows twittering happily on the windowsill or see the stocky figure, arms crossed and legs outthrust, asleep in a chair in the corner.
He is still sitting thus, deaf and blind to the world around him, when a cheerful Duke Baird strides into the room and greets him with a hearty clap on the shoulder.
"So you're up, are you? This one will go in the record-books, I think, old friend."
But there is no reply, only a shrinking away of the clapped shoulder, and Baird perches on the bed to look his patient in the eyes.
Whatever he expected to see there, it was not this blank, fathomless despair.
Rising, he approaches the sleeper in the corner and touches her shoulder cautiously, whispering her name. "Alanna. Wake up, Alanna. You're needed, my dear."
The Lioness wakes abruptly and springs to her feet, then – finding herself too stiff and cramped to stay there – subsides back into her seat. "What is it?" she asks Baird. "Has he woken yet? How long has it been?"
The chief healer answers her last question first: "It's been four days, all told. He isn't sleeping, but …" A gesture at the hunched figure on the bed. "He ought to be more or less recovered by now, whatever he did to himself. His Gift seems fully restored, for the matter of that. But something's badly amiss with him. I don't think he even recognized me when I spoke to him."
Alanna gets to her feet again, slowly. "Numair?" she says, crossing the small room to perch next to him on the bed. "Numair, it's Alanna. Are you all right? Are you even there?"
He turns to her, the movement slow and halting. "Alanna."
"Good – you still know me, at any rate." This seems like progress of a sort. She glances at Baird, now occupying her chair in the corner, and nods briefly. The healer rises and slips out the door.
"How long – how long have I—"
"Four days, give or take," she answers.
"And you've been here? You're – a good friend, Alanna."
"Bosh. It's nothing to do with you – I promised Daine I'd stay with you till you woke up."
"Daine." His voice is a whisper, rough with painful longing. "Tell me – tell me what happened."
Alanna sighs. "She warned me you'd be like this," she says. "She's fretting herself sick over you, Numair. Sarralyn, too. Pull yourself together, can't you?"
And still he stares; but a something has kindled in the depths of his eyes that was not there before. "But I saw …" he whispers. "So white, so still … there was so much blood …"
"Men!" The Lioness is tired and hungry, and her bones ache. She loves this man as a brother; she understands that he has had a shock; but she is at the end of her patience. "Were you or were you not, Numair Salmalín, told very specifically to stay outside?"
"But I heard her scream."
"And rushed in like a tilt-silly squire, and distracted me from a difficult and complicated healing by fainting dead away. There's a very good reason—"
"And you're telling me she's alive? My Daine is alive?"
What a difference the truth can make.
"Alive, whole, and the mother of a fine, healthy son," says Alanna, with some impatience. "Who's four days old, now, and yet to see his blasted fool of a father."
"Where – can I see her? See them?" Renewed, pulled back from the brink of an unspeakable horror, he can hardly keep still.
In spite of herself, Alanna smiles. "By now they'll be waiting outside," she tells him. "I'll fetch them."
She is alive – they're both alive – Alanna has said so. Still it is a wondrous shock to see her so, rosy-cheeked and upright, stepping through the doorway, speaking his name.
For all that her tone of voice makes it clear she isn't best pleased with him.
Sarra, at least, is delighted to see him this time; she runs to him and hurls herself into his outspread arms. "Da! Where were you?" she demands. "We missed you. Look! Mama got us a new baby brudder!"
"Da missed you, too, sweetling," Numair murmurs, holding his daughter tight. "Have you come to show me your new brother?"
The little girl nods importantly. "Ma bringed him wif us. But—" she drops her voice to a loud whisper—"We have to be very very quiet, 'cos he's sleeping."
"It's all right, Sarra," Daine says, smiling at her daughter. "Your brother sleeps as soundly as his da. I don't think he'll wake up."
It is one thing to talk to Sarra, who is small and uncomplicated and infinitely forgiving; it is quite another to know how to begin with Daine, now that he has done two unforgivably stupid and probably dangerous things in one week.
He recognizes the cloth sling she wears, over one shoulder, supporting its precious burden along her other arm: it is the same one in which Sarralyn spent most of her infancy, riding along with her mother everywhere Daine went, from the stables to the royal council chamber, even to weddings and one or two state banquets; only true danger, in those days, could persuade Daine to leave her baby at home. She has already gone back to shirt and breeches, he notices – she is plumper than usual, still, but is visibly resuming her normal shape. He smiles shyly at her, hoping for forgiveness, for – for what, he hardly knows.
"Come and see your son," she says.
He swings his long legs over the side of the cot, Sarra still in his arms, and totters to his feet. They approach each other cautiously. Silent, awed, he pulls aside the soft fabric with a gentle finger.
"Well, half of him," Daine amends. Her tone has changed utterly – loving, fond, vastly amused. "I'm sure he'll let you see his whole face once he's finished his lunch."
"He's beautiful," breathes Numair. "Perfect. And so are you, my magelet." Carefully he opens the circle of his arms to embrace daughter, wife and son. "All of this is perfect."
She rests against him for a long moment, both of them content. Then she raises her head and looks at him with great solemnity. "Next time, remember," she says softly, "I keep my promises."
