A/N: This chapter is very, very long. I just couldn't seem to make it any shorter, for some reason.

Thanks to those who have reviewed so far! Please review some more :) This is getting trickier, so I need the encouragement!

Disclaimer: Still Tamora Pierce's characters (all hail!) and my own messing around with them.


5: Compassion

In the morning Daine and Numair attended a round-table session on the role of veterinarians in handling bio- and agro-terrorist threats. At the end of the session, feeling exhausted and spent rather than excited, they managed to elude their colleagues long enough to eat lunch, alone, in one of the hotel's several small cafés.

Both had slept badly the previous night and woken in irritable temper, and the afternoon's programme did not seem calculated to improve their moods. "I wish Alanna or I could go with you," Numair said. "I don't trust him as far as I could—"

"Forewarned is forearmed, remember?" Daine hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. "I'm going to see round a zoo and sort out what's the matter with these birds of his. That's all. How much trouble could I—"

"Don't say that." Numair held up a large hand, looking grim. "Never say that."

"I didn't realize you were so superstitious."

"Only about one thing."

Leaning forward over her coffee, Daine smiled at her husband. "Try not to worry so much, love," she said. "You've got a couple of hours free this afternoon, haven't you?"

He nodded.

"The hotel's pool looks lovely. Have a swim—it'll clear your head."

Numair gave her an odd look. "Are you … are you prescribing a cold shower, Dr Sarrasri?"

"Do you need one, Professor Salmalín?"

The tension broken for a moment, they grinned at each other.


He will never be sure quite when his love for her began, but he will remember the day—the moment—when he recognized it all his life.

They and the Coopers and Onua have come for a week's holiday to the Coopers' Aberdeen home, and on this, their last day, Numair and Daine have walked down to the sea. They are standing together at the high-water line, feet bare, both working up the courage to dip their toes in the frigid end-of-August water. Daine goes first, finally, wading boldly in up to her calves; the cold makes her shriek a little, but she turns round to him, grinning, and calls, "It's lovely! Come along in!"

She wades out a little farther, until her knees disappear under the gently rolling surf and the wavelets crest just below the hems of her shorts. She turns again and waves, sandals in hand.

And then the undertow pulls her feet from under her and she vanishes into the sea.

"Daine! DAINE!" He screams her name as his feet pound down the beach and into the water, searching frantically for some sign of her. His legs are already numb almost to the knees, and he knows that a non-swimmer's chances of extricating herself are slim. He curses himself for not warning her more strongly of the danger.

A small hand thrusts up after the crest of a wave and he lunges for it, grabbing Daine's arm with both hands and struggling to stay upright as he seeks another handhold. He hauls her out of the water, drapes her over his shoulder, and, fighting the drag against his calves, strides back to the beach. He sets her on her feet and holds her up while she continues to cough up salt water.

When he is satisfied that she is alive and well, he grips her slender shoulders—he is shivering as violently as she—holds her bewildered gaze, and says sternly, "Do not ever, ever terrify me like that again." The ferocity in his voice astounds him.

Then—he can't seem to help himself—he bends his head and covers her trembling lips with his.

He is startled at the electric intensity of the kiss. Then, belatedly, he realizes what he is doing and is ashamed of himself: She's only nineteen, and I'm thirty-one! She's my research assistant! This is utterly inappropriate! She nearly drowned five minutes ago—what sort of monster would take advantage of her like this?

Until her arms tighten round his neck and she returns the kiss with a hunger that exactly matches his own.

The day after their return to Edinburgh, he arrives unannounced and knocks at the door of her flat, intending to lecture her on the importance of knowing how to swim and to insist upon giving her lessons. She opens the door, face pale, lips set, brandishing a businesslike bathing costume with the Marks & Spencer tags still on. "I hope you've brought your kit," she says grimly. "The Uni pool opens in half an hour, and if we don't start straight away I'll lose my nerve."


Prince Kaddar called for Daine punctually at one o'clock. He greeted her—and Numair, who had insisted on waiting with her for Kaddar to arrive—with scrupulous politeness. Daine thought he seemed subdued, but perhaps this was unsurprising after the previous night's excesses; she felt rather subdued herself. She kissed Numair briefly, holding her palm against his cheek for a moment in an effort to ease the worry in his dark eyes. Then, squaring her shoulders, she turned back to Kaddar.

"Shall we?" she said.

Daine groaned silently at the sight of yet another royal limousine. Was she to spend all her time in this country staring at the interior walls of a hotel or at the inside of a German-made car? But there was nothing to be done about it. Smiling to thank the uniformed chauffeur who opened the rear door for them, she preceded her escort into the vehicle.

Outside the air-conditioned sterility of hotel and palace, obscured but not hidden by the tinted windows of taxis and limousines, she had glimpsed, and now glimpsed again, one result of this country's current economic turmoil. Its small oil reserves exhausted, much of its limited agricultural land gobbled up by luxurious housing developments dependent on a water supply imported at great expense, it teetered on the brink of utter ruin, and hundreds of rural people forced from their small farms and stock-raising enterprises now lined the main streets of the capital, hawking cheap trinkets to tourists or begging for money or food.

The fifteen-minute journey to the Royal Palace seemed longer today, without the reassuring presence of Numair, Alanna, and Lindhall Reed. Daine told herself firmly that Kaddar was a perfectly inoffensive person and her errand a perfectly harmless one; but in spite of herself she shivered at the prospect of an afternoon with King Ozorne.

"Are you cold?" the prince asked her, concerned. "I could ask the driver to lower the air-conditioning."

"No!" the syllable came out more violently than she had intended. She exhaled slowly and forced a smile. "No, thank you, I'm very comfortable."

Kaddar cleared his throat. "Daine," he began hesitantly, "Daine, I wonder if I could ask you … about Professor Salmalín …"

He paused, and Daine looked at him expectantly. "If you've a question for Numair, you'd do better to ask him directly," she said at last. "I can't keep track of all his research, I'm afraid."

"It isn't exactly …" another pause; the prince was beginning to look rather miserable.

It was clear to Daine, suddenly, what it was he wanted to ask.

"You're wondering about us," she said. "About our relationship, the difference in our ages. You aren't the first," she added, seeing his embarrassment. "We've been—together—since I was a student. It's turned some heads. But I'm not sure—" she tried to phrase it politely— "what your interest is in my relationship with my husband."

To her surprise, Kaddar smiled. "It's very good of you not to tell me immediately to mind my own business," he said. "My interest is—well—I have heard things about your husband that are not precisely complimentary. What I knew of him, before meeting both of you, did not lead me to believe that he would … would make a suitable husband for …"

On the alert now, and angry, Daine betrayed her feelings only in a tighter grip on her rucksack. "Might I ask the source of your information? It wouldn't be your uncle, by any chance?"

His expression told her she had hit the mark.

"Please don't misunderstand me," the prince said. "I should be very glad—I shall be very glad—to learn otherwise. And I am familiar with your husband's work, and respect it greatly." Glancing over his shoulder at the impassive back of the driver's head, he leaned toward her and said softly, "Please understand that my uncle's prejudices are not mine."

"I'm glad to hear it," Daine said, also very softly. Leaning back in her seat, she smiled at him, briefly but with genuine warmth. "Once I've finished with the royal aviary, I hope you'll keep your promise to give me a guided tour? I feel as though I've seen nothing but upholstery for two days."

"You have my word on it," said Kaddar with a gallant half-bow.


The car deposited them at the Royal Palace and, with some trepidation, Daine followed Kaddar up the steps. The place seemed, if anything, more ostentatious by daylight, and her working clothes—it had seemed pointless to wear anything else for the purpose of examining anxious birds—seemed especially shabby in contrast. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, she felt far more confident: At least today I'm not in borrowed feathers!

King Ozorne himself was on hand to greet them, also looking stranger and more ostentatious by daylight. His deeply tanned face was framed by elaborately pomaded jet-black hair, every strand fixed carefully in its place; he wore what Daine suspected was an invented military-looking uniform, all frogs and ribbons and gold braid.

"Dr Sarrasri!" he greeted her with a careful inclination of the head, which she answered with a bow (still feeling she ought to curtsey—but surely not when dressed in trainers, cargo trousers and a faded Edinburgh Zoo uniform shirt?). "It is very good of you to come. We are most grateful to you."

Ah, yes, the royal "we." And here I thought the day was getting a bit better.

"I'm always happy to help animals in need, Your Majesty," Daine replied. "Perhaps on our way you could tell me more about the problems … ?"

This topic occupied most of the long walk to the aviary. Some two dozen of his birds, the king explained, had recently been behaving oddly: they were eating less than usual or refusing favourite foods; they were lethargic at times and at other times restless, even over-preening to the point of losing feathers. Daine wondered aloud, delicately, what other professional opinions had been sought and was told that the staff of the Royal Zoo had examined the birds but had not been able to diagnose or treat the problem. Ozorne appeared genuinely concerned about these small members of his household, and for the first time Daine felt a tiny glimmer of sympathy for the man.

An eye-blink vision of Numair's face as he recounted his memory-nightmare quashed the feeling swiftly.


Daine's best friends among her fellow students are Miri Fisher and Evin Larse, both in the year ahead of her. Miri, a friendly, freckled brunette with mischievous green eyes, comes from a village in Devonshire and has grown up on the famous tales of veterinary life set in Daine's own home district; her outlook on life is an odd blend of the idealist and the prankster to which Daine is instantly drawn. Evin, tall, blond and rakishly handsome, is the son of two modestly famous stage actors, raised among the footlights in the West End of London. He begins their acquaintance by declaiming at her, with melodramatic flair,

The general of our horse thou art; and we,
Great in our hope, lay our best love and credence
Upon thy promising fortune. (1)

Then he pulls a fifty-pence piece from behind her ear.

Evin and Miri are inseparable, bickering and sharing jokes in equal measure, and to Daine their company is like a comforting refrain, easing the rigours of their demanding academic program and playing counterpoint to her unpleasant memories of Ryedale Comprehensive. It is inexpressibly liberating to have friends who don't know she is the illegitimate child of an unknown father, or—better yet—don't care.

It is Miri who reveals to her that the graduate students in the School of Biological Sciences refer to Numair, behind his back, as "Don Juan Salmalín"—a nickname that mysteriously fades from current use some time during Daine's second year. It is Evin who gives her her own nickname, the one that will follow her to her job interview at the Edinburgh Zoo, where the director greets her by saying, "Ms Sarrasri! I've so looked forward to meeting you. Aren't you the one they call the Beast Whisperer?"

(1) Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, Act III, scene iii


The aviary was, at least to Daine, the most breath-taking sight the Royal Palace had to offer. The huge room appeared at first glance to be open to the sky, though Daine quickly realized this was an illusion: in fact, twenty feet or more above her head, aviary netting supported by artfully camouflaged struts kept the birds safely away from a vaulted glass ceiling. After the dry cold of the air-conditioned palace, the heat and humidity, and the rich brown scent of loam and humus, struck her like a wall. Huge trees—huge, at any rate, in such a setting—towered over a landscape of waist- and shoulder-high tropical plants, and the air rang with the songs and conversations of hundreds of exotic birds.

"It's beautiful," Daine heard herself say. She shut her lips tight against the next words that sprang into her throat: How much did it cost? She appreciated, for the birds' sake, the attention to detail that made this environment so natural and inviting, and she could see and hear that the king treated his pets with kindness and gave them all they required; this she approved and admired. Yet the idea that such an unnecessary extravagance—for these birds had not been rescued, but imported, doubtless at significant expense—existed so close to the city streets where so many starving children begged for food appalled her.

Is it really so different from home? She argued with herself: No—but yes. There's no help for these people anywhere, as far as I can see, and least of all from their own government. The one they don't even get to elect.

But this was not the time for such reflections; she had a job to do here, after all.

As Kaddar and Ozorne watched—each a little wary of the other, she observed—Daine stepped forward into the artificial forest, listening intently. She halted between two vine-draped trees and stood perfectly still, arms outstretched, eyes half closed, breath deep and slow.

At first nothing happened.

Then, cautiously, birds began to approach her; bright eyes studied her with interest, and claws, tiny and larger and larger still, gently gripped her skin, her hair, her clothes. A peacock waddled solemnly toward her and stopped inches from her toes. "Hello, little friends," she whispered. By now she had almost forgotten her human audience. "Thank you for this friendly welcome. I've come to help your friends who are ill. Can you show me where they are?"

Birds large and small twittered and burbled at her. Then two—a vivid crimson rosella and a white cockatoo with a startling yellow crest—separated themselves from the crowd and took off, swooping and circling. Daine followed, treading slowly and cautiously.

The birds in question were not hard to identify, once she knew where to look for them. The first few she spotted were too ill to fly; they perched on tree limbs, wings drooping, feathers dull and dishevelled, and when she stretched out an exploratory hand, they did not react at all.

She lifted a peach-faced lovebird gently from its perch and, cradling it against her chest with one hand, examined it closely. Its eyes were dull and staring, its heartbeat weak under her hands. As her fingers probed and preened, her mind raced through differential diagnoses. Poisoning, almost certainly; the birds had been poisoned. But how? By what? Accidentally, or deliberately?

She asked the birds what they felt. In twitters and squawks and throaty warbles, they told her.

Half an hour later, having examined all the afflicted birds she could find (twenty-two in all), she was sure of the agent, though not of the delivery. "Your birds have lead poisoning," she announced, re-emerging into the clearing where her hosts waited. Ozorne had a cockatiel on each shoulder, preening his hair; Kaddar squatted on the earthen floor, feeding mixed seed to a small crowd of rosellas.

The king looked up sharply. "Poison?" he demanded. "Impossible. I feed the birds myself, and the only keys to the aviary I keep on my person. No one could possibly poison them."

What an interesting reaction. "I didn't say the poisoning was deliberate, Your Majesty," Daine pointed out. Kaddar was looking at her oddly, she noticed—almost as though he were trying not to laugh. Glancing down, she realized how peculiar she must look with her hair pulled in all directions, her arms covered in tiny scratches, and her clothing spattered with bird droppings, and silently congratulated herself on having remembered to pack a change of clothes in her rucksack before leaving the hotel. "In most cases, animal or human, lead poisoning is accidental—the source is somewhere in the victim's environment. The most common vectors are lead-based paints and lead water pipes."

She paused, considering; in Europe, such pipes would be decades old, overlooked when others were replaced with newer, safer ones—but here, who knew? Was it safe to suggest to King Ozorne that his palace might need a plumbing upgrade? I'll have to manage it somehow. The birds can't do it, and someone's got to. "Perhaps you could show me how the water is piped into this room?"

The pipes were copper and looked almost new. Next Daine set out to determine, with the help of her new winged friends, where the majority of the affected birds habitually nested; the result was a cluster near the trompe-l'oeil mural that cleverly hid the aviary's complex climate control system. The painting was so delicately executed, its detail so intricate and true to life, that she had walked past it twice before she realized what it was.

Delicate and true to life in every respect except that up there, a foot or so above Daine's head on the right-hand side of the mural, was an area some two and a half feet wide where the paint was chipping off. "I think we've found the problem," she called.


Isolating the sick birds, explaining to the king how the poisoning had happened, and setting out an EDTA chelation therapy regimen to treat them, with written instructions to the vets and keepers of the Royal Zoo, took a quarter of an hour; fending off his extravagant expressions of thanks occupied a further half-hour. By the end of it Daine's head was aching with the effort of reconciling the two Ozornes: the devoted, even paternal, animal owner willing almost to give her lands and a title to thank her for her services; and the one she had seen last night, and still glimpsed now, whose compassion for the rest of his fellow creatures was evidently almost nil—and who, taken all in all, still made her skin crawl. It was a maddening contradiction, and the sort of thought experiment that, she reflected irritably, would have much better suited Numair.

At last a cringing palace aide came to tell the king that Miss Kingsford was waiting for him in the council chamber, at His Majesty's own request, and Daine and Kaddar were able to make their escape.