A/N: I am trying to go somewhere somewhat original with this, but it's getting really tricky, so please bear with me!
Disclaimer: See previous chapters ...
7: Deception
Very early on the third morning of the conference—it was a Monday, Daine thought, but as always when travelling she was growing vague about dates—she woke slowly, infinitesimally aware of a shift in the air, a slight motion that should not be. Inches away, Numair slept on, coal-black hair tumbled over both their pillows, snoring gently. Daine sat up in bed and looked around, puzzled, taking inventory: the furniture was all as she remembered it, her bright orange laptop was there on the desk and Numair's oversized one, the cases on the rack, the shoes at the bottom of the closet. There seemed to be no more or fewer papers stacked on the furniture than before—
There. That was it: a white rectangle of paper on the dark-green carpet, just inside the door.
Quietly, not wanting to wake Numair, she slipped out of bed, padded over to the door, and picked up the folded note.
Numair woke at seven-thirty to the insistent beeping of the hotel alarm clock, which stood on Daine's nightstand, and pulled the bedclothes over his head with a groan. The beeping went on. At first he was simply irritated: Why had she not dealt with it? It must have woken her, surely. "Turn it off!" he growled.
Then, turning toward the sound, he registered the empty space between the alarm clock and himself, and was confused. Was Daine already up and in the shower, perhaps? No—the only sound in the room was that incessant beeping.
First things first. Glowering, Numair reached over and hit random buttons on the clock until it stopped beeping. The ensuing silence was absolute.
He swung his long legs over the side of the bed. "Daine?" he called softly, as though she might be hiding under the desk or behind the curtains. "Sweetheart, are you here?"
Numair would have been the first to admit that mornings were not his forte. He had often wondered how Daine managed to put up with his almost invariable morning growling (her coping mechanisms seemed to involve deep silence, coffee, and very hot porridge with a great deal of butter). Could she, he wondered now, have gone down early to breakfast in hopes of connecting with someone she wanted to talk to before the day's sessions began? Had she gone swimming? No—there was her bathing suit, hanging with his over the shower door. Wherever she had gone, it was very unlike her not to have left some message to explain her absence.
With this thought in mind, Numair began a more systematic search. There was no note on Daine's pillow, on his nightstand or hers. Nothing on the desk or on the lid of either laptop. Nothing on the dresser.
When, finally, he discovered her message—scrawled on the back of a subscription flyer advertising discounts on a Canadian zoology journal, one corner tucked underneath his sponge-bag next to the sink—it did more to heighten his concern than to alleviate it.
Got a note from Alanna about an injured stray. Gone to investigate.
Back for breakfast.
Love,
D
The idea of a summons from Alanna in the early morning seemed, on the face of it, absurd; the Lioness of the Falklands had often been heard to remark that she had left the army primarily in order to have the occasional lie-in. And an injured stray? Here?
Well, one way to find out.
The phone in the bathroom (Why is there a phone in the bathroom?) connected him with the front desk, and thence with Alanna's room. She answered in a sleepy croak: "Cooper. Whassit?"
"Alanna." His voice was tight with worry. "Is Daine with you?"
"Numair? What time is it?"
"Nearly eight. Have you seen her?"
"Daine? No, of course not. Wait—she isn't with you?" Alanna sounded awake now, and equally worried.
"She left me a note to say she'd gone to see you and she'd be back for breakfast. Only she isn't, and, clearly, she didn't."
"Damn it!"
"My thoughts exactly," Numair said dryly.
Alanna sighed. "Put something on," she said. "I'm coming round."
Numair dressed quickly and carelessly, his mind racing. It was past eight o'clock now, and he had to give a paper at nine. Daine wouldn't miss that, surely? Well, for a sick or hurt animal, she would. Daine has her priorities.
Hard on the heels of this thought came another, more disturbing one: And after what Kaddar and Varice saw yesterday, I'm sure Ozorne knows that.
From time to time, on request, the Edinburgh Zoo lends Daine to other such institutions. Sometimes she diagnoses and treats mysterious behavioural problems; several times she helps previously unsuccessful feline and primate mothers to care for their latest offspring, in more than one case sitting cross-legged inside an orangutan or gorilla enclosure demonstrating to its occupant how to nurse her baby. The big apes seem not to notice, or care, how her appearance and her scent differ from their own.
Numair joins her when other commitments permit, observing and taking notes that, together with Daine's own, will later form the basis of lectures and articles on animal behaviour.
Shortly after her twenty-third birthday, Daine travels alone to Berlin to consult with zoo staff there who are concerned about their female snow leopard; in the same week, Numair has been engaged for months to give a special lecture in Uppsala. Neither has been away overnight alone since their wedding. During the journey, and while working with her German colleagues and their patient, Daine is busy and therefore cheerful; but when the door of her hotel room closes behind her for the evening, the silence and solitude descend on her like a suffocating drift of snow.
She has brought both professional reading and a novel, but cannot concentrate on either; the music on the available radio stations is either too irritating or too melancholy to be good company. She turns on her laptop, plugs it into the hotel's LAN, and checks her e-mail, scrolling past several dozen listserv postings before she finds the single message she is looking for:
To: Sarrasri, Daine
From: Salmalin, Numair
Subject: Uppsala calling Berlin
Sweetheart,
The lecture went all right, I think. How is your snow leopard? Pining for her mate, as you suspected?
The weather in Uppsala is dreadful; I hope Berlin is more pleasant.
I'll see you soon. Sleep well.
Love,
N
Tears cloud Daine's eyes, as she reads the brief text over and over, until she can no longer distinguish the words. The profound, unforgiving loneliness that assailed her after the death of her family, and was turned back by the joys of friendship, love, and useful work, returns in a sickening wave that threatens to swamp her entirely. Disgusted with herself—for her tears, for being so dependent that a single night alone seems an unbearable prospect, for wishing Numair had written a longer message or that he had mentioned missing her as she misses him—she logs off and shuts down without sending an answer and, though it is barely nine-thirty, undresses and, sniffling, crawls into bed.
Turning in early turns out to be a mistake: if the room was lonely with lights and music on, the vast, cold, sterile bed—with no husband, no dogs, and no cats to share it with—is a thousand times lonelier in the dark. Turning on the bedside lamp to have another go at her novel is of no use, and turning it off again, reflecting that she is so exhausted that surely she must fall asleep soon, does no good either.
When the red numbers on the digital alarm clock blink from 2:59 to 3:00 before her still-open eyes, she gives up. Her mobile is next to the clock; she reaches for it and dials.
As soon as he answers, she knows he hasn't been sleeping either.
"You didn't answer my message," he says. "I thought you must be so busy that you hadn't had time to—"
He stops talking because she is sobbing too hard to hear him. Not since the night of her confession to Onua and him has she cried like this.
"I don't like being so far away from you," she manages, at last. "It was all right in the daytime, but now it's so—it's so—"
"I know," he says.
"I've checked the pool, the breakfast room, and all the conference rooms," Numair said, his large hands grasping fistfuls of dark hair as if this would help him think. "She isn't anywhere I've looked, and no one seems to have seen her."
Alanna looked at her wristwatch. "Your thing starts in ten minutes," she pointed out. "You'd better neaten yourself up and go and give your paper, and Lindhall and I will keep looking. She can't have gone too far."
Lindhall Reed nodded.
"Go and give my paper … without Daine?" Numair stared at his friends, not immediately realizing how bizarre the question would sound.
Alanna and Lindhall exchanged glances. "You've done it before, surely," Alanna said patiently.
Blushing a little, Numair shook his head to clear it. "Yes," he said. "Yes, of course. We'll meet back here at ten-thirty. You know where to bring her if you find her."
If the brilliant (and famously absent-minded) Professor Numair Salmalín, in presenting his research into the biochemical signatures of biological weapons, seemed somewhat more scattered than usual, his slides less well integrated with his notes and his manner particularly distracted, few in his audience noticed, and none suspected the cause.
Many people, however, noticed his breathless sprint back to his hotel room.
"Well?" Numair demanded, once they were all behind the closed door.
Lindhall spread his hands, and Alanna said, "Nothing, Numair. I'm sorry. We've looked in every publicly accessible spot in this building, inside and out, and she isn't here. I tried ringing her mobile, but—"
"Damn it!" Numair's large fist shook the sofa he and Alanna were sitting on. "That's it! I'm fifty kinds of fool, Alanna. I ought to have known all along how to find her." He paused. "Or, at any rate, how to find her mobile."
Frantically he dug his laptop out of its bag, switched it on, and waited, long fingers drumming impatiently on the desk, for it to boot up. "We got separated, once, up in the Highlands, and Daine nearly broke her neck trying to climb down a crag before we found each other again. I gave her the mobile for her birthday—it's got one of those GPS tracking things. I've never actually used it."
Alanna looked sceptical. "You mean the ones marketed at nervous parents and employers who don't trust their staff?" she inquired. "Did you tell her what it does?"
As he typed in his password, he thought about it. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I suppose I expected she'd work it out on her own—you know how she and the cats like to press buttons and see what they do …"
By now he had found and accessed the Web site he needed. "Somewhere I've got the code you put in …" A brief rummage through an encrypted file directory and he had it. Silently the three of them watched the GPS locator find and map the signal they sought.
"Where the devil—" Alanna began.
"Bloody hell." Numair felt suddenly very cold. "She's in the Royal Palace."
Daine next woke in utterly unfamiliar surroundings, with a splitting headache and a cold knot of anxiety in her stomach. Her mouth was dry, and what little light there was hurt her eyes. She felt, perplexingly, as though she were tied or chained to the cot on which she lay, though she could see no such bonds holding her.
On the edge of her consciousness hovered something, some fragment of recognition, that she couldn't quite catch.
She drew a deep breath, trying to steady herself, and instead filled nostrils and lungs with a sour, unpleasant odour that made her stomach churn. The phantom bonds on her shoulders, hips and ankles eased their hold, and she sat up, stiffened muscles screaming in protest. The ache in her head intensified, and an impulse she could neither identify nor resist made her swing her legs over the side, stand up, and begin pacing back and forth across her small prison.
There seemed to be no compulsion to look in any particular direction, and so, as she paced, she looked around her, studying her surroundings carefully. There was little enough to look at: four bare concrete-block walls, one heavy steel door fitted tightly into its frame, the cot bolted to the floor, a bucket in the opposite corner. No possibility of escape, certainly. And to think, two days ago I was complaining about being trapped at a cocktail party.
Suddenly it occurred to her to wonder whether she still had her mobile on her and, if so, whether it would work. Slowly, fighting against whatever power kept her pacing to and fro, she slipped her left hand into her trouser pocket. There it was—thanks be! Painstakingly she drew it forth and forced her chin down and her palm up so that she could see the display.
NO SIGNAL, it said. Damn, damn, damn.
She dropped the mobile back into her pocket without noticing the tiny green light flashing to the left of the screen.
Panic surged; the small room seemed to be getting smaller. Daine's body stopped pacing and she stood frozen in the centre of the floor. She fought to move a leg, an arm, but it was like pulling her limbs through thick, clinging mud. This is just like my first time in the pool, after ...
That's it! That's it. If I could learn to swim, I can deal with this. Whatever the hell "this" is. She stopped trying to move and closed her eyes, steadying herself and trying to deepen and slow her breathing. Letting her mind drift, she called up the sound of that beloved voice—not teasing, this time, not rough with passion or merry or grim, but steady and reassuring and blessedly calm. It's all right, vetkin, said Numair, in her mind. I'm here. I've got you. You're safe.
The panic receded, little by little, until at last it seemed safe to open her eyes.
Daine approaches swimming as she once approached statistical analysis: grimly, expecting to detest the exercise but determined to master it. Numair can see her terror plainly but pretends, so as not to injure her pride, that this is a lesson like any other.
He also tries hard not to notice, and appreciate, the way the navy-blue shorts and tank-top of her new bathing-suit cling to her slender curves. This is clearly not the proper context to explore the new turn their relationship has taken.
Six months from now, Daine will be a strong and graceful swimmer, a credit to Numair's teaching; her rapid progress will astonish her friend Miri, a swimmer from childhood, and eventually she will feel almost as much at home in a swimming-pool as she does on horseback.
But at first, the experience is even worse than she expects. The water feels deathly cold; she struggles to move her limbs, and the reminiscent tug of the water against her muscles makes her mind scream with terror. Only Numair's warm, patient voice in her ears, his large, strong hands guiding and supporting her, prevent her from clambering out of the pool and running away in tears.
"You made a good start today," he tells her later, when they are fully clothed again and she is warming her hands around a large mug of tea in the nearest coffee shop.
She scoffs.
"It's true, vetkin. Most people wouldn't even try this, so soon after what happened to you the other day. I'm proud of you."
She folds her arms, ducks her head. "About the other day …"
"Yes, we ought to discuss that."
"You saved my life. I don't think I remembered to thank you—but I am grateful, Numair. For that, and for—well—"
"You would have done the same for me, Daine. You have done, in fact—have you forgotten how we met?" It is hard to know which of them is more embarrassed. "That wasn't quite what I meant, however—"
"I know." She will not meet his eyes, terribly afraid, suddenly, that he is about to explain away the kiss, to tell her it didn't mean to him what she knows it meant to her.
"I'm sorry about—about what I did. It was unfair—I took advantage. I was so terrified that you'd drowned—I'm not sure what came over me, but I promise it won't happen again."
Too late, he sees the single tear drop onto her folded arms. His pulse pounds in his ears. Reaching across the small table, he cups her chin, raises her head, meets her damp, defiant gaze.
"Unless you want it to."
Her blue-grey eyes blaze for a moment with unbelieving joy.
He takes both her hands in his, heedless of the heads that have turned in their direction. "I love you, my vetkin," he says softly.
"I love you, too." Daine's voice is equally soft, wondering. "I think … I think maybe I always have."
"I'm going up there to find her."
"Not on your own. I'm coming with you."
"No, Alanna."
"I'm not one of your students, Numair. I don't answer to you. I'm your friend, and Daine's friend, and if you think I'll let you go haring off alone to confront a tin-pot dictator—"
"It's bad enough I've dragged Daine into this mess. I won't be responsible for any more … I won't drag you into it as well. I've got no one else—you have George and the ch—"
Alanna stared at him. "If you're going to talk like that, you're obviously not fit to go anywhere alone."
"Have you not listened to what I've told you about Ozorne, Alanna?" Numair's large hands were clenched in frustration. "He's dangerous. I don't know what he's up to, or what he wants with Daine—"
"You don't even know he has Daine," Alanna pointed out reasonably. "All you know is that she—or her mobile, anyway—is somewhere in the Royal Palace."
"She went out to meet you, lured by some sort of message that you didn't send, and she hasn't come back." She had seen Numair angry before, but rarely like this. His voice was cold, flat, absolutely expressionless—and twice as frightening as mere angry blustering would have been. "It's been half a day. Daine would not stay away this long of her own volition, not without a very good reason, and she would not lie to me about where she was going. Wherever she is, however she got there, she is there against her will, and I am going to get her back."
"Arram. Numair." Until now Lindhall Reed had been so silent that both Numair and Alanna had almost forgotten his presence. "Before you do … anything, please think. Is this—this display of solitary heroics not exactly what Ozorne will expect of you? Do you think he hasn't planned for just this eventuality? Tell me, Numair: how will you help your wife by charging alone into a trap he has laid for you?"
