A/N: I really struggled with this chapter, particularly the last part. It's very long, but not particularly eventful ... not sure how that happened. I promise more proper plot, and a big chunk of fluffy fluff, in chapter 12!
Daine's daughter -- thanks :) Sorry about the cliffie, but yeah, I had to ...
Kitty Ryan -- I told you that was inadvertant, right? 'Twas the Rogue whispering to my subconscious, I verily believe!
maddimus3 -- thank you :) And I will.
Tawnykit -- they do have a plan. I'm just, um, not entirely sure what it is yet. You see how tricky it is to do this in an AU without magic? What was I thinking? ;)
Dolphindreamer -- hmm, I hadn't thought of doing a make-up scene ;). Daine didn't really do anything wrong, except leaning too far over the railings (and maybe getting a little too close to some other animals during the day). It's just that this is the first time he's seen her interact with really big,scary animals, and it freaks him out. Other flashbacks, set later in their relationship, show him accepting and even embracing this aspect of her life, which is part of falling in love with her :).
Disclaimer: See previous 10 chapters.
11: Nightmares
It was past eight o'clock by the time the hotel was reopened to those few of its guests who had not been hospitalized. As soon as the police cordons came down, Kaddar, Alanna, Lindhall and Zaimid moved what Alanna had taken to calling their "command post" back into Numair and Daine's room.
"I've got everyone within reach on standby," Kaddar said at last. "Everyone who can get to the city will be ready to go in by morning. My people in the Royal Guard and the army are organizing weapons – we'll have enough for about half the civilians, which is more than I could have hoped for. Someone of ours will be on duty at the main gate beginning at seven o'clock, and as many other guardsmen as possible will be incapacitated by, er, accidental food poisoning." Alanna allowed herself a brief, vicious grin at this.
Kaddar leaned back in his chair, joints popping as he stretched his legs out and his arms above his head. Then he straightened and looked at them each in turn, his face commanding and earnest. Almost for the first time, Alanna saw what his followers must see in him. "We shall only have one chance at this," he said. "Miss Kingsford's attempt to help Daine escape was courageous, but …" he shook his head. "And those loyal to my uncle will now be more than ever on their guard."
"We must also consider the possibility," Lindhall broke in, his quiet voice grave, "that your uncle will decide to forgo even the appearance of legal proceedings. Once he has extracted the confession he wants …"
The four of them nodded grimly.
"Things are in place at my end," Alanna said. She had briefed George thoroughly, and he would make certain that people in a position to make diplomatic noise would hear the real story before any media coverage of Numair's confession reached their ears. If only Numair and Daine were high-level politicians or some such, she thought bitterly. We'd have the Special Forces here already. "We've only one agent in the place, but he'll contact yours and do what he can. And there's not a hope in hell that anyone in our government will believe any 'confessions' they see on the telly. Though I'd rather stop it happening at all," she added.
Again the others nodded their agreement.
"We'd best get some rest," Alanna said then. "It's past midnight, and we'll be up again all too soon."
On the dresser in Daine's small, Spartan bedroom is a framed photograph of her six-year-old self with her mother—one of only a few she still possesses. It does not occur to her to show it to anyone; Numair discovers its existence only when she has 'flu and he comes to visit her, bearing out-of-season strawberries to tempt her to eat and a rare nineteenth-century book, an illustrated guide to equine anatomy, that he has recently discovered in a second-hand bookshop. While she carefully turns the pages, he looks around him.
"She was very pretty," he remarks, studying the portrait.
"Yes," Daine agrees. She is sitting up in bed, wrapped in blankets. "I've always wished I looked more like her."
The young woman in the picture—a mother at sixteen, she is only a few years older than Daine is now—has soft blonde hair and a sweetly pretty face; her full, sensitive mouth is Daine's, and her fair, translucent complexion, but her dreamy expression has none of the fierce tenacity that characterizes her daughter's. Daine's stubborn chin and the glint of wry, deadpan humour that always lurks just behind her blue-grey eyes are nowhere in evidence, either.
"Well," Numair says consideringly, "I must say that I like you much better as you are."
Possibly she is blushing, but probably the flush on her cheeks is only an effect of the 'flu.
On a chilly spring evening some four years later, the same photograph graces the mantelpiece of their chaotic sitting-room, and below it burns a cheerful log fire.
"She was my age, in that photo," Daine says suddenly. "Can you imagine what it must have been like, to be my age, alone with a six-year-old? I don't think I ever gave Ma enough credit, you know."
"Well, she did a marvellous job with you, at any rate." Numair's arm tightens around her shoulders, pulling her against him, and Cloud, curled in her lap, mews in protest.
"I s'pose so." She shrugs. "Only I wish … I'd like to have some idea …"
"She never even hinted at who he was?"
She shakes her head. "She always said she'd tell me someday. And then … well, then it was too late."
"Someday." He strokes her hair. "Funny—I know someone who always says that, too."
Daine dreamed.
Whether because of the bizarre mixture of chemicals in her bloodstream or because sleep-deprivation and dehydration were affecting her more than she had thought, her dreams were more vivid and concrete than usual, and almost uniformly frightening.
In one dream, she slowly climbed the grassy side of Arthur's seat, holding a small, curly-headed child by each hand; ahead of them walked Numair, bearing a third, even smaller child on his broad shoulders. He turned back, laughing, and then he blurred into Ozorne and went on laughing, on a manic, rising note, as he snatched the child from his shoulders and hurled her to the ground.
The children's terrified shrieks, and her own as well, were taken up and scattered by a sudden, viciously cold wind that, gaining strength, blew both the children and Ozorne away before knocking Daine off her feet and sending her sprawling on what was no longer a grassy hillside but instead a cold, glassy floor. She was now enveloped in a darkness so absolute that even her extraordinarily good night vision could give her no other clue to her surroundings. Tensed for the worst, ears straining in the total silence, she waited. At last faint grinding and tearing noises began all around her and slowly built to a deafening crescendo; she clapped her hands to her ears, only to discover that thick, sticky liquid was pouring out between her fingers, stinging her nostrils with the unmistakable scent of blood.
Then the darkness, the noise and the blood all vanished together, in a thunderclap of silence and white light, and she was in a huge, ruined Roman arena, watching from the midst of a clamouring crowd as a man in chains – Oh, God, Numair! – was led out to the centre of the packed-dirt arena floor. When he stood there alone (head bowed, arms hanging at his sides, in an attitude of utter despair) gates clanged open and half a dozen great cats – lionesses, tigers, a leopard, a jaguar – bounded toward him and circled, tails lashing, growling deep in their throats.
"Stop! Don't hurt him!" Daine shouted, as loudly as she could; but neither predators nor prey appeared to hear her. She called again and again, her voice growing hoarse, always to no avail. Finally the largest lioness tired of threatening and leaped—
And Daine felt herself falling, dropping an unimaginable distance, falling so fast that the air was pressed from her lungs and she gasped, unable to draw breath.
She fell against something wet, cold, painfully jarring – against it and through it – down, down, into frigid salt water that burned her eyes and numbed her body and fought its way into her nostrils. Heavy weights tugged at her wrists and ankles. She tried to swim, tried to kick out and push herself back to the surface, but found she had forgotten how; her mad, helpless flailing was only dragging her farther down. She opened her mouth to call for help – to call for Numair – and the water rushed in, down her throat and into her lungs, drowning her.
As if from a great distance she heard his voice, thick with some emotion she knew but could not place: Daine … my God, vetkin, what have they done to you?
A warm, gentle hand lay against her forehead for a moment, then cupped her cheek.
"Numair," she whispered. He's alive. The choking pressure on her lungs eased, and she drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.
For some reason, this meeting between old friends – old enemies – had none of the awkwardness of the last one, two nights earlier. Perhaps it was simply that now there was no need for any sort of pretence.
"I'm prepared to accept your terms," Numair said flatly, before Ozorne had a chance to begin. He spoke in English; his was far more fluent and idiomatic than Ozorne's, and he could not resist this small show of superiority. "You can lock me up, and I'll confess in the morning. Provided that you let me see my wife now."
The king struggled only for a second to conceal his surprise; anyone who knew him less well would almost certainly not have seen the momentary widening of the amber eyes, the infinitesimal lift of the manicured brows. When he spoke, however, his voice was controlled, unpleasantly amused. "Certainly you may see her. She will be in no condition to see you, however. Veralidaine has been … uncooperative. It was necessary to restrain her."
"If you've harmed her …" Numair's hands clenched involuntarily, bunching into fists, before he controlled himself. No good can come of assaulting him now, no matter how much he may deserve it. "Take me to her," he said grimly.
When the door swung open, he had to shut his lips tight against an exclamation of outrage. The cell was so small – no more than four feet by six – that he, the bucket in the corner, and the cot along one wall nearly filled it; the walls and ceiling were featureless and smooth. Numair shuddered at the thought of how it must have felt for Daine, with her dread of being caged, to wake up in such a space. But far worse …
She slept, but unquietly, struggling against her shackles, gasping for breath. Her face was bruised, her lip bloodied; deep shadows ringed her eyes.
"Daine," he choked, dropping to his knees beside the metal cot. "My God, vetkin, what have they done to you?"
He laid a trembling hand on her forehead; despite the air-conditioned chill of the place, her skin was damp with sweat, her smoky brown curls dark and matted with it. Shaking, inwardly cursing himself for bringing this on her, he smoothed clinging tendrils away from her brow and briefly stroked her cheek. Silently, as he watched her face, her battered lips formed his name. She didn't wake, but at his touch her breathing had eased, her body stilled.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he whispered, almost under his breath. "So sorry. Whatever happens … whatever happens, remember that I love you."
"How sweet adolescent love is." Ozorne's presence, almost forgotten, was rudely borne in on him by that mocking voice. "Rather pathetic in a man of your age, of course …"
Numair rose to his full height, half expecting to graze his head on the low ceiling, and favoured his captor with a cold glare. "How like you to be so unable to understand."
"That's your car?" Daine asks him, arching a sardonic eyebrow. "Or did Mr Bean give you a loan of his while yours is in the shop?"
He can understand her amusement; the vehicle in question is, after all, a twenty-year-old Austin Mini. "It runs very well," he says defensively. "And it will certainly keep you drier than your bike."
He opens the left-hand door for her, but she makes no move to get into the car. "Where d'you sit to drive it—in the boot?" she asks instead.
Numair knows her well enough by this time to recognize that something deeper is lurking behind her sarcasm. "What's the matter?" he asks kindly.
"Nothing." She flushes a little and looks away, across the stark expanse of the underground car park. "This is kind of you, Numair, but I'd really rather take my bike. It's only a little rain—"
"It's a torrential downpour," he counters. "You'll be soaked to the skin before you've gone twenty feet, and everything in your bag will be ruined. Look, if you're worried about my driving—"
"It's not that."
"What is it, then? And don't say 'nothing' again, please."
There is a long pause.
"I'm … a little … claustrophobic," she says at last, softly, her gaze fixed on the toes of her wellies. "I don't much like riding in cars, and this one is … it's so …"
"Yes, I suppose it is," he admits. "Look, em, would it help if you closed your eyes, so you couldn't see how small it is?"
Startled, she looks up at him. "I thought you'd laugh," she tells him.
"Then you don't know me as well as you ought," he retorts. "Now, what do you think? Would it help?"
"I don't know. I've never tried it. Sometimes rolling the window all the way down makes it a little better, but …"
"But in this case counterproductive, obviously. Would you … do you think you could try it? It's only a short trip, and I hate to think of you out there getting drenched when I could have you home and dry in ten minutes."
"Only ten minutes? D'you promise?" She sounds dubious.
"It's on my way home—I pass your street every day. Upon my honour, milady—only ten minutes." He lays a hand over his heart as he says this, the picture of melodramatic gallantry, and is rewarded with a tiny smile.
She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and holds out her hand, letting him guide her gently into the passenger seat and buckle her in. When he has folded himself into the driving seat beside her, put on his own seatbelt, and started the engine, he turns to look at her before letting in the clutch: she is composed, her face a blank mask, but there is tension in every line of her body and she grips her rucksack with white-knuckled hands. "Ready?" he asks.
"As I'll ever be," she says grimly.
He narrates their trajectory as they pass familiar waypoints. At the end of the ten-minute journey, he helps her out of the car and holds a large black umbrella over them both until they reach the shelter of the stable block.
"Thanks," she says, peering out at the rain, which is falling in sheets. "That was—thanks, Numair."
She stands on tiptoe and briefly kisses his cheek. Then she turns and heads for the staircase that leads to her flat and Onua's. She doesn't look back—which is fortunate, he decides when he realizes he has been standing for several minutes staring after her, his fingers against his cheek. He looks at his watch and curses: he is engaged to have drinks with a very pretty lecturer in French literature this evening, and he is already late.
Numair had thought it might be difficult to play the part of a doomed man, knowing the plans that were in the works for his rescue; but it seemed he had underestimated his own capacity for craven terror. He was not accustomed to cloak-and-dagger conspiracies and threats of death, and it was, he found, quite easy to lose confidence in Kaddar's allies, in the possibility of rescue, even—though he would rather have died than admit it to Alanna—in what George could accomplish on his and Daine's behalf. He had only to picture Daine as he had most recently seen her to feel again the same heart-stopping clutch of terror that had gripped him when he first realized where she was.
What Numair most wanted at the moment, if he could not be with Daine, was to be alone—free to pace to the limits of his chains, or curse the air blue, or sleep, or cry, or meditate, or relive happy memories. Even just to sit in silence and not think for a short while would have been a blessing.
Instead, Ozorne—once finished with the state banquet he had apparently been hosting all evening—seemed determined to spend the whole night in his cell with him. Most evil dictators would be satisfied with the certain prospect of wringing a public confession from an enemy and putting him to death, Numair thought rather giddily. But Ozorne Tasikhe can't help but hang about and gloat. Still, perhaps he could turn this tendency to his advantage.
"I don't suppose you'd tell me how you did it," he inquired, attempting a tone of casual interest, the next time there was a break in Ozorne's monologue.
Ozorne gave him a suspicious look.
"Scientific curiosity," Numair explained. "I've tried and tried to work it out, but it's beyond me." And if I knew how it worked, perhaps I could invent a way to stop it. "And I'm hardly likely to tell anyone your secrets, am I? After all, the next time I leave this building, I'll be dead."
There was a little more glaring, but ultimately—as Numair had suspected—the scientist-king could not resist the opportunity to display his brilliance.
"It is a chemical compound of my own invention," he said. "It harnesses the warring effects of adrenaline—fight and flight—and makes the subject incapable of responding to either, instead holding him immobilized between the two, and thus entirely open to command."
Numair nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
"It is most efficiently delivered intravenously, but recently I have developed a version of the compound for airborne delivery—through the air-conditioning ducts of a large building, for example." Ozorne was clearly delighted with himself. "Of course, the effects are not so reliable or so sustained. Still, it is sufficiently effective, I think you must agree."
"How long before it kills them?"
Ozorne's shrug said this really didn't matter much. "It varies, depending on the subject, and on other factors," he said. "Long enough for most purposes."
"And the trigger?" Numair's voice sounded like someone else's, but Ozorne appeared not to notice.
"The command process is complex," was the condescending reply. "Mainly, however, it relies on pheromones and on a mechanism akin to hypnotic suggestion. It is not yet possible to control the subject's speech, but in other respects control is absolute."
"And your plan is to use this … this process to terrorize your neighbours into paying you tribute, or some such?"
Ozorne waved a dismissive hand. "No, no," he said impatiently. "This was only a demonstration. Once the mechanism is perfected, I shall have buyers queuing up for such a powerful weapon. It will be a far more lucrative export than oil or diamonds."
"But what you've demonstrated," Numair pointed out, "is some bizarre plot of mine, is it not?"
"That," said Ozorne with a smile that would have suited a cobra to perfection, "will depend on who asks the question."
The man is mad. Utterly, utterly mad.
"'Control is absolute,' you say," Numair remarked, belatedly seeing an opening. "And yet, you couldn't manage to control Daine—or so I presume, given the physical restraints. I can't help wondering what went wrong there."
Again Ozorne was silent for a moment, glaring. "Veralidaine appears to have a higher tolerance than other subjects of her size," he admitted at last.
"Daine isn't exactly like other people," Numair said. "I thought you'd realized that—but I see that I overestimated your perception."
Ozorne ignored this, but Numair thought he saw a twitch beginning at the corner of the older man's eye. "Tell me honestly, Arram: how much longer would she have had before you grew bored and threw her over?"
"Grew bored? Threw her over?" Numair struggled with his anger, knowing that he and his antagonist were playing the same game. "She's my wife, Ozorne. Not a one-night stand."
"Come, now—I know Arram Draper better than that."
Numair sighed. "I don't doubt it. But I haven't been Arram Draper for a good many years, you see."
Ozorne's eyes narrowed. "Once a betrayer, always a betrayer," he said darkly.
"That's a very interesting accusation, coming from you."
There was a pause. Numair breathed slowly and evenly, maintaining the illusion of calm; out of the corner of his eye he watched his tormentor glaring, muttering, finally collecting himself for a renewed assault.
"I must say," he began, conversationally, "I was most surprised to learn that Arram Draper, notorious for toying with the affections of beautiful women, had allowed himself to be drawn in so far as marriage. And then to find that your choice was such a woman—ill educated, without beauty—and little more than a child. I concluded that she must know some very … entertaining … tricks."
The control Numair had thought he had proved wholly unequal to such extreme provocation. Later he would think of all the calmer, more rational things he could have said, all the more reasoned and intelligent possible reactions—the words and actions of the intelligent, rational, non-violent person he usually was.
At the moment, however, he was hardly himself; he was irrationally angry, roaring with outrage at the monster who dared say such ugly things of his beloved, his beautiful, his bright and generous and industrious Daine. So it was hardly surprising that the satisfaction of seeing genuine fear in his former friend's eyes as he lunged forward—even for just a moment, before the guard at the door of the cell struck the back of his head with the butt of an automatic rifle, sending him sprawling to the floor, semi-conscious—seemed eminently worth the pain.
He retained just enough awareness, for the next few minutes, to feel the prod of a leather-shod foot in his ribs and to hear Ozorne whisper venomously, "Congratulations, Numair Salmalín. You have bought yourself a very painful death. As for your wife ... well, I am sure she will grow to love her new home in time ..."
So sorry, my vetkin. All my fault. So sorry. Finally, gratefully, he let unconsciousness engulf him.
