Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Explain this to me again," Thayet said, and picked up a swathe of fabric to run her fingers along the monstrous stitches and the gaping, heavy weave. "And... and try to make it sound believable, for pity's sake. This happened... how?"

Numair looked sidelong at the woman. He wasn't fooled for a moment by her placid expression; the odd note in her voice told him that she was fighting back laughter. He flushed and kicked at more of the fabric with a scuffed boot.

"It was an accident." He muttered, and then more strongly: "And really, it was Daine's fault."

Thayet did laugh at that, shoving a swathe from a chair so she could sit down. It didn't surprise her that the chair was covered in books under all the cotton, but she made a show of moving them to the table before sitting down.

"Daine's fault." She repeated, and raised an eyebrow. "You're blaming this magical accident on your ungifted, very pregnant, and noticeably absent wife. And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"It's indirectly Daine's fault," he amended, and folded his arms. "But still..."

"Still, she isn't here." Thayet smiled encouragingly at him. "Perhaps she went on a training exercise or for a hike through the forest after she used your magic."

"Perhaps." Numair shrugged, "But it's more likely she's complaining about me to Cloud."

"Ah! Some truth at last! And that's the first thing you've said that I believe. You had a fight?"

The man relented and spread his hands in surrender. "Well, you know how Daine is right now. She can't get comfortable or sleep properly, and it's made her... in her words, Thayet: she's fair fractious. The smallest things set her off."

"Ah, so the fight was her fault, too!" The queen chipped in brightly. "Really, Numair, you're not selling this story. I thought you used to be a player!"

"I've had no sleep either. That's why..." The man's voice trailed off, and he gestured to the chaos lying to his right with an embarrassed hand. Thayet's amused expression faded, and she nodded.
This was why she was here, and she was here as the queen - not as the mage's friend. She raised herself to his feet and looked at where he was pointing.

She knew some of it. It was, as the man from the apartments below had shouted furiously, a hole. Splintered floorboards jutted up at sharp angles between more heaps of the blue fabric, and the sad remains of a smothered rug hung pathetically down the gap. Scraps of wood had fallen to the room below, and the remains of the nobleman's lunch was impaled neatly on the unfortunately inedible kind of stake.

The rest of the floor, Thayet had been assured, was not going to collapse. That had nothing to do with the fabric, of course. When the weight of it had made the floor shriek and warp Numair had panicked and cast a flood of his gift into the ground beneath his feet. It had been too late to save the damaged part. The crashing sound of falling timber had brought guards and maids and pages running. But the rest of the floor was sturdy underfoot. No - not under foot. Under fabric. Numair had warped the floorboards into the one material he knew he could trust to hold strong, and it gleamed beneath the blue cotton.
The man in the apartment below could probably see the enormous stitches of the cotton too, and the occassional embroidered flower.

The floor had turned into thick, greenish glass.

"Thinking about it, it probably was due to the lack of sleep." Numair mused behind her. Thayet shook her head in open disbelief.

"You know the rules about casting strong spells in the living quarters," She scolded him. Numair scratched his nose awkwardly.

"It didn't seem like such a strong..." He nudged at the fabric with his toe and jumped when it wriggled away from him. "I wasn't trying to make it... gods, it's still growing! Do you think the damn stuff is sentient?"

"For your sake, I hope not." The woman's lips curved irresistibly. "Unless you have a few baby names going spare."

The man groaned loudly and threw himself down onto a pile of fabric. Something clinked under it, and he winced and dug out a few pieces of crockery. "I wish I had done this in the magic workshops. At least then I wouldn't be digging around for everything I own. I can't even find my spell notes."

"Just go downstairs and look up." Thayet managed, and dissolved into helpless giggles. It was a long time before she could catch her breath, and then she caught sight of a giant button slowly inching along one wall, dragging stitches like a trail of pitiful ducklings, and laughed even harder.

"Daine woke up early this morning." Numair said when she had quietened. He watched the fabric with a warning look in his eye, but it seemed to have slowed down. He relaxed a little and continued his explanation. "She's never been too worried about her looks - well, you know that. If you think it was difficult getting her to those dress fittings for Carthak, you should try talking to her before court! She always tells me off: animals don't care if it's lace or linen, they'll still mess it up the same. Usually I get around her by saying that even if the animals don't care, I do. Then I get told off." his voice took on a gentle mocking tone as he imitated the woman's mischevous words: "Oh, I didn't realise I was being an embarrassment!"

"She knows what you mean," Thayet smiled gently and then scratched at her wrist, where a scrap of cloth had been tickling her. "What does this have to do with you destroying my castle?"

Numair winced, and tried to explain...

... Daine woke up earlier and earlier each morning, and had gotten used to slipping out of bed silently and keeping herself busy until Kitten or the dawn chorus distracted her. Numair was equally accustomed to waking up alone, although he disliked it. He was just as used to dragging his feet into the main room and finding his best friend fast asleep at the table, her head resting on a book or a pile of tack. He had even gotten into the habit of bringing the blanket out of the bedroom to wrap around her shoulders, and the animals were used to being silently chased away by tiny stinging sparks of his gift. That morning, though, he had carried the blanket into the main room to find that Daine was wide awake, looking in the mirror and frowning at her reflection.

"It's like the metal is all warped, or something." she commented after wishing him good morning. "I 'spose if I looked in a spoon I'd be a normal shape again."

"Depends which side of the spoon it is." Her husband yawned. "If it was convex you'd look like you were carrying twins."

Daine pulled a face at him and then tugged her shirt up, looking woefully at her distended stomach and the way it filled the rectangle of glass. "This could be twins. I'm bigger than a house."

"Baird said it wasn't." Numair said. He walked over and gently smoothed her shirt back down, then wrapped his arms around her and met her eyes in the mirror. She looked back, smiling when he kissed her ear, but the expression faded quite quickly. "Daine, what's wrong?"

"I'm... I'm tired. Not like I need sleep," she added quickly when he started to answer. He closed his mouth, still watching her expression in the mirror, and she sighed and brushed her knuckles along his wrist. "It probably sounds fair terrible, but honestly... I'm tired of being pregnant."

"There's just a few more weeks," Numair stroked her hair gently, and she made a bitter noise.

"A few more weeks of… of feeling grouchy and hungry and bloated and hot and aching and having sore feet and..." She gestured at the mirror, "...and stretch marks and no sleep, and looking like I'm stuck-shifted between a human and a hippo..."

What could he say to that? Numair found himself struggling for words, because (as he tried to explain to Thayet) it was so unlike Daine to talk about her looks, and even stranger for her to raise the subject, that he wasn't at all sure what she needed to hear. He settled for telling the truth.

"You know I think you're beautiful." He murmured, and she shrugged."Honestly, magelet, you look like you're pregnant, not like some... anthropromorphic creature. You don't have the ears to pass as a hippo hybrid, for a start."

That startled a laugh from her, and he felt some of the tension ebb from her shoulders. "I might feel better if my clothes fit," she admitted. "I've been wearing your shirts for nearly a month, now."

"When I offered to buy you something you said no," he reminded her, and the woman clicked her tongue against her teeth.

"It seems like a waste of money when it'll be over soon."

In some ways, Numair thought, Daine had never left her childhood behind. It came out in the strangest ways - one of which was this obstinate refusal to spend money when it wasn't absolutely necessary. He sometimes saw her looking worriedly at the nice things he had collected in his tower over the years, or the clothes they wore to court. It didn't seem to register with her that her friends were nobles of the realm, and that they didn't feel guilty dressing well. There had to be a small voice lurking in her thoughts: if you waste money, how will we survive the lean months?

Once when she was about fifteen she had worn her work clothes into rags before replacing them. Numair, torn between amusement and concern, had finally grown irritated and pointed out that they could spend every copper they earned for a year and they would still have enough food and fuel stored in the basement to survive the longest winter imaginable. Daine nodded slowly, and then asked in a serious voice: but what about the winter after that?

This was the same conversation, and they both knew by now that the other one's mind would never be changed.

"I'd still like to buy you something, though." Numair rested his chin against her head, looking thoughtfully at the reflected image of his shirt on a girl who was much too small and wide to wear it. "It'll make you feel more comfortable, love, and you could wear it again."

"Again?" She looked up sharply. "Are you already so set on planning the next one?"

"You're the one who's so practical." He shrugged and grinned, trying to pass it off as a joke. "It's not such bad economy if you get pregnant again."

"I'm not going through all this again to earn a dress." She almost laughed, and then her mood changed and she added in a fiercer tone: "I'm not going through this again, full stop. I hate it."

..."Oh dear." Thayet muttered, and then: "So that's how your fight started, is it?"

"Started?" The man hid a laugh. "We haven't stopped fighting in weeks. I told you, we're both tired, and she's got a good excuse and I've got a short fuse, and sometimes we stop shouting for long enough to apologise to each other."

"That sounds familiar." Thayet remembered her own confinements with a shake of her head. "But you should know better than to talk about putting her through this again, even if you were just joking."

"I know." He looked shamefaced. "After she stormed out I felt terrible for it, and that's when I decided..."

Chapter Text

Numair's story was interrupted by the click of the door. Daine stepped in cautiously, her eyes wide as she stared at the swathes of fabric.

Turning to Numair, she said, "You're going to have to explain this one to me in the shortest words you know."

He met her eyes with a touch of defiance. "It's a dress for you."

Daine made a point of looking around at the mounds of fabric. Her voice was utterly bewildered. "How much more pregnant do you think I'm going to get?"

Thayet couldn't help it. She dissolved into laughter, clutching at herself as great peals of mirth shook her slight frame. Both Daine and Numair caught their breath and then they met each other's eyes, and although their faces were both still coloured by surprise or defiance, they shared rueful grins. Daine tentatively found something soft under the cloth and sat down, happy to rest her aching feet and hoping she had found a cushion, not one of the castle cats. Numair moved to sit near her and, in a low voice, explained as much of the story as he could. Thayet stopped laughing in time to hear Daine ask, "But why this dress? I've always hated this dress!" and that set her off again.

"It was in case it went wrong." The man said stiffly.

"Numair?"

"Yes?"

"It went wrong."

He scowled and tugged at his nose. "Gods bless it, but I was only trying to do something nice..."

"So you thought it'd be good for Daine to have something nice to wear." Thayet recapped, ignoring the way the girl folded her arms and scowled in embarrassment. "That's reasonable enough. But how did we get from that to... to this?"

"I found a old spell." Numair explained, "I think it was supposed to be for carriages, actually. You know, to change the height or the length of the fixings so that it didn't matter which horses you lashed it to. I've been meaning to give it to Jon, actually." He looked a little sheepish about his absentmindedness. "Do you think he'd appreciate it?"

"It might go some way towards an apology." Thayet had cleared a small section of floor, and was peering down at the greenish glass with fascination. When Daine snorted out a laugh she smiled and looked up. "He's blaming you, by the way."

"Is he?" Daine rolled her eyes and fixed her husband in a stern look. "So you never want to sleep in a hedgehog-free bed again, right?"

"Grow up, Daine." He said, but smiled in defeat. She gestured at the dress, eyes wide.

"Up? I'd have to be fifty feet tall!"

"So it's not Daine's fault." Thayet supplied, trying to get the conversation to some level of seriousness. Numair looked for a second like he might argue, but then pulled a face at his wife and relaxed.

"No. No, it was me."

The spell was designed for wagons and carts, but he saw no reason why it shouldn't work on fabric. It was meant for farmers, who would keep carts for generations but not be able to afford matching horses. The carts would change, adapting to the size and shape of the horse when it was harnessed in. Numair reasoned that the same logic could apply to a pregnant woman. When Daine fastened the buttons that crossed her stomach, the spell would warp and reshape the dress to fit her perfectly. It was perfect!

"The problem was," he continued, "That a tiny, tiny bit of the spell was missing. I'd been working on a few possible solutions and I really thought I'd gotten it right... it worked fine on the models." He gestured to where the desk had been, and where a score of tiny wooden carts were probably crushed by now. Seeing this, he winced and lowered his hand. "Well, it turns out that... well, wood is from trees..."

"You don't say." Daine murmured. He shot her a dark look.

"Trees which grow in one way, because they're trees. I didn't think that... that fabric isn't simple. It's spinning and density and stitches and gauge and hundreds of other things."

Thayet, who had spent her childhood spinning and weaving with the women of her family, privately thought that this was an obvious fact. Daine, who despised most womanly tasks, shrugged.

"So let's say I spell a piece of wood and tell it to grow five inches. It does! But then I spell a piece of fabric. And the stitches grow five inches, and so do the gaps between them, and maybe even the strands in the thread decide they all want to be five inches long, and before you know it..." He gestured around the room, "... you're chasing giant buttons away from the fire."

Thayet nodded slowly. "Alright, so that explains the fabric. Now, explain to me how you're going to fix it."

"Fix it?" The man looked up, almost frantic. "Thayet, it's still growing! Until it stops, I can't even test it to see what went wrong!"

"Is it even going to stop?" Daine's voice turned quite serious. Numair looked uncertain, which was always a worrying sign. She gripped at his hand. "Love, as much as I like the gesture, if my present gets any bigger the walls are going to cave, never mind the floor!"

"We need to stop it," Thayet agreed, and she seemed to come to a decison. Summoning a servant, she ordered him to fetch every free person in the castle. "Keep going until you reach the barracks, and send everyone." She said. "Nobles, cooks or knights, it doesn't matter. We need to get this dress outside before it brings the whole castle down around our ears!"

Chapter Text

It was ridiculous how quickly the news spread. Thayet summoned as many people as possible. They joked and gaped as they tripped into the mages' room and found an edge of the enormous dress. After that first group grabbed armfuls of the fabric they found that they were trapped in the room. So many more people had crowded into the corridor that the route was quite blocked.

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Thayet called out. "We're taking it to the jousting field. You can all see it there. Let us past!"

Laughing, the company began to make a cheerful beeline down the stairs and out into the grounds. The people carrying the fabric puffed and groaned at its weight until they were clear of the narrow corridors of the living quarters. Then, in the larger space of the atrium, so many helpful hands seized stitches that the dress seemed almost weightless. Thayet, who had a button to wrestle with, gently coaxed them along with instructions, and in a few minutes they were out in the fresh air.

"Daine," The queen overheard Numair saying, "You know you're not supposed to do anything strenuous..."

"Leave my poor button alone. I could carry the whole thing by myself a few hours ago," A tart voice replied, and Thayet hid a smile.

They heaped the dress down in the centre of the field and stood around it, trying to work out what to do next. Thayet suggested that it might stop growing and become useful, but by that time the fabric had become thick, coarse stitches in a heavy mass. They would never be able to use it for anything, and it was still growing. The buttons seemed to amble along with slow indifference towards the staring crowd.
Thayet was turning to ask Numair what to do next when she realised the man had vanished. Daine smiled and pointed to where the man was drawing a circle with his boot in the dirt around the mound of fabric. Once the protection circle was in place the cloth kept growing, but pressed up against the edge of the spell as if it were in a jar. Numair pointed at the fabric and whispered a word, and it burst in to flame. Several people in the crowd gasped and applauded. Daine rolled her eyes.

"That's only impressive if you don't know he can't use a flint without burning himself."

"Then don't tell them." Thayet offered. "And maybe they'll stop teasing him about the floor."

"He deserves to be teased about the floor," Daine laughed, remembering the gaping faces of the crowd looking up from the floor below as the fabric was dragged away. Those same people were now cheerfully gathering around Numair, laughing and joking, and soon the mage was joining in.

With such a large bonfire and the evening drawing in, a few people brought musical instruments and started a makeshift party around the warm blaze. Thayet, always two steps ahead of any social event, sent her servants to the kitchens. Soon the air was thick with the smell of roasting meat, kegs of beer and cider, and slightly greasy smoke. The wooden buttons burned so well that several people hooked them from the warded blaze to make smaller fires of their own.

"It's like Beltane." Numair said, finally finding Daine and sitting beside her. The prospect of sitting on the ground had been too daunting, so instead she had perched on one of the platforms they put chairs on for jousting matches. Seeing her shiver, Numair summoned their own button with his gift and drew her closer, wrapping his arm warmly around her shoulders. They watched the fire for a long while, and the people enjoying themselves, and the remains of the ruined dress going up in flames.

Numair said, "I think this turned out well."

"All this makes me feel better." Daine replied in a peaceful way. "I'm glad it happened."

Numair ruffled her hair playfully.

"We've got a lot of cleaning up to do when we get home." He remarked. She wrinkled her nose at him.

"Not that, dolt! I reckon... I reckon..." She bit her lip and then shook her head. Her husband smiled encouragingly at her, and she finally thought of how to speak her mind. Her words were unapologetically blunt. "Numair, it's fair nice to see you getting something wrong once in a while. I've been thinking I'm the only one who doesn't have a clue what she's doing."

"Really?" He looked amazed. "I thought... well, because your mother..."

"Oh, that." She waved a hand dismissively. "I'm fine with all that. As long as you let me squeeze your hand and you promise to forget all the swear words I've gotten saved up I'm ready enough for that."
Numair promised without a moment's hesitation, made a hedge-sign against broken vows with one elaborate player's gesture, and then kissed her temple when she laughed. "I'm being serious, Numair."

"How do you know that I'm not, magelet? Lack of sleep is a strange thing. Next you'll be thinking you can turn into animals or something."

"For that comment I'll be crushing your hand whether you want me to or not."

He laughed and shifted a little. When he was comfortable again, he asked in a soft voice, "Are you scared, Daine?"

"No. Yes. A little." She looked at the burning dress for a moment, and the firelight lit up her face. It made her look strangely young, which made her next words even stranger in contrast. "Before we fight a battle I don't get scared, because I know what to expect. Before this... I'm not scared about if it'll hurt or how it might go badly, because I know how to fix those things. But I'm scared of suddenly having a baby, of suddenly changing and not being just myself any more, but being something's ma. Gods, Numair, I have to say 'something' because we don't even know if it's a boy or a girl!"

"Someone." He corrected her gently, and she shook her head.

"It's almost as bad. That's the word we use for strangers. People we know nothing about. That's exactly what the baby is to us right now. Doesn't that scare you?"

"Yes, but it excites me too." He held her a little closer. "We can look forward to seeing them find out about the world. We get to show them everything that's soft and bright and beautiful, answer all their questions... what's their name, why is their hair curly, why is our home always full of cats..."

"...why is the floor made of glass?" Daine finished with a sly grin. Numair tweaked her nose.

"You know I can fix that."

"Get some sleep first," She suggested, and yawned. "Don't want you turning my walls into soup."

"Your walls?" He laid heavy emphasis on the first word, and Daine grinned lazily.

"I heard Thayet sayin' she'd kick most people out for good if they wrecked up the castle that badly. Since it was only you who destroyed the floor, I reckon I'll be waving you goodbye from my lovely new rooms. Unless I invited you to share them, of course."

"I still contend it was your fault." He returned in an aloof tone. Daine raised an eyebrow at him.

"All I said was 'I don't think it will work.'"

"Exactly! With no evidence to support that (frankly insulting) assertion..."

"Oh, bother your long words. I was right. It didn't work."

"Only because you undermined my confidence."

"Your precious confidence should take a lot more punishment than that before you sulk off and destroy our home, love."

"Let's just say we're both equally culpable, shall we?"

"No!" Daine glared at him, and then saw that he was teasing her and relaxed. Slowly linking her fingers through his, she thought about being scared, and meeting their tiny new stranger, and living in a house with a glass floor. The thoughts circled in her mind in a sleepy, confused kind of way. For once she let them whirl for as long as they needed to. Neither she nor Numair really wanted to move away from this warm seat near the peculiar fire, and it was so peaceful that they could easily drift off to sleep here, even with the people drinking and dancing nearby.

It seemed a shame to spoil it, really.

"Numair," she said quietly, feeling his fingers moving gently through her hair. "Are you awake?"

"Just about. You're the one who told me to get some sleep."

"Mm." She yawned and then shifted a little uncomfortably. "Before you do, can you just... count for me? Like meditating, but keep going."

"One," he started with a smile. "Two, three..."

When he reached seventy three she asked him to stop. He looked intrigued.

"Is this some new experiment, magelet?"

"Not really," she returned with a short laugh. "I just speed up when I count, and you're like a metronome. I'll ask you to do it again in half an hour or so, maybe."

"I'm so good at counting you have to hear me twice! Your ears won't believe their eyes!" Numair announced in his player's voice. Daine laughed aloud at that, and then stopped with a sudden choked sound.

Numair caught her fingers and ran his thumb over them soothingly. "Are you well, sweetling?"

"I'm fine," she caught her breath. "Well, I think it's too early, so it's just false pains, but I've been having them all day and... and if we can only count as high as sixty next time, we should probably go home."
Numair couldn't find the words for a long moment. Daine broke the silence in the end, yanking her hand away from his grasp. "Gods damn it, Numair! I'm allowed to crush your hand, not the other way around!"

"All day?" He asked her finally. "You've been going through that all day and you didn't say anything?"

"I liked being distracted." She admitted with a smile. "If I'd said anything I'd never have gotten to see my lovely new magic dress."

"So you might not have even gotten a chance to wear it, even if it had worked." Numair sounded dazed. Daine kissed his cheek.

"That's not the important thing. If it had worked, I wouldn't have been so wondrously occupied this afternoon."

"Would you believe me if I said I absolutely planned that? Naturally, a black robe would only ever ruin a spell for an exceptional reason... or an exceptional young lady..."

"Nice try."

"Actually..." He casually waved a hand at the massive fire. A button had been writhing and swelling against the circle, but at his signal it stopped and shrank back. It almost looked sheepish as it grew smaller, and smaller. He waved a hand again and it stopped. "Let them have their bonfire," he said with a superior expression, and then he faced down his wife's look of absolute incredulity. "As if I would mess up a simple growing spell, Daine!"

She gaped at him. All she could think of to say was, "If this turns out to be a false alarm, how many of my clothes are you going to burn to distract me?"

He laughed, absolutely unrepentant. "I didn't know you were having pains, love. This was mainly to cheer you up. I figured even if you were furious at me you'd still enjoy seeing that dress go up in flames."

She rested her head on her hand, smiling irresistibly. Easing herself further away, she tugged his hand for him to stand up, and when he was standing in front of her she bowed her head in a queenly manner.
"You fooled every single one of us. Gods help me for being married to a player!"

He laughed and bowed, making the gesture ridiculously elegant and miming a large hat for good measure. Daine clapped and joined in with his laughter until there were tears in both of their eyes.