Read Online Changer of Days by Alma Alexander - Free Book Online

it had. Senena had sworn to it. Impossibly, incredibly, they would have a chance. Kieran stood rapt in the common room of the inn where he had waited for so long, with tears in his eyes. He was remembering a rainy day now many years in the past, shaking off the wet in Cascin’s hall with Feor while other arms bore Anghara away into some women’s fastness to be dosed against catching a chill.
    She will need a friend.
    “So be it,” he breathed, as he had done then, repeating the vow. I will take you from here, or I will perish in the attempt. Without you…nothing I have done during these long empty years has any meaning.
    Kieran’s men slipped into the keep in inconspicuous ones and twos, himself following with Charo at his heels. They came together unobtrusively at the back of a barrack stables, mostly empty now that its inhabitants were away bearing their owners to Sif’s war, and settled down to wait for Melsyr’s signal.
    “Who’s to guarantee she’ll be able to do it?” murmured one of the men, wrapped in his cloak and sprawled over a pile of loose straw. “Fodrun is hardly likely to give his approval. And keeping this from him…I wonder if the little queen’s got it in her.”
    “She’ll do it,” said Kieran. He spoke as though he had knowledge of it, as though it had never been in any doubt.
    “Do you have the Sight?” mumbled a skeptic from the dark.
    Melsyr’s son turned up in the morning, moving like a shadow, with a basket of victuals and a message that nothing was known yet. None of them could eat much, but Kieran insisted—this was the worst waiting yet, with the imminence of something immense hanging over them, and used as these men were to being in tight spots together, stretched nerves made for uneasy companionship. Eating would give them something to do. Besides, they had learned the hard way never to scorn offered food—they never knew what lay around the next corner.
    Melsyr himself, still in uniform, came at dusk, but even in the dim cobwebs of twilight shadows hanging from the rafters his face seemed to glow. Kieran’s hackles rose. “She’s done it,” Melsyr whispered. “Tomorrow. It will only be for half an hour, up on the northern battlements—up where the mountains crowd up to the keep, it’s the most isolated place. There will be ten guards with her, four more at the foot of the stair, and Fodrun himself will be in charge.”
    For a moment none of them could speak over the violent thudding of their hearts. And then Kieran did, his voice low and steady although his eyes were twin blue flames. “And you?”
    “I am to be with the four guarding the rear,” said Melsyr. His teeth flashed white in the gloom, a promise of intent. Kieran recognized it for what it was, and reached to lay a hand on the other man’s shoulder.
    “The Gods alone know if or when we might need you again,” he said, and it was a warning. “Do not let yourself be suspected. Above all, do not help us. It would be best if you could manage not to be there.”
    They could barely distinguish one another’s features in the dimness, but that which passed between them needed no light. It was gratitude, and pride; it was a fierce joy, and a love born of what could become a great friendship. It was Melsyr who broke away first, briefly covering Kieran’s hand with his own and then stepping away into a bow.
    “As you will, lord,” he said. “I will switch duty with someone tomorrow…much as it galls me not to be there to see you take the Princess from this place, perhaps it would be more useful if I were on guard at a back door.” He grinned again. “But have no fear; if we do meet at some gate, I’ll ease your passage as much as I am able, and you have my full permission to deal with me as best you deem suitable at the time. Something tells me you will return; I will be here for you when you do. There will be,” he added, unconsciously echoing Sif’s words, “time enough.”
    And then he was gone.