Changer of Days (7 page)

Looking around, he saw his men mopping up the remainder of the guard. The rest of the keep still was—still seemed—deceptively quiet. Whatever chance they had of carrying this off was here, right now. The keep could rouse at any second.

“Adamo, round them up,” he said, his voice swift, quiet. “Twos and threes, as before. There’s still a chance they will open the keep gates before all this is discovered, there will be people crossing into the city—slip into the crowd. If you have to, leave your weapons—we won’t be tagged immediately as intruders, not if we leave quietly. Charo, help me; you and I will stay with Anghara. I can carry you,” he said, turning to the girl whom he still supported in an upright position with an arm around her waist, “but it might look a little bit less conspicuous if you walked. Are you able?”

Anghara began to nod; then her eyes slid past his shoulder and onto the stairwell littered with corpses, and lighted on the ungainly bundle of wheaten hair, sprawled limbs and great belly that was Senena. Her breath caught. Kieran turned, saw what she was looking at. His arm tightened a little, in support.

“I must go to her…” Anghara breathed, retrieving her hand from Charo’s grasp. Her frail form was imbued with surprising strength as she stepped away from Kieran, stumbling toward the stairs and the still form lying there. Kieran exchanged a glance with the others; at a nod, Adamo peeled away and began collecting the rest of the men together. Kieran and Charo followed Anghara.

The little queen’s gown was soaked with blood, and her hands were clenched into tight fists of agony; Anghara covered her legs with her own cloak, folding the child-queen’s small hands into her own. Tears were running freely down her cheeks. “She was kind to me,” Anghara said, very softly.

Kieran came down on one knee beside her, a hand on her shoulder; Charo bent to touch Senena’s brow.

“It’s the babe,” Charo murmured softly. “She would have had it hard anyway—she was so small and frail. She’s still alive, but barely; and death will be a mercy…”

But Senena, slowly and in infinite pain, opened her eyes and stared into Anghara’s face. “To walk…in the sunlight,” she whispered. “To see…the sky.”

“Senena…”

But Senena’s eyes were lucid, and oddly triumphant. “I am not his,” she said, finally seeming to understand the motives which had led her to befriend Anghara. “He will not raise a dynasty out of a son of my body…Come back to Miranei, Anghara…Reign for me in Roisinan…”

Her eyes remained open, but her spirit was suddenly gone—they were empty, windows of pale glass. And Anghara reached again, for something she remembered—something she had once done as if by right—the presence of a God, and the glory of his gifts. But there was nothing there, nothing but emptiness and white pain which bent her double once again over Senena’s body.

Come to me now, al’Khur! I am an’sen’thar…I wear your gold…

But through a veil of pain his voice came back to her:
Another whom you might have wished to save will come to me before we meet again…I see suffering…

And another voice, from years later, the voice of the oracle which had given her a cryptic rhyme at Gul Khaima:
Beneath an ancient crown the unborn die.
The Crown Under the Mountain. Senena’s unborn son. And Anghara’s own helplessness.

“I am blind,” she whispered, finding in the hour of Senena’s death the courage to name something she had known for a long time but avoided facing. “He has taken the Sight from me. I am blind.”

A
nghara wept as though her heart would break, as though all the world’s sorrows were contained in the still body which lay before her—broken promises, divided loyalties, shattered lives. When Kieran slipped an arm around her shoulders, the slight pressure of his hand an invitation to rise, Anghara lifted a tear-streaked face up to him and shook her head violently.

“We can’t just leave her!” she said, and her voice was hoarse from crying.

“Let them find us here, and we all join her in Glas Coil before this day’s noon,” said Kieran. “We will burn a wand of incense for her soul in a temple as soon as we may, for she was a friend to you, and a great lady…but for now, Anghara, come, it is past time we left this place. Or it will all have been for nothing. And Senena herself would have wanted you to win free. Come.”

He thought she might resist still as he helped her rise, for her shoulders were rigid beneath his hands, but she had bitten down on her sorrow and held it all ruthlessly in check as he bent to gently close Senena’s eyes. Charo had already arranged the little queen’s limbs in a more seemly fashion underneath the merciful concealment of the enveloping cloak, and now Kieran, murmuring a prayer of passage, reached to pull the cloak up to cover her face. Anghara had shut her own eyes, and tears welled unchecked from underneath her closed eyelids, spilling through the long eyelashes and down her cheeks. When Charo came round to take her arm, and the gentle pressure of Kieran’s hand guided her to take a first step down the staircase awash with the blood of dead men, Anghara went where they led her, submissive to their will.

They had done the impossible—and it had all seemed, in retrospect, to have taken a ridiculously short time. Luck was still with them as they left the scene of the carnage; there was a sense of violation in the courtyards of the keep as Kieran and Charo, supporting Anghara between them, slipped through—but the keep still knew nothing of the vile deed, or who had done it. However, there were more than the usual number of the guards at the open gate, and they seemed uneasy about something. Kieran had stopped just out of sight, behind a jutting corner still deep in morning shadow; he and Charo watched grimly as two of the guards stopped a handful of servants on their way to the city marketplaces and rummaged through their bags.

“They’ll never let us through,” said Charo.

But Kieran was remembering something—throwaway words, quickly forgotten in the gathering power of the night before, uttered back in the stables. Melsyr’s quick grin in the darkness…a flash of white teeth…
I’ll swop duties with someone; it might be more useful if I’m guarding a back gate…

“The postern,” said Kieran brusquely. “It’s our only chance. Come on.”

They wheeled and stumbled back the way they had come. Kieran hesitated at the next corner, and Charo leaned closer. “Do you know where we’re going?” he hissed.

“I know where Miranei’s postern is from the outside,” Kieran hissed back. “I could hardly ask directions for it in here. Adamo found out from one of his friends, and he said…give me a moment…”

“Go left,” said a faint, unexpected voice. “There’s a passage from this courtyard.”

Kieran glanced down at Anghara with a sense of surprise. He should have remembered this was her childhood home. He nodded. “Come on, Charo.”

He saw the archway leading into the passage she had mentioned, and then had to flatten the three of them against the wall as five soldiers emerged, moving fast. Their faces were set into expressions ranging from unease to what was almost panic in the case of the youngest. They passed without turning their heads; Kieran waited for a tense moment to see if any more were likely to emerge before drawing his blade with a soft hiss. “I’ll go first,” he said softly. “You follow, Charo, help Anghara. Be careful.”

Charo nodded, wasting no words, loosening his own weapon. Kieran moved forward with wary caution. The narrow arched gate widened into a broad walkway—initially a tunnel, torches guttering in sconces on either side, abruptly metamorphosing into a cloister surrounding a grassy square with a fountain set into the central sward.

“Keep to the left,” Anghara’s voice came from behind, pitched only just loud enough for Kieran to hear. “There’s another arch straight ahead.”

There was; Kieran slipped inside. A sudden noise made him lift his hand, stilling the other two into silence, but the sound of footsteps faded into the distance and Kieran crept forward cautiously once again.

“Turn right at the end of this corridor,” came the instruction, just as a blank wall seemed to cut off all forward passage. A narrow lane branched right and left at the T-junction, and Kieran, peering both ways, stepped into the right passage.

“At the end of this corridor,” whispered Anghara, “there’s a door; the latch is on this side, but there might be a guard on the other. We’ll come out at the foot of the West Tower; the postern is set into the base of the tower itself.”

“Wait a minute,” said Kieran softly. “The West Tower? This isn’t the postern I know. That lets into the city. This one…”

“This one leads into the foothills,” said Charo, a touch of quickening excitement in his voice. “Well done, cousin. If the unease spreads out into the city, at least we’ll be well out of it…”

“In the mountains, on foot, with no supplies at the tail end of winter,” said Kieran. “Still, the idea has merit. If we are seen to enter Miranei for the first time only after this whole mess, it might be easier to get out again quietly, as opposed to us trying to sneak out of the city once what happened this morning becomes known.”

There was no man at the latch-gate at the end of the corridor, but there were three at a small sturdy door set into the Western Tower. One of them, wearing the insignia of a commander of some rank, was leaning casually on the ill-tempered face of a gargoyle made of tarnished metal and wearing a black iron ring through its broad nostrils, set into the door.

“That’s the postern?”

“Yes,” Anghara said, and her voice was barely louder than breath. “The door is stone. From the outside, you can’t see it. It looks as though it is a part of the wall…”

There was a sudden silence, and even as Kieran turned his head he saw Anghara crumple soundlessly and Charo’s arms go around her as she fell. “Out,” Charo said, “like a candle. It’s all been too much.”

Kieran paused for another moment, turning back to the conversation at the gate, and then his lips tightened. “Set her down just inside the door,” he said, “and we can only pray that nobody comes this way until we’re done. Make it fast, Charo; if we make any more noise in Miranei today, we will never get out of here. I’ll take the captain.”

Charo nodded. “The other two are mine.”

The surprise was total, and that instant in which the soldiers could do nothing but gape open-mouthed at the two apparitions who issued forth from the maw of the keep was all Kieran and Charo needed. The captain had time to pull his jewelled dagger out of its sheath, but looked unsure as to what to do with it; all too obviously a lordling of some description. Few men in Sif’s army had leadership positions through court connections rather than merit, but there were some; the captain on postern duty this morning was one of them. Kieran felt no compunction in despatching him, thinking even as he straightened that he had probably done Sif a favor. When he turned, it was to see Charo bending over the second man he had just bested. Kieran could see the guardsman’s chest moving in short, shallow breaths.

Charo seemed curiously reluctant to finish him off.

“What is it?” Kieran said, taking a step closer.

“The other one’s dead, but this is Melsyr,” said Charo. “I only skewered him through the shoulder; it should bleed enough to convince them he put up a fight, but not so much that his life is in danger.” Charo grinned, the dangerous, wolfish grin of a man who had just killed—a man who scented victory. “This is a great heart,” he said. “If I ever meet him again, I swear I’ll bow before him.”

“Get Anghara,” said Kieran, wiping his blade on a corner of the dead guardsman’s cloak and sheathing it. Charo bounded away toward the gate, and returned bearing his foster sister’s limp form in his arms.

“She weighs no more than a Cascin goose,” he said, the indignity of the remark almost an antidote to the anxiety in his voice. “She’s still out; I don’t like the look of it.”

“She’ll be all right,” said Kieran, very gently. “It’s a pity you had to knock Melsyr out…he said he’d give much for a chance to see us take Anghara out of here.”

But when he looked down on Melsyr’s prone form, he saw an echo of Charo’s grin on Melsyr’s face, his eyes open and blazing. “Go,” he said. “I have seen. The Gods bless you.”

Kieran dropped onto one knee beside him, pressing his good shoulder in a gesture of gratitude which spoke louder than any words.

“There is a horse and some blankets in a copse just off the path,” Melsyr said, grimacing with pain. “I made them ready, on the chance you might pass this way. I could not do more.”

“You did enough,” Kieran told him. “More than enough. Will you be all right?”

“They won’t suspect me,” said Melsyr. “Go.”

Kieran rose to his feet. “We’ll meet again,” he said. “Stay well.”

He pulled at the ring threaded through the gargoyle’s nose, and with a groan of protesting hinges the postern, a part of Miranei’s battlements, swung slowly open. When the thick stone door was open enough for him to see a glimpse of trees and mountains, Kieran dropped the ring and glanced about. “We can’t close this from the outside,” he said. “As soon as they get here they’ll know exactly where we went. Come on, we need a head start; they’ll be after us before we know it.”

Charo slipped out first, Anghara still in his arms; Kieran followed. They found the copse easily, and the things Melsyr had left there. He’d chosen a good horse—perhaps it was his own.

“When they discover where we came out, they’ll look for us in the hills,” said Kieran thoughtfully, rubbing the horses soft nose in an overture of friendship. “We ought to be far from here by then.”

“The others don’t know where we are,” said Charo, “and we can’t go far on our own with one horse, two blankets, and a saddlebag of food.”

“You’ll have to go back to the inn,” said Kieran. “That’s where the rest will come, if they manage to get out of the keep. At the very least leave a message that we’ll try to cut across the moors and link with Rochen.”

“We might all stay in the city longer than we wish,” said Charo grimly. “And if they dig into our stories too deeply…none of us will see Rochen again.” And then his eyes cleared again, glowing with a fierce exhilaration. “But we did it!” he crowed, hitting his thigh with a closed fist. “We did it, Kieran! And now…now the real work begins.”

“Yes, and now Sif will scour the country for us with even greater zeal. I don’t know why he held back for so long, but when he finds out what his hesitation has wrought in Miranei, he won’t make the same mistake again. We’ve shown our hand; he knows the only thing we might want with Anghara is to raise her up in his place. And he won’t sit back and let that happen.”

Anghara moaned softly, turning her head. Both youths turned sharply at the sound, in time to see her eyes flicker open.

“Rochen will be at Lucher?” Charo said tersely, without taking his eyes off Anghara. She was very pale, and her skin was drawn tightly across cheekbones which seemed to be made of glass.

Kieran nodded mutely. Charo raised a hand to adjust his cloak’s fastening at his throat. “Get her there,” he said. “I don’t know what that devil did to her while she was in his clutches, but this is a score I’m taking on. Look at her.”

Kieran hadn’t taken his eyes off her since he had first seen her upon the battlements at dawn, unless it was to find a path in Miranei’s labyrinthine courtyards, or raise a sword to clear it before him. Charo’s words had already been written in his own heart.

“She looks too frail to be real,” said Charo.

“We’ll meet you in Lucher,” said Kieran. “Get going.”

Without another word Charo turned and melted into the dappled shadows of the wood.

Anghara still looked impossibly fragile, but her eyes had regained the steadiness he remembered from years before; it was this that gave Kieran the first intimation that the words he had been repeating ever since they had snatched her—
she’ll be all right
—might have some truth. He had not quite wholly believed them himself.

“We still have a moment or two,” he said. “Do you want to rest a while longer? I think Melsyr left a wineskin…”

She nodded; taking the gesture as an assent both to a few more minutes’ rest and a sip of wine, he rummaged for the wineskin and passed it over, dropping to one knee beside her. She lifted the skin to her lips, took a few swallows, her eyes closed; and then she laid it on her lap and met his gaze, her own eyes once again brimming with tears. “I missed you,” she said, very quietly.

“I promised Feor I would find you,” Kieran said. “I must have scoured all of Roisinan seven times over; we buried Feor last summer, and he went to his grave thinking you lost forever. Where were you, Anghara?”

“Kheldrin,” she said softly, dropping her gaze.

The bluntness of it took him by surprise.

“Kheldrin?”
he echoed, when he’d got his breath back. She could almost read his mind—the shock, the doubt, the sense of violation; he was from Shaymir, after all, and, as al’Tamar had admitted, occasional Kheldrini traders had long been finding their way into Shaymir from the northern fringes of the Kadun Khajir’i’id. The Shaymir folk had seen more of “Khelsies” than the average Roisinani. But even in Shaymir, Kheldrini, when their hosts weren’t bargaining for their silk or amber, were avoided, suspected and feared. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely surprising, the Shaymiri, if anyone, would have glimpsed some of the more arcane aspects of Kheldrini culture. Kieran hadn’t been back to his native land for any length of time since he had been sent to foster at Cascin, but he was a son of Shaymir for all that. And now Anghara, whom he had steadfastly sought over long years throughout what he thought of as the civilized lands, named as her sanctuary what had always been drilled into him as a dark and dangerous country.