Changer of Days by Alma Alexander Page B

know who you are,” he had said simply, coming to stand beside the bench in the inn’s common room where Kieran had been sitting with Charo. Kieran heard the double hiss beside him—Charo’s quick indrawn breath and the loosening of the blade in his scabbard—and raised a swift hand to forestall murder.
    “Sit,” Kieran had invited. His eyes were hooded; his voice guarded.
    The young man slid into the seat opposite Kieran’s, avoiding Charos eyes. “You need have no fear,” he said, his voice low. “I have known for some time. I will not betray you. I…know why you are here.”
    Outside it was snowing; perhaps it had just been a quick gust of cold air that swirled inside as someone opened the inn door that made Kieran shiver where he sat—but there was something deeper. A touch of prescience, perhaps. “Who are you?” Kieran asked.
    “Melsyr, son of Kalas, who was King Dynan’s general.”
    “I thought he died, in the same battle that claimed the king,” muttered Charo, dimly recalling a few remembered phrases heard from Feor in happier times.
    “Almost,” said Melsyr. “He survived long enough to curse Fodrun, whom he had himself picked and brought to the king to be made Second General. He never believed Anghara was really dead. To him, Sif was a usurper who seized the throne when he saw the chance, and Fodrun nothing more than a traitor.”
    “Yet you serve in the usurper’s guard,” Kieran said blandly.
    “I was in the guard when Dynan was king,” said Melsyr hotly. “To leave when Sif came…it would have signed my father’s death sentence.”
    “But he died,” said Charo.
    “Yes. Bitter, angry…yet unmolested. And on his death…yes, I stayed. I have a young wife, a small son. And I know naught but soldiering.”
    “And now?” Kieran said. “What changed, that you should come to me?”
    “My father’s queen, and my own, is in Sif’s dungeons,” Melsyr said tersely.
    “I am listening,” said Kieran, and his voice had changed, very subtly. Melsyr had dropped his gaze to the scrubbed deal table between them, but he lifted his head at this, and met eyes that were no longer chips of blue steel.
    They were still too few, but Melsyr was a source of information that had eluded them until now. Kieran learned details of Anghara’s captivity; Charo, who had rapidly changed tack and taken Melsyr as a messenger of the Gods, had more than a few illusions shattered as he proposed one or two wild plans, now that they had a man on the inside.
    “Suicide,” Melsyr had said flatly. “There might be one or two guards who could be turned—especially now that Sif himself is not here. When he is…I do not know what it is in him, but men follow him unto death. If he were here…I do not know if even I would have found it in myself to go against him…even now…knowing that time is against us, and that you are her only chance.”
    “But we could overpower the guards at the gate, and then we could…” Charo persisted stubbornly.
    “I do not doubt your courage,” said Melsyr. “But the guards at the gate are the least of your problems. They are changed every hour; you would need a guide down into the fourth level of the maze of catacombs that are the dungeons of Miranei. All he would have to do is delay you…just a little. The next detachment of guards would come, and find the bodies you will have left at the gates. Then even if you freed the young queen you would find the gates barred and held against you on your return. They would have you precisely where they wanted you—in the dungeons. And you would all die, one way or another.”
    Charo had been convinced, eventually, but such was the pitch to which he had worked himself, he had to get up and stamp out into the snow to cool his frustrations. Adamo had come to take his place, and the cooler heads arranged with Melsyr that he would be their eyes and ears in the keep, and send a message as soon as anything changed…if it did.
     
    And now