Free Changer of Days by Alma Alexander

this gaunt, pale young woman was no longer the little girl he had left behind. It was Anghara Kir Hama he held this day, not the child he knew as Brynna. “Can you hear me?”
    She opened her eyes even as a finger of sunlight found its way around the towers and poured itself onto the battlements where so many lay dead or dying. The pain was still there, the pain he had seen touch her not a few moments ago, but receding. She stared at him for a long moment, and then the gray eyes filled with tears. “Kieran…”
    He had to swallow twice before he could speak. “Can you walk? It’s time we were away from here…before they send what’s left of the entire garrison.”
    “Help me up.” Her voice was faint, cracked, faded. Gods, thought Kieran, shocked despite himself as his arm went around her thin waist while he helped her to her feet. What has he done to you?
    But the physical punishment had been nothing, he could tell, compared to the specter of pain that haunted her eyes. Inside, there was something broken—something that would take a great deal more healing than simply reversing the effects of solitary confinement and starvation.
    Charo was beside them, his wild warrior’s eyes unexpectedly brimming with tears. Anghara saw him, held out a hand; he took it, clasped it with both of his, for once completely bereft of words. It was, uncharacteristically, left to the usually mute Adamo to break the cocoon of silence being woven around Anghara—but only because, as usual, he said everything important with his eyes, pools of remembered love and affection as he gazed at Anghara. The words he found to say were sensibly practical. “It’s time we were leaving,” he commented, and at that Kieran took charge again.
    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