Page 26

He nods. Bites his knuckles again. Treila offers him a tight smile that he doesn’t see, then keeps walking; she doesn’t know what to believe herself, after all. And regardless of his fears, he believes too much.

The chapel is empty, save for the bees. Her back tenses as she spots the first one, then ten, then a hundred. Treila has only stepped foot in here three times in the last six months, and every time she has been accompanied by every other servant in the keep, and many of the refugees. Without human bodies massed within, the room feels all wrong. Feels like something out of place.

She keeps her distance from the hives. Outside, the sun is beginning to set, and she figures that must mean the bees are coming home for the night. Taking shelter. It should be safe, to walk among them, but she can’t. Not when she can still remember how her flesh had swollen, how her skin had wept. Her stomach had been empty, her veins on fire.

Treila keeps to the walls instead. She presses a hand to one, and feels it warm beneath her fingertips. Solid. Real.

Then she hears footsteps, fast and angry, and she retreats, slips behind one of the pillars of the hall and presses herself flat to it, sinking into the growing shadows.

“—Your Radiance,” says a nun, voice thin as she struggles to keep up with the prioress ahead of her, “I am sure His Majesty meant no disrespect—”

“Do not make apologies for him!”

Oh, the prioress is angry. Treila tastes it on her tongue. She isfurious, and that makes Treila stand to attention.

“They are desperate,” the prioress says. “Of course they are desperate. We all are. I cannot blame them for that, but Ser Voyne, Ser Leodegardis”—she does not say the king, is too afraid to speak treason even here—“they refuse the barest inch of caution. What does it cost them, to simply treat them as unknown envoys, sequester them for a night,questionthem as to their intentions? And instead, they accept every request, in public, in broad view of—eugh!”

Metal clatters on the floor. One of the Priory’s fine instruments of worship, no doubt.

“Your Radiance, you must admit, the circumstances of their appearance... what are we here for, if not to believe?”

The prioress does not immediately respond. She also stops pacing, her footsteps falling silent.

“We have reached the limits of our resistance, Your Radiance,” the nun continues. “You said yourself, we have run out of time. And if this is the moment of our greatest need—”

“Silence a moment, Sister,” the prioress says, and draws an unsteady breath.

Treila dissects every word, every pause, every outburst, because she needs to know if this is territorial anger, or something more. If the prioress only objects to not being consulted, that is one thing. But if the prioress does not, for even a moment, suspect those painted strangers of being what they appear to be, then Treila’s fears are well-founded. The rest of the castle has gone mad.

And Treila needs to get out, as fast as she can.

It doesn’t matter that her brief attempt at destroying Ser Voyne has been interrupted. What matters is her own hide. If even the prioress, who surely believes in the Constant Lady with some honest piece of her heart, is as wary as Treila feels, then Treila cannot count on miraculous salvation.

“I have never in all my years,” the prioress says at last, voice grudging, pained, “seen any indication that the Lady or Her attendants give a single shit what happens to Her worshippers. And I can’t believe She would choose to start here, now, with us.”

The faceless nun is silent, stunned.

A bee hums beside her ear, and Treila jerks aside. There is nothing left for her here; she slips out of the chapel, in search of a way out.

13

Ser Voyne is nowhere to be found, and Phosyne is left to her own devices. She can find no joy in it. Her body still shakes. Her head still hurts. She should eat the honey Voyne has left her, but every time she tries, her body rebels. The floral aroma goes to her head and she nearly vomits.

So she doesn’t eat the honey. Instead, she watches out her window, and tries to think.

When thinking doesn’t work, she sneaks out.

It’s not hard. Her guards are missing, and the room directly below her is empty. It’s easy, from there, to pick one of the lesser-used staircases and creep down and out into the yard. It’s early evening now, the air dancing with the steady pulse of glowing flies, and there is hushed laughter in the air.Laughter. Phosyne tastes hope on her lips, but it transmutes to something far more sour, and she presses herself up against a stone wall and holds her breath.

Somethingis wrong. She doesn’t quite know what, but she saw the tableau down in the yard at noon. She thinks she saw Voyne fall to her knees.

That, and the lack of her guards—those recent, desperate additions—it adds up to either greater fear, or the removal of fear. Neither make sense.

The great hall glows with firelight, and she creeps closer to peer in through one of the many small windows. She is not alone, but there are only a few others peering in; not the crowd she would have expected. Good behavior, for what should have rightly been a mob.

Inside must be stifling, even though she can see no more than tenbodies within, crowded around a table. She sees the king, in his finery, and Ser Leodegardis, in his stoic remove. Prioress Jacynde is not there. Ser Voyne is, stone still with some form of shock, and Phosyne doesn’t like that look on her brow.

It looks broken.