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“Is too treacherous,” his cousin, Ser Galleren, snaps. “Why do you think the relief has not come? Every single person we have sent down the cliffside has either died or been captured.”

“One more messenger is one less mouth to feed,” Denisot, the chamberlain, points out. “We lose nothing by trying. A faint chanceof hope is better than none at all. And hope may stave off another riot.”

King Cardimir closes his eyes, pinches at the bridge of his nose. “We must provision any messenger we send. We can’t even give them a knife.”

Prioress Jacynde does not flinch, not even when all heads turn to look at her. Her engineers are even now hard at work, trying to manufacture their salvation in exchange for nearly all the iron in Aymar. Every hinge, every pot, and even a fair number of weapons and plows, the dregs that would have been given to the refugees to arm them in an assault. All handed over, melted down, into a new tool that they hope will buy them more time.

Time to starve.

“We must consider,” Jacynde says, “that our messengershavegotten through.”

Silence.

Voyne clenches her jaw. Tight.

Cardimir does not move.

“Prioress,” Leodegardis warns.

“If we refuse to consider all options, we will miss opportunities,” Prioress Jacynde says. “If our messengers have gotten through, and if relief has not come, then we must assume we are too great a risk to rescue.”

The silence cracks, explodes, and there is shouting. Cardimir and Leodegardis share a look, and Voyne considers getting to her feet, joining the fray, with words if not with fists. That need to act boils in her blood. It would feel so good.

It would do no good at all.

The prioress is right, after all. Even if no messenger has gotten through, word must have reached the capital city of Glocain and the princes by now. There should be a relief force.

There is not.

There may never be.

Their army has always been proud, and skilled, and well-funded. They have laid siege, and this is a perversion of the way of things.They know every way that a siege may be won or lost, and yet they have not been able to break their attackers’ lines.

Voyne has marched across every mile of the king’s land. She has led armies to great victories and called for desperate retreats. She knows that, realistically, there may be no winning move here.

And she knows, too, that whatever happens here is not her responsibility. She does not wear the mantle of a strategist anymore, or even a leader. She is a knight of the king’s guard. It was not her job to prevent this.

But that doesn’t reduce the weight Voyne feels on her shoulders and chest every waking moment, as hunger gnaws at her belly—though not as harshly as it does for others. She is well fed. She sits at the king’s right hand, or near enough, and that comes with perks.

The king reaches for his honeyed wine. He drinks deep. And then he passes the cup to Leodegardis, who sips, and to Voyne, who stares.

“Drink,” he says. “One last comfort, before the horror.”

And she takes the cup and drinks.

After, when the room is quiet and all but empty, she and Ser Leodegardis sit alone in the chamber, heads bowed together over a map. The physical aches and pains of the day have at last made themselves known. She has shed her armor and sent her page away again, and rubs at her aching shoulder through her gambeson.

There is so much to be done, and so little. The chaos and physicality of the riot provided the smallest break in the unending stretch of days endured, and now she is having trouble fitting back into her shell.

“Send me out,” she says, the first time either of them has spoken since the sun set.

“You know I can’t do that,” he says. “Least of all because I have no actual authority over you. His Majesty—”

“His Majesty has kept me useless on a leash for two years,” she interrupts, not looking up from the map, the routes more or less accessible to a clever climber marked out along the topography ofthe cliff they sit on. She tries not to sound bitter, only practical. She knew (knows) how to be practical. “I am ornamental, not useful.”

“You were useful today. You stopped the riot quickly, without death.”

“But with much frustrated rage,” she points out. “If I remain, that rage may turn to hatred. If you send me away, you may buy peace for another week.”