Page 47

A hole, at the base of one of the walls without windows, nearly hidden by a cleverly placed barrel.

Ser Voyne knows these halls, and is fairly certain that there was no hole there before. She feels cool air. Smells the damp.

Both rats are staring up at her. Rats, and not rats; they are women, too. Her eyes glance off one with blonde hair, her gaze refusing to resolve her features, and lands on the other. Gaunt, dark-haired, twitchy.

Ser Voyne’s hands flex at her sides. She remembers anger. Her hands, around this woman’s throat.You are to look after me.The words float through her mind, make her shudder.

They’re talking to her. It takes effort to listen.

“—it’s nothing, just a cache,” the blonde one says, though Ser Voyne cannot see her at all now. “Just a hiding place. I was getting food—”

The words mean little to Voyne, as if she can’t hear them. There is sound, she knows there is sound, but the words simply don’t matter.

Ser Voyne stalks forward, remembering how it feels to impale oneself upon a blade and keep moving. She has given her vow, and seizes the woman she is supposed to look after by the throat.

She lost her, earlier today. She remembers that, too. Shelostthis woman.Phosyne, the name appears, emerges as if from fog. “You are out of your tower,” she says.

Footsteps behind her. The blonde one—the Lady? No, not the Lady, she has made this mistake before, she isnotto turn around—flees.

“Ser Voyne—” Phosyne stammers out, weak hands on her wrist, trying to break her hold. Ser Voyne will not let go of her. She hauls her closer, instead, pulls her charge against her chest. Wraps her other arm around Phosyne’s waist so she can’t escape again.

Keep her away from stone, memory whispers to her, and so Ser Voyne hauls her toward the stairs. There’s too much stone around them, beneath them. She needs to get this creature to the yard.

“Please, you’re hurting me,” Phosyne protests, her legs tangling with Voyne’s. When she trips, Ser Voyne keeps her upright. When she tripsagain, Ser Voyne growls and pauses, only long enough to pick her up and sling her over one shoulder.

It knocks the breath from Phosyne and keeps her silent until they are outside again.

The air is hot and sodden. Her chest feels like it is weeping. Phosyne, gone blessedly still, sweats against her. The yard smells not of shit and desperation but of spices and wine. The feast, at last, has been laid out. Bodies fill the space, and Ser Voyne picks her way between them.

The great hall cannot fit everybody, of course, and so long runners of fabric, beautiful tapestries and cut-up tents, have been laid out across the upper and lower yards, forming the shadow of tables. Every runner is heaped with food, green and red and golden, chard and apples and radishes, and every type of meat besides. Roast fowl, grilled eel, pickled eggs and salted pork. There are ewers of wine, glistening in the sunlight, and all around them is the smell ofbounty.

All around them are hungry, desperate faces. They stare at the food, but nobody reaches for it. They are pinned below the gaze of the Lady, who waits just outside the entrance to the great hall.

Waits for her.

Ser Voyne’s heart swells, beats double time, and she almost forgets Phosyne slung across her shoulder, until she moves to kneel at her Lady’s feet and has to shift the weight. She pulls Phosyne from her then, and lays her out like an offering before her Lady.

Phosyne stares up in—

Not love.

Ser Voyne shivers, unbidden, suddenly afraid. Why doesn’t Phosyne look upon the Lady with love? Or fear, at least? This is anger. Insult. Disgust.

Ser Voyne is reaching for her throat when the Lady intervenes.

“What a treat you have found for me, Ser Voyne,” She says, and smiles beatifically down at both of them. “So much more welcome than your last discovery.”

Blonde hair. Green eyes. Roughspun clothing.It’s almost a memory.

So is the image of a girl without a face. Is she here? Did she follow them? Or will Voyne need to go after her, round her up?

That’s an issue for later. For now, the Lady is kneeling, reaching out to brush one of the uneven, lank curls out of Phosyne’s face. Her expression has changed. It isn’t generosity, not anymore. Something has sharpened in Her, but it isn’t anger, either.

Her Lady looks... excited.

“And are you the little mouse who so unsettled my knight?” She asks, voice low and rich.

Phosyne is no longer shaking. She has gone very still instead, a sighted mouse indeed. A sighted mouse with a voice, however. “What are you?” she asks, voice as steady as her hands.