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The cistern is not deep, but the water level is low, not enough to form a cushion. Phosyne lands hard. Thereiswater enough to cover Phosyne’s nose and mouth, but she’s too stunned to move, even as she feels herself choking. She has to sit up. She has to move out of the way. She has to—

Ser Voyne stares down at her.

Phosyne flinches, and is finally able to roll over, push herself up, cough out the water in her throat. She forces herself to look up. “Well?” she rasps. “Are you coming, Ser Voyne?” It’s a challenge she’s almost too afraid to make, but she needs to test this. Needs to get her down here.

She watches Ser Voyne pace around the rim like a dog in a cage. And then, just as Phosyne begins to worry, the knight leaps into the cistern.

Voyne is stronger, better fed, and she lands on her feet, unsteady but upright. She is trembling with barely constrained—what? Rage? Or more confusion? She prowls closer, and Phosyne flattens herself against the wall of the cistern.

It’s hewn from stone. She can disappear again, if she needs to.

She thinks she can, anyway. She just doesn’t know how far she can go. A wall is one thing; the bedrock of an entire castle another. There isn’t a walkway on the other side. Oh, but this was a bad idea, and Ser Voyne is close now, getting closer, stinking of spices and meat and sugar, and there is murder in her eyes.

Then it’s confusion again. Water beads along her brow. Sweat, surely, but the cistern is also humid, the water warm from the sun. If the air out in the yard was already thick to breathe, this is like drowning.

Slowly, Phosyne lowers herself to the ground. Into the water again. It’s only a little over a foot deep, but she hunkers down into it, cups her hands beneath the surface.

Ser Voyne kneels, too. Reaches for Phosyne’s throat.

Phosyne makes herself lean forward into it, and lifts her hands between them, to Ser Voyne’s lips.

“Drink,” Phosyne says, as Ser Voyne’s fingers brush her neck.

Ser Voyne hesitates. Licks her lips.

Bows her head and sips.

Her eyelids flutter. The lingering anger in her brow goes slack. Her hand leaves Phosyne’s neck and cups Phosyne’s hands instead, bringing them closer to her. The water is running out Phosyne’s fingers, but Voyne drinks and drinks, guides their hands down to scoop still more water, drinksagain, mouths at Phosyne’s palms even as the last of the water drains away.

Ser Voyne shivers. Shudders. Quakes. Bows over Phosyne’s hands and presses them to her fevered brow.

And then she sobs.

22

The great hall roars.

Treila sits next to Edouart’s mother and gives herself over to the rush of it. Laughter trips off her tongue, stories too, praises, gratitude. It’s every feast day wrapped up into one, and all around her, food is torn apart, swallowed whole, pressed against others’ lips.

Nobody has noticed yet that Treila is not eating.

They’re all too distracted, and it’s enough to serve food onto their plates, refill cups, stoke the fires of conviviality. Down deep, Treila is terrified, but on the surface, she is laughing. Her eyes gleam in the firelight as night descends.

She feels a sort of power, knowing she’s still got her head. Seeing everybody else lose theirs. She knows that the meat Simmonet chews is human flesh. She also knows that he can’t tell, even though the foot of whoever it belonged to was served up right alongside it. Treila has taken it upon herself to pick the scraps of meat from between the little bones, because it will get eaten either way, and it’s too distracting to see people touching it without processing what they’re holding.

And it feels good, to pass food to Simmonet, to Edouart, to see their hollow cheeks flush with delight as they chew and swallow. They have been so hungry, and now they weep with delight.

The flesh is oily between her fingertips. It smells divine, driving back and overwhelming the stench of unwashed, filthy bodies all around her. She only stays her own hunger by clinging to a scrap of irrational anger, that this flesh would delight where the bones she had been forced to gnaw bore only raw and frozen gristle, skin that had gone paper-thin, muscle barely more than a memory.

She keeps working at it even as her stomach cramps and lurches, because it is easier to resist a bite of flesh than the perfect apples, oozing berries, roasted courgettes.

Take it, take it all, you know better than to deprive yourself.She has earned her selfishness. It is all that protects her. But she’d be a fool to think she’s any less at risk of bewitchment than Simmonet. She cannot make the gamble.

Across the hall, the Lady still sits at the head of her table, and the king at his. Treila sees no trace of Ser Voyne and hopes that means the madwoman is safe. The seats beside the Lady remain empty. Her saints instead flit around the other tables. They move seats, serve food much as Treila is doing. The Absolving Saint in particular disappears into the kitchens only to return with fresh platters. The cooks are all at Treila’s table. There’s nobody working the fires.

She thinks of saying something, pointing out the incongruity, but decides against it. She waits for somebody at her table to notice she has gone silent, but they hardly notice her at all. It’s like she’s invisible when she isn’t in motion.

What she wouldn’t give for this talent on a normal day.