Page 12 of The Starving Saints

Treila sees Voyne fall.

The whole crowd sees it. The yard is packed with every single person in the castle, all drawn out from their tents and their

holes and their miseries, all watching the procession that approaches the king. Every single one sees Voyne step forward.

And every single one sees her fall.

They also see the blonde-haired, painted woman touch the top of Ser Voyne’s head in benediction, then turn to the king, who

does not kneel, but holds out a hand.

The crowd breathes. Inhale, swell, exhale, wither. The fear they have clutched hand in hand with hope is released. Treila

can feel the charge of expectation that dances from shoulder to shoulder, lip to lip.

She steps forward, unable to help herself.

Ser Voyne is crying, wholly focused on the painted woman, unaware of everything else around her. It’s greater than the pain

she wore when she at last recognized Treila’s face. It is bigger than Treila, than their sordid history, than guilt over a

single death. And why shouldn’t it be? Ser Voyne looks at this woman and sees salvation for all of Aymar.

Treila’s struck with the laughable feeling that they’ve taken away something that is hers , and that’s her signal to get the fuck out of there and clear her head.

She retreats into the crowd.

The first ring of people she pushes through is silent, but beyond that, there are whispers, growing to stronger murmurs. She hears talk of food. Of rescue. There is giddiness. Not just hope, but giddiness, no wariness at all. She wants to punch somebody, shake them until they see sense again. Captivity has honed her mistrust of every other soul in the world to a fine point. What has it done to theirs?

She can’t stand it. Any of it. This sudden happy ending makes no sense.

Treila reaches the nearest tower and finds it unguarded. Whoever is meant to be here has joined the thrumming mass. She slips

inside, up and around the stairs, out onto the wall. Without soldiers blocking the way, it’s the quickest path back to the

upper bailey, and from there to her workshop. But her workshop has no answers. It only has a hole to a dead-end cave that

whispered to her in her starved brain.

The chapel is closer. She does not want to go there, doesn’t want to hear the hum of bees, risk a sting, but it’s the only

place she can think to go for answers. After all, those four people were painted to look like the icons. There must be some

connection.

It’s weak, but then she’s feeling unsteady all around.

Halfway to the chapel, she finds Edouart perched on the rampart, staring down at the yard. His fist is pressed against his

teeth. He is gnawing on his own flesh. Then he glances over, sees her, and his eyes turn desperate.

He doesn’t say anything, though.

She comes to stand by him anyway. When she sneaks a look herself, she can only make out Ser Voyne’s retreating back, trailing

after her liege and the strange party, ushering them into the great hall.

“Is it over, then?” Edouart asks. He doesn’t sound happy. He doesn’t sound hopeful.

Clever boy. Always cautious, this one. She could’ve stood to have been more like him, back when it would have mattered. “I

don’t see how it can be,” she says. “It’s just four people.”

“Simmonet said they were the saints, come to life. Come to rescue us.”

“Where are their swords?” she asks. “Food? No, if anything, they’re a ploy. A way to get somebody inside the gates.”

He looks like he’s about to cry. “I think they’re here to judge us. They’ll help us only if we deserve it. And if not...”

Anxious boy.

“Well,” she says, “if not, there’s not much to be done about it. But nobody down there seems worried.”

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 is furious , 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, question them 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.