Page 18 of The Starving Saints

Treila sleeps only fitfully. The heat of the summer makes her sweat and thrash in her sleep. Her workroom would be cooler,

but she’s woken from enough nightmares of teeth against her flesh as it is; she doesn’t need to be any closer.

She almost sleeps through the king’s proclamation, but Simmonet drags her from her pallet at the first blast of the trumpets.

She stares blankly while she’s summoned to an impossible feast, pats Simmonet’s back as he begins to weep with relief.

All wrong. This is all wrong. She needs to get out, and to get out, she needs to find the madwoman. Now .

But by the time she gets up to the tower, it’s empty. Phosyne isn’t even lying dead up in the loft. There’s nobody in the

room at all. She considers ransacking it, taking everything that might even slightly be of use, but aside from the candle

still submerged in the bucket of murky water, Treila sees absolutely nothing useful. Rotted meat, ratty blankets, a dried

reptile hanging from the ceiling, a bucket of piss. Nothing else. Treila stands another long few moments in the open doorway,

and once, she thinks she feels something brush against her leg.

Nothing is there.

So she goes hunting.

She prowls throughout Aymar like she’s looking for rats, checking every crevice. She can’t get into the great hall, where the king is once more cloistered with his guests, or even see through the windows, the crowd is so thick around it. And everywhere else, she doesn’t see Phosyne, or Ser Voyne. They’re not in the keep, not in the yard, and Treila is ready to scream when she thinks, at last, to check the chapel.

She’s not halfway there when she sees Phosyne.

The madwoman is running, weaving, staggering as her weakened muscles threaten to revoke support. She’s making straight for

the keep, and Treila hesitates. Racing to intercept her might draw attention, when Phosyne is, at least, alive, and likely

headed back to her room. But then Phosyne pitches forward, and Treila can’t stand to let her hit the ground that hard. She

springs across the dusty space between them.

Treila catches Phosyne before she can fall, but can’t hold her upright. She sinks slowly to her knees, laying the madwoman

across her lap, cradled in her arms. Phosyne flinches away, babbles something incomprehensible.

Treila slaps her.

It doesn’t help. She’ll need to take a different tack.

“I need your help again,” she says, even as she fumbles in her pocket for another nibble of fruit. “Listen. Are you listening?”

But Phosyne is just shaking, not saying anything, gaze darting behind Treila again and again. Back toward the chapel.

With a sinking feeling, Treila turns to look, too.

Ser Voyne is staring at them.

She’s not in armor. She’s not even armed. But her hands are covered in blood, and for just a moment, Treila is a girl again,

staring at her father’s headless corpse, staring at Ser Voyne’s impassive face, splattered crimson.

She lets go of Phosyne. She barely hears her flee.

Ser Voyne crosses the dusty yard to her in long, rolling steps, proof of the muscles that lie below her arming jacket, her

breeches. Her eyes are fixed on Treila, and Treila thinks, distantly, that she should be running too.

She doesn’t move, not even when Ser Voyne stops right in front of her.

“Why are you on your knees, my lady?” Ser Voyne asks. Her voice is low and rough, as if she’s been screaming. But her expression is kind, entreating, wholly focused on her.

Treila can’t breathe.

“Come,” Ser Voyne says, and places one gentle hand beneath her elbow, guides her to her feet.

This is an opportunity , Treila thinks, but the thought is distant. She should be triumphant. Here is Ser Voyne, soft and caring. But where is the

guilt? The confusion, even? Just confusion would be enough, would make sense , where this kindness does not. This is not how their second meeting was supposed to go. Ser Voyne was supposed to find her

again, and approach cautiously, ask her name, ask if it is really, truly her. And Treila would have playacted fear, flinching

away from any touch, begging for mercy.

Mercy, Ser—mercy, for the price my father has already paid for his treason.

But everything is different now, and Treila can’t get the words out, can’t even pull away as Ser Voyne steers her toward the

garden where they sat together not three days ago. All because Ser Voyne looks at her with adoration, not disbelief.

Her heart is breaking, her whole world close to shattering into a thousand pieces she will never be able to put back together.

This doesn’t change anything, it can’t change anything; her father is still dead, her family still destroyed, and she still has no future beyond catching rats in

dying castles. But if Ser Voyne has already suffered for it—if Ser Voyne tells her that she has thought of Treila every day,

even though Treila was just a girl, just collateral damage, then Treila doesn’t know who she is anymore.

Because Treila was betrayed by Ser Voyne, and hates Ser Voyne. And right now, she doesn’t feel hate. She feels—raw. Out of

control. Desperate and needy and longing.

She lets herself be seated on the same bench. Stares as Ser Voyne kneels at her feet.

All around them, impossibly green shoots push up from the earth. Young plants, plants that should have sprouted months ago,

were eaten weeks ago. But here they are, incontrovertible. Food, fresh food , and Treila should not be so delighted, because she needs to get out, not stay. Everybody must get out, not stay. Food here is worthless if they can’t break through the siege.

And yet all of her reason feels as distant as her rage. She’s too giddy. She stares back at Ser Voyne, and can’t stop herself

from asking, desperately, “Where has your doubt gone?”

“Far away,” Ser Voyne says with a small, sheepish smile. “I understand now how foolish it was, to be so surprised by your

presence. To mistrust it so. Of course you’re here, because... because I have need of you.”

Treila can’t stop the shocked sound that ekes out of her throat.

Focus. She never thought she would have Ser Voyne so close, with all her armor shed. Treila has a knife at her belt, a knife that

would fit so perfectly in the notch between her clavicle and her ribs, right into her lungs, and it would be so sweet to hear her gasping, breath bubbling as she thrashed on the ground.

Wouldn’t it?

And wouldn’t it be even better with Ser Voyne hanging on her every word, kneeling at her feet like this? Yearning for her

touch?

Because she is yearning. Treila can see that. Shaking, she reaches out, fits her palm to Ser Voyne’s cheek. The older woman leans into it.

Her eyes close in decadent pain.

“My lady,” Ser Voyne breathes.

Treila’s lower lip trembles. Her free hand hovers above the hilt of her knife, then falls.

She can’t do it. This devotion is too much. It makes her feel powerful in a way that feigning fear never would have.

And even if it doesn’t hurt Ser Voyne quite so much, Treila can still seize her original goal. Ser Voyne does not feel guilty,

no, but she adores , and that might be stronger than shame. Treila can break her faith with it. Dismantle every belief that led to Ser Voyne

so cleanly severing her father’s head from his body.

“Have you ever questioned your orders? Ever hesitated to fulfill them?” she asks.

“Not yours,” Ser Voyne replies.

Treila frowns, tries to think—what orders? Girlish orders, for refreshment, for lessons, for sparring in the yard. Those orders? They meant the world to her, but she’d been fourteen, spoiled, desirous for the first time in her short life. That Ser Voyne marked them is... she can’t think of the word. She can only shudder.

“And King Cardimir’s?” she presses.

And she is treated to the most beautiful sight she’s ever seen: Ser Voyne’s lip curling in contempt, in barely restrained

hatred .

“You know the answer to that, my lady,” Ser Voyne says.

“No, I don’t think I do,” Treila says, and leans closer. Her breathing has quickened so much that she is almost hyperventilating.

“Do you truly hate him so? I would never have guessed.” She is breathless.

“He has misused me. I know that now, thanks to you,” Ser Voyne returns, and her tone now is urgent. As if she needs Treila to understand. “I have followed every order he has given me, even when it conflicts with what is best in me, with

where my strength arises from. I thought that he knew best, but he has led me astray.”

“Yes,” Treila whispers, raises her second hand to cup Ser Voyne’s other cheek. Her skin is so hot beneath Treila’s touch,

a sheen of fine sweat appearing on her brow. Treila wants to kiss it. Wants to drink it in. “This is all I’ve ever wanted

you to know. I’ve wanted you to realize it for so long. For years, Ser Voyne.”

“I didn’t realize how long I’d been waiting for you,” Ser Voyne confesses.

Treila is shaking. Tears burn at her eyes, tears she can’t afford to shed. But what if she could? What if she could, for the

first time in five years, lay down the burden of her rage, and rest a while, knowing she would be fed, and clothed, and loved?

Understood, at least.

But then Ser Voyne’s brow crumples in that sweet confusion Treila has been waiting for, the same confusion she wore the last

time they sat in this garden. The confusion of realization, of shock. Treila draws back reflexively, then realizes that Ser

Voyne’s attention is now fixed on something behind her. She turns and sees the Constant Lady, standing at the entrance to

the garden. She holds a humming skep in Her hands, and She is looking straight at Treila with fury in Her multicolored eyes.

Treila is on her feet in an instant, ready to fight, but determined instead to kneel.

She’s had too many long years where bowing her head has been the only way to save her neck. She’s well-practiced.

“My Lady,” Ser Voyne says, in the exact intonation she had used when asking Treila why she was on the ground, and Treila winces.

The world comes back into its proper orbit, everything once more in focus. Of course. Of course Ser Voyne did not see Treila

and think of little Lady de Batrolin—she thought of the Constant Lady.

Though the Lady is arrayed in layered finery, and Treila cowers in the dirt in a drab smock, missing a stocking. Aside from

their blonde hair, Treila can’t see the similarities.

Now that they’re both in view, it’s clear Ser Voyne can’t, either. The confusion falls from her eyes, and she goes to the

Lady, kneels at Her feet. The Lady’s gaze bores into the crown of Treila’s bowed head a moment longer, and then She turns, fabric whispering

over Her feet. She lets go of the buzzing skep with one hand, places it atop Ser Voyne’s head. She murmurs something Treila

cannot hear.

Cannot hear the words of, at any rate. Treila strains to pick up the tone, hackles up, ready to flee if she must.

But whatever fury Treila thought she saw is gone, or never existed at all. She hears warm tones, soft murmurs.

She glances up in time to see the Constant Lady kissing Ser Voyne’s lips.

Treila makes herself look away. She fights to control herself, shame and embarrassment burning hot in her blood. It takes

long, desperate minutes for her to feel steadier in her skin again, and by then, Ser Voyne is long gone, at the heels of her

new mistress.

Bewitched. Seeing nonsense. Speaking nonsense.

She should be grateful to have this cobwebbed veil snatched back from her eyes so swiftly. She doesn’t have time for this.

She needs to go find Phosyne again, and perhaps now the heretic will have calmed down enough for Treila to demand more of

her.

Determined, Treila turns to go, and is surprised to see one of the saints. The Loving Saint, bent low in the dirt. He is planting seeds, working his hands into the soil out of season, but it looks beautiful as he does it. His skin is flawless, his eyelashes long, his hair shining. She hasn’t cared about the Loving Saint since she was a little girl with the crush all little girls seemed to have on him, well before she ever met Ser Voyne, but now she feels her heart give a little tug. Something beautiful, in all of this mess. It’s soothing just to watch.

He doesn’t look up, even when she drifts a little closer. Behind him, in the furrows he has already filled, she sees shoots

breaking through the soil. They grow so quickly she thinks she can hear them.

Her stomach aches. It’s easier to understand than the quieter pain in her chest. She’s going to eat tonight, regardless of

everything else. She’s too tired to resist now; for all her caution, she is not a fool, and she is still human, at the root.

The Loving Saint hums, quietly. Plants another seed, and another. They are all different sorts, enough to feed an army. She

recognizes only a few. One in particular is translucent, almost flat, but curved. Its bottom edge is marked by a thin white

line, its top by a pink stain. It goes into the ground, and not a minute later, it too is sprouting, its cotyledon pale and

thin, growing fast into a spiral.

When she looks away, she finds the Loving Saint gazing up at her. He says nothing, but he quirks a brow, smiles.

She flushes and turns to leave.

He doesn’t stop her, and she’s back in the keep tower when she slows long enough to think again about that seed. It didn’t

look like a seed at all, the more she thinks of it.

It looked like he was planting a fingernail.

But that can’t be right.

It grew like all the rest of them.