Page 2 of The Starving Saints

Ser Voyne, still sweat-soaked and itching for a proper fight in the wake of the riot, listens as the rest of the king’s fellows

debate the merits of killing their own.

It will free up food for other mouths, the pragmatists say. (They do not say that flesh is flesh, but Voyne sees hunger in

their eyes.) The fearful and the faithful say that law and order must be kept, no matter the cost; in the closed system the

castle became six months ago, there is no room for chaos. But the loyalists, they cry that there must be as many hands to

bear arms as possible when at last the relief comes, when the siege is broken, when they can take back the fields.

This is when Voyne moves forward in her seat, and the room quiets.

“I would agree, except that treasonous hands had best not hold swords,” she says. That earns nods and soft murmurs of assent;

after all, she is a war hero. She was at Carcabonne, has seen terrors. She should know.

Does know, she reminds herself, when her confidence falters under the weight of eyes on her, eyes that see her fine armor and

her seat at the king’s right hand. They’re listening to her, but perhaps they shouldn’t. Perhaps she’s lost the taste; she

hasn’t seen any terrors lately.

The king doesn’t let her get close.

She feels his eyes on her most of all, and so Voyne doesn’t add the more damning rebuttal to the loyalists’ argument that

is burning a hole in her breast: that there has been no sign of a relief force, and the chance of them ever leaving these

stone walls is so small she can no longer see it.

There will be no taking back the fields, with treasonous hands or not.

Today’s riot is just the beginning.

They were not meant to be pinned down in Aymar, though of course it was constructed for just such a possibility, a strong

spur castle on a ridge manned by Ser Leodegardis, his brothers, his household. A garrison of not inconsiderable strength,

managed and provisioned well. But even Aymar has its limitations, and feeding so many refugees and knights and servants for

six months was never going to be possible, and that is before they consider that the king is here in residence with them with

his own sizable retinue. The farms beyond the walls have all been torched and squatted on and turned to shit, and the kitchen

gardens, while extensive, have now been picked bare of even the autumn-bearing crops, far too soon. The stores have sustained

them this far, but only due to a miscalculation, because they’d all hoped they would be gone long before now.

Relief was supposed to arrive a month ago.

Instead, they are stalemated. They have fended off rounds of attacks from Etrebia, but they have destroyed few of their rams

and towers, only fought back hard enough to make them bide their time out of range. Etrebia’s men are entrenched and willing

to wait for resupply. Aymar’s inhabitants are prepared only to starve.

Voyne sees all of this, and is furious, and wants nothing more than to ride out herself and force her way through to victory.

Instead, she puts down riots and sits at her liege’s side, spoiling for a fight she must not start.

“We need to send another messenger,” Ser Leodegardis says from the king’s other side, fists clenching on the table as he resists

the urge to bury his head in his hands. He, too, feels the weight, but he bears it better. “Before our strength begins to

fail. The descent—”

“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 chance of 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 messengers have gotten 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 of the 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.”

“Are you a coward, then?”

Voyne flinches, recoils, finally looks up at him. “Excuse me?”

“You’d abandon your king.”

“I would risk my life to save him.”

“But you wouldn’t die by his side.”

Leodegardis holds her gaze in challenge. They are close in age, a difference of no more than three or four years. They have

known each other since they were teenagers, perfecting their work with the blade, strengthening their bodies and learning

tactics, learning languages. They were heroes together, for a time, planting their flags on conquered battlefields, making

legends of themselves. Now they stare each other down across a vast gulf that grew when they weren’t looking.

In another life, Voyne could have been him. Tasked with the protection of the border, entrusted with a castle, with a span

of fields and towns, with the lives and well-being of hundreds, thousands. They both won their king’s favor on the battlefield,

earned his trust. They should be equals.

Instead, she is a glorified lapdog. Within besieged walls, she is worthless.

She turns away, finally, bowing her head. “I was mistaken,” she said, throat thick. “But please—please promise me, that if

my actions today threaten your control here, that you will remember my offer.”

Leodegardis doesn’t promise, but he also doesn’t foreswear her. “Go rest,” he says instead, offering a tired smile. “It’s

almost time for evening service, I think. Perhaps the Lady will grant you some comfort.”

A good suggestion, and kindly meant. She clasps his shoulder, then leaves him to his nightmares. They all feel it, the weight of death bearing down on Aymar, but he is Aymar. They are all about to die, and she is about to fail, but he is about to crumble.

She winds her way through the keep and to the chapel tower. Jacynde’s nuns are indeed hard at work, ready to guide the few

parishioners who are here to observe the setting sun. Voyne, grateful, lets the familiar words and hymns wash over her. It

isn’t the balm it used to be, back when she was young and idealistic and fervent in her belief that the world could ever be

orderly, could ever make sense, but it still soothes her jagged edges. It is a relief, to be reminded that she isn’t alone,

is never alone. The Constant Lady always has a hand upon the world.

After, she makes her way up uneven staircases long-since memorized, twists and turns as familiar as the halls she played in

as a child. Few rushlights burn, but there is midsummer moonlight streaming through windows, more than enough to guide her

by. She steps aside to let a serving girl pass, then takes the final turning to reach what used to be Leodegardis’s room,

now given over to Cardimir, to Voyne, to their servants. A little household for the king, shut up in a keep and starving quietly,

only a little slower than all the rest.

She slips inside, and is surprised to see Cardimir waiting for her.

He sits by the hearth, where there’s no fire thanks to how warm and sticky the air is. “Come,” he says, voice pitched so as

not to wake the servants who have already bedded down in their partitioned section of the room. Voyne goes to him, kneels

before him in greeting. He touches her shoulder absently, the one that hurts, the one that is scarred from an arrow she took

for him years ago.

“I had forgotten,” he murmurs, “the power of your presence.”

“You saw the riot?” she asks.

“Through the strangest vantage point,” he says. “What do you know of Leodegardis’s madwoman?”

“The heretic?” she asks. “Very little. Only that she arrived a few months before we did.” It hadn’t felt important to learn

more, no matter Leodegardis’s odd affection for the woman.

But the entrance to her tower room is not so far away. Voyne has seen the woman a few times, drawn and furtive and skulking. Her eyes drift in that direction.

“I have charged her with finding a way to restock the quartermaster’s stores,” he says. “Now that our other options have run

out.”

Voyne averts her eyes so that she does not stare in horrified disbelief.

“My liege?” Her mistrust colors her words more than she wants it to, but it’s been a long day. A long day of nearly killing

desperate, hungry people. She understands, of course. It’s tempting, to hope for an impossible solution, but she had thought

her king was better than that. More reasonable.

But it’s also a distraction. They can’t afford distractions.

“I have asked her for a miracle,” Cardimir says.

Voyne bows her head, mastering herself with the reflex of long practice. “I see,” she says. “And what provisions does she

demand for such a thing?” If it’s not much, if it’s only a way to keep the woman occupied, perhaps it’s not so bad.

There is so little to do but wait for death now.

“Very little,” he says. Her shoulders ease. “But I want her to have more. I want her to have you.”

Voyne’s head jerks up. She stares, unable to stop herself. “Me.”

“I need you to watch her,” he adds. “Encourage her. She is... disorganized. I would see her supported. Given oversight.”

“So that she can conjure food from nothing?” she asks, brow pinching. She searches her king’s face for some scrap of sense.

She finds it. He is confident and calm.

That’s a hundred times worse than misguided faith.

“What is a second miracle after a first?” he asks with an indulgent smile that makes Voyne feel small, childlike. She hates

that smile, and if she were not so worn down, so stunned, she would bristle at it. Instead, she just shakes her head, helpless,

not understanding. He takes pity on her. “She is to be thanked for fixing our water issue last month,” Cardimir says.

Voyne’s world lurches into a new alignment. She frowns. “But the Priory—”

“Agreed to take responsibility, in case there was a problem. And in case it worked. Nobody would have trusted the cisterns if they knew a heretic was responsible for clearing them.” He waves a hand. “She is... a wild thing. One of Jacynde’s order, originally, but strayed. Jacynde hates her, but Leodegardis is adamant in his patronage, and she has paid her way admirably so far.”

That gives her pause.

Because the water issue of last month was also an impossible solution to an impossible problem. Aymar’s location was strong,

but its strength had nearly been their undoing. Built on a rocky outcropping, the castle’s only source of water was rain and

a single well in the lower yard. The rains had stopped months ago as summer rolled in. The cisterns had begun to dry out,

so they’d hauled water up and out, up and out, before the well could dry, too.

With that water, so desperately needed, had come pestilence. It had begun slowly, a few children beginning to vomit, low fevers

rolling through, and in their meetings, they had steeled themselves for the sorts of illness that spread among the closely

packed. They let the Priory step in, begin segregating the ill, treating them, fumigating the castle with cloying incense.

They had known, at least, that it couldn’t be the water. Water pulled from stone was clean. The cisterns were capped and guarded.

It couldn’t be the water.

But it was.

As the well’s level had dropped, the water had turned foul, and they had spread that foulness to every cistern. At first,

the water had tasted normal, had looked clear, but eventually the buckets they hauled up stank of shit. There was no other

water.

And then, a miracle. Jacynde’s nuns had created a powder that, when mixed with the water, caused the water to heave and shudder

and shine with wondrous colors, before finally turning clear and odorless again. Leodegardis had ordered his household to

test the cleared water themselves, and when they did not sicken further, when they grew hale once more, the cisterns were

cleared.

Voyne reflects that she has not actually tasted the cleared cistern water; there is another tank, one that captured rain before the sum mer began to dry, that lives just below the madwoman’s room. It delivers clean water via a pipe into the kitchen, and Cardimir drinks from it exclusively, as does she.

Just in case.

Knowing now that it was not the Priory that solved their woes, but this strange, gaunt wraith of a woman who has somehow bewitched

her king, Voyne is glad for their caution.

She scrubs at her face, sitting back on her heels. “What of the Priory’s new invention?” she asks, testing out the new landscape

beneath her. “Do we also have this madwoman to thank for taking our iron from us?”

Leaving us ill-armed to repel an attack? she does not add.

“That was Jacynde’s order,” the king assures, and the world slows its spin, settling into its new configuration with a groan.

It’s only a little off-kilter. “But I do not doubt she could have derived something similar. And until Etrebia strikes again,

we have far more need of food. You know this, Ser Voyne.”

“I do, my liege,” she says, then takes a deep breath. Tries to be grateful for the clean water, hopeful for miracles . It does not sit well in her practical breast, which burns instead for a blade, a battle plan.

This will have to suffice.

“What will you have me do?” she asks.

“Her name is Phosyne,” Cardimir tells her. “I want you to go to her tomorrow. Do not let her out of your sight, and do not

let her remain idle. Reassure me that she is working as hard as she can. We have only enough time for results.”

She wants to say no, wants instead to ask him to send her away as a messenger. It would be a better use of her skills. But if he is right, if this Phosyne has worked one

miracle already and only needs help to produce another—

She can trade one escort for another. A king is not so different from a madwoman.

“Yes, my liege,” she says.