Page 20 of The Starving Saints

Ser Voyne knows these halls.

They are as familiar to her as breathing. She has spent time here, but when she tries to remember how she has spent her days,

she comes up empty. It doesn’t bother her in the slightest, but it is curious, and she has had a most curious day all around.

In the great hall, the grand feast is being laid out. Something more wondrous even than the meal the saints provided the night

before. She can smell the roasting meat even from where she stands inside the main keep tower. Her job, bestowed on her by

her beautiful Lady, is to walk the ramparts and these towers to find anybody who lingers, anybody who has not heard of the

most generous invitation to eat and be merry. She’s already found a few small clusters, mostly people too weak to move. She

has fed them honey and smiled upon them until they roused and staggered off toward salvation. The others she has persuaded

through alternative means.

Her hands are covered in a sticky mix of red and gold.

This is the last retreat left to check. The ground floor, which smells of leather and sweat and metal, is empty. In fact,

most of the keep is empty. The king, that wretched, glorious man, has been loyal and true. He has taken his household, and

Ser Leodegardis’s too, to the great hall. They have been there all morning, providing the hands her Lady has needed to give

them all such bounty.

Most of the keep is empty. She does, however, hear scrabbling from below. The lower rooms, storehouses, workspaces.

Rats, searching for their next meal. Thieving little rats, who do not have the decency to heed her Lady’s invitation.

There should be metal on her shoulders, she thinks, an errant thought that distracts her just as she reaches the steps. There should be metal, like the Warding Saint wears. Where has it gone? She doesn’t rightly remember, and that, too, is curious. But then the rats shift and squeak again. Closer this time.

She descends a few steps, rounds a corner. This room is lit by thin shafts of daylight, throwing heaps and piles into shadowy

relief. A perfect place for hiding.

She spots her rats, two forms huddled above...

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. She lost this 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 is not to 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 trips again , 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 of bounty .

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.

“Our Constant Lady,” Ser Voyne interjects. “Avert your eyes, you are not worthy to—”

“Hush, Ser Voyne,” her Lady says, and she cannot speak. “What do you think I am, little mouse?”

“Something summoned,” Phosyne says.

Yes, they have called to the Constant Lady for—for a long time, though again Ser Voyne can’t remember the details. Or why

they called. But they called, and She has come, a blessing and a salve, and—

“Oh, I was not summoned, little mouse,” her Lady says. She cups Phosyne’s jaw, head tilting like a curious bird’s as She takes

her measure. “I go nowhere I do not please. But I do wander everywhere.” Her yellow lips curl. “Come, eat with me. I wonder

what you think of my gifts.”

“No,” Phosyne says.

Ser Voyne reaches for her with a voiceless snarl, but her Lady waves her off again. “Sit with me, at least. Perhaps you can tell me of the water.”

Phosyne’s pallid skin goes paler still.

“I have tasted it, and it is sweet,” says the Constant Lady, and at last She rises. She touches Ser Voyne’s throat with one

slim finger, and Voyne feels her voice return. Feels herself move once more. “Take a seat at my table, dear knight. Bring

with you your little pet.”

Phosyne rolls onto her belly and tries to stand, but Ser Voyne is faster, now that she is freed. She pulls Phosyne, lifts

her with one arm below her knees, the other below her shoulders.

“Let me go,” Phosyne begs, even as Voyne passes her Lady and plunges into the heat of the great hall.

At the head of one of the great tables is King Cardimir, Ser Leodegardis at his right hand. The picture of proper order. But

Ser Voyne feels nothing, walks past him, for her destination is greater still.

Her Lady’s table sits parallel to the king’s, and in mirror image to him, the Lady’s chair sits, empty and draped in silks

to receive Her at the head. To that chair’s right is the Absolving Saint, standing behind his own. He inclines his head as

Ser Voyne approaches, and looks down with a silvered smile at Phosyne. Phosyne stills, frowning, staring back with intense

curiosity.

Ser Voyne jolts her, breaking her concentration.

“Sit, Ser Voyne,” the Absolving Saint says, and pulls the chair out.

For a moment, she is confused, but then a rush of gratitude fills her. She sits. He tucks her chair in. He looks at Phosyne

while he does it, as he traps the skinny woman between Voyne and the table so that escape becomes nearly impossible.

“Our Lady would have you both as her guests tonight,” the Absolving Saint says. He reaches out as if to touch Phosyne’s brow,

then hesitates, glances to the door. He pulls his hand smoothly back. He leaves them.

The Loving Saint and the Warding Saint, too, are out of their seats, their chairs remaining empty as they drift between the

tables, touch brows, shoulders, backs. They bow to whisper in ears. They fill plates, though nobody yet dares to eat.

“Don’t you see this is all wrong?” Phosyne whispers, glancing up at her, shivering. “This isn’t how people act.”

Before Ser Voyne can question her, or even parse what Phosyne has said, what little noise there was dies away completely.

It leaves only her Lady, speaking out in the yard to all that are gathered there.

“All this bounty, I give to you, who have suffered so terribly,” the Lady says, and though She does not shout and has no criers,

Ser Voyne can hear it clear as a bell from where she sits, even with a wall and a hundred bodies between them. “I would mend

you where you have broken, nurture you where you have been left to wither. You are my garden, and I shall tend you until you

reach your fullest bloom. Eat, and be well.”

And seemingly as one beast, they all descend upon the food.

The great hall echoes not with talks or prayers or cheers, but with chewing, swallowing, gasping, sucking. Ser Voyne and Phosyne

alone keep their hands still.

“Ser Voyne?”

She looks down at Phosyne, who is trembling again. Panic lights her eyes. “Let me go,” Phosyne begs. “Let me go, and I swear

to you, I will go back to my tower, I will do my work, I will not impose on anybody. I won’t go back to the hole. But don’t

keep me here.”

“No,” Ser Voyne says. “We must remain. We must eat. The Lady said—”

“What have they done to you?” Phosyne asks, and she is shaking. “You aren’t in there anymore. They’ve taken you.”

Ser Voyne blinks, frowns.

And then the Lady enters the great hall.

She is glory made flesh. Ser Voyne watches, breathless, as her Lady approaches, observing the desperate, thankful gorgings

on either side of her. Below Her yellow paint, Her cheeks are full of high color, and then Her eyes are fixed on the two of

them, and She smiles. Ser Voyne ducks her head, unable to withstand the glory of Her regard.

The Lady takes Her seat at Ser Voyne’s left.

Ser Voyne stares at her hands, searching for the right words to say to express how honored she is to sit at the Lady’s right hand, but before she can fumble out anything at all, the Lady speaks.

To Phosyne.

“Well, little mouse,” She says, filling a fine porcelain cup with water from a polished ewer. “I have tasted this water, and

it is sweet, but it wasn’t always so. And now it tastes of you.” She lifts the cup to Her curling lips, takes a long sip.

Her eyes do not leave Phosyne’s.

“I can’t imagine I taste sweet,” Phosyne says, wariness in her voice.

“Oh, but you do.” She reaches over to them and takes Voyne’s wrist, guides her hand to release her captive and take the cup

instead. Obediently, Voyne drinks, thinking of sweetness and Phosyne’s body against hers in the chapel.

The water is not honey, but it is undeniably good. It is cool, and soothing, and Ser Voyne feels something in her unwind.

But with it comes confusion, and she stares down at Phosyne as the Lady plucks the empty cup from her hand and sets it aside.

There’s something wrong, here. She’s not supposed to be at the Lady’s right hand. She should be with her king, and Phosyne

should be up in her tower. This is not the proper order of things. This is her liege’s castle, they should be seated at his

table, and yet he has been relegated. Set aside. She can see now that his table is smaller, that it is shadowed, and that

nobody at it can see the slight.

She remembers the weight of a knife in her hand. Prioress Jacynde, kneeling. At her feet? No, at the Lady’s, but also—

Also—

“Here, my dear knight,” the Lady says, and offers up a morsel of meat. It is rich and unctuous on Ser Voyne’s tongue, and

it washes away the memory of blood. She forgets all about Cardimir.

Phosyne looks between them. Her brow pinches further. Voyne can almost see wheels turning behind her eyes. She feels a faint

thrill go through her at the sight.

“And does this food taste of you?” Phosyne asks.

The Lady’s smile grows. “I do provide,” She concedes. “All of this and more.”

“You brought no carts with you. No supplies.”

“Didn’t I?” the Lady replies as She serves Herself a helping of fruit and several more thin slices of meat from the vast array of riches before Her. Voyne would do it for Her, but her hands are busy keeping Phosyne in place. The Lady uses Her fingers to pull each bit of food into bite-size pieces, and then She lifts a bit of meat and offers it to Phosyne, as if Phosyne were a tame little thing.

Phosyne draws back. Ser Voyne squeezes her knee hard in censure.

“Am I not your Constant Lady?”

“Not the Lady. And even if you were, you would not be mine,” Phosyne says, and for her disrespect earns Ser Voyne’s other

hand tangled in her hair. She leans back, bruised throat exposed, but she does not writhe or pant. “I have not taken honey

in nearly a year.”

The Lady looks over the length of her, presented across Ser Voyne’s lap. “No,” She says, “you have not. But not, I think,

for lack of love.”

“Love implies a presence in my thoughts. These days, there’s more an absence.”

“A bold confession.”

“An honest one.”

“I will concede you lack a longing,” the Lady admits. “You will need to eat something soon, little mouse. Already I smell

rot upon your breath. You will not last much longer. Do you choose to die, rather than accept help?”

Phosyne looks like she’s about to argue, but instead says nothing at all.

“You are not a fool, little mouse,” the Lady says. There is a hint of warning there.

Phosyne should know better. But then, deference has never been her strength, even when it would benefit her most.

The Absolving Saint returns, bearing with him a platter upon which a steaming, fragrant joint of meat rests, surrounded by

split pomegranates, stewed mushrooms, verdant lettuces. Defleshed bones ornament the plate like scattered pearls, eight in

all, none the same exact size or shape.

In her arms, Phosyne goes rigid, as if she’s made of wood.

The Absolving Saint places the platter before the three of them. He picks up carving fork and knife, and begins to slice petals of flesh away from the two bones that run through the center of the shank. He places two on Ser Voyne’s plate, and her mouth waters.

Cinching Phosyne tight against her with one arm and leaning forward to pin her to the table’s edge, Voyne reaches out and

picks up a piece. It is tender and slippery between her fingers. She is mildly surprised to see her hands are still covered

in blood and honey.

It wouldn’t have mattered before. Before? But she has a memory of heavy iron in her hand, between her and her food, carrying

it to her lips instead of her sticky fingers.

She takes a bite anyway. She chews. She swallows.

She lets the Absolving Saint take her hand when she is done and wipe it clean for her, then reaches for more.

In her lap, Phosyne sounds like she is crying. “Look. Please, look at what you’re eating,” she entreats.

Ser Voyne looks. The roast weeps glistening fat, rests in pools of oil that shimmer in the candlelight and sing with spices.

Voyne can’t help but lean in, can’t help but select another glistening slice from the beautiful arrangement. Horse? Whatever

beast it came from was heavily muscled, but Voyne has never seen a shank with so much meat upon the bone before.

“Don’t,” Phosyne begs.

Ser Voyne takes another bite half to spite her, half to model good behavior. Phosyne will need to eat, and soon; she is so

fragile in Voyne’s arms.

When she has eaten the last of what is on her plate, ignoring Phosyne’s wheezing breaths, close to panic, Ser Voyne drinks

deeply from her cup. It is water, not wine. The cool sweetness of it breaks over her, and the confusion is back.

She knows the taste that lingers in her mouth, the fat that coats her lips and the shreds of flesh stuck in her teeth. Just

like she knows these halls, just like she knows that she should be wearing metal. Frowning, she takes another bite, chews

slowly, closes her eyes. It comes apart easily between her teeth, slides over her tongue, and she remembers this, though last time she had it, it was not spiced half so well. Last time, there was smoke. Last time, there was blood. Last time, she had been so hungry, the hungriest she had ever been, and the meat had been parceled out so carefully between her and her men, and...

“Ser Voyne,” her Lady says, pulling her away from the memory. “Attend to your charge. She needs your firm hand, I think.”

Of course. Phosyne’s body struggles in her arms, and Ser Voyne clamps down harder, holding the frail woman against her chest.

With one hand, she grabs up a honey-drenched fig; with the other, she presses against Phosyne’s jaw, spreads her chapped lips

wide. With one finger, she pushes between Phosyne’s teeth.

“ Eat ,” Voyne demands.

Phosyne bites down. Blood spills from Voyne, and she cries out, dropping the fig, loosing her hold. And then the pain is gone,

and Phosyne is gone, sprinting wildly for the exit. Voyne is on her feet, but the Lady reaches out and clasps her bleeding

hand. She draws it to Her own lips, and Voyne pants, torn between two duties.

“Stay, Ser Voyne. She will come back, I am sure. She must eat sometime,” the Lady murmurs into her blood. But Ser Voyne cannot

hear her, because she knows the taste of this meat, and Phosyne is not in her tower, and all of this is wrong, it’s wrong , she knows these halls, she knows this anger inside of her and—

And she’s supposed to be saving this castle.

She pulls her hand from her Lady’s lips, and races after Phosyne.

From behind, she thinks she hears her Lady laugh.