Page 22 of The Starving Saints

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.

But then she realizes somebody is looking back at her. Clear skin, shining white hair, long lashes brushing his cheeks as he tilts his head slightly in greeting

from across the hall.

The Loving Saint crosses the room, and every body in the way shifts aside so he can pass.

Treila goes through her options: run, and invite a chase; look away, and pretend she is as starry-eyed as all the rest; take

hold of her knife below the table, and wait to see if it is needed.

She chooses option three.

She even straightens where she sits on the bench, bold and counting every step he takes. At first, those he passes stare up

at him, but as he nears, they don’t spare him a single glance. Nobody at Treila’s table reacts as he reaches it, except to

shift aside as if gently nudged with an invisible hand. They clear a space across from her.

He sits.

“Are you enjoying the feast?” he asks, leaning one elbow into the masses of discarded bone and fruit skin on the table, pillowing his chin upon his fist. The silk he’s draped in wicks up juices, staining fast, then blanching white again as quick as breathing. His nails are clean. No trace of dirt from the gardens.

“I am,” she agrees.

“But you’re not eating.” His gaze flicks to the metatarsals littering her plate, the pile of meat beside it. “Just playing

with your food.”

He, then, is not so bewitched. And why would he be? She files that detail away. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m not

hungry?” Her hand below the table shifts on the knife.

“I’d believe you more if you said this was unappetizing,” he says. His voice is sweet, his tone delighted. He is fascinated.

He is measuring just how lucid she is.

She wants to know what will happen if she acknowledges that lucidity. She says, “No, you’ve cooked it well.”

And he blossoms .

“This isn’t the first time,” he says, and there is something like glee in his voice.

Treila considers the pile. Feels the ghost of tendon between her molars. It’s a private memory, but she looks back up at him

through her lashes. “Dark things happen in winter woods.”

His smile spreads. “They do indeed. But what of the fruit? The honey?” He trails one finger along a bit of thick comb, lifts

it to his lips. Suckles it off.

“I told you,” she says. “I’m not hungry. But I appreciate the ambience.”

“Fine words for a stitching girl.” He looks her over, measuring, appraising. “But not always a stitching girl, I think. Where

did you come from?”

There’s a hint of a threat in his voice, all wrapped up in delight. Any trace of gentleness is gone from him now. He’s sharp,

wickedly so, and Treila is certain now that this is no Loving Saint.

“Come closer,” she says, gaze raking over his body as she takes his measure in turn, “and I might tell you.”

She thinks Phosyne might be able to learn something from his gutted corpse, and she thinks she can get it out of the hall

without anybody noticing, if she’s quick. If she’s good.

He rounds the table and places one knee on the bench beside her, caging her in with his broad shoulders. The curtain of his hair falls around them both. Her smile twists into wicked glee, and she rises fast, knife flashing.

He catches her by the wrist, the point less than an inch from his gut.

“Do you know,” he murmurs, voice silken and low, so quiet she shouldn’t be able to hear it through the din, and yet it winds

around her ear, “that is perhaps only the third knife I’ve seen in this entire castle?”

She’s panting, adrenaline sick in her veins, and she jerks her hand. Forward, first, then back when he does not let her stab

him. But he doesn’t let her retreat, either. She should be frightened. She should be terrified , now that she’s played her hand, but instead she’s leaning closer, as if to kiss him.

She wonders if he’ll let her.

“Ser Leodegardis ordered all iron collected a little over a fortnight ago,” she tells him, voice barely above a breath. “The

Priory had need. All our knives, all our tools, even the iron banding on the doors—all went to the nuns. Only the knights

kept their armaments.”

She shifts her grip on the knife, just a little, just enough to draw his eye down. “And I kept this,” she purrs.

“Because you were afraid, or because you were hunting?” He’s smiling at her, still, and if anything, his cheeks are flushed

with higher color now. His thumb strokes at her pulse. Yes, he would probably let her kiss him.

“Hunting,” she says.

He makes a pleased little noise that’s almost swallowed up in the conversation all around them. “It makes a little more sense

now. That look you wore in the garden.”

Treila inhales sharply. “You were watching.”

“Of course. It’s not often I see such a beautiful mess of confusion. Gallant Ser Voyne was not acting as you expected, was

she?”

“No,” she admits. Considers. “The last time she saw me, it unsettled her. Weakened her walls.”

“You wanted to bring them tumbling down, but instead found them transfigured.”

“Replaced.”

He hums. “Oh, you are a sharp little thing, aren’t you? Eager to cut, and drink deep. She missed it.”

“That’s intentional,” she murmurs. No, Voyne can’t know at all. But then she thinks a moment, realizes he means the Lady,

and she goes still.

“Intentional to all the world,” he agrees. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Her.”

“Why not? Don’t you serve Her?”

“Sheathe your knife, and perhaps I can answer some of your questions.”

And he lets her go.

It would take just the slightest jerk forward to slide the knife between his ribs. But she doesn’t even hesitate. She pushes

the knife back into its sheath and into the folds of her skirt.

She offers him her empty hands.

Perhaps augury is not the only way to get something useful out of him.

He takes her by the wrists, and climbs off the bench, leading her away. She follows, heart hammering, wondering if she’s making

a terrible mistake. But this creature is a clever sort, and just like with Phosyne on the ground beneath her, she finds she

likes being seen for what she is: a threat.

The doorway he tugs her through leads out into the yard, but not into the masses crowded around the tables. Instead, it’s

into the empty stretch of dirt that leads to a stairway, up onto the walls. He climbs backward up them, never missing a step,

never letting go, and then they are up and in the wind, above the noise. In the dark.

He draws her into a shadowed corner, lets her crowd him there. She tangles a hand in his silken hair simply because he doesn’t

stop her.

“You promised answers?” she murmurs.

He winks. “Not promised. Offered. There’s a difference. My first piece of advice to you is to keep track of which is which.”

“A gift or one half of an exchange.”

“Very different,” he agrees. His skin is cool. So is his breath.

“You know,” she says, studying his features, “I have never under stood why you look like this. So unnatural. All of you saints, I suppose, but... you more than the rest.”

“I don’t have to look like this,” he says, and his tongue peeks out between his lips for a moment. “This is a just a canvas.

I am whoever it is you love. Or, perhaps, long to be loved by.”

As she watches, his white hair turns black. It spreads from where her fingers grip it tightly, to his scalp, to his eyebrows.

Eyelashes. It shortens, too, draws up through her hands and disappears like water, and then it is close cropped to his skull

on one side, braided and heavy on the other. His features dance and shift as well, his narrow jaw widening, his broad shoulders

slimming down the tiniest bit. Even his height changes, until she is staring up at Ser Voyne.

No, not Ser Voyne; there’s too much mischief in those eyes. But the Loving Saint looks close enough to make his point, and

it’s enough to set her stumbling back, pupils blown wide.

Run , the animal part of her says. Run, now. This is nothing good.

But then he’s back to his old self, the form he wears in paintings and in icons. He stretches his arms above his head, arches

his back, looks at her through pleased and pleasing eyes. “Yet another tasty little detail about you,” he says.

“You saw me in the garden,” she points out.

“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to retreat just now, when you pushed so close before.” He beckons with one long-fingered hand.

She is warier this time. But she does step closer, until she can once more hear his languid breathing. “You are no saint,”

she ventures.

His brows lift, pleased. “I am to them,” he says, nodding down to the bodies below. “But to you, no.”

“Because you are what I desire?”

“Love. Desire. Either. Both. But no, you’re not quite right. There’s a truth at the core of me. Just like there is to you.” He reaches out, and she’s close enough that he can trail fingers up her arm, along her collarbone. “I can see it. So can the Lady. Or She could, if She were not too preoccupied with jealousy. It’s not like Her, to miss the knife but block the stab.” Up, up, touching her neck now, then her jaw, then her lips. He traces their outline. She thinks of biting him. “But Ser Voyne is a prize, I’ll grant you that. Something so strong, turned so brittle with mishandling.”

“And so She’s jealous ?” It’s laughable, but Treila remembers the fury in Her eyes in the garden.

“She thinks She is unmistakable. Entirely unique. The brightest star in all the sky. What a blow, to see Her creature mistake

a grubby servant girl for her Lady. And that blow leaves Her too angry to ask why Her creature made the mistake at all.”

He leaves the wall, drops his hands to her waist, her hips.

“Why didn’t you eat? It wasn’t what we were serving,” he asks.

“I couldn’t be sure whether it was a gift or a bargain. I like to know what something costs before I pay for it.”

“And yet your body must have been screaming for it.”

“I’m used to resisting what my body screams for.”

He leans in, lips against the shell of her ear. Treila knows better than to give in, to luxuriate, but she can still appreciate

it. Still tilt her head to the side. She doesn’t let him steer her against anything that would block her escape, stands firm

where she is, but she pushes her hips into his touch.

“Somebody’s told you to be careful,” he guesses. He rolls their hips together and he shudders just as much as she does. “You

were hungry in the garden. But something happened between then and now.”

“I saw what you were planting.”

He pulls back, grins. “A little transubstantiation. I’m glad I had an audience. But there is something else. Trapped in these

walls, you will need to eat. You know that. Unless...”

She waits. She runs her hands along his chest. She pulls at his hair again, and he sighs, eyes half-lidded.

“If you have a way out, I would suggest you take it,” he murmurs. “Whatever the cost. You won’t have the choice soon.”

“And if I stay?” she asks, knowing she won’t, but curious all the same. She’s curious about that fury in the Lady’s eyes.

About what, exactly, this creature under her hands is. About how it would feel for him to don Ser Voyne’s guise again, and

sink to his knees, and...

“If you stay,” he says, eyes shining in the evening light, “it is eat or be eaten. But I promise I’ll make it good.”