Page 24 of The Starving Saints

Her tower door is open.

Phosyne tries to remember if she left it that way when she went down to the tunnel with Treila. Possibly. After all, the boys

are gone. The memory makes her wince, but there’s nothing for it. There’s food for them, at least. She tries not to feel grief

at the thought of losing them. Of seeing them next on the Lady’s lap.

Well, she has Ser Voyne now instead.

She pokes her head in and, seeing nobody and nothing waiting for her, slips into the room. Voyne is right behind her.

Her gut gives a renewed pang now that she’s back in a space that is ostensibly safe for her, and she goes to the box she keeps

her rations in. All meat, of course, and her stomach twists at the sight. She can’t smell the feast here, her only blessing,

but the memory of it, divorced from the evidence of how wrong it is, is enough to make her ache.

Treila. She will just have to wait for Treila. Beg food off her once more, and—

There is food on her workbench.

Phosyne edges closer warily, looking for signs somebody has been here before her. Treila, perhaps? But it’s not dried fruit

on her workbench. It’s also not the luscious offerings the Constant Lady had tried to tempt her with. It looks like...

“Hardtack,” Ser Voyne says, staring at it. “I thought we gave out the last of it...”

The reminder of exactly how bad the situation is, even absent the unnatural feast below, nearly knocks Voyne off her feet. She sinks to a crouch, covering her face with her hands. That she doesn’t moan is, Phosyne thinks, likely only because of her training.

Phosyne picks up the biscuit, turns it over in her hands. Most of it is dry and grainy, what she’d expect, but one corner

is covered in a thin film of slime. She lifts the biscuit to her nose, breathes in.

She smells sulfur.

“Oh, you clever boys,” she murmurs, then takes a bite.

Or tries to; it’s so hard it nearly breaks her teeth, and she hisses in pain. No matter; her hands are wet and her robes are

soaked. She wraps the brick in her skirts and presses until she feels it give a little. It’s still too hard to bite, but she

can scrape the top layer off with her teeth. It’s too salty by far, and otherwise tastes like sawdust, except for the faint

hint of sweetness on her tongue as her saliva breaks it down.

Bread. Bread, bread she can eat , and she, too, sinks to the floor.

She has scraped all the soft bits off and is soaking it again in the folds of her robes when Ser Voyne manages to speak again.

“I don’t understand what happened to me,” she says.

Phosyne looks over at her. She is still hunched over, almost prostrate.

“I’m afraid I don’t have many answers,” Phosyne says. “I can tell you what I saw, from outside. Would that help?”

Voyne nods.

“I saw you at Her table last night, eating food that She must have conjured from nowhere. And I saw you this morning, at the

chapel. I found Jacynde above you, with her tongue cut out. Your hands were covered in blood.”

Voyne shudders. “She said... She said a faithless tongue was worth more as food than to eat food.”

At first Phosyne takes that to mean Jacynde said that, but of course not, of course it is Her. The Lady. “Faithless?”

“Last night,” Voyne says. “Prioress Jacynde came to make us see sense. To make us understand that the food could not be explained.

But the Lady cowed her. Pulled apart her armor by articulating all of the prioress’s doubts. She couldn’t withstand it. She

let them give her honeyed wine. And then she stopped fighting.”

“But the Lady holds grudges.”

“It didn’t feel like that,” Voyne whispers. “It didn’t feel like retribution, or even lesson-giving. It felt like...” She

frowns. Closes her eyes. “Harvest.”

Phosyne pulls the softened biscuit from her robe and stares at it, stomach curdling, before she sets it gently upon her workbench

for later. “Somewhere, on those tables down there...” She goes back over the evening. Sees the Absolving Saint presenting

the roasted arm so proudly. The Lady chewing bits of flesh.

She says nothing. She can’t make herself say it. Ser Voyne either understands or she doesn’t. Either way, the other woman

gets up and begins to pace.

Phosyne works on mastering her stomach, putting the realization aside for later. Exhaustion wins out over both, but it dampens

down the horror enough that Phosyne can make herself grab the biscuit, scrape another layer off with her teeth. It goes down

thick and gluey in her throat.

At length, Ser Voyne stops pacing. Her shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath, and when she exhales, she looks a little

more like Phosyne remembers. Flinty-eyed. Strong. The transformation is impressive; Phosyne can almost forget how small and

broken she’d looked in the cistern, and their clothes aren’t even half-dry yet.

“So,” Ser Voyne says, turning to Phosyne and, after assessing her appearance, approaching as if afraid one or both of them

might spook. “What next?”

Phosyne bites at her lip, then looks at the door. Still no sign of Treila. “There’s a way out. Maybe. We’re waiting for the

girl who knows the way.”

Ser Voyne does not look as relieved as Phosyne had expected. In fact, she looks angry.

“No,” Voyne says, voice firm. Unyielding.

Phosyne blinks up at her. “No?”

“No. We aren’t leaving. We stay here. We fix this. We save them.”

“ Save them?” Phosyne asks, disbelieving.

“If what happened to me is happening to everybody in this keep,” Ser Voyne says, slowly, as if trying to explain something to a very distractible child, “then we cannot leave them to suffer. Even if we delude ourselves into thinking the Lady has kind intentions.”

They both know She does not.

“We don’t know what they are,” Phosyne says. “What they want. What the limits of their powers might be.”

“Then we study them.” Voyne’s stern expression is turning into a scowl. “We have a duty, Phosyne.”

“To martyr ourselves?” Phosyne asks. There’s a part of her that doesn’t want to leave, not yet, but that part is curiosity,

and her curiosity has taken her nowhere good. It certainly isn’t any feeling of obligation. She lost that the moment the Lady

said She was not summoned.

“To serve. We have protected those people from Etrebia, and we will protect them now, as well.”

“Did we? Protect them from Etrebia, I mean. Because from up here it has looked as though we have only prolonged death.”

Ser Voyne’s jaw clenches. Phosyne realizes she’s made yet another mistake. The fragile peace between them is about to crack,

and either Voyne is going to bear down on her again (and she’ll probably like it again), or Phosyne’s going to tug on the

leash, command her to stop , even though she keeps promising she won’t do it again, because she’s scared and because she wants to see the power work

once more.

But neither happens, because the tower door opens and Treila slips inside.

Ser Voyne’s reaction is—confusing. She wheels toward the door, as Phosyne would expect, and Phosyne is already up off the

floor to get herself between the two women before Voyne can threaten or lunge, but as soon as Voyne can see Treila she goes

limp.

Treila stares up at her, eyes wide at first, then narrowing to slits.

Voyne’s gaze slips away.

Phosyne wants to ask, but she has more important questions. More urgent ones, at any rate, now that she has a better sense

of just how powerful the food being served down below is . She turns to Treila.

“Did you eat the food? Any of it?”

Treila screws up her face, turning her attention to Phosyne. “No, of course not.” Her voice is just the same. Her posture’s a little different, more tightly wound, perhaps, but all in all, she is Treila in a way that Voyne was not Voyne before the cistern. “Are you ready?”

Impatient, more than before. What happened to her, down in the revels? There are lurid suck-marks on her throat that weren’t

there earlier.

A brush with the chaos, then. A seduction. Phosyne only hopes she’s kept her head.

“I—yes, of course.” She looks back at Voyne reflexively.

Voyne’s brow is clouded with confusion.

At first, Phosyne thinks she’s hit a wall. That the water only lasts a certain amount of time, and everything is about to

change again. But then Voyne blinks once, twice, and asks:

“Who are you talking to?”

Phosyne takes a step back, as if her body could be hiding Treila from sight. Voyne watches her, of course, but then glances

at the door. Doesn’t react to Treila standing right there. Just like she hadn’t reacted to Treila down by the tunnel.

“She can’t see you,” Phosyne realizes.

“What?”

“No, she can ,” Phosyne amends, because Ser Voyne is looking at Treila’s edges, perfectly avoiding the substance of her. “She can’t notice you.”

“Phosyne—” Voyne tries, but Treila talks over her:

“It’s the Lady’s fault.”

Phosyne holds up a hand, and Voyne goes silent, watching her warily now. “The Lady?” Phosyne asks.

“Yes. She saw me with Ser Voyne earlier. For some reason, Ser Voyne thought I was Her , though I didn’t... realize it at first.” She doesn’t look pleased at the memory. “I thought the Lady would kill me, but

Ser Voyne went to Her obediently, and...” She gestures. Pauses, looks like she is going to stay something else. She rubs

at the shell of her ear and doesn’t say it.

But Phosyne thinks she understands. “The Lady has made sure Voyne won’t confuse you with Her again.”

“Exactly.” Her gaze returns to Voyne. “It’s irritating, but not insurmountable. Probably a blessing. She’s docile, now?”

“Yes, and coherent. I—”

She’s cut off by Voyne seizing her by the upper arm, hauling her away from the door.

“Phosyne,” she murmurs, voice low and dangerous. “Tell me, right this instant, what you see. Who you’re talking to about me.”

“A friend,” Phosyne says.

Treila quirks a brow. “She can’t hear me, either?”

“Apparently not.”

“ Phosyne. ” Voyne’s fingers tighten.

“It’s another facet of your bewitchment,” Phosyne says, looking up at the knight, wishing that what she’s about to say isn’t

going to make everything worse. “The Lady is preventing you from seeing somebody. Her name is Treila.”

Voyne’s face goes blank for just a second. “What?” she asks, and she’s a little breathless.

Phosyne glances at Treila. Treila huffs a small laugh.

This is far more extensive than Phosyne could have imagined. Simple, in its comprehensiveness. She clears her throat, tries

again. “Tell me what you hear. Are you ready?”

Voyne nods.

“Treila.”

Again, blankness. Then she comes back to herself; she doesn’t say anything, but Phosyne can see it as a quickening behind

her eyes. A few seconds pass, then Voyne goes, “Well?”

“I said it.”

“You—” Voyne chokes a little, lets go of Phosyne, backs away.

“Tell me what you’ve heard me say,” Phosyne asks. She shouldn’t feel this fascinated. She should probably be far more afraid.

Voyne concentrates. “That the Lady is preventing me from... something. I didn’t hear the rest.”

“Then I can’t explain it. You will have to trust me. Do you trust me, Ser Voyne?”

No, she very clearly does not. But that doesn’t mean she won’t. Her throat bobs. “Whoever you’re talking to,” she says, slowly, “is a friend. And is not them.”

“No. I promise you that. Do you recall, I said we may have a way out?”

Voyne nods.

Treila makes a displeased sound.

“This is our way out.”

“We will stay.” Her gaze is blade-sharp again. The tension between them crackles, shifts, back to the way it was before Treila’s

arrival. But then Voyne falters. She glances toward what she cannot look at, and her eyes slide off, and it looks like it

hurts. She can tell it’s wrong. “Unless—unless we can return, after. Perhaps some distance will help break whatever is influencing

my mind.”

Phosyne looks to Treila.

“Is it one way?” she asks.

“I don’t care,” Treila says.

And that is a good point. Once they’re out, they’re out.

“No,” Phosyne translates, lies to Voyne. “So we’re going to take the chance.”

Voyne shifts uneasily, as if she wants to argue, and Phosyne prepares herself to command, but it isn’t necessary. Voyne nods,

then gestures for Phosyne to precede her. “Clear the way for me?” she asks.

She sounds vulnerable when she says it.

They creep out once more into the echoing, empty keep. The distance between the tower and the tunnel seems longer this time,

but then, every excursion Phosyne has made in the last week has been harder than the one before. Voyne follows at a safe distance,

but Treila stays close.

“An odd situation,” Treila says.

“Just another of many. The feast, how was it?”

“Wine-soaked,” Treila says. “A girl could lose her head in there. Everybody else has.”

“If something happens,” Phosyne tells her, “if we don’t get out right away—the water is safe. In the cisterns. It has some

fortifying effect. Clarifying.” She gestures back toward Voyne.

“And what will we have to pay for that?” Treila asks.

Phosyne frowns. “Pay?”

Treila throws her a gleaming smile in the dark. “Don’t worry about it,” she says.

Phosyne wonders if she should.

“You’re taking this better than most,” she ventures. By most , Phosyne mainly means herself and Voyne. They’re holding it together, sure, but Treila is...

Treila looks energized by it all. She plunged into the belly of the beast to blend in, and has come out of it looking not

disgusted, not exhausted, but exhilarated.

In answer, Treila looks back at Ser Voyne. Voyne’s head turns, eyes averting. She almost stumbles on the next step, which

Phosyne doesn’t think she even notices. “I’ve already had all the rules of my life turned upside down before,” Treila says,

finally. “It’s easier to keep your head when you know it’s all you can rely on.”