Page 25 of The Starving Saints

Ser Voyne wants to be herself again.

She’d almost managed it, in the tower. She’d almost moved past the echoes of Phosyne’s commands, the blurriness of her memory.

But now she can’t look directly ahead of her, if directly ahead of her is Phosyne’s “friend,” and she can feel herself beginning

to unravel again.

It’s tempting to believe Phosyne is speaking to herself. She wants to haul Phosyne back up to the tower, where she belongs . Phosyne herself had cemented that in her mind, somehow, in the chapel.

After she—

After she—

Ser Voyne makes herself face it fully: after she carved the prioress’s tongue from her mouth and gave it to the Absolving

Saint to take back to the Constant Lady. To eat.

It’s like reaching a fire after a day out in whipping snow. It hurts. But the pain turns to an ache turns to some measure

of restored movement.

But as she passes the next window, a glint of gold in the night catches her eye. She knows she can’t afford to stop, but she

slows, and then she sees him: Cardimir, out in the upper yard, attended by two saints, his crown upon his head. Fires have

been lit, sending everything into stark, unsettling relief. The Absolving Saint and the Warding Saint stand close by; the

Warding Saint clutches one of Cardimir’s servants, a woman Voyne knows. Her skirt is hiked up above one leg, baring her thigh.

The Absolving Saint kneels before her, and touches her vulnerable skin. Her head lolls back. Red blooms where the Absolving Saint touches, enough blood that Voyne can see it from here as it falls into a goblet. The same one she has sipped honeyed wine from so many times in the past. There is a ring of people around the horror show, watching, kneeling, adoring. Nobody moves to stop any of it.

The Absolving Saint stands. He draws what might be honeycomb from his sleeve, crushes it into the cup. And Cardimir, without

hesitation and with an easy air, takes the goblet and begins to drink.

Disgust wells in her. Disgust, and terror, and a bright urge to race out into the yard, to lunge at the saints, to rescue

her king.

Except he doesn’t appear to want rescuing.

Neither did you , she reminds herself. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t protest. She didn’t even pause to consider who she had been eating.

Her stomach lurches.

A hand seizes her elbow. She recoils, hissing, but it is only Phosyne. “Come on, we don’t have much time,” Phosyne says. A

feeling of weighty silence follows on, and then Phosyne shakes her head. “Our friend says to tell you that he’s hardly worth

saving. But more importantly, they will stop you if you go to him. Or they will make you hold the cup.”

Voyne flinches.

She wants to close her eyes as she resumes her descent. She doesn’t want to see herself fleeing.

They reach the ground floor of the keep, and then slip down the stairs to the little room where Voyne found Phosyne earlier.

She knows she was just here, can remember it, but it’s all a little slantways. She hates this. She hates being unsure of herself,

of feeling so unsteady. She has a purpose , the same one she’s had for six months, and that should be enough.

But she’s not wearing her armor. She doesn’t even have her sword. Everything feels strange, and she’s not even sure who she

is, anymore. That thought isn’t hers. It’s more like scales being peeled up. Something slipping out from underneath. She hisses.

There’s a touch on her wrist. Phosyne looks up at her.

“We’re here.”

Not much longer, then, until they’re outside, and maybe Voyne will be able to think straight. It’s the only hope she can cling to as she looks around the little room, and sees again the hole where the floor and a wall join.

Phosyne is looking up and to the right of it, and then she averts her gaze. Voyne tries to look where Phosyne had, but flinches

instantly; she feels the deflection like the crackle of lightning in wool blankets.

At least she feels it, this time.

“Is that really necessary?” Phosyne says. Not to her, though. A pause. Listening. “No, I can move just fine like this.” She

plucks at her robes. “Ser Voyne much the same, I think.”

“What?”

Phosyne flushes a little. “Our friend recommends undressing. Apparently—”

And then nothing. Silence. More than silence. Voyne grimaces, touches one ear.

Phosyne cocks her head. “Incredible,” she murmurs. Voyne wishes she didn’t sound so delighted.

“I will remain clothed.”

“Right. Of course. Perhaps, though, I...”

And then she’s fussing with the toggle of her robe, and then she is nude. All bones and angles, skin pallid and loose where

there was flesh beneath before. Bruises, where Voyne has touched her. Voyne looks away, suddenly short of breath.

“It will make the climb easier,” Phosyne says, or passes along. Voyne isn’t sure which. The other woman is wrapping the worn

fabric into a bundle, if the sounds are anything to go by. “Right. Well, off we go, then.”

Voyne nods, hazards a glance. Phosyne is clutching the bundle to her chest. It helps. Slightly.

“Through here,” Phosyne says, crouching down. Ser Voyne’s head pounds. This absence with them, that she cannot hear the name

of, cannot look through, cannot look at—it will drive her mad, soon enough. It makes it impossible to look at the hole. Their

companion must be in front of it, or inside it.

“I can’t see the way,” Voyne confesses, then focuses on her breathing so she doesn’t vomit.

Phosyne hums acknowledgment. After a minute or so, she clears her throat. “Try to look again?”

Voyne does, and this time, she can see the gap again.

“Go first,” she tells Phosyne. That way, at least, she has half a chance of seeing where she’s going.

Of course, the tunnel is entirely dark. Voyne realizes her mistake as soon as she wriggles into the tunnel (really, no more

than a crevice) and finds she can’t see anyway, but she is far too aware of Phosyne squirming ahead of her. It’s mostly sound.

Sound, and stench. She hangs back, lets Phosyne get a little farther on, and then begins to crawl.

Phosyne is a small woman, and her “friend” must be similarly built, because where they seem to slide through the stone, Voyne

has to force every inch she gains. Her shoulders catch on outcroppings. Her hips need to be twisted this way and that to navigate

sharp turns. She feels too large, hemmed in, crushed.

The stone, at least, is cold, blessedly cold, and Voyne takes a moment to press her burning cheek against it, eyes closed.

Ahead of her, she hears Phosyne crawling, and the unsettling nothingness of their companion’s movements beyond. She focuses

on Phosyne to try to block out the nothing. She edges forward a few more feet.

Her head collides with rock.

She hisses, ducking, and tries to feel out the path ahead of her, but comes up with only stone. Stone and stone and more stone.

No gap at all. She can hear Phosyne ahead of her, but can’t reach her.

Her entire body goes hot, then freezing cold, and her headache feels like it will split her skull apart. She gasps for breath,

retreats.

“Ser Voyne?” Phosyne calls.

She doesn’t stop until she’s back in the keep, dry heaving, curled up on herself like she’d been in the cistern. Somewhere

behind her, there’s movement, and then Phosyne is beside her, a hand hovering over her shoulder, unsure if she trusts Voyne

enough to touch.

“What’s happening?” Phosyne asks. “What are you feeling?”

“There was no tunnel,” Voyne says, because she doesn’t know how to describe the sickness in her now. She doesn’t want to tell Phosyne that she craves honey on her lips with a fervor that scares her. That she wants to see ringed irises, not Phosyne’s flat gray eyes. She wants the Lady. She wants to run to Her, fall at Her feet, and she’s almost too far gone to feel horror at the image.

“But I was ahead of you,” Phosyne says, and, at last, touches Voyne’s shoulder. The contact sends a jolt through Voyne. She

pulls away, afraid of what she might do if she doesn’t put distance between them.

“I know,” Voyne snaps. She’s up on her feet, pacing. “I know that, I could hear you, but there was just unbroken rock. There wasn’t a way through. I shouldn’t have been able to hear

you through that, I don’t—I don’t understand —”

She doesn’t understand any of this. Her brain is on fire, her limbs do not always obey her, and she wishes more than anything

that she could wring the Lady’s throat, the way she’s killed a hundred others.

The nothingness of their companion enters the room, and Voyne snarls, turns away, slams a fist into the wall because if she

doesn’t, she might lash out at the woman she cannot see or at Phosyne, and that will only make everything worse.

Phosyne doesn’t speak. Voyne supposes that means she’s listening. Voyne hopes that means the nothing has a plan.

But then Phosyne shakes her head, says, “No, no, we’ll just try again—”

“There’s no point,” Ser Voyne says. “There was a wall —”

“We’ll give it some time, Ser Voyne and I can go in together, I can try to see what’s stopping her—”

Nothing. Nothing fills the room. Ser Voyne breathes hard through her nose, fights the urge to flee.

And then nothing is gone again. It’s just the two of them left, Phosyne looking between Voyne and the hole, the hole and Voyne.

“Well?” Voyne asks, when she can speak again.

“She’s leaving without us,” Phosyne says. She clutches the bundle of her robes to her, fingers tight. All of her is tight.

Every muscle in her narrow body is tense.

And Voyne realizes then that if Phosyne goes back into the tunnel, Voyne will not be able to pursue her.

Time stretches. Voyne almost kneels, almost begs, because she doesn’t want to be left here alone. She makes herself wait instead. Wait, and hope that perhaps Phosyne will credit duty more than survival.

It is a stupid choice to make, but Voyne hopes that she makes it.

When Phosyne unrolls her robe and drags it back on over her head, Voyne weeps.