Page 31 of The Starving Saints

For every body she moves, Ser Voyne checks every entrance to the yard. Each time, she expects to see the Lady standing there,

or one of the other saints. Her arms burn and her skin beads with perspiration. Dust rises up and forms a slurry with her

sweat, and by the end, she is filthy, sore, exhausted.

And alone.

It feels like a trap. It can’t be an accident, that Ser Voyne is standing now in the middle of the cleared yard, worn down,

barely upright, guzzling water. She’s vulnerable. She knows she’s vulnerable. One word from the Lady, or one strike of the

Warding Saint’s fist, and she’ll fall. She will. She knows it.

And yet she remains alone. That, perhaps, is why when Ser Voyne at last staggers into the keep, chin up, eyes flashing, she

doesn’t go immediately to Phosyne’s tower.

No, there is other work to be done, in this blessed, unexpected reprieve.

She has not found Cardimir, and she has abandoned hope of it. He is either with the Lady, or cowering somewhere private. But

Ser Leodegardis... she thinks that, if he has any of his mind left to him at all, he will be eager to mount a defense.

If she can give him water, he will be able to help her. She goes first to the great hall, but does not see his bearded, worn face anywhere. Food

litters the tables, still heaped to groaning, but it is rotting already. Lettuce has turned black and slick, and flies buzz

thick above the picked-clean bones of—

Ser Voyne turns away. Goes back into the keep proper. Climbs the stairs to where, not two weeks ago, she sat with her liege, Ser Leodegardis, the chamberlain, and all the rest.

This room is occupied.

Ser Leodegardis sits alone at the table. Beside him is a cup of, Voyne knows without looking, honeyed wine. She can only hope

it is not blood. His gaze is fixed on a map.

His right forearm is gone, amputated neatly at the elbow.

Ser Voyne’s stomach lurches, her mouth waters, and she remembers the fine round bones strewn across the platter of roasted

meat like pearls.

Not pearls. Wrist bones.

When she sits down across from him, it is with her full weight. She bows her head. She wonders if he can even see her.

“Ser Voyne,” he greets.

She wonders if he is himself.

That, he doesn’t offer an easy answer to, but when she looks up to him, she meets eyes that seem uncommonly clear. Then again,

she hasn’t gotten close to anybody but Phosyne since her fever dream broke, and Phosyne is many things, but bewitched by the

intruders if not one of them.

“Ser Leodegardis,” she offers, wondering what he will do with his name.

Did they talk, when Voyne was in the depths of her idolatry? Or were they only puppets? She can’t remember. Doesn’t want to

remember.

He wets his cracked lips with his tongue.

Voyne drops her gaze to the cup of wine.

“No,” he says. His voice is soft. Rueful. When she looks up at him, he is smiling, but it is not happy.

He’s aware. Enough, at least. He knows there is something very wrong. “I have water,” Voyne says.

His shoulders quake. She sees a flash of hope in his eyes, and then he quashes it.

“It’s from Phosyne,” she adds.

He hesitates, then reaches out his remaining hand.

She passes him the oilskin and he takes one testing sip, then tips his head back and pours half the bag down his throat. He coughs halfway through, spit sliding down his chin. Voyne understands. She waits until he is done, and takes the skin from him gingerly, careful not to touch. A single touch could break him, now, and she needs him with her.

“Thank you,” he says, when he’s taken a moment to collect himself. “Sit with me?”

She lowers herself into her seat once more, though she pulls it closer to him. It’s so like all those evenings before, when

they sat across from each other and discussed strategy, him treating her like her experience mattered, her pretending she

was his equal. Striving to be his equal, to learn what made him different so that one day, she could become him. It feels laughable now. Should have felt

laughable the moment the siege set in, because without victory, she has no future at all.

And now...

“She did this to you?” Ser Voyne asks.

“You don’t remember,” he answers.

Her stomach drops.

“I did this,” he says. He looks down at his abbreviated arm. “You were there, I am sure, though the memory is... hazy.

I remember only why I did it, in truth.”

She tries to recollect, though her mind shies away. The night she knelt for the Lady—no, the morning after, before Jacynde,

before Phosyne in the chapel—Leodegardis had accepted the king’s jewel-handled knife and leaned down.

Down?

“I remember differently,” she says.

He gestures down, and Voyne, reluctantly, peers below the table.

His left leg is gone.

With a groan, she covers her face with her hands. Yes, that is what she remembers. The arm must have come later. Perhaps somebody

else held the blade. She doesn’t think she was there for that, but is too afraid to ask.

“Why?” she asks, as shivers wrack her body.

“I made the sacrifices I needed to,” he assures her.

“Needed to?” she manages to ask, meeting his eyes once more, demanding.

“It is nothing less than what you would have done, in my place.” He says it as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. His

smile is sad but indulgent nonetheless.

Cardimir’s words echo through her: My people must eat .

But that was a dead man. Leodegardis himself had argued with her that a dead man was worth more as food than a living horse,

for a living horse would keep a little longer.

“One leg can’t feed a hundred.”

“But if it could? If it could feed even ten families, so that they could live another week, another month, until they are

safe once more? Wouldn’t you give of yourself?”

Voyne hesitates. She doesn’t know what she should feel. Anger that he would ask? Horror?

Shame, that she can’t simply say Yes, they could have all of me ?

It’s the last, and it sweeps through her like a wildfire. “This is why he gave you Aymar,” Ser Voyne says.

Leodegardis gazes back at her without response, merely swaying where he sits. He’s in pain, now, where he wasn’t before.

And what of Cardimir? He hadn’t made this sacrifice. No, he’d fed off his own household. He was supposed to protect them.

He was honor-bound to lead, not to ravage.

How long had he been so cretinous inside? So useless on his throne?

No. No, she cannot give him any more of her time. He no longer has any claim to it.

She returns her focus to Leodegardis. “Do you regret it? At all?” Voyne asks. “Now that you can think clearly again? They

took this from you, like they took my loyalty. We should have—we should have fought back. Like we were trained to.”

At that, Leodegardis ducks his head. His brow furrows. “I have no regrets,” he says, slowly, choosing his words with care.

“I have no regrets because how can I regret feeding my people? Even if...”

Even if they will all still die tomorrow.

How much of their minds are both still clouded, she wonders. And for how long?

Or is it that they are seeing clearly, freed from the shackles of logic and causality? When she thinks to the starving battlefields

she has fought upon, she knows that, if she were offered the chance to go back, to feed her men with only pieces of her flesh,

she would have ransomed every inch of herself to get them home safely.

It just wasn’t feasible, so she’d fought instead.

“They deserve salvation, not merely an extension of their suffering,” she makes herself argue. She must focus on the long

term, not just immediate protection. Otherwise, they will be trapped here indefinitely.

“They do,” he agrees. “But I’m not sure I can win that for them.”

“I swear to you that I will do it,” she says, reaching out one hand to grasp his.

He doesn’t let her. “Always swearing the impossible, Ser Voyne,” he cautions. “No, I think it is too late for all of us. Haven’t

you heard them? The gates are open now. They are coming.”

“Etrebia?” she asks, mouth dry at the thought that the original threat does still exist, still waits for them to falter. But

Leodegardis shakes his head. He looks to her left.

They aren’t alone.

Ser Voyne tears her gaze away from Leodegardis to find the room has gone dark, even though she is certain the sun was at its

zenith only a little while ago. The room has few windows; they are thin, tall things, designed to be defensible. But they

still let in enough light to see by in midday, even in a storm.

Unless they are blocked.

Unless bodies curl against their slanted sills and press into the gaps, covering the sun and air almost completely.

Only a little light filters in, enough for Voyne to make out an arm, a leg, the curve of a hip.

The glimmer of eyes.

There are eight window niches in the room, and every single one of them is occupied. She jerks away from the table, on her feet and reaching for the sword that isn’t there. Laughter erupts from every side, and she backpedals, closer to Leodegardis.

“Do you remember,” she asks him, the words rasping in her throat, “where they took my blade?”

“ I took it,” he reminds her, and she does remember it, at last. Him kneeling at her feet, and her surrendering her sword, her

armor, as the Lady looked on. “They would not touch it. I placed it... I placed it by the throne, where it belonged.”

And then his brow draws down and he seizes her with his remaining hand, hauls her close. “You must swear to me two things,

Ser Voyne,” he gasps out against her ear.

“Name it,” she says, trying desperately to give him her full attention while keeping her eyes fixed on the prowling shadows.

“Trust in Phosyne,” he says. It sounds like stone grinding on stone. He is fighting everything in himself. But the words catch

the tinder beneath her ribs and ignite, burning bright. She hangs on to him and to his every word. “And protect the people.”

He releases her, and she falls forward. The shadows are slinking closer, the light from the windows brightening as they leave

the sills and come into the room proper.

“I swear,” Ser Voyne says. “I swear on my life. I am sorry—”

And then she runs.