Page 35 of The Starving Saints

Voyne knows the layout of Aymar very well. She knows each doorway, each yard, each wall; if she has not stepped foot in some

for weeks or months, she still has the design etched inside her skull. The Lady used this aspect of her, along with all the

others, to roust out each hiding place before the feast.

Now, Voyne uses it to flee.

Castles are not meant to be raced through, but she has no other option, not as the shadows descend on her and nip at her heels.

They have no substance to them—not like people, not like hounds—and yet they chase her down. She can’t make out details, only

slashes of color, strangely flat, horribly unnatural, but she can taste their hunger.

They clot in the stairwell; she finds the only window wide enough to accept a body and slips through out onto the meager footholds

that stud along the tower to another entrance one level down. She clambers, scurries, steals her way across spaces not designated

as paths but designed to assist a defender. If she can get to the lower level, she can move to the other staircase. Get to

Phosyne.

But outside the walls, the unnerving beasts still pursue her. Where before they were shadow, now they are air; she sees them

as smears of black and red and gold and white on the boiling hot sky. Below, she can still see the insensate forms of people

she dragged to safety. She almost says a prayer for no new splashes of carmine in the dust, but she is already too late.

Below her, on one of Aymar’s walls, she can see Denisot, the chamberlain. He crawls like a dog, bleeding from his hands, his knees, his feet. He is naked, and on his back are those same smears of flat color. And at their edges, his blood, splashing onto the stone.

A small procession follows him, of humans this time. No—a parade. One has a horn. Voyne ducks and scrapes and claws her way

around the tower, so that she can’t see them anymore. The stone is not kind.

She wishes she had Phosyne’s skill, to pass through rock from one side to the other. She must, instead, rely on geometry.

Inside again, and the press of bodies grows close. Laughter, dry and burning, crackles against her ears.

And yet—

It all falls away as she nears Phosyne’s door.

Something is different about it. The proportions are the same, the strange repurposing of the defensive slit beside the door.

There is nothing, at first, that marks it as changed. Except the torches by her door are long-since burned down, yet they

flash and shine now, driving back the shadows. Even as she staggers closer, they grow, brighten. They pulse, as if with a

heartbeat—one much quieter than her own.

Progress. Phosyne has made some progress. This is like her strange everburning candle, and her head swims with relief.

Phosyne is safe. Phosyne is safety.

Her hand hovers above the door, preparing to open it. Or should she knock?

(Knock? This woman is her charge. This woman is insane. This woman is—)

She doesn’t open it or knock.

Behind her, there is the sound of paper rustling. Dried curls of bark, one against the other. They are waiting. Waiting for

her to retreat. Waiting for her to go begging to Phosyne for some order.

But Leodegardis has given her direction, something solid, something old and familiar and true. She must take the throne room.

Her sword is there. Retrieve the sword; protect the people from this new, worse threat.

She casts one last, longing look at Phosyne’s door and dives back down the stairs.

Voyne’s training, all her experience, is nothing against a foe that seems to be at once a single heaving organism and tens of individuals. She has no weapon but her fists, and finds herself grappling and tearing more than striking. They part like wool rovings, then coalesce once more. Long fingers pluck at her, seize her elbow, haul back on her ankle. There is nothing to parry, only jaws to kick at, and those jaws dissipate between one sunbeam and the next.

While the Lady and Her saints are so terribly close to human, these things are smoke and scent. They echo with the same salivating

lust, but lack their betters’ table manners. Flashes of color, flashes of light, there and gone again, flat in one moment,

fulsome in the next as claws rake over her back.

She howls in outrage.

But for all the blows that land, none stay. She bleeds, but from scratches only. Not enough to even slick the floor.

If they wish to slake their hunger, there are a hundred other bodies waiting, willing, wilting in the heat outside. They are

chasing her for sport.

Killing a stag for sport and trophy is the same for the beast, though. The end point is still death. They will tear her apart.

She changes tack; she cannot fight back, but she can endure. Every time she tries to engage, tries to bite back as they rip

at her arms, her legs, she loses time.

She drags herself the last few steps down to the throne room door.

And like sun spilling over the horizon, the Constant Lady stands just beyond it.

No—Voyne cannot allow Her that name. The name alone makes her head spin, makes her stagger up to her feet, yearning in that

sunlight’s direction. Toward the memory of how good it had felt to serve. How pure. How simple.

Simplicity is a lie. Service is never easy, not when done right.

Her sword is beyond that sun. But its light has driven back the biting shadows; nothing grabs at her as she steps into the

throne room. No more scratches, no more testing bites. Blessed relief.

“Hello, pet,” says the False Lady. “You’ve gone journeying.” Her eyes drop to Voyne’s hands a moment, then trail over her body. Voyne longs for armor, feels exposed, too naked, in her gambeson and leggings. “Journeying, and brought me nothing home. How thoughtless.”

Voyne refuses to answer. There is blood on the air, fresh, stinking. Not hers, too strong to be hers. The hungry things in

the shadows only tasted small droplets. She cannot see her sword, or anything she can turn into a weapon.

Turn back. It sounds like Phosyne’s voice in her head, or maybe even Leodegardis’s, advising some final measure of caution. But there

is no way back, and only one way forward.

She lunges.

And then the air shimmers, and she is on the ground. The monster’s foot is on her shoulder, pressing lightly. Her skirts are

soft, whispering over Voyne’s ruddy, sweat-slick cheek. “No, I don’t think so,” the creature says. “You do keep a civil tongue

in that head somewhere. Use it.”

Voyne’s heart beats double time, and her mind is swamped beneath a tidal surge, up and over. She can barely breathe.

“I will kill you,” she makes herself say. “I will kill you for what you’ve done to this place.”

The world is hazy. Her muscles burn with frustrated impetus, a hunting dog kept penned in.

“But I have made it beautiful,” the False Lady says. Her foot moves. For a moment, Voyne is free, but she can’t make sense

of direction enough to fight. Instead, she is lifted into Her lap. A coddled creature. Mind its little fangs, its shrill bark;

it thinks it is so much larger than reality.

She can hear the faint buzzing of bees. It grows and grows. A hive is gathering. She forces herself to look around. She cannot

allow herself to slip away, not again.

The Absolving Saint enters, the shadows parting to admit him. From this angle, she can see their teeth, like slashes of white

paint or bird shit on stone. The saint bears a platter. He brings it to his Mistress, kneeling to lay it by Her side.

The False Lady reaches out and plucks a dainty from the dish. It looks for all the world like a bloom nestled between two lips. But when she blinks again, the lips are the convolutions of a mushroom, and it is the bloom that is made of peels of flesh.

Another blink, and it is pastry and fruit.

“Will you not eat something?” She says, and holds it to Voyne’s mouth.

“And was this carved from Leodegardis as well?” she whispers, stomach heaving. She thinks again of the stump of his arm, and

the pearlescent wrist bones on the platter the Absolving Saint last presented her with.

He is a skilled cook. Does he seek to disguise what he has made, or to rarify it?

It would taste good, she knows. So good, so easy, so succulent. A perfect bite, and the moment she swallowed, it would wipe

away all the agony of her resistance. Her tongue along lips, the pantomime of a kiss—but if they are his, those lips carry

with them the vows he asked of her.

Trust in Phosyne.

Protect the people.

She keeps her mouth firmly shut.

“Not him,” the Absolving Saint says, but too late to sway her; she has taken the strength she needs. She glares at him and

pictures herself flaying his own lips away. His teeth are white when he speaks, too clean and perfect to be anything but fake.

“I intend to savor him; he is not to be so quickly used up.”

“And neither are you,” the False Lady purrs.

“Your dogs don’t seem to know that,” Voyne spits, jerking her chin toward the door to the throne room. Those sharpened figments,

those painted vicious shadows, crowd it.

“You cannot begrudge a beast its nature,” the Absolving Saint replies. “Or its joys. Why should they not frolic, like the

people of Aymar we have rescued for you?”

She tries to surge up, to snap her own teeth at him, but she’s too weak. The False Lady’s hold is too firm.

“You need your strength,” the False Lady coos as She guides Voyne’s attention back with a touch. She leans back and pulls at the fabric of Her robes, until Her breast is bared. Voyne can’t look away. She stares as the monster draws one fingernail across the alabaster flesh, parts it like a fleece.

Instead of blood, golden honey oozes forth. It drips down, coats what is almost, but not quite, a nipple, a strange knot of

rosy, shining flesh.

“Eat,” She says, softly. Her other hand cups the back of Voyne’s head. “Drink. Let me nourish you.”

Voyne turns away. She wants to snarl in threat, or to retch in horror, but the honey smells so good, rich and sweet, so sweet—

Was this how Phosyne felt, when Voyne pressed her to eat the comb?

“You trust in the little mouse to fetch you home again, don’t you?” the False Lady murmurs. “Just drink, and allow yourself

two masters. We both want to cultivate you, Ser Voyne. You have room enough in you for both.”

“I know what loyalty is,” Voyne bites out, because only the abstraction of duty can help her.

“You do so enjoy your suffering,” the monster says. Her nails scrape over Voyne’s scalp, sharp enough to make her gasp. “I

thought death your art, but now I find myself reconsidering. You have learned the many gradations of pain, I think, receiving

and giving, and you still search for yourself within it all. I thought to give you a life free of pain, but that was never

what you wished for, was it? Even gentleness is pain for you.”

Her words slide home, a misericord between the ribs. It galls her, drives her to argue, but she fights the urge. Another trick;

this is another way to bring her defenses down. She would not be so focused on her if She were not frightened, if Voyne did

not pose some threat.

(Or perhaps She only plays with Her food, the same way the shadows on the stairs did.)

The beast moves beneath Voyne, rolls her. A slip and blink and then Voyne is on the floor. The False Lady hauls her up to

her knees, and Voyne can see now that she is within reach of the throne. Behind it must be her sword. A little farther; she

has passed the test. She is so close.

“Stay here,” the Lady says into her ear, hands sliding along Voyne’s shoulders and then disappearing entirely. “Stay, and hope the little mouse remembers you exist. She has so many new and lovely worlds to explore—for you must know, I have shown her such wondrous sights.”

And then She is gone, and Voyne can hear nothing but the waiting breath of painted faces and the buzzing hum of bees.