Page 6 of The Starving Saints

When the next dawn comes, Etrebia remains encamped.

Treila is not surprised; she has long given up on miracles. But Edouart and Simmonet are distraught. They thought their salvation

was at hand, when the news spread through the tight press of bodies sheltering in the lowest levels of the keep. She’d taken

them with her into her workroom, if only so she could get there quickly, make sure her little gap was safe, and had been kept

up far past the end of the bombardment by their hopeful whispers.

They cry themselves to sleep each night, now that they know the truth: victory does not mean freedom, and they are all still

starving.

Some died in the bombardment. There is a funeral the next day. Treila thinks that, had nobody died at all, the inhabitants

at Aymar might have collapsed in on themselves in frustrated, aimless agony. Death provides catharsis. She knows that her

own father’s murder gave her focus, in those first terrible days.

It was all she could see, as she scraped for bits of food, for makeshift shelter: her father on his knees before King Cardimir,

her father’s neck bared to Ser Voyne’s sword. Her father’s young wife, so recently wed, begging for mercy. Her father silent,

all his obscenities exhausted before dawn, when he was dragged from his bed, from his chambers, from his title. No longer

Lord de Batrolin: the king had declared him a traitor, and so her entire world had been redefined.

A lesser girl would have been consumed by that grief, even as she and her stepmother and her father’s closest servants were

thrust from the house, marched off the land and into the wilderness. A softer girl would have wept, and refused to walk, and

starved.

Instead, she had taken the rage beneath the grief and used it to keep her going. The servants left, or died; her stepmother disappeared the first night, likely running back to the king to beg mercy once more. And Treila had kept walking.

Aymar has nowhere to go, though. Soon the grief will pass and the stomachs of its wretched inhabitants will remind them how

much they can still suffer. It will ease things, briefly, having fewer mouths to feed, though not nearly long enough. Each

mouth already eats so little.

Treila does not attend the funeral. She does not attend many services. Half of it is her squandered faith, trampled in the

dirt five years ago and never quite recovered; the Constant Lady does not have a saint for her, no Vengeful Saint or Starving

Saint. No true balm for her bitterness, no witness and no succor.

The other half is pragmatic wariness. She knows how quickly a single beesting can multiply to hundreds, courtesy of her desperate

attempt to tear a wild hive open to get at the honey within. They stung her bleeding and raw. She had nearly died.

She’d fled, then collapsed in a meadow where, swollen and still starving, she’d dreamed of the Constant Lady. Each stinger

throbbed where it rested in her skin, and the too-perfect Lady had looked down at her, face immobile. No benediction, no offer

of salvation—just silent judgment, and then She’d turned and walked away.

It seems absurd to think that a visitation, when a fevered nightmare makes far more sense. But Treila still has never shaken

that feeling of abandonment, of censure. And if the Priory knew about that day, about how she’d violated the hive, how she’d

been struck down in retribution, she imagines they wouldn’t want her, either.

So she takes their blessing on her tongue each day as they walk the castle walls, because everybody else does it, because

she does not want to stand out. But otherwise, she keeps her distance.

Instead, Treila works to clear the hole at the base of the wall. She pulls out loose stones one by one and discards them among the rubble. It takes far longer than the length of the funeral, of course. She works for days. Sometimes, it is busy enough that she is lost in the bustle, but people are moving around less and less. They are hunkering down, preparing for their own individual sieges. And by a day after the bombardment, word has gotten out; the scanty rations the quartermaster gives out each morning will still be gone in two weeks. Maybe less.

Boots are being hoarded for boiling.

And people are watching. Prying. The guards are now looking inward instead of outward half the time, afraid of another riot,

and every idle farmer watches for any alteration in patterns of behavior. Everything is a potential threat, even Treila with

her rocks.

So when she can’t excuse her ramblings in the day, she does it at night. The rats help, or their scant corpses; she makes

a deal with the quartermaster, finally, to bring him what she catches. She can see anger in his eyes when she offers, because

he could have used her months ago, but he has no room to fight her.

She brings a rat; she deposits a stone. She isn’t paid a single coin, but she is earning her escape, so she accepts it.

A messenger is selected; Simmonet was right that they were looking, and Treila was right that they are realists, and will not believe in

quick salvation, no matter the staying of Etrebia’s weapons. This time, they send the houndsmaster. And then, once he is over

the wall, they slaughter his ten remaining dogs.

They’re careful about it, of course. They learned the hard way, when they slaughtered the first batch, nearly two thirds of

the pack, months ago to reduce the number of mouths to feed. Half the residents of the castle would be horrified if they knew,

and the other half would rush the great hall, screaming for the meat. So Ser Leodegardis does it himself, because nobody would

expect it of him, and he does it quickly. Treila watches from her perch in the rafters of the kennel as he takes each one

behind a half-height wall, crouches, and slits its throat.

It is a subtle thing, the way the kennel quiets. It takes a few days for the word to spread, and by then everybody’s gotten

a small portion of fresh meat, so they’re already satiated, already complicit.

The horses are next, Treila figures. The hay is all but gone, the grass in the yard long turned to mud by all the refugees. With no food, the horses will starve soon enough, so better to take the meat; but without horses, they will have no way to sortie with the enemy. They will be giving up their last chances of anything but a close fight. They will be choosing to outlast on their stomachs alone.

But it’s not really a choice.

Hopefully she’ll be long gone by then.

On the fourth day, she’s cleared a gap that might be big enough to fit through, and she sits back on her heels, staring at

the hole. Her fingers ache. Her heart pounds. She thinks of sliding through that gap, down and out, and then—

And then what?

She came to Aymar for a reason, and if she leaves, she will be abandoning it.

She sits down fully now, and closes her eyes, and pictures Ser Voyne. Not holding the blade to her father’s throat, but before

that. Before, when she was recovering from her injuries from the glorious rescue of Carcabonne, when she was a guest in Treila’s

father’s house. Beautiful, strong, brave Ser Voyne, intimidating and beloved by all who have so much as heard her name.

Treila’s mouth tastes sour at the thought.

She remembers Ser Voyne’s hands on her hips, nudging her into a cleaner stance, a practice sword heavy in Treila’s hands as

she struggled to focus. The memory’s five years gone, but not faded in the slightest. Treila can still feel Ser Voyne’s breath

ghosting on the back of her neck, and how her own body responded with awkward, coltish want and alertness. She remembers sparring,

and though Voyne had nearly a decade of age and experience on her, half a foot and a substantial weight in muscle, Treila

had won more than once. She’d been clever, and fast, and she’d laughed and fancied herself in love, even though her teacher

hadn’t noticed, not once, and—

And then King Cardimir had arrived, jealous and volatile, and everything had gone wrong. The memory stops its shadow play

there, because Treila has lived long enough in that pit, and has woven the anger of it into herself. She doesn’t need to remember

her father’s head on the executioner’s block, Ser Voyne’s gleaming sword poised above his neck. She doesn’t need to picture

the woods the rest of her household had fled into. She doesn’t need to remember starving.

She’s going to do enough of that again, and soon.

So while she’d love to stay and find some way, despite the constant watchers, despite the constant strain, to get Ser Voyne alone, to ask her, Don’t you know me? , to wrap her calloused fingers—no longer those of a young, promising lady—around that bitch’s throat...

She leans down. Scents the air. Opens her eyes and looks at the hole, and then sets about shucking her clothing.

Treila moves quickly, keenly aware that there is no door anymore separating her little workroom from the rest of the keep;

all wood was requisitioned and inventoried for firewood back near the beginning, when the nights were still chilly. It sits

in one of the smaller towers along the east wall of the castle, for when they need it, no thought given to how much privacy

is now at a premium.

She sheds her boots, her cap, her kirtle, her smock, her smalls. She strips down to nothing but her skin, then sets about

bundling all that fabric into something small and compact. She can’t afford the bulk of it lying on her body, if she’s going

to fit into that hole. She hesitates a moment before tying it closed with some of the last of her waxed thread, thinking she

should add her stores, her trinkets, but this is not likely to lead to an escape immediately. Surely there will be more excavations.

And if she can get out, she can get back in. Probably.

She ties up the bundle and comes to crouch by the gap, considering the best way in. Feet first, and she can keep an eye on

this room as she goes, but if it is anything less than straight, she will be at a disadvantage. So headfirst it is, despite

the flutter of panic in her breast at going straight down into the unknown. She gets onto her belly. She pushes the bundle

in ahead of her, then squirms in after it.

She manages to fit her shoulders through the gap, and for once their stringy narrowness is a help to her as she wriggles and

twists, inching a little farther into what she can now tell is not just a hole, but a tunnel. There is no other side, not

within immediate reach, but she feels that same fetid, damp air moving on her skin.

She has never been so glad to smell shit.

Her heart quickens, and she claws her way forward, past gritty gravel and onto solid stone. Her hips catch on the entry for just a moment, and then she is through, entirely encased in cold stone against her naked flesh. She pushes the bundle of her clothing another half foot ahead of her, then follows it, moving slowly, her knees scraping hard against the rock. It’s not smoothed for human passage; this is not a manmade tunnel. It has not been dug out, only found.

Another foot. Another. She is going down, just slightly, but she can feel the blood beginning to pool in her head. She starts

to worry. Should she have gone in feet first? Should she have brought a light, somehow? She can see nothing now, her body

blocking what little light comes from the cellar behind her, and she feels her way forward instead. Inch over inch, but the

stone is closing in again, and her breaths are coming faster.

A rope. She should have brought rope. Foolish, foolish girl, to plunge ahead without any thought but rescue. Her breathing

fills the narrow gap, and her spine presses into the rock above her. Her head thickens, her hands scrabble beneath her, she

feels like she is falling.

She feels like she is dying.

She can’t even curl in on herself, and when she tries to retreat, her toes can’t find the way. It’s not as simple as crawling

backward, it’s not like trying to climb out from beneath a table in a game of hide-and-seek, and the feeling of space behind

her, when she finds it again, is terrifying. She can’t see where she is going, forward or back. It’s a single passageway,

she has passed no turnings, and yet she is suddenly so confused. She is lost. She is closed in on all sides and simultaneously

alone in an empty, vast space.

But no, no, that’s not true, and she knows better. She knows better. She has come through so much, and a little rocky grave is not for her, and when she stretches out one leg, she feels

the incline that leads her back up and she knows she can push herself along that way. When she stretches out one arm, she

finds a drop-off, but not too steep, not so steep she needs a rope.

She is in a tube. She can retreat. She can advance.

She advances.

Still, she should have brought a light, she thinks, as she passes from the tight confines of the tube into something more open, just a little, where she could gather herself and turn around, go back headfirst. She clutches the bundle of her clothing to her chest and tries to think, one hand on the path home so she will not lose it. A cooling breeze comes from below and to her left, soothes her sweaty brow, helps her put her thoughts in order. If she goes back, there’s a chance she can steal a rushlight, but she will have no way to keep it lit through that tunnel, and no way to light it once she’s through. The same for any candle, though there’s a better chance, if she can find a glass housing to put around it. The nuns will have them, surely, though obtaining one from them seems unlikely. The madwoman’s tower, then? Perhaps, but now the king’s lapdog is her guard dog instead. So no, there is no chance of light.

Which leaves one decision only: Can she go forward in blackness—or will she die if she tries?

There is no guarantee that this path leads to safety, or anywhere at all. But the breeze from below is not only in her imagination.

The wind must come from somewhere, mustn’t it? If she goes slowly, if she leaves things behind her to mark her path, if she

turns back the moment there is a branch she may not remember later—she can do this. She can go by touch and instinct. She is a slippery thing of

darkness, an eel in girl’s skin, and she is brave.

She loses all sense of time as she inches forward, down, following the whisper of air. She leaves one stocking first, then

the other. Her cap. Her girdle. Her smalls. She does not find any branch, not really, a few gullies that are only the depth

of her shin and then stop. Her stomach grumbles, and she thinks of food, and how she should go back, loot her cache, bring

food with her, but what if she edges forward just another step, squirms through one more gap barely large enough for her to

pass, what if she—

And then there is light.

Light.

Not daylight, but the thin blue of night, and she has not been down here so long at all. She makes out the shadows of footholds,

descending a steeper section. She sees a ledge below her, drops her dress down first, then follows after.

She emerges into a room.

No; not a room. This was not made by human hands. It’s a grotto, an underground stream, and she can hear the water moving now. The stink of human waste presses in, and she knows she has found the water that feeds the well. She falls to her knees and wants to kiss it, but knows better.

But the light...

The light is coming from the water, and Treila frowns down at it. Then she lifts her head and peers around, and sees no crack

in the stone, no way for moonlight to filter in. Confused, she rocks back on her heels. She looks up and down the length of

the faintly glowing water, looking for how it enters, how it exits.

She can’t see anything. The water passes through gaps that are so minuscule she cannot see them, or perhaps just appears,

as if by magic, through the stone. The water will not help her.

She makes herself stand, makes herself feel for the breeze.

There.

It’s coming from a narrow fissure in the wall, barely visible. It might have been impossible to find without the thin light

that throws strange shadows on every surface. Treila approaches, slides her fingers into it, but it’s not wide enough even

to admit her hand. She presses her face to it, nose and lips in the gap, and breathes, breathes the first fresh air she’s

had in months (because she does not count the air in the lower yard, not even if she can see birds flying above, because she

cannot leave ).

But she can’t leave through here, either.

“Are you lost?” the crack breathes against her lips.