Page 7 of The Starving Saints

Ser Voyne takes to sleeping in Phosyne’s room, across the doorway. She is a better block than the old haphazard stacks of

detritus. Nobody comes in, and nobody goes out.

Phosyne is very glad that only Pneio left her tower during the bombardment, and that she was able to haul him back without

Voyne’s notice. Her best guess is that Voyne cannot see the little beasts, for she doesn’t comment on them, even when Phosyne

can clearly see them dart between hiding places. They are like smoke.

Their heat, though, Voyne has noticed.

“Unblock the windows,” Voyne demands, the morning after the bombardment.

“No,” Phosyne says, scrambling for some excuse.

“A person needs sunlight,” Voyne says. “Fresh air. A break from this infernal heat and stench.”

Phosyne positions herself in front of one of the filled windows. “My work requires the dark.”

Voyne’s jaw tenses, twitches. It’s clear that she is itching for relief. For a summons to do as she did the night before.

She is not a creature made for standing guard, but for action. Phosyne hates to see her caged like this, but it isn’t up to

her.

She waits to see if Voyne will lunge.

Bruises make a patchwork of Phosyne’s dry, pale skin, lurid and uneven as if her body lacks the resources to soothe them.

She feels the ache of each one, even as her mind is afire.

“Leave the windows,” she says. “Let me work.”

“Your miracle,” Voyne says.

Her miracle. Her idea for a miracle. “I have much to study,” she says, desires coming into conjunction for a blissful, hopeful moment. “I need

supplies. Can you get them for me?”

She requisitions twenty candles from the priory. It earns her an hour’s privacy, and Voyne an hour’s walk.

The next several days are spent deep in work. Her hands dance over the candles, purest beeswax, clarified and cast by exacting

standard. She burns them down, one after the other, observing, reading, waiting for the next shift in perspective, the next

advancement.

She revisits the memory of the bombardment. The press of bodies, her terror over Pneio and Ornuo free to wander, the moans

of the frightened and injured. The flash of racing shadow that she’d had no choice but to chase, out into the strange silence

after the attack. She’d smelled such odors that night, bodily and chemical, some traces of what the Priory had done.

Salvation , Voyne called it, when Phosyne had enough presence of mind to finally ask. Intercession . The Priory, too, plays with fire these days.

There are innumerable references to fire in the books she has accumulated since she first became aware of the unseen world

that seems to lie parallel to their own, within reach for those who know to search for it. They are worn and dirty things

missing pages, passed from hand to hand, filled with knowledge that in her Priory days she would have mocked as fanciful,

imaginative forays into nothingness. She knows better now. Some of the books, she thinks, are correct, though she can’t figure

out how to utilize the knowledge within; other parts are wrong, but there is some truth to them anyway.

Her teachers in the Priory would have demanded proof. Measurement, replicable observation, a mechanism of action. And she

understands the appeal. Certainty feels safe. But certainty is also limiting. Certainty did not purify Aymar’s water.

These texts, with their parables, their fictions, their outlandish claims, are exactly the opposite. And yet with enough study,

she has teased meaning from them. She has made tangible changes to the world. She must keep searching for the next revelation.

One of her fragments, a haphazard translation of the works of somebody only credited as “the weeping philosopher”—a man who died of ?dema some six hundred years ago at least—describes the soul as measured in fire and water. Water, for soft growing things; fire, for the element that transcends death. An everliving flame, not constant, but shifting in its parts, some extinguishing, some springing up to life. There is something there, she thinks.

Occasionally, Voyne is called away. It’s never for long, but Ser Leodegardis occasionally sends for her. The king, less often.

Phosyne can see how each summons tears at her. She longs to leave, but hates to abandon her post.

Three days after the attack, Voyne is summoned just after dawn. As the door closes, Phosyne feels herself unwind. It is too

much, living under such strict and hateful observation, even when Voyne stays out of her way and allows inspiration to guide

her. Alone, Phosyne leans against her worktable and closes her eyes.

Her stomach cramps and ripples. Terrible, wretched body; it reminds her, ceaselessly, that to pursue the fire distracts her

from the ultimate goal of food.

They are the same , she tells her belly. Hush.

Before she can feed herself some scrap, there comes a soft knock. Not the king’s. Not Voyne’s. She holds still, hoping that

silence will make whoever it is disappear. She doesn’t want to look through her spyglass.

Sweat beads upon her brow. Is it getting hotter in here?

The door opens. There is nothing to stop anybody’s entrance with Voyne gone. Suddenly afraid, Phosyne looks up.

Prioress Jacynde stands there, in her raiment. It’s the simpler version, for working days, but it is still cleaner and more

elaborate than anything Phosyne has worn recently. How she can still starch her robes, Phosyne could not say.

“Phosyne,” Jacynde greets. The name sits ill on her lips; she still remembers calling her Sefridis, and Sefridis was obedient

and useful and small. Well, Phosyne is still small, she supposes. That part hasn’t changed.

“Your Radiance,” Phosyne replies.

“I have come to see for myself what you do with my candles,” Jacynde says, looking doubtfully at Phosyne’s workspace. Her nose wrinkles with distaste. “You certainly do take liberties with your independence.”

No clean cell for Phosyne anymore, no orderly calculations, no tending to the beehives. Not even a steady pattern of wake

and sleep; Phosyne often works through the night, especially when Voyne sleeps.

She must have some visceral memory of cloistered life, and yet it evades her. How did it feel, cleaning her cell? How did

it feel, to be in community, to have faith? Surely any sane person would remember. Surely that cannot evaporate so fast.

But it has. All that is left are the things worn so deep into her that they are no longer feelings, but axioms. There are

physical habits tied to this woman’s voice, habits that are hard to resist: ways of standing, ways of holding or avoiding

gaze. Shame bubbles out of a pocket Phosyne thought long-since sealed. Her scalp itches.

She wishes, briefly, that her heart would itch instead. She thinks it was easier, when she believed.

One of the Priory candles is lit. The flame shifts in the gloom. Barely enough to work by; a waste, no doubt, to Jacynde’s

eyes, because she cannot see what Phosyne has been observing.

“Congratulations,” Phosyne says, when the silence stretches, “on your success against Etrebia.”

Jacynde just looks exhausted.

“What were they?” Phosyne presses, though she doesn’t expect a true answer.

It’s not how she is supposed to talk to Jacynde. Training dictates deference. Even as a laywoman, she should be appeasing,

receptive, attentive in a submissive form. Instead, she can’t help but speak to Jacynde as if they are equals.

The storm upon Jacynde’s brow shows just how poorly that is received. But Phosyne cannot stop herself.

At some point, she lost the knack.

She will never taste honey again, Phosyne remembers with a pang. This woman has forbidden it, and even if she had not—Phosyne cannot imagine allowing herself to be welcome in service. Not after their break.

“Green vitriol,” Jacynde says, finally, “partially. Some of the sisters have been working with Theophrane in his smithy, which

I understand you nearly destroyed.”

Phosyne flushes and looks away. “It might have been a spark from your incendiaries,” she says, because there’s no way to explain

Pneio. No way she could have caused a spark without him.

“There was no spark until they struck home on the enemy line,” Jacynde replies, dryly. “But then, I don’t expect you to understand

the complexities.”

“No? And yet I cleaned the water,” she says, before she can hold her tongue.

Acknowledge me , she thinks. See what I can do. Be intrigued. Desire what I can teach you.

Jacynde never will.

The water is clean, and Jacynde cannot explain it. Their bellies are empty, and Jacynde cannot fill them. Phosyne understands,

then: Jacynde is insulted. Deeply insulted, that Phosyne can do what she cannot. The water, she had hope of solving one day.

But the food—

If Phosyne can do it, it will not be by the Priory’s alchemy, and it will be, incontrovertibly, magic.

It will be the domain of the Constant Lady, if they are lucky. If they are not, it will be something beyond.

How can Phosyne ever claim to be capable of such a thing?

I’m not , she wants to say. The king has decreed, but that can’t make it so. And yet even as she cringes away from the theological consequences of what she hopes to achieve, she also longs for it. Hears

a siren call, a whispering that there are rules to this world the Priory has no ability to understand, rules that nonetheless

exist.

How can the Priory reject understanding the world, just because it follows an unfamiliar order?

Jacynde, unimpressed, says only, “You should make the most of what I’ve given you. There will be no more.”

And then she is gone.

In the silence after Jacynde’s departure, Phosyne gazes at the dancing candle flame. It consumes the wax beneath it, transforms it into heat, the way the body transforms food into warmth and movement. But stomachs cannot break down the wax. She will burn her meager stores away soon.

A nun of the Priory can summon fire from iron. There, then gone, explosive and powerful, eating away at a new kind of food.

What did it consume? Perhaps that is the new angle she has needed, the next conjunction of ideas.

Jacynde’s visit has been illuminating. She has been looking at the problem all wrong. The king has asked for food from nothing;

she will find a way to let them have nothing as food.

It will begin with the candle.

Her mind is full of hymns. The fire cants as she hums them nearly below hearing. Green vitriol, sulfuric acid, the gasses

that caught fire and melted Etrebia’s engines of war. She will wait no more for fire from the heavens.

She needs more supplies.