Page 8 of The Starving Saints

Five days after the bombardment, Ser Leodegardis sends a runner to fetch Ser Voyne for Priory service. It’s a welcome relief.

Phosyne has now added stinking sulfur to the mix of her experiments. Voyne’s only balm is that Phosyne is running low on candles,

and when they are gone—well, then the Priory will give her no more, her work will stop by force, and Voyne can argue to be

freed.

Another day or two. She need only bear the madwoman’s inanities a little longer. Then she will be able to sit at the table

once more with the other knights and strategize: How will they take what the Lady has granted them, and win salvation?

Phosyne still has not told her how the fire started, the night of the bombardment. She will not tell her anything about her

miraculous idea. Voyne leaves her to her dark and stinking cell, guards now posted at her door to stop her from any other

smoldering wanders. Outside, she breathes the clean and slightly cooler air, and tries not to look at the scars from Etrebia’s

assault. There are so few strong hands to put things back to rights.

The chapel hums with the buzzing of bees, the air filled with winged bodies passing in and out of the arched, open windows.

They, unlike everybody else in this castle, can pass freely over the walls and to more fruitful fields, but they always return

home, filling the rows of painted boxes with honey. It’s a shame that they work too slowly to feed the hundreds of mouths

that wait.

Voyne kneels beside her liege on pillows once cased in velvet, now only sacks of worn-away nap. She is so grateful to be near him, and far away from Phosyne, that when Prioress Jacynde leads voices raised in hymns, hers is strongest among them.

And what a balm those hymns are: predictable words, in predictable order, about how to find solace in an unpredictable world.

The hymns preach order, measurement, constancy, when all the world is yet lost in chaos. To build a bed, a house, a nation

is to create an anchor, something to hold on to.

When Voyne was a little girl, the engineers in service to the Constant Lady had not yet solved the problem of comb-building.

They had not divined the correct proportions that would persuade a hive to build only within movable frames, instead of filling

every nook and cranny with waxy lattices. They’d used skeps still, lovingly-woven baskets that the bees would fill all the

way to bursting—and then, each fall, the skeps would be destroyed in the harvest, and the bees with them. Honey had been far

more precious, more rare. She’d tasted it only on feast days, but she’d gorged herself then, on honey cakes and mead and sweet

comb crushed between her teeth. Now, she parts her lips and Prioress Jacynde places just a dot of honey on her tongue, a benediction.

It is, of course, sweet, but more than that, it brings with it flavors floral and vegetal, freshness she now longs for with

her whole soul. This is not last year’s honey; they must have begun to process some of the frames of honeycomb. It’s too early

for it, but perhaps they were so full they had to be drained.

Or perhaps it’s because the quartermaster has more need of it than holy rites.

The offering given and received, Ser Voyne anticipates the end of the service, and a moment to talk alone with her liege,

but instead, there is a rustle of fabric as two nuns enter from the lower chamber, bearing up a body between them. Another funeral , Ser Voyne realizes, and looks around, but nobody else appears surprised.

They all know, she realizes. It is only she who is out of the loop.

The dead body is that of an older man, his features already drawn well before death; the lines creasing his skin are deep furrows, and there aren’t many that suggest laughter. Beneath his skin are only hollows, empty spaces, where his flesh has withered down to nothing. She thinks, horribly, it might be the first starvation death, until she sees the abbreviation of the leg, just above the knee. One of the people rescued from the rubble, she realizes.

She had thought the funerals concluded. She had thought they had known the measure of their loss.

One last soul taken by Etrebia’s hand, before the rest of them begin to succumb to privation. Somehow, this is worse. Worse

than the mass funeral she had been summoned to on the first day after the attack; she’d stood guard for that one, watching

the crowd as they regained their fervor, their commitment. It had been beautiful, glorious, terrible; she could see every

mouth lapping up the balm they were given, the righteous reactivity of a people acutely wounded, not slowly eroding. She’d

known already, though. There was no sign of Etrebia’s retreat. There was no change, despite a miracle.

She’d suffered, that day. A brilliant crash from the exaltation of the night’s victory down into the muck and mire of entrapment,

of Phosyne’s madness, of the resumption of the ordinary.

Is that why today’s funeral is so quiet? So ill-attended?

She watches as Jacynde anoints the dead man’s brow with honey ( food for somebody else; how dare they waste it? ), arranges the limbs into a death repose, leans close and closes her own eyes, as if in sadness.

“Death is the natural result of life,” Jacynde says, and her voice rings out through the room. “One follows the other, inevitable

as the sun rises and sets. But though the setting sun cools the air and wakens the beasts of the night, death instead is a

singular rupture. Death does not come all at once; it leaves many of us in the sunlight behind, to grapple with a loss that

comes seemingly out of order. Our own rhythms distract us from the procession.”

Voyne and the others echo assent, understanding, though Voyne does not entirely feel it.

There are few people in the chapel outside of the king’s retinue and Ser Leodegardis’s household. The most pious, perhaps,

or direct relations. Nothing like the first funeral; if there could have been a feast, there would have been.

But people sensibly keep their distance from death, when it lurks just outside their door.

“This man, Jecobe de Avienten, has left us seemingly out of order. A single death, too late to join his fellows. But his death

was a natural thing. His life has ended, his death has begun. And so we honor and respect that change, that brave venture

into the unknown.”

Brave , Voyne thinks, and almost laughs. Brave, truly? She thinks of his family, who has likely watched him suffer, then realizes,

bitterly, that chances are good that he has no family at all. Otherwise the empty pews make no sense.

And what of the people who will come next? When starvation comes, it is the isolated who are taken first. Men like Jecobe.

That he died in the attack was, perhaps, a mercy.

This is a bellwether.

The rest of the funeral is unobjectionable. The service that follows is reassuringly, predictably standard, and if not for

the body on the slab, the bees dancing over its cold flesh and suckling at the honey on its brow, Voyne could almost feel

okay again.

When it’s over, King Cardimir still kneels, head lowered in prayer for the salvation of the keep, as he does every week. Around

her, Prioress Jacynde’s nuns launch into motion, a carefully orchestrated dance, just like the bees they tend to. They avoid

the body and busy themselves with the processional that follows the service. Their dedication and order is a far cry from

Phosyne’s scrambling madness. The thought galls Voyne, enough to make her stand, knees creaking. She thinks to ask something

of Jacynde, some advice, some clarity—or at least to confirm her suspicions, that there is nothing useful in Phosyne, after

all.

Perhaps it wasn’t true that the Priory had taken the credit for cleaning the water to still fears; perhaps they’d planted

the thought that it was Phosyne who had done it out of kindness, to allow her blighted mind some privacy instead of allowing

her to be cast out into the general population, where she surely could not manage.

But before she can reach Jacynde, the icon of the Constant Lady rises into the air, four nuns taking their positions to bear her gilded palanquin. The poles sit heavy on their slender shoulders, and two of them falter, swaying slightly, their heads no doubt rushing from lack of food and the heat of midday. But they rally, urged on by the thick perfume of the box. It’s old now, a bit stale, but still strong, soaked into the preserved flowers that are heaped around the statue itself. Only the Lady’s elongated, stylized face peers out from its desiccated bower, pure white around the jaw and hairline, fading to the brilliant goldenrod of crushed dandelions on Her cheeks and lips. Her eyes are wide open, the irises concentric rings of red and blue and green, and Her lips curve into a beatific smile.

Despite the circumstances, the Priory has kept Her immaculate. The dried flowers are a much better option than none at all,

and the horsehair wig that tops the statue has been kept combed and carefully braided. The clockwork that allows Her to lift

one hand in benediction still moves when the nun at the back turns the crank tucked out of sight. The small skep that rests

in the Lady’s lap hums with activity, bees climbing out and wriggling inside, but no honey leaks from it. It is a blazing

beacon of order in a world threatening to abandon it, and Ser Voyne finds herself kneeling again before it, shivering.

She should probably focus her attentions and her prayers on one of the saints. It is said they intercede more readily, and

the Constant Lady has now soaked in their collective adoration for two hours, while the saints have watched on from their

smaller litters, less elaborately decorated. She should be prostrating herself before the Warding Saint, to beg for the continued

strength of their walls, or pressing a kiss to the silvered lips of the Absolving Saint, confessing to her impulsive demand

to be allowed to ride for help. She has no need of the Loving Saint, but even he would be a better option, more human, more

likely to do more than observe.

But Ser Voyne wants nothing more than for her world to make sense again, so she gazes up at the Lady’s ringed eyes, and prays.

Time, however, will not wait for her prayers, and the Lady’s gracious girls are on a tight schedule. The candles have burned down to the noontime mark, and the day is hot, the sun blinding. They begin their procession, leaving Ser Voyne on her knees behind. They bear the icons out of the tower and onto the walls of the upper bailey. They will walk the whole perimeter of the castle today, just as they have every day before, and will every day after. Then they will go down to the yard, down among the tents and the starving children, and they will minister as they are able. Help to mend broken things, give the smallest touch of honey to the tongues of all who will kneel before them.

They leave the body behind.

Jacynde remains as well. She drifts to the body’s side once more, and Voyne joins her.

“Are there others?” she asks, when it is only the four of them left in the room: Cardimir, Leodegardis, Jacynde, herself.

“That were so badly injured in the attack?”

She wishes she already knew. She should already know.

“No, just the one,” Jacynde says. “He likely would have died soon anyway; he was too weak to recover.” She’s more practical,

in private, than she is in her sermons. Voyne appreciates it. She sidles closer. Thinks to speak of Phosyne. If she asks questions,

and the king can hear them, can hear what madness is passing under this roof—

She doesn’t get the chance.

“Ser Leodegardis,” Prioress Jacynde says, and Voyne comes back to herself and sees that Jacynde is holding out a knife, hilt

first.

The keeper of Aymar takes it with only the slightest hesitation. His fingers wrap tight as he approaches the body.

She rushes to his side before she can think better of it. “Leo—”

“Step aside, Ser Voyne,” he says, and his voice is so strained it nearly breaks. “This must be done.”

“What—”

But he has taken the man’s arm, is stretching it along his side on the platform, fitting the blade to his wrist. He is going

to cut the dead man’s hands off.

“Look away, if it distresses you so,” he murmurs.

He begins to cut.

“No,” Voyne says, then, as her overheated brain begins to make sense of this, louder, “ No. ” She grabs Leodegardis’s hand, and his lips twist in anger.

“Ser Voyne,” her king warns. “You are harder than this. Steel yourself, please.”

“You can’t. You can’t send him to the quartermaster,” she says, looking between them, to Jacynde, desperate. “Things aren’t

so bad yet. We have time .”

“Not much of it,” Prioress Jacynde says. “And meat spoils.”

Leodegardis shrugs off her hold.

The blade meets bone. Aymar’s keeper grimaces, shifts his grip, guides the point of the blade into the joint space. This man

has been dead for long enough that he is no longer rigid, and so his blood is sluggish and clotted, but it still seeps out,

dark red, almost brown.

The hand falls away from the body. The cross section of the wrist does not look so different from that of livestock. Voyne

closes her eyes against it, and, unbidden, remembers the taste of flesh.

There have been times, before, where there was no other option. Leodegardis knows as well as she does; they have been pinned

down in bleak winters, in blighted fields. They have done what they needed to survive. They have made pacts with their fellow

knights, If my body should fail before yours, you must take my flesh into your own, you must get out . But that was different. That was done with eyes wide open, among equals. Here, now—

“You cannot do this,” she repeats, even as she hears Leodegardis begin to saw at one of the feet. It’s easier to consume a man when you’ve forgotten what he was , her experience whispers. No feet, no hands, no head, and the body is not a man anymore, just a package of flesh. Deliverance.

Salvation. It will buy them a little more time. But— “Not while we still have horses.”

“A horse on the hoof will keep longer,” Leodegardis argues, voice flat.

“ Stop ,” she begs, and looks to her king.

Her king looks back, unmoved.

“My people,” he says, “must eat. They do not need to know. Nobody else needs to know but us.”

He, she knows, has never had to make this choice. Perhaps that is why he can be so confident. To him this is all theoretical.

And he won’t be the one eating human meat.

“In times of extremis,” Jacynde adds, voice even, “we must use what we are given by the saints. And this is what is given.”

“And the other dead?” she snaps. “What is different today? What has changed so much in three days?” What is she missing?

Leodegardis grimaces. “The meat had already begun to spoil,” he says, softly. “And too many were already thinking about the

bodies. Here, in this instance, we have privacy.”

“We’d hide it from them.” When she has been driven to this desecration, she walked into it knowingly. This deception, this

paternalistic, horrific management—

“For their own good,” Leodegardis says. “If they do not know, then they need never blame themselves.”

He is right, of course. But she cannot accept this butchery. “If we do this, we cross a line,” she says. “We cannot go back.

We have time, still. The Priory has come through for us. Etrebia’s siege engines are broken. Will we not ride out to break

their line? Will we not try ?”

Her liege’s lips curl in a snarl, an expression she hasn’t seen on him since the siege first set in and proved it could not

be broken. “Ser Voyne, master yourself. We do not have the strength to fight. This is not the time to be precious.” He looks

so arrogant, in this moment, chin lifted, tongue virginal to the taste of human meat. “Give me a miracle, and I will relent,”

he proclaims. “But I see no miracle.”

“The woman is ungovernable!” Voyne cries. “You cannot rely on her. You can’t ask me to—”

“I can ask you to do anything I please,” he cuts her off. “She gave us clean water. She will give us food. Until then, I will do as I see fit.” He looks down at the body of Jecobe de Avienten, touches the cut stump

of his wrist.

“You screech so loudly of what we should and should not do. We should not eat him, hm? Then what if we give it to your charge

instead?” Cardimir asks. “Not so bad as eating, but it could still give us food one day. It could be the link to our miracle.

Would that mollify your nerves, girl?”

Girl strikes her deeper even than the thought of Phosyne fumbling about with a man’s remains. Cardimir has never spoken to her this way, and she bristles. “And what would she do with it, Your Majesty? Let it rot and try to make it dance with grass seeds?”

“I must agree with Ser Voyne,” the prioress admits. “To be consigned to meat is terrible. To be wasted would be more so.”

“And have you given me a solution?” the king snaps, rounding on her, his fury growing. “Either of you, will you give me a

solution? No? If you tell me she is mad and cannot give me my miracle, then I will trust you. But if that is so, then this

man’s flesh goes to feed my people. He is a sacrifice. This is a sacrifice. You must know what we have done, but they have no need to. It buys us time. Stand back , Ser Voyne.”

Helplessly trained, Ser Voyne steps back. She sinks to one knee. She stares up at her king, and wishes she were anywhere else

at all.