Page 14 of The Starving Saints
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 messengerisselected; 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 knowme?, 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 againsther 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. Sheknowsbetter. 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.
