Page 18 of The Starving Saints
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 onlyhollows, 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 gildedpalanquin. 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. Theybear 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?”
