Page 41 of The Starving Saints
Phosyne can relate.
“You are to look after me. Do you remember that?”
Ser Voyne nods, slowly, the movement ungainly and wrong. But she does not look away. She is listening. She’sremembering, with great force of will. Her body has begun to tremble.
Phosyne leans into her. Drags her hands along the muscles of herarms, corded and tense. There’s anger there.Good.She should be angry. If she could see the mess they’re in, she would be raging, and she would be beautiful in her rage.
“I’m out of my tower,” Phosyne points out. “I’m not supposed to be. The last time I got out, you nearly killed me. You were soangry, because together, we’re supposed to be saving this castle, and I never do what you ask.”
That gets a snarl out of the bigger woman, and then suddenly, it’s not Voyne pressed into the wall, it’s Phosyne. Her head cracks against the stone and she bucks, trying to get the knight’s weight off her. It doesn’t work.
Ser Voyne’s fist closes around her throat. Her thumb and forefinger press into the points of Phosyne’s jaw, and she gasps, head falling back against the wall. She’s supposed to be afraid, sheknowsthat, but this whole mess is so confusing and turned on its head that Phosyne isn’t really surprised to realize she’s enjoying this. That her bodysingswhen Ser Voyne squeezes a little tighter, and panic blooms in her chest.
“That’s it,” she gasps out. “You hate me. Remember?”
Ser Voyne squeezes harder. Phosyne can barely breathe. But on the gasp she does manage, she smells—
Blood.
And she remembers Jacynde’s empty, bloody mouth, the pieces clicking into place as she realizes why Ser Voyne was standing below the observatory. The eagerness in her flips to pure terror in an instant, and she begins to thrash. The stone is no longer cold against her back, it’s hot with the heat of her body, and she scrabbles against it, eyes closing, lips parting in a silent, airless scream—
And then she’s outside of the chapel, on the narrow walkway that rings the tower. There is a wall in front of her. She hears sobbing coming through it. Voyne’s sobbing. Somehow she’s fallen through the stone and come out whole the other side—and Voyne cannot follow.
Phosyne doesn’t look. She just runs.
18
Treila sleeps only fitfully. The heat of the summer makes her sweat and thrash in her sleep. Her workroom would be cooler, but she’s woken from enough nightmares of teeth against her flesh as it is; she doesn’t need to be any closer.
She almost sleeps through the king’s proclamation, but Simmonet drags her from her pallet at the first blast of the trumpets. She stares blankly while she’s summoned to an impossible feast, pats Simmonet’s back as he begins to weep with relief.
All wrong. This is all wrong. She needs to get out, and to get out, she needs to find the madwoman.Now.
But by the time she gets up to the tower, it’s empty. Phosyne isn’t even lying dead up in the loft. There’s nobody in the room at all. She considers ransacking it, taking everything that might even slightly be of use, but aside from the candle still submerged in the bucket of murky water, Treila sees absolutely nothing useful. Rotted meat, ratty blankets, a dried reptile hanging from the ceiling, a bucket of piss. Nothing else. Treila stands another long few moments in the open doorway, and once, she thinks she feels something brush against her leg.
Nothing is there.
So she goes hunting.
She prowls throughout Aymar like she’s looking for rats, checking every crevice. She can’t get into the great hall, where the king is once more cloistered with his guests, or even see through the windows, the crowd is so thick around it. And everywhere else, she doesn’tsee Phosyne, or Ser Voyne. They’re not in the keep, not in the yard, and Treila is ready to scream when she thinks, at last, to check the chapel.
She’s not halfway there when she sees Phosyne.
The madwoman is running, weaving, staggering as her weakened muscles threaten to revoke support. She’s making straight for the keep, and Treila hesitates. Racing to intercept her might draw attention, when Phosyne is, at least, alive, and likely headed back to her room. But then Phosyne pitches forward, and Treila can’t stand to let her hit the ground that hard. She springs across the dusty space between them.
Treila catches Phosyne before she can fall, but can’t hold her upright. She sinks slowly to her knees, laying the madwoman across her lap, cradled in her arms. Phosyne flinches away, babbles something incomprehensible.
Treila slaps her.
It doesn’t help. She’ll need to take a different tack.
“I need your help again,” she says, even as she fumbles in her pocket for another nibble of fruit. “Listen. Are you listening?”
But Phosyne is just shaking, not saying anything, gaze darting behind Treila again and again. Back toward the chapel.
With a sinking feeling, Treila turns to look, too.
Ser Voyne is staring at them.
