Page 5 of The Starving Saints
“Are you a coward, then?”
Voyne flinches, recoils, finally looks up at him. “Excuse me?”
“You’d abandon your king.”
“I would risk my life to save him.”
“But you wouldn’t die by his side.”
Leodegardis holds her gaze in challenge. They are close in age, a difference of no more than three or four years. They have known each other since they were teenagers, perfecting their work with the blade, strengthening their bodies and learning tactics, learning languages. They were heroes together, for a time, planting their flags on conquered battlefields, making legends of themselves. Now they stare each other down across a vast gulf that grew when they weren’t looking.
In another life, Voyne could have been him. Tasked with the protection of the border, entrusted with a castle, with a span of fields and towns, with the lives and well-being of hundreds, thousands. They both won their king’s favor on the battlefield, earned his trust. They should be equals.
Instead, she is a glorified lapdog. Within besieged walls, she is worthless.
She turns away, finally, bowing her head. “I was mistaken,” she said, throat thick. “But please—please promise me, that if my actions today threaten your control here, that you will remember my offer.”
Leodegardis doesn’t promise, but he also doesn’t foreswear her. “Go rest,” he says instead, offering a tired smile. “It’s almost time for evening service, I think. Perhaps the Lady will grant you some comfort.”
A good suggestion, and kindly meant. She clasps his shoulder,then leaves him to his nightmares. They all feel it, the weight of death bearing down on Aymar, but heisAymar. They are all about to die, and she is about to fail, but he is about to crumble.
She winds her way through the keep and to the chapel tower. Jacynde’s nuns are indeed hard at work, ready to guide the few parishioners who are here to observe the setting sun. Voyne, grateful, lets the familiar words and hymns wash over her. It isn’t the balm it used to be, back when she was young and idealistic and fervent in her belief that the world could ever be orderly, could ever make sense, but it still soothes her jagged edges. It is a relief, to be reminded that she isn’t alone, is never alone. The Constant Lady always has a hand upon the world.
After, she makes her way up uneven staircases long-since memorized, twists and turns as familiar as the halls she played in as a child. Few rushlights burn, but there is midsummer moonlight streaming through windows, more than enough to guide her by. She steps aside to let a serving girl pass, then takes the final turning to reach what used to be Leodegardis’s room, now given over to Cardimir, to Voyne, to their servants. A little household for the king, shut up in a keep and starving quietly, only a little slower than all the rest.
She slips inside, and is surprised to see Cardimir waiting for her.
He sits by the hearth, where there’s no fire thanks to how warm and sticky the air is. “Come,” he says, voice pitched so as not to wake the servants who have already bedded down in their partitioned section of the room. Voyne goes to him, kneels before him in greeting. He touches her shoulder absently, the one that hurts, the one that is scarred from an arrow she took for him years ago.
“I had forgotten,” he murmurs, “the power of your presence.”
“You saw the riot?” she asks.
“Through the strangest vantage point,” he says. “What do you know of Leodegardis’s madwoman?”
“The heretic?” she asks. “Very little. Only that she arrived a few months before we did.” It hadn’t felt important to learn more, no matter Leodegardis’s odd affection for the woman.
But the entrance to her tower room is not so far away. Voyne hasseen the woman a few times, drawn and furtive and skulking. Her eyes drift in that direction.
“I have charged her with finding a way to restock the quartermaster’s stores,” he says. “Now that our other options have run out.”
Voyne averts her eyes so that she does not stare in horrified disbelief.
“My liege?” Her mistrust colors her words more than she wants it to, but it’s been a long day. A long day of nearly killing desperate, hungry people. She understands, of course. It’s tempting, to hope for an impossible solution, but she had thought her king was better than that. More reasonable.
But it’s also a distraction. They can’t afford distractions.
“I have asked her for a miracle,” Cardimir says.
Voyne bows her head, mastering herself with the reflex of long practice. “I see,” she says. “And what provisions does she demand for such a thing?” If it’s not much, if it’s only a way to keep the woman occupied, perhaps it’s not so bad.
There is so little to do but wait for death now.
“Very little,” he says. Her shoulders ease. “But I want her to have more. I want her to have you.”
Voyne’s head jerks up. She stares, unable to stop herself. “Me.”
“I need you to watch her,” he adds. “Encourage her. She is... disorganized. I would see her supported. Given oversight.”
