Page 54 of The Starving Saints
He makes a pleased little noise that’s almost swallowed up in the conversation all around them. “It makes a little more sense now. That look you wore in the garden.”
Treila inhales sharply. “You were watching.”
“Of course. It’s not often I see such a beautiful mess of confusion. Gallant Ser Voyne was not acting as you expected, was she?”
“No,” she admits. Considers. “The last time she saw me, it unsettled her. Weakened her walls.”
“You wanted to bring them tumbling down, but instead found them transfigured.”
“Replaced.”
He hums. “Oh, you are a sharp little thing, aren’t you? Eager to cut, and drink deep. She missed it.”
“That’s intentional,” she murmurs. No, Voyne can’t know at all. But then she thinks a moment, realizes he means the Lady, and she goes still.
“Intentional to all the world,” he agrees. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Her.”
“Why not? Don’t you serve Her?”
“Sheathe your knife, and perhaps I can answer some of your questions.”
And he lets her go.
It would take just the slightest jerk forward to slide the knife between his ribs. But she doesn’t even hesitate. She pushes the knife back into its sheath and into the folds of her skirt.
She offers him her empty hands.
Perhaps augury is not the only way to get something useful out of him.
He takes her by the wrists, and climbs off the bench, leading her away. She follows, heart hammering, wondering if she’s making a terrible mistake. But this creature is a clever sort, and just like with Phosyne on the ground beneath her, she finds she likes being seen for what she is: a threat.
The doorway he tugs her through leads out into the yard, but not into the masses crowded around the tables. Instead, it’s into the empty stretch of dirt that leads to a stairway, up onto the walls. He climbs backward up them, never missing a step, never letting go, and then they are up and in the wind, above the noise. In the dark.
He draws her into a shadowed corner, lets her crowd him there. She tangles a hand in his silken hair simply because he doesn’t stop her.
“You promised answers?” she murmurs.
He winks. “Not promised. Offered. There’s a difference. My first piece of advice to you is to keep track of which is which.”
“A gift or one half of an exchange.”
“Very different,” he agrees. His skin is cool. So is his breath.
“You know,” she says, studying his features, “I have never understood why you look like this. So unnatural. All of you saints, I suppose, but... you more than the rest.”
“I don’t have to look like this,” he says, and his tongue peeks out between his lips for a moment. “This is a just a canvas. I am whoever it is you love. Or, perhaps, long to be loved by.”
As she watches, his white hair turns black. It spreads from where her fingers grip it tightly, to his scalp, to his eyebrows. Eyelashes. It shortens, too, draws up through her hands and disappears like water, and then it is close cropped to his skull on one side, braided and heavy on the other. His features dance and shift as well, his narrow jaw widening, his broad shoulders slimming down the tiniest bit. Even his height changes, until she is staring up at Ser Voyne.
No, not Ser Voyne; there’s too much mischief in those eyes. But the Loving Saint looks close enough to make his point, and it’s enough to set her stumbling back, pupils blown wide.
Run, the animal part of her says.Run, now. This is nothing good.
But then he’s back to his old self, the form he wears in paintings and in icons. He stretches his arms above his head, arches his back, looks at her through pleased and pleasing eyes. “Yet another tasty little detail about you,” he says.
“You saw me in the garden,” she points out.
“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to retreat just now, when you pushed so close before.” He beckons with one long-fingered hand.
