Page 70 of The Starving Saints
“What do you wish to do?” the Lady asks, at her shoulder now. Her fine hands hover close to Phosyne’s waist, but do not touch. “For I do believe that, should you wish to do something, anything at all, you can find the tricks to make it happen.”
“Like the water,” Phosyne says, uneasy.
“That, and more,” the Absolving Saint says, at her other side. They’re both close enough to touch her. Neither does.
“But we will only teach you one thing, in exchange for your safety this one time,” the Lady purrs. “So choose carefully, little mouse.”
Phosyne stares into her room.
This whole exchange hinges on the belief that these creatureswantto teach her. Phosyne is fairly certain of that, bolstered by their response to her explanation. But she doesn’t know at what point their desire to harm her will outweigh that longing to instruct. Helping Jacynde is the safe option; they have already offered it once, even knowing that she feels no great loyalty to her anymore. Asking for the correct words and actions to banish them from the castle is, almost certainly, too much. And in between?
She could ask to learn how they summoned food.
How they had bewitched Ser Voyne.
How they had enticed an entire castle to eat at their table and lose their minds.
What she wants, though, is to ask what theyare. What they fear, what they crave, what they have come for. But that’s not on offer.
So she reaches for the next step removed fromwhatthey are: “Teach me how you came into the castle, unnoticed.”
The Lady’s hands settle at her waist, and Phosyne feels teeth pressed against her throat in a smile. “Gladly,” the Lady says. “Close your eyes, and taste honey on your tongue.”
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Ser Voyne sees no trace of saints as she makes her way to the cisterns.
She does see the sun too high in the sky; only minutes ago, it seems, it was dawn. But now the yard is baking, and there are too many people still passed out in the dirt, baking with it. Their skin is growing red and hot.
Like Prioress Jacynde’s.
She can feel Jacynde’s writhing tongue inside her fist. She can feel many things that should be far away, fogged over, but it is as if the heat of the sun and the clarity of the cistern water has laid her open. She feels the tongue, and the impact of her sword hilt into an unarmored skull, and the frigid chill of a failed campaign in winter, when she and Leodegardis had been left with no choice but to carve up the dead and portion them out to the survivors.
She has seen so much suffering. She has been the instrument of it so many times: the edge of the blade, the lick of the flame. It’s easier to cast it as protecting Aymar, protecting her king. But from another angle, it is only violence. If she serves the wrong master...
Voyne cannot allow herself to dwell on it. Not even as she feels acutely every whimper, every keen, every begging tug at the edge of her armor that has ever happened.
Nobody here is begging.
They sleep like the dead. She recognizes many of them; there is no order to who has fallen where. She tells herself that the steady rise and fall of their chests is merciful: sleep stops pain, and they are, at least, alive.
This is no Carcabonne. A battlefield strewn with dead, and a liberated castle empty of everybody she meant to save. There is still a chance here.
She draws up water, bucket by bucket, and fills what oilskins are at the ready. She fills cups, too, after she dumps out honeyed wine. She ignores the bloody remnants where the Absolving Saint bled that woman for Cardimir’s thirst. There are so many people here, lying at her feet, needing to be saved. She tries to save them. She props up first one, then another, tipping water down their throats. Some swallow. Some choke. One wakes up and screams when he sees her, and Voyne remembers, too late, that she is the reason his arms are covered in half a dozen red stripes. Her nails on his flesh, hauling him to this banquet.
After that, she can’t do it anymore.
It won’t be enough, she reasons. Phosyne was right. She could give every person in this yard a drink of water, and wait for them to rise, and she would have no way to keep them safe from another offer of food. There are too many people here to lead. So instead she turns her strength to getting them out of the heat. The sun beats down on her as she hauls limp, helpless bodies into shade.
She hopes it will be enough.
Most that she moves are whole and healthy, save for the burning of their skin. But a few... a few have been ravaged. She finds strange wounds: a kitchen boy missing stripes of flesh from his legs, the furrows already healing pink and smooth. A girl with her shirt missing, exposing her belly, where a window of translucent skin covers over the pulsing of her guts. Other injuries she suspects were at her hands the day before, more immediate, some purulent.
She can do nothing for them, and the knowledge tears at her heart.
And she sees no trace of Cardimir, no trace of anybody she can rouse and scream at, beg for help or guidance or leadership.
There is only so much wreckage.
