Page 10 of The Starving Saints

“What is this?”

Oh, no. She has found the dish. Phosyne’s heart sinks as she lifts it up, then wrinkles her nose at the stench.

“Research,” Phosyne says, before she can think to lie and say,Oh, I must have forgotten it. Better, in hindsight, to be thought flighty than willfully... whatever she is.

Ser Voyne stares at the rotted meat. “No. No, this is madness,” she says. “This is not research. I have seen the nuns at their calculations. This isfilth. How, exactly, did you expect food to appear? Out of nothing?”

“Notnothing,” Phosyne scoffs, coming closer, gesticulating with one clenching hand. “Out of a pattern. The meat is in a process, now, yes? It is rotting. There is growth in it, and decay, both. I thought that if I introduced seeds, that might steer the process more firmly toward growth—”

“Of mold.”

“—ofmeat, to allow regeneration, production of pure, clean flesh. The flesh itself was once fed by the grass plants that produced the seeds. I need only remind it of what it once was. Or that was the idea, anyway. It hasn’t worked. I’ll try something else.”

Ser Voyne stares another moment at the lump, then covers it again, drags one gloved hand over her face. Then her eyes, blazing with indignation, rise to Phosyne. “And this is logic, to you? This is work worth pursuing?”

Phosyne wrings the fabric of her robe, hands clenching as she looks between the workstation and the knight. Her face is hot with shame and affront. “It wasn’t my first theory,” she concedes. “Or eventhe tenth. But the rest, though they seemed more plausible, didn’t bear fruit. So to speak.”

Ser Voyne laughs, as if startled, and spins on her heel. She goes to the door. Relief kindles in Phosyne’s chest as the taller woman throws the door open, makes to leave.

But then she turns back and pulls it shut behind her again, leaning against it with arms crossed over her broad chest. “Please tell me,” Ser Voyne says, choosing each word with care, “that you’re making fun of me. That you hope your mockery drives me away.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“This is your work. Truly.”

Phosyne straightens her spine. “Yes.”

“Then you are a fool and a waste of resources.”

That sends a bolt of panic through her. She does not eat much, but she must still eat; she must have her space; she has done all that she can. “I cleaned the water, didn’t I?” Phosyne protests.

“And how did you do that?”

“What?”

“Your method. Your research. Prioress Jacynde is still trying to untangle it, figure out how to produce your powder. She says you will give her no recipe.”

“She couldn’t make it, even with one.”

“How?” Ser Voyne demands.

“I...” Her words fail her. She looks around. A demonstration, she could do a demonstration. But even as she thinks it, she can see how Ser Voyne will look at her, as she mixes powdered rat feces in with dried sweet william to form the substrate of the clarifier. And that does not even encompass the whispering of poetry.

“You are wasting my time.Ourtime,” Ser Voyne spits.

“Then allow me to waste it in private, and not to trouble you any longer,” Phosyne snaps. She advances a step, as if to push Ser Voyne out the doorway.

It is the wrong move. The older woman’s eyes flare with haughty anger. “You have been spoiled. I don’t know how you bewitched Ser Leodegardis, why he keeps you like a pet dove, but if you cannot work—”

“I work very well, thank you! I have only been asked to do the impossible!”

“—Then I willputyou to work.”

They are close, closer than Phosyne meant for them to get, and her rib cage aches with how fast she is breathing, how hard her blood pulses in her veins. She hasn’t been so close to another person in months, maybe years, and for all her fury, she can’t look away from Ser Voyne’s blazing eyes. They’re a piercing shade of hazel, and they are so bright with answering fervor. Her whole imposing presence, her coiled, barely leashed threat, is making it impossible to think.

And then the ground shifts below their feet.

Behind her, furniture judders against the wall, the floor. Phosyne pulls away, spins on her heel, but Voyne is already ahead of her, pounding back up the stairs, over to the window. She pushes hard against the glass pane, then starts disassembling everything blocking it up.

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