Page 105 of The Starving Saints

But she has been here before. She has dragged herself out through the dark of the forest.

She grits her teeth and leads the way to the tunnel below the keep.

Whatever it is that Phosyne does to draw the attention of the Lady’s creatures, it works; Treila sees no trace of the many-limbed flat things, though she sees the wreckage of their hunger. Blood stains on the stone. Bits of scalp and hair. Bones in the windowsills. The saints were gentle, by comparison.

There is not much time left.

When they reach the workshop, Treila bids Edouart and Simmonet and all the rest to leave Voyne there. They obey. They do not recognize her, or even mark her, save to follow her command.

She gives the two boys a shred of dried fruit all the same. She makes them eat it, and then she releases them.

Alone, she regards Voyne. She regards herself. She regards the gap in the rock. It will be hard to drag Voyne through in her armor. It will be hard to pull with Treila’s skirts tangled around her legs. Butshe can’t bring herself to change a single thing about them, not yet, not even for pragmatism’s sake.

So when she backs into the hole and grabs Voyne’s shoulders to haul after her, she does it stumbling and falling and cursing.

The tunnels are wide enough now, at least, that Treila can pull Voyne’s corpse alongside her as she descends. It is not easy, and in the dark, she feels too dearly how Voyne’s skin is only the temperature of the air, how strange and slack her limbs are. She will stiffen soon enough in the rigor of death, and she will be even harder to move, so Treila does not allow herself to falter. She gives herself no breaks. She pulls and tugs and when Voyne’s armor catches on the rock, Treila squirms between the body and the stone to get to the blockage, to maneuver them both to safety.

Safety.Treila wants to laugh. Treilaislaughing by the time she reaches the cavern.

It’s still lit by Phosyne’s candle, flickering bravely against the black, and it gives her enough light to find a good spot to lay out Voyne’s body. It’s a flat stretch just beside the glowing little creek, far from the crack in the wall at the other end. Between the golden light of the candle and the blue cast of the stream, Voyne’s face is a sculpted death mask.

She looks peaceful, somehow. Even where the stone has scraped her forehead raw.

Treila settles a hand on Voyne’s chest. Her fingertips can just reach the blood-sticky skin of her throat, and after a moment’s resistance, Treila gives in. Feels her skin simply to feel it, instead of to perform a task. She is so very solid. So very real. Not a ghost, not a fragment of Treila’s past.

When Treila bows her head, she feels a surge of longing. It is clear, and piercing, and it cuts through everything else inside of her.

This is not how Voyne was meant to die. This is not how Treila wanted to be reunited with her.

Treila wanted Voyne in her glory days, after she had liberated Carcabonne and come to Treila’s home to recover. She wanted the woman, strong and beautiful and noble, who had indulged Treila’s desires to learn swordplay, who had allowed Treila to fawn and flirt. A kindness to Voyne’s host; generosity to his daughter. Treila hasalways wanted that Voyne precisely for her impossibility. To find her would have been to go back before that long winter. Back before Voyne had sliced Treila’s father’s head off.

Before Treila had learned what suffering was.

She curls her fingers around the hilt and wishes she had Phosyne’s power to remove the blade. She longs for the safety of the knife in her hand once more.

But no, that’s not right. She doesn’t want to hold it; she wants it gone.

It’s insulting, sticking out of Voyne’s throat. Wrong. She wants, so badly, to give Voyne a shred of dignity, to have the blade removed, to let herrest, and suddenly it seems like the most important thing in all the world. Down here, there’s only one hungry mouth, and it waits for the candle to be extinguished. Down here, the Lady cannot reach Voyne, and so Voyne can lie in gentle repose until Phosyne finds an answer.

Phosyne is not going to find an answer. Treila saw the hunger in her eyes. Phosyne is a moment’s weakness from becoming like the Lady.

There’s no point in staying. Treila eyes the gap, and the pain of losing her finger, her ear, echoes through her. She glances down at Voyne, at her hand on the knife. If she could only pull the knife out, she could offer Voyne in place of her.

She could.

She wouldn’t.

What she wants, what she truly wants, is to unspool time. Go back to when Voyne was alive and they were curled together in the garden. If Treila hadn’t grabbed for the knife—if she had listened, actually listened, and realized that they were playing out, in terrible irony, the opposite of when Voyne had knelt at her feet and thought her the Lady—

Well. Things could have been very different, couldn’t they?

Treila’s hand shifts on the knife, loosens, almost falls away. A sob hitches in her chest. “You taught me how to fight,” she tells Voyne. “It’s not fair that this one time, I wasn’t supposed to.” Her fingers tighten. Stubbornly, petulantly, childishly, she tugs on the blade.

It slides free.

45

Resurrection is not so different from coming back to herself in the cistern.

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