Page 108 of The Starving Saints

Treila stares down at her. “You can’t mean to die for your king still. Not—not after all of this.”

“I don’t mean to die at all. I mean to fight. There are too many people still alive up there to abandon. And Phosyne—”

“Phosyne is changing. And not into anything good.”

Voyne licks her lips, remembers how Phosyne had looked on the throne. She can’t help her shudder. “Then all the more reason to end this. Treila—the knife.”

Treila goes to it, eyeing it mistrustfully. As if she does not want to touch it again.

“These creatures can be killed by iron,” Voyne says.

“Maybe, but—there are so many. Too many.”

“Take the knife,” Voyne says again. “Get it to Phosyne. Give it to her. It cut through whatever enchantment had hold of me, it might do the same again.” She might not even need to die for it to work; when Voyne had clutched the hammer in her hand, she had been able, at last, to see Treila. “No matter what, she will know what to do with it.”

Of that much, Voyne is certain, down to her bones.

Treila is clearly struggling, though, even as she picks up the knife. She has seen something Voyne has not. She is wary. She is clever.

“Brave girl,” Voyne murmurs, and Treila looks up at her, stricken, like the blade is in her belly and not her hand. “I trust in the both of you. And I will follow as soon as I am able.”

“You’re certain?” Treila asks. “You don’t think I’ll fail?”

“I think you haven’t let yourself die so far,” Voyne says.

Treila hesitates one last time, then jerks her chin toward the candle. Voyne can see it now, glowing boldly against the dark. It’s one of Phosyne’s; there’s no melted wax around its base.

“If I don’t come back,” Treila says, “if it’s been too long, don’t come after me. Don’t let them have you again, don’t even risk it. Promise me.”

“And where would I go?”

“There is a creature, here. In the crack in the wall.” She motions with her chin to a line of deeper darkness that splits the dimly lit wall. “While Phosyne’s candle burns, it can’t hear you. But douse it, go to it, ask to leave. The thing that lives in it can get you outside the walls, just—just negotiate carefully. And don’t come back. Only one of us needs to be a fool.”

Voyne nods. “I understand. Now, go.”

“I’ll come back,” Treila promises. She hesitates. Voyne wants totouch her, wants to press a kiss to her brow, wants to hold her. But she doesn’t need it. What Voyne and Cardimir and the world have made her—what she has made herself—is strong enough on its own.

One last breath, and then Treila pushes herself into the earth and, in another moment, is gone.

Voyne sits, unmoving, for a long time after. She counts her breaths. She tenses and relaxes each of her muscles in turn. When she is ready, she pushes herself forward onto her hands and knees. She crawls to the candle.

She douses it in the creek, then sits back and regards the gash in the world.

“Hello,” she says. “Let’s have a chat.”

46

The keep is empty when Treila emerges from the tunnel.

She expects to see hungry, pale faces as she creeps up the stairs, but there are none. There are no tangles of limbs in the windows. There are not even any sleeping, sated bodies on the floor. The whole edifice is silent, and the pained chaos of Treila’s heart quiets with it, knowing that she has no room for feeling, only for caution.

If it is silent, then something has changed. Something has gone wrong.

She must get to Phosyne as quickly as possible. Carcabonne and Ser Voyne and her father can wait a little while longer; they have, after all, waited for five years.

Treila steals out into the courtyard. It is night, and the upper and lower baileys are both empty, though the dirt is stained in too many places. Still, there are no scraps, no bones or torn flesh, no abandoned tents. There is only soil, dusty and dry and barren.

But the great hall’s windows blaze with light, and a soft murmuration drifts from them as well.

---