Page 11 of The Starving Saints

“Stop!” Phosyne shouts.

“I need to see what’s happening,” Voyne bites out, and there comes another crash, this one more sound than movement. The shadows that are Pneio and Ornuo dart out from their hiding places, find new ones. Scraps of wood hit the floor, roll down the stairs, and Phosyne presses herself against the wall as she climbs.

By the time she gets there, Voyne has stopped halfway in her dismantling. There’s no need to keep going; the shouting from below, the torchlight on the walls, the continued slam of stone against stone gives them the answer:

They are under attack.

5

There is a sick poetry in it; Voyne has spent the whole day making excuses to avoid coming to the madwoman’s tower, pretending that she was in some way helping the defense of Aymar, and instead attack comes when she is trapped here in this foul, fetid little chamber. It’s as if Etrebia has sensed her dereliction (which is not fair; to be here is duty too, even if it’s farcical).

She watches through the gaps in Phosyne’s window as another blow strikes the outer wall. The sun is low enough now that she cannot see the extent of the damage, but the steady rhythm of the assault tells her what she needs to know. This is not some light sortie. They mean to attempt the castle once more.

She can’t stay here.

“Take shelter,” she says, pulling away from the window and longing for her armor. She seizes Phosyne by the elbow, steers her toward the stairs. The witch resists, of course, but Voyne is stronger and more certain. “Down in the lowest levels, with the others.”

“But—my research—” she stammers out, and Voyne wants to shake her.

Your research is a joke, she nearly says, but this is an emergency, and she is built for action. “Your research will not matter if you are dead,” she says instead as they reach the main floor of Phosyne’s squalid chamber. “Take some of it with you, if you must, but you are going to take shelter, and you are going to wait for my return.”

And the woman has the gall to try to climb back up to the window.

Now she shifts her hold to Phosyne’s collar and drags her to thedoor. “You may not be able to see sense,” Voyne hisses, “but I will be cursed if I let you throw away your life.”

She ignores Phosyne’s wailing all the way down the stairs. Past her liege’s room, down to the lowest level, where terrified farmers and servants are already massing. She shoves Phosyne into the press of them. “Keep her here,” she demands of an older woman whom she thinks she recognizes from the kitchen. And then she allows herself to stop caring, and plunges out into the yard.

A flash of golden hair passes by her, half-recognized and then gone in another breath; some serving girl, guiding younger boys to safety, making her job easier.

This is no Carcabonne. Not the battle for its release, nor the state she found its halls in. But the fear, the fear is so thick in the air she can taste it. Little blood slicks the stones of Aymar, but more will soon, if salvation does not come.

And yet she is exhilarated all the same. The waiting is over. The moment is here.

Constant Lady preserve her, but she should have her armor now. Even if it weighed her down as she did exactly what she is doing now, herding the frightened innocent to some semblance of shelter. At least she would feel more herself. At least people would know to look to her for aid.

But perhaps there is a mercy here—without her armor, she is much less obviously the queller of the riot. Some, no doubt, fear her less when she doesn’t gleam. And despite her silent pleas, there is no Constant Lady here. There are only people, as there always have been. Voyne must be their intercessor.

The yard empties, the panic contained within the walls farthest from the bombardment. She doesn’t think all of the enemy’s strikes are hitting home; if they are, the walls are holding well. Adrenaline filters out the collisions that are too soft, too distant, not relevant. That still leaves several that hit, one after the other, that crumble an interior wall into the lower bailey yard. Smaller chunks skitter and fly to all corners. It’s not safe to remain.

This is the held breath before the battle. She would do well to make use of it.

She retreats inside, into the press of too much humanity. Too many people. Even with some in the great hall, even with others in various towers, there are too many people to move. She can’t spot any of the attendants who are trained to help the knights into their plate; she will have to arm herself. She can barely reach the stairs and climb up. If any of these walls collapse, there will be mass death.

Perhaps that is why she finds her king two floors up, in their converted quarters, where she goes to fetch her armor.

That does not explain why he stands by the window.

She feels unaccountably naked as she goes to his side, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s staring out.

“My liege,” she says. “We must get you somewhere safer.”

He doesn’t look at her. He is twisting pinches of his beard into tight spirals. “This is the moment, Voyne,” he says instead. “Look. See what our iron has bought. This may be the moment of our ransom.”

The Priory.

She crouches down so that she can see out the window below him. Out on the far wall, she can see figures working in shadows, the torches doused to deny Etrebia anything to aim by as night falls in earnest. But she can make out enough: the nuns help work small catapults, each of the Priory’s design. They are not, strictly speaking, a martial order, but their designs have always been of use in times of war. Those catapults, she knows, are stronger than their footprint should rightly allow, and around their rotational bases they bear notations she has heard calledradiansthat allow precise calibration, aiming, destruction. From here, she can barely see the nuns at work, their shorn heads wrapped in black fabric hastily donned to hide them in the night. They observe the turning of the machines. They load them with what Voyne can only hope is their precious new invention.

(But what if, her treacherous mind whispers,that invention is as laughable as Phosyne’s rotting meat?)

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