Page 16 of The Starving Saints

“Your miracle,” Voyne says.

Her miracle. Herideafor a miracle. “I have much to study,” she says, desires coming into conjunction for a blissful, hopeful moment. “I need supplies. Can you get them for me?”

She requisitions twenty candles from the priory. It earns her an hour’s privacy, and Voyne an hour’s walk.

The next several days are spent deep in work. Her hands dance over the candles, purest beeswax, clarified and cast by exacting standard. She burns them down, one after the other, observing, reading, waiting for the next shift in perspective, the next advancement.

She revisits the memory of the bombardment. The press of bodies, her terror over Pneio and Ornuo free to wander, the moans of the frightened and injured. The flash of racing shadow that she’d had no choice but to chase, out into the strange silence after the attack. She’d smelled such odors that night, bodily and chemical, some traces of what the Priory had done.

Salvation, Voyne called it, when Phosyne had enough presence of mind to finally ask.Intercession. The Priory, too, plays with fire these days.

There are innumerable references to fire in the books she has accumulated since she first became aware of the unseen world that seems to lie parallel to their own, within reach for those who know to search for it. They are worn and dirty things missing pages, passed from hand to hand, filled with knowledge that in her Priory days she would have mocked as fanciful, imaginative forays into nothingness. She knows better now. Some of the books, she thinks, are correct, though she can’t figure out how to utilize the knowledge within; other parts are wrong, but there is some truth to them anyway.

Her teachers in the Priory would have demanded proof. Measurement, replicable observation, a mechanism of action. And she understands the appeal. Certainty feels safe. But certainty is also limiting. Certainty did not purify Aymar’s water.

These texts, with their parables, their fictions, their outlandish claims, are exactly the opposite. And yet with enough study, she has teased meaning from them. She has made tangible changes to the world. She must keep searching for the next revelation.

One of her fragments, a haphazard translation of the works ofsomebody only credited as “the weeping philosopher”—a man who died of œdema some six hundred years ago at least—describes the soul as measured in fire and water. Water, for soft growing things; fire, for the element that transcends death. An everliving flame, not constant, but shifting in its parts, some extinguishing, some springing up to life. There is something there, she thinks.

Occasionally, Voyne is called away. It’s never for long, but Ser Leodegardis occasionally sends for her. The king, less often. Phosyne can see how each summons tears at her. She longs to leave, but hates to abandon her post.

Three days after the attack, Voyne is summoned just after dawn. As the door closes, Phosyne feels herself unwind. It is too much, living under such strict and hateful observation, even when Voyne stays out of her way and allows inspiration to guide her. Alone, Phosyne leans against her worktable and closes her eyes.

Her stomach cramps and ripples. Terrible, wretched body; it reminds her, ceaselessly, that to pursue the fire distracts her from the ultimate goal of food.

They are the same, she tells her belly.Hush.

Before she can feed herself some scrap, there comes a soft knock. Not the king’s. Not Voyne’s. She holds still, hoping that silence will make whoever it is disappear. She doesn’t want to look through her spyglass.

Sweat beads upon her brow.Is it getting hotter in here?

The door opens. There is nothing to stop anybody’s entrance with Voyne gone. Suddenly afraid, Phosyne looks up.

Prioress Jacynde stands there, in her raiment. It’s the simpler version, for working days, but it is still cleaner and more elaborate than anything Phosyne has worn recently. How she can still starch her robes, Phosyne could not say.

“Phosyne,” Jacynde greets. The name sits ill on her lips; she still remembers calling her Sefridis, and Sefridis was obedient and useful and small. Well, Phosyne is still small, she supposes. That part hasn’t changed.

“Your Radiance,” Phosyne replies.

“I have come to see for myself what you do with my candles,” Jacynde says, looking doubtfully at Phosyne’s workspace. Her nose wrinkles with distaste. “You certainly do take liberties with your independence.”

No clean cell for Phosyne anymore, no orderly calculations, no tending to the beehives. Not even a steady pattern of wake and sleep; Phosyne often works through the night, especially when Voyne sleeps.

She must have some visceral memory of cloistered life, and yet it evades her. How did it feel, cleaning her cell? How did it feel, to be in community, to have faith? Surely any sane person would remember. Surely that cannot evaporate so fast.

But it has. All that is left are the things worn so deep into her that they are no longer feelings, but axioms. There are physical habits tied to this woman’s voice, habits that are hard to resist: ways of standing, ways of holding or avoiding gaze. Shame bubbles out of a pocket Phosyne thought long-since sealed. Her scalp itches.

She wishes, briefly, that her heart would itch instead. She thinks it was easier, when she believed.

One of the Priory candles is lit. The flame shifts in the gloom. Barely enough to work by; a waste, no doubt, to Jacynde’s eyes, because she cannot see what Phosyne has been observing.

“Congratulations,” Phosyne says, when the silence stretches, “on your success against Etrebia.”

Jacynde just looks exhausted.

“What were they?” Phosyne presses, though she doesn’t expect a true answer.

It’s not how she is supposed to talk to Jacynde. Training dictates deference. Even as a laywoman, she should be appeasing, receptive, attentive in a submissive form. Instead, she can’t help but speak to Jacynde as if they are equals.

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