Page 17 of The Starving Saints

The storm upon Jacynde’s brow shows just how poorly that is received. But Phosyne cannot stop herself.

At some point, she lost the knack.

She will never taste honey again, Phosyne remembers with a pang.This woman has forbidden it, and even if she had not—Phosyne cannot imagine allowing herself to be welcome in service. Not after their break.

“Green vitriol,” Jacynde says, finally, “partially. Some of the sisters have been working with Theophrane in his smithy, which I understand you nearly destroyed.”

Phosyne flushes and looks away. “It might have been a spark from your incendiaries,” she says, because there’s no way to explain Pneio. No way she could have caused a spark without him.

“There was no spark until they struck home on the enemy line,” Jacynde replies, dryly. “But then, I don’t expect you to understand the complexities.”

“No? And yet I cleaned the water,” she says, before she can hold her tongue.

Acknowledge me, she thinks.See what I can do. Be intrigued. Desire what I can teach you.

Jacynde never will.

The water is clean, and Jacynde cannot explain it. Their bellies are empty, and Jacynde cannot fill them. Phosyne understands, then: Jacynde is insulted. Deeply insulted, that Phosyne can do what she cannot. The water, she had hope of solving one day. But the food—

If Phosyne can do it, it will not be by the Priory’s alchemy, and it will be, incontrovertibly, magic.

It will be the domain of the Constant Lady, if they are lucky. If they are not, it will be something beyond.

How can Phosyne ever claim to be capable of such a thing?

I’m not, she wants to say.The king has decreed, but that can’t make it so.And yet even as she cringes away from the theological consequences of what she hopes to achieve, she also longs for it. Hears a siren call, a whispering that there are rules to this world the Priory has no ability to understand, rules that nonetheless exist.

How can the Priory reject understanding the world, just because it follows an unfamiliar order?

Jacynde, unimpressed, says only, “You should make the most of what I’ve given you. There will be no more.”

And then she is gone.

In the silence after Jacynde’s departure, Phosyne gazes at the dancing candle flame. It consumes the wax beneath it, transforms it into heat, the way the body transforms food into warmth and movement. But stomachs cannot break down the wax. She will burn her meager stores away soon.

A nun of the Priory can summon fire from iron. There, then gone, explosive and powerful, eating away at a new kind of food. What did it consume? Perhaps that is the new angle she has needed, the next conjunction of ideas.

Jacynde’s visit has been illuminating. She has been looking at the problem all wrong. The king has asked for food from nothing; she will find a way to let them have nothing as food.

It will begin with the candle.

Her mind is full of hymns. The fire cants as she hums them nearly below hearing. Green vitriol, sulfuric acid, the gasses that caught fire and melted Etrebia’s engines of war. She will wait no more for fire from the heavens.

She needs more supplies.

8

Five days after the bombardment, Ser Leodegardis sends a runner to fetch Ser Voyne for Priory service. It’s a welcome relief. Phosyne has now added stinking sulfur to the mix of her experiments. Voyne’s only balm is that Phosyne is running low on candles, and when they are gone—well, then the Priory will give her no more, her work will stop by force, and Voyne can argue to be freed.

Another day or two. She need only bear the madwoman’s inanities a little longer. Then she will be able to sit at the table once more with the other knights and strategize: How will they take what the Lady has granted them, and win salvation?

Phosyne still has not told her how the fire started, the night of the bombardment. She will not tell her anything about her miraculous idea. Voyne leaves her to her dark and stinking cell, guards now posted at her door to stop her from any other smoldering wanders. Outside, she breathes the clean and slightly cooler air, and tries not to look at the scars from Etrebia’s assault. There are so few strong hands to put things back to rights.

The chapel hums with the buzzing of bees, the air filled with winged bodies passing in and out of the arched, open windows. They, unlike everybody else in this castle, can pass freely over the walls and to more fruitful fields, but they always return home, filling the rows of painted boxes with honey. It’s a shame that they work too slowly to feed the hundreds of mouths that wait.

Voyne kneels beside her liege on pillows once cased in velvet, now only sacks of worn-away nap. She is so grateful to be near him,and far away from Phosyne, that when Prioress Jacynde leads voices raised in hymns, hers is strongest among them.

And what a balm those hymns are: predictable words, in predictable order, about how to find solace in an unpredictable world. The hymns preach order, measurement, constancy, when all the world is yet lost in chaos. To build a bed, a house, a nation is to create an anchor, something to hold on to.

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