Page 31 of The Starving Saints

Yes, she supposes she is.

The girl leans in again, her face too close for comfort. Then her nose wrinkles. “Stay there,” she says, and then she is gone.

Phosyne doesn’t particularly want to follow orders, but she can’t get her legs to work again. She’s tired. She’s sotired, the panic having stolen every last drop of her waning strength.

She half expects the girl to come back with Ser Voyne, or not at all, but when she returns (how much later? Five minutes? Five hours? Phosyne can’t be certain), she is carrying a little pouch. She crouches down beside Phosyne and from that pouch pulls—

Dried fruit.

Phosyne’s mouth would water, if she weren’t such a dried-out husk herself.

“You realize you’re dying, right?” the girl says.

Phosyne manages a weak smile. “Aren’t we all?” she whispers hoarsely.

The girl quirks a brow. “Fruit will help. I’ve been there before.” Echoes of Ser Voyne. How many in this castle have come close enough to death to learn from it? That means something, Phosyne thinks, but can’t discernwhat.

Maybe just bad luck.

“Please,” she says, when the girl doesn’t move to put the wrinkled fruit between her lips. “I don’t know if I can get up.”

The girl looks her over, appraising. “You can,” she declares. “For a little while longer, anyway. Probably doesn’t feel like it, though.”

There’s an undercurrent of something sharp in her words.Cruelty, Phosyne realizes. “Please,” she says again, more forcefully this time. “Or—or send for Ser Voyne. She will want to know where I am.”

“She’s a little distracted with our visitors,” the girl says, smiling. It doesn’t look like a real smile.

Then again, much of the room doesn’t look like a real room. Thedarkness is emptiness, and if Phosyne doesn’t concentrate very hard, she thinks she’ll fall through the floor. She pays attention to its solidity. It’s very hard. Her back hurts.

The girl waggles the fruit. “I’ve only got a little of this left,” she says. “So in return, I want something from you.”

“Oh,” Phosyne says. Blinks owlishly up at her.

“Glad to see you understand,” the girl says, that not-smile still on her lips. “They say you’re a heretic. Is that true?”

Phosyne winces. “More or less.” She’s thinking of Pneio and Ornuo and their new guests. Yes, that probably counts as heresy. Then again, if she can summon whole people now, she really should be able to summon food. Fill this little room with cabbages.

No, better to focus on not falling through the floor.

“Focus, please,” the girl says, but she doesn’t mean about the floor. Phosyne squints up at her. “I want a way out.”

“I’m afraid,” Phosyne replies, “that I’m fresh out of miracles.”

The girl looks at the fruit, then takes a bite herself.

Phosyne groans.

“A way out,” she repeats, hoping the girl has more of an idea thanthat.

From the way her brow pinches, she does. “There’s a waydown,” the girl says after a brief silence. “To where the well fills. But there’s—” She falters. Reorients. “I can feel a breeze, but it’s coming through a very narrow crack.”

“I’m told picks work well on stone.”

That not-smile is back, wider this time. “But we melted down all the iron,” she says.

Ah. So they did.Thank you, Prioress Jacynde, Phosyne thinks. No iron. No iron makes this harder. Makes...

A thought almost sticks in her mind, an idea, something that makes her deeply uncomfortable. But then it’s gone again.

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