Page 39 of The Starving Saints

They wind up the stairs that lead to the observatory platform above the chapel proper, and are almost to the door when the nun stops. She bows her head, and Phosyne expects she’s praying, but then she asks, “Did you do this?”

Phosyne can’t stop her panicked smile.

“We were tasked to find food,” the nun continues, without looking back. “Impossible task, of course, and yet—and yet there’s food here now, and when we were tasked to clean the water, impossible task, you delivered us.”

If Phosyne speaks, she’s going to blurt out her guilt. The temptation is too great. She doesn’t like the weight of secrets on her, wantshelpto solve this problem, wants absolution. Phosyne makes a weak, strangled sound, animal in its tone.

“No, it doesn’t matter,” the nun says, presses her hands to her eyes, then beckons for Phosyne to go ahead of her. “She’s up there.She wouldn’t talk to me, but maybe she’ll talk to you. I just... this all feels wrong. Is it blasphemy, for this all to feel wrong?”

Phosyne wishes she remembered this girl. Wishes, too, that she remembered that oceanic feeling of faith she knows she must have had. Worship was herlifefor twenty years; shouldn’t it feel more real to her now than an old, unraveling dream? If it did, maybe she could offer some comfort.

Instead, she slips past the nun and eases open the door.

The wind fights her. The insubstantial breeze down in the yard is stronger up here, where the walls can’t stop it, where it’s maddening instead of useful. She can’t move the door more than an inch until the wind abruptly changes directions, catches the door from the other side, and throws it open. Phosyne stumbles out into the midday sun.

Jacyndeisthere, just as the nun said she would be. Phosyne stares at her prostrate form, then looks behind her. The door stands open, but her escort is gone. She feels unmoored, and sways on her feet as she forces herself to look at the prioress again.

She will have to confess, she tells herself. She couldn’t tell that poor girl, no, because what would it have changed? But if she can help Jacynde now, and then tell her what she knows, perhaps Jacynde will have some better idea of where to start. And if not, Phosyne might at least beg some honey to help get her mind working better. If she shows contrition and obedience, maybe Jacynde will take pity on her, given the strange circumstances.

The thought makes her grimace, but she still twitches her robes into some semblance of order and walks away from the shelter of the stairway tower.

Around her are the astrolabes, the telescopes, the tools of measurement that make order out of the world. Jacynde is not using any of them. She is kneeling, head uncovered, staring at nothing. She is inanimate, and Phosyne does remember enough to be afraid. Jacynde is so rarely still.

“Your Radiance,” Phosyne says. It comes out as more of a croak.

Jacynde’s shoulders shudder.

Phosyne circles around so she can see the prioress’s face. She expects to see... pain. Pain, and desperation, and the wreckage of a crisis of faith. If Phosyne concentrates, she can imagine it: a lifetime spent as the intercessor to the Lady and Her saints, only to be caught unprepared and unbelieving when the Lady and Her saints actually appeared. Maybe that, instead of doubt or suspicion, is the reason why she has retreated here. Maybe faith, when brought to life, is too much when you are drowned in it your whole life. The sustaining liquor of it suddenly made solid.

And Jacynde doesn’t look comfortable, no, but she doesn’t look like she’s drowning either. She looks...

Blank.

There are old tear tracks on her cheek, cutting through layers of paint. Sweat, too, once beaded on her brow, blurring the edges, warping the design. But now her skin looks dry and red. She has been sitting out in this heat for Phosyne cannot guess how long. Too long.

Phosyne reaches out, then stops, hands only an inch or two away from Jacynde’s shoulders. The prioress frowns, but notather. Perhaps only at the way she blocks out the light, casting shadow over the woman’s face.

Jacynde’s lips part, and Phosyne smells blood. It doesn’t run out past the prioress’s lips, but it clings to the margins of her teeth, lines her gums. And behind that, Phosyne sees—

Nothing. Her tongue is gone. Cut out at the root.

Bile rises in her throat, and Phosyne falls back onto her ass, staring.

As she stares, she catches movement, a pulsing. A faint buzzing.

A bee crawls along Jacynde’s hard palette, along her teeth, and out onto her upper lip. It lingers there a moment, flicking its wings to dry them of pink-tinged saliva, and then it alights and disappears into the wide heavens.

That breaks through Phosyne’s shock, and in another moment, she’s dragging Jacynde against her skinny chest. The prioress is so heavy, in all her robes, but Phosyne urges herself to move. She uses every scrap of strength left in her and hauls Jacynde back toward the stairs. Jacynde is dead weight in her arms, her only response a thin, high whine.

“Who did this to you?” Phosyne asks, shaking, knowing alreadythat the answer isher. Not the Lady, but Phosyne herself, somehow summoning salvation. It iswrong, has always been wrong, and if Phosyne still felt the slightest bit of control over the situation, that’s gone now. Gone, along with the prioress’stongue, and oh, Phosyne thinks she is going to be sick.

She crawls instead, pulling them both into the shadow of the tower.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers as they collapse together down the spiraling stairs. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I did.”

Jacynde only moans in response, and does not flinch as her hip strikes the edge of a stair.

The little nun finds them where the stairs open up onto the chapel, and clasps her hands over her mouth to stifle a cry of horror. She goes to her knees, staring into Jacynde’s unblinking eyes. “Is she—is she—”

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