Page 43 of The Starving Saints

“You know the answer to that, my lady,” Ser Voyne says.

“No, I don’t think I do,” Treila says, and leans closer. Her breathing has quickened so much that she is almost hyperventilating. “Do you truly hate him so? I would never have guessed.” She is breathless.

“He has misused me. I know that now, thanks to you,” Ser Voyne returns, and her tone now is urgent. As if sheneedsTreila to understand. “I have followed every order he has given me, even when it conflicts with what is best in me, with where my strength arises from. I thought that he knew best, but he has led me astray.”

“Yes,” Treila whispers, raises her second hand to cup Ser Voyne’s other cheek. Her skin is so hot beneath Treila’s touch, a sheen of fine sweat appearing on her brow. Treila wants to kiss it. Wants to drink it in. “This is all I’ve ever wanted you to know. I’ve wanted you to realize it for so long. For years, Ser Voyne.”

“I didn’t realize how long I’d been waiting for you,” Ser Voyne confesses.

Treila is shaking. Tears burn at her eyes, tears she can’t afford to shed. But what if she could? What if she could, for the first time in five years, lay down the burden of her rage, and rest a while, knowing she would be fed, and clothed, and loved?

Understood, at least.

But then Ser Voyne’s brow crumples in that sweet confusion Treila has been waiting for, the same confusion she wore the last time they sat in this garden. The confusion of realization, of shock. Treila draws back reflexively, then realizes that Ser Voyne’s attention is now fixed on something behind her. She turns and sees the Constant Lady, standing at the entrance to the garden. She holds a humming skep in Her hands, and She is looking straight at Treila with fury in Her multicolored eyes.

Treila is on her feet in an instant, ready to fight, but determined instead to kneel.

She’s had too many long years where bowing her head has been the only way to save her neck. She’s well-practiced.

“My Lady,” Ser Voyne says, in the exact intonation she had used when asking Treila why she was on the ground, and Treila winces. The world comes back into its proper orbit, everything once more in focus. Of course. Of course Ser Voyne did not see Treila and think of little Lady de Batrolin—she thought of the Constant Lady.

Though the Lady is arrayed in layered finery, and Treila cowers in the dirt in a drab smock, missing a stocking. Aside from their blonde hair, Treila can’t see the similarities.

Now that they’re both in view, it’s clear Ser Voyne can’t, either. The confusion falls from her eyes, and she goes to the Lady, kneels atHerfeet. The Lady’s gaze bores into the crown of Treila’s bowed head a moment longer, and then She turns, fabric whispering over Her feet. She lets go of the buzzing skep with one hand, places it atop Ser Voyne’s head. She murmurs something Treila cannot hear.

Cannot hear the words of, at any rate. Treila strains to pick up the tone, hackles up, ready to flee if she must.

But whatever fury Treila thought she saw is gone, or never existed at all. She hears warm tones, soft murmurs.

She glances up in time to see the Constant Lady kissing Ser Voyne’s lips.

Treila makes herself look away. She fights to control herself, shame and embarrassment burning hot in her blood. It takes long, desperate minutes for her to feel steadier in her skin again, and by then, Ser Voyne is long gone, at the heels of her new mistress.

Bewitched. Seeing nonsense.Speakingnonsense.

She should be grateful to have this cobwebbed veil snatched back from her eyes so swiftly. She doesn’t have time for this. She needs to go find Phosyne again, and perhaps now the heretic will have calmed down enough for Treila to demand more of her.

Determined, Treila turns to go, and is surprised to see one of the saints. The Loving Saint, bent low in the dirt. He is planting seeds, working his hands into the soil out of season, but it looks beautifulas he does it. His skin is flawless, his eyelashes long, his hair shining. She hasn’t cared about the Loving Saint since she was a little girl with the crush all little girls seemed to have on him, well before she ever met Ser Voyne, but now she feels her heart give a little tug. Something beautiful, in all of this mess. It’s soothing just to watch.

He doesn’t look up, even when she drifts a little closer. Behind him, in the furrows he has already filled, she sees shoots breaking through the soil. They grow so quickly she thinks she can hear them.

Her stomach aches. It’s easier to understand than the quieter pain in her chest. She’s going to eat tonight, regardless of everything else. She’s too tired to resist now; for all her caution, she is not a fool, and she is still human, at the root.

The Loving Saint hums, quietly. Plants another seed, and another. They are all different sorts, enough to feed an army. She recognizes only a few. One in particular is translucent, almost flat, but curved. Its bottom edge is marked by a thin white line, its top by a pink stain. It goes into the ground, and not a minute later, it too is sprouting, its cotyledon pale and thin, growing fast into a spiral.

When she looks away, she finds the Loving Saint gazing up at her. He says nothing, but he quirks a brow, smiles.

She flushes and turns to leave.

He doesn’t stop her, and she’s back in the keep tower when she slows long enough to think again about that seed. It didn’t look like a seed at all, the more she thinks of it.

It looked like he was planting a fingernail.

But that can’t be right.

It grew like all the rest of them.

19

---