Page 44 of The Starving Saints

Phosyne slams the door to her tower shut and falls back against it, gasping for breath, the world spinning around her. Her throathurts. Her cheek merely stings from where Treila struck her, but she feels both points of assault like brands. They’re the only thing holding her together, because every time she remembers falling through the chapel wall, she thinks she might fall through the floor next.

She sinks to the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. “Ornuo?” she manages, and holds one shaking hand out for a warm, scaled flank.

She feels only air.

“Ornuo, rotten boy,” she calls again. “Pneio?” she tries, when there are no rustles from the mess around the room, no skittering claws on stone. “No, no, no,” she whimpers, standing and pitching herself toward her workbench, knowing what she won’t find, knowing she’s even more screwed than before.

They’re not below the table, or behind the stinking refuse bucket, or on top of her bookshelves, or beneath the stairs. She climbs up to the loft on hands and knees, trying to think like them. She sees the hints of their existence (faint scratches where they have sprinted around the room in the middle of the night, chewed chair legs, the whisper of shed scales), but nothing indicating they’rehere.

Then again, they hid for five days straight when Ser Voyne was still in residence.

Phosyne sits down heavily in the windowsill and claws at her scalp, the necklace of bruises on her throat giving an echoing ache. There are too many disasters for her mind to fix on any one of themat length. But for now, she sees Ser Voyne, the blood on her hands, the empty, confused look in her eyes. Phosyne shouldn’t care. In context, she shouldn’t care about Ornuo or Pneio, either; if they burn down the smithy, so what? That will neither drive off nor help the saints in whatever they are here to do.

The weakness in her whispers that, if it’s truly her fault these beings are here, and if they truly bring a feast tonight, then that is her miracle accomplished, and perhaps everything will, in the end, be okay. The work is done, though she doesn’t know how. She can rest, can’t she?

The sick pang in her stomach answers that.

Something bangs against the door.

It’s a lot softer than when the king came calling, but more firm than her door shifting in its frame that morning. Phosyne stares. More knocking. Fear has soaked her veins clear through, and she can hardly stand, but all the same, she finds herself before her glassed pipe, peering out into the hall, not sure what she expects to see.

It’s only Treila.

Only.Only? Phosyne groans and pulls away from the lens, needing a moment to sort out exactly how she feels seeing Treila again. On the one hand, her cheek still smarts, and she doesn’t entirely remember what Treila asked of her out in the yard. On the other, she still seems to be herself, not so far gone as Ser Voyne is. But ultimately, she is useless; she can offer some fruit, maybe, but what then?

The door moves in its frame. Phosyne should have barricaded it.

“Stay out!” she calls.

The door opens anyway. Treila slips inside and closes it, and her skin is ashen. Her eyes are wide, her jaw set. She looksyounglike this, young and vulnerable.

Phosyne hesitates, then approaches cautiously. “I saidstay out,” she says, for lack of any better idea.

Treila glances at her, but she doesn’t apologize.

“How do you untangle madness from reality?” she asks instead.

And isn’tthatright at the heart of things? “I wish I knew,” Phosyne says. “What happened? You look...” She waves a hand, as if that will define the exact mixture of broken looking back at her.

Treila purses her lips, then shakes herself, and that vulnerability falls off like dead leaves. “You seem marginally more coherent,” she says, thumbing at her upper lip, not meeting Phosyne’s eyes. “I still need your help. More, really.”

“Escaping.”

“Exactly.” Treila rolls her next thought around in her mouth. Phosyne waits, wringing the fabric of her robe between her fingers. She can’t help herself; she keeps darting looks at the door. Pneio and Ornuo out on their own isbad, but so is everything else. Treila has the right idea. Running is the easiest, and maybe best, answer.

“Your candle worked,” Treila says, drawing her attention back. “I took it down to the cave I found, it lit just fine.”

So itwasn’ther blood that did it. Good to know.

“It didn’t show me anything I hadn’t seen before, though.”

Phosyne grimaces, then takes a step back, wrapping her arms around her waist defensively. It won’t do much to protect her if Treila is angry, but Treila doesn’t seem angry.

“So you need something else,” Phosyne says. “I’m not sure I have anything left to give.” Another step back, just in case.

“It didn’tshowme anything,” Treila says, getting up off the ground and dusting off her skirts. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t find anything. You remember the crack I told you of? The one I wanted to widen?”

Phosyne nods.

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