Page 49 of The Starving Saints

She is glory made flesh. Ser Voyne watches, breathless, as her Lady approaches, observing the desperate, thankful gorgings on either side of her. Below Her yellow paint, Her cheeks are full of high color, and then Her eyes are fixed on the two of them, and She smiles. Ser Voyne ducks her head, unable to withstand the glory of Her regard.

The Lady takes Her seat at Ser Voyne’s left.

Ser Voyne stares at her hands, searching for the right words tosay to express how honored she is to sit at the Lady’s right hand, but before she can fumble out anything at all, the Lady speaks.

To Phosyne.

“Well, little mouse,” She says, filling a fine porcelain cup with water from a polished ewer. “I have tasted this water, and it is sweet, but it wasn’t always so. And now it tastes of you.” She lifts the cup to Her curling lips, takes a long sip. Her eyes do not leave Phosyne’s.

“I can’t imagine I taste sweet,” Phosyne says, wariness in her voice.

“Oh, but you do.” She reaches over to them and takes Voyne’s wrist, guides her hand to release her captive and take the cup instead. Obediently, Voyne drinks, thinking of sweetness and Phosyne’s body against hers in the chapel.

The water is not honey, but it is undeniably good. It is cool, and soothing, and Ser Voyne feels something in her unwind. But with it comes confusion, and she stares down at Phosyne as the Lady plucks the empty cup from her hand and sets it aside.

There’s something wrong, here. She’s not supposed to be at the Lady’s right hand. She should be with her king, and Phosyne should be up in her tower. This is not the proper order of things. This is her liege’s castle, they should be seated at his table, and yet he has been relegated. Set aside. She can see now that his table is smaller, that it is shadowed, and that nobody at it can see the slight.

She remembers the weight of a knife in her hand. Prioress Jacynde, kneeling. At her feet? No, at the Lady’s, but also—

Also—

“Here, my dear knight,” the Lady says, and offers up a morsel of meat. It is rich and unctuous on Ser Voyne’s tongue, and it washes away the memory of blood. She forgets all about Cardimir.

Phosyne looks between them. Her brow pinches further. Voyne can almost see wheels turning behind her eyes. She feels a faint thrill go through her at the sight.

“And does this food taste of you?” Phosyne asks.

The Lady’s smile grows. “I do provide,” She concedes. “All of this and more.”

“You brought no carts with you. No supplies.”

“Didn’t I?” the Lady replies as She serves Herself a helping of fruit and several more thin slices of meat from the vast array of riches before Her. Voyne would do it for Her, but her hands are busy keeping Phosyne in place. The Lady uses Her fingers to pull each bit of food into bite-size pieces, and then She lifts a bit of meat and offers it to Phosyne, as if Phosyne were a tame little thing.

Phosyne draws back. Ser Voyne squeezes her knee hard in censure.

“Am I not your Constant Lady?”

“Not the Lady. And even if you were, you would not be mine,” Phosyne says, and for her disrespect earns Ser Voyne’s other hand tangled in her hair. She leans back, bruised throat exposed, but she does not writhe or pant. “I have not taken honey in nearly a year.”

The Lady looks over the length of her, presented across Ser Voyne’s lap. “No,” She says, “you have not. But not, I think, for lack of love.”

“Love implies a presence in my thoughts. These days, there’s more an absence.”

“A bold confession.”

“An honest one.”

“I will concede you lack a longing,” the Lady admits. “You will need to eat something soon, little mouse. Already I smell rot upon your breath. You will not last much longer. Do you choose to die, rather than accept help?”

Phosyne looks like she’s about to argue, but instead says nothing at all.

“You are not a fool, little mouse,” the Lady says. There is a hint of warning there.

Phosyne should know better. But then, deference has never been her strength, even when it would benefit her most.

The Absolving Saint returns, bearing with him a platter upon which a steaming, fragrant joint of meat rests, surrounded by split pomegranates, stewed mushrooms, verdant lettuces. Defleshed bones ornament the plate like scattered pearls, eight in all, none the same exact size or shape.

In her arms, Phosyne goes rigid, as if she’s made of wood.

---