Page 51 of The Starving Saints

Treila doesn’t question Phosyne’s hasty correction; perhaps she’s already drawn the same conclusion, that these strange visitors aren’t what they appear to be. “She won’t, there’s too much going on,” the girl assures her. “Our mistake before was thinking we were safe because nobody was here to see us. It just makes us easier to spot. Go, hide, I’ll come to the tower tonight and we can try again.”

“What about you?”

“The other servants will wonder where I am, if I don’t put in an appearance soon.” Treila grins, and it’s manic and cocky. Phosyne remembers, then, to be afraid of this girl, too.

“Don’t eat the food,” she warns, glancing over her shoulder. She thinks she hears footsteps.

Treila looks, too, so she probably does. “Of course not,” she agrees. “We’ll be out of here by dawn. Nowgo.” She releases her grip, and slips back into the shadows.

Phosyne takes a deep breath, stomach cramped with fear as much as hunger, and ducks out into the yard, back into the masses.

Most are still seated, still gorging themselves on impossible food, but some now, finally, are on their feet. They are singing and dancing, celebrating. Two nuns, their heads bare, their habits discarded, smear honey on each other’s lips. Phosyne stares at them for too long before moving onward, looking for somewhere she can sit and disappear.

But if she sits, she will stand out if she does not eat, and she iscertainshe should not eat. Even before she saw that limb at the Lady’s table, recognized that it could not belong to any ungulate, noted the eight wrist bones arrayed around it as decoration—

Well, the Lady had very clearly wanted her to eat, and that alone is enough to put her off.

She finds the stairs down to the lower yard, takes them with her shaking, unsteady legs. There’s no sound of Ser Voyne behind her, and Phosyne lets herself slow a little, take each step with care. If Voyne is not behind her, then she’s at the Lady’s feet again. Broken, certainly. Twisted, undoubtedly. Whatever spell has fallen overAymar that makes the king not question his visitors, that makes starving people wait to eat until granted permission, rests heavily on everybody who Phosyne saw in the great hall the night before, eating the first offerings of impossible food. And it rests heaviest on Voyne.

And does this food taste of you?

I do provide.

Phosyne stops, mouthing the exchange again. The pieces rearrange themselves. The food is the method by which these minds have been ensnared, yes, butwhy?

Because the food is of the Lady—that is, because the Lady provided it. Because to sit at somebody’s table, to let them feed you, is to create a bond. This is more literal, perhaps, than the usual bonds of hospitality, but she can see it clear enough: this castle, its inhabitants now belong to the Lady, because they have accepted Her gifts. Longed for them. Rejoiced in them.

And though the king welcomed the Lady into Aymar, somewhere in the mix he has lost his primacy. The Lady should be a guest, except, of course, that She is their rescuer, and beyond that, to all appearances, their deity. Even if She is not the Lady in truth, the king clearly believes Her to be so.

Aymar, Phosyne realizes, no longer belongs to the king.

It’s territory. Territory and fealty and Ser Voyne’s loyalty, transferred to another.

Phosyne starts pacing again, nerves afire with every connection she makes. She almost doesn’t see the ripple in the crowd, so wrapped up in horrors is she. But there it is, people parting, and Ser Voyne is once more looking for her.

She cannot let Voyne take her back. Of that, she is certain. But she is too frail to fight, to run. All she can hope for is to confuse Voyne long enough to evade capture, slip back into the crowd.

She ducks behind one of the cisterns.

There are six throughout the lower yard, all rising three feet or so above the ground. They are covered now with tarps, to stop the hot air from stealing more water than it returns, but the one Phosyne hides behind has its cover rolled back. Water for the feast. Waterfrom the rains that stopped months ago, topped up with as much as could be drawn up from the fouled well, cleansed with her invention.

Water that was not provided by the Lady.

I have tasted this water, and it is sweet, but it wasn’t always so.

Now it tastes of you.

“Oh,” Phosyne says. She remembers both times Voyne drank from the cup the Lady had given her. Both times, she had faltered. Grown confused. Looked at Phosyne, and Phosyne had felt she was so close tounderstandingagain...

And then another bite of food, and it was gone.

Ser Voyne is close now; Phosyne can hear her panting breath. There’s nowhere to run where Voyne will not find her. Maybe, if she had gone down to Treila’s tunnel instead of out into the yard, she could have hidden. But there is water in the cistern below her, and there’s a way in.

Phosyne hopes she is seeing reason, not madness.

She hauls herself over the edge of the cistern.

She lets herself fall.

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