Page 75 of The Starving Saints

Did they talk, when Voyne was in the depths of her idolatry? Or were they only puppets? She can’t remember. Doesn’t want to remember.

He wets his cracked lips with his tongue.

Voyne drops her gaze to the cup of wine.

“No,” he says. His voice is soft. Rueful. When she looks up at him, he is smiling, but it is not happy.

He’s aware. Enough, at least. He knows there is something very wrong. “I have water,” Voyne says.

His shoulders quake. She sees a flash of hope in his eyes, and then he quashes it.

“It’s from Phosyne,” she adds.

He hesitates, then reaches out his remaining hand.

She passes him the oilskin and he takes one testing sip, then tipshis head back and pours half the bag down his throat. He coughs halfway through, spit sliding down his chin. Voyne understands. She waits until he is done, and takes the skin from him gingerly, careful not to touch. A single touch could break him, now, and she needs him with her.

“Thank you,” he says, when he’s taken a moment to collect himself. “Sit with me?”

She lowers herself into her seat once more, though she pulls it closer to him. It’s so like all those evenings before, when they sat across from each other and discussed strategy, him treating her like her experience mattered, her pretending she was his equal. Striving tobehis equal, to learn what made him different so that one day, she could become him. It feels laughable now. Should have felt laughable the moment the siege set in, because without victory, she has no future at all.

And now...

“She did this to you?” Ser Voyne asks.

“You don’t remember,” he answers.

Her stomach drops.

“I did this,” he says. He looks down at his abbreviated arm. “You were there, I am sure, though the memory is... hazy. I remember only why I did it, in truth.”

She tries to recollect, though her mind shies away. The night she knelt for the Lady—no, the morning after, before Jacynde, before Phosyne in the chapel—Leodegardis had accepted the king’s jewel-handled knife and leaned down.

Down?

“I remember differently,” she says.

He gestures down, and Voyne, reluctantly, peers below the table.

His left leg is gone.

With a groan, she covers her face with her hands. Yes, that is what she remembers. The arm must have come later. Perhaps somebody else held the blade. She doesn’t think she was there for that, but is too afraid to ask.

“Why?” she asks, as shivers wrack her body.

“I made the sacrifices I needed to,” he assures her.

“Needed to?” she manages to ask, meeting his eyes once more, demanding.

“It is nothing less than what you would have done, in my place.” He says it as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. His smile is sad but indulgent nonetheless.

Cardimir’s words echo through her:My people must eat.

But that was a dead man. Leodegardis himself had argued with her that a dead man was worth more as food than a living horse, for a living horse would keep a little longer.

“One leg can’t feed a hundred.”

“But if it could? If it could feed even ten families, so that they could live another week, another month, until they are safe once more? Wouldn’t you give of yourself?”

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