Page 91 of The Starving Saints

In the lower yard, down by the cisterns, a man holds aloft his daughter like an offering. Blood runs down the little girl’s arms and legs. At his feet, his other children crowd and press, lapping up each drop that falls.

And around it all is the audience. Even in so much drowning sunlight, Voyne can barely make out their contours. They are light flashing off of quartz, heat haze, splashes of whitewash on stone. They are flat, where the bodies they advance toward are thick and curved and so real Voyne can’t stand to look at them.

But they do have weight to them. Dust scatters in their wake. And when one bends to the flayed man’s chest and bites—

Well, their teeth rend flesh as well as any beast’s.

Voyne keeps her head down through all of it, shaking, shivering, cold in the hot noon sun. She feels like she is drowning. She feels like she is dying. But that’s hardly new. What is new is only the intensity of the feeling. She takes solace in the fact that she doesn’t feel hunger when she sees these horrors, unlike everybody else around her.

But it is her lack of hunger, of course, that marks her.

She’s in the shadow of the south wall when it happens. When the first set of eyes settles on her, sees through the thin veil of her act. Voyne only knows because she stumbles as she walks, has to put out a hand to support herself, and as she tips forward, she sees the whites of two eyes replaced with piercing gold, pupils dotting the center, widening as they take her in. They measure her weakness. They see her falter.

Voyne is running before she has time to rationalize any of it.

The nearest open door leads into the smithy. It’s fifty yards away, if that. She has a clear shot, or as close to it as she’s going to get; the nearest tableau, a woman carving pieces of her flesh and placing those bloody scraps into her own mouth, isn’t close enough to reach her.

Her muscles burn. Her head pounds. The world keeps trying to fall away, to pitch and yaw, but she closes her eyes and sprints.

Behind her, she hears paws, hooves, feet in the dirt. Her pursuers snarl. They call to her, desperate for her aid. They laugh.

The wall of the smithy is as solid as it was when she slammed Phosyne up against it, and she collides hard, wrenching her shoulder. She gasps, eyes open, spun around to face what is coming for her. Everything tilts. She sees a flash of movement, feels pain in her leg, kicks out. Punches. Scratches. Fights, like she has not fought in years.

She gains a moment’s freedom. It’s enough.

She throws herself into the smithy, expecting only more chaos, more horror, more blood—

But the building is dim, and warm, and all but empty.

There is only one man inside. Theophrane, the head blacksmith. He sits surrounded by his tools, as if he’s built a nest of them. They’re in no fit state to be used, all jumbled up, but he does clutch a punch chisel like a dagger. It would do some damage, if he lunged.

“Get out,” the blacksmith says.

She ignores him but keeps her distance, gasping for breath as she shoves the door closed and leans her whole weight against it. She locks gazes with the blacksmith, daring him to argue as the beasts outside hurl themselves against the wood.

He doesn’t, but he doesn’t lower the chisel, either. Soon, sooner than Voyne would have expected, the thuds slow, then cease.

Easier prey outside, perhaps.

He waits until she’s eased up against the door to demand, once again, “Get out, Ser Voyne.”

He knows who she is. He knows to be afraid. He’s hiding, trying to defend himself, and—

And that means that he’s not under their sway.

She lifts her hands, hoping to gentle him. “You’re safe here?” she asks.

His throat works. He lifts the chisel up a little higher. “Not if you’re in here with me.”

She sinks down to one knee, hands still up. “I just need space to think. I will not harm you.” She scans the room. It’s steady. Nothing spins. The world has reasserted itself, and she lets out a low, helpless moan, fisting her hand against the floor. “Out there, I—”

“You’re one of them,” Theophrane says.

And there is the memory: the lead-up to the feast, before Voyne found Phosyne huddled below the keep. There were so many who needed to be brought to the table. She had honey for so many of them.

Her beestings itch. They throb. There is blood beneath her nails, too. Jacynde’s blood.

Theophrane’s blood, before.

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