The Starving Saints

Aymar Castle, a border fortress, has been under siege by the kingdom of Etrebia for six months. Designed to hold three hundred, the castle now shelters nine hundred people, including King Cardimir and his retinue. Food stores will be exhausted in fifteen days.

The narrative follows three women. Phosyne, a former nun turned heretical alchemist, lives alone in a castle tower. Her sole success has been purifying the fouled well water through an alchemical process she cannot fully explain, involving rat feces, dried herbs, and whispered poetry. The Priory, the castle's religious order devoted to the Constant Lady, took public credit for the purification so the populace would not distrust work by a heretic. Phosyne also hides two mysterious creatures, Pneio and Ornuo, sleek, sulfur-scented beasts that appeared in her chambers months earlier through unknown means.

When a food riot erupts, King Cardimir demands Phosyne produce a miracle and assigns Ser Voyne, a decorated knight of his guard, as her minder. Voyne, a war hero from the battle of Carcabonne, chafes at her role as the king's ornamental bodyguard. In council, Prioress Jacynde, the Priory's head, raises the possibility that the capital has abandoned them.

The third perspective belongs to Treila, a young woman posing as a leatherworker. She is secretly Treila de Batrolin, daughter of a lord whom Cardimir publicly executed five years earlier on charges of smuggling salt, with Voyne wielding the blade. Having survived a brutal childhood of starvation, Treila harbors a consuming desire for revenge. In her underground workroom, she discovers a tunnel leading to a grotto where the well's water source glows blue. A disembodied voice whispers from a crack in the grotto wall, asking if she is lost.

When Etrebia launches a bombardment, the Priory deploys catapults loaded with incendiaries forged from nearly all the castle's iron, destroying the siege engines. This loss of iron will prove catastrophic. In the aftermath, Phosyne, inspired by fire and her creatures' nature, creates an everburning candle that consumes no wax and can only be doused by water. It is miraculous but does not produce food. Meanwhile, Ser Leodegardis, the castle's keeper, begins butchering a dead soldier for meat with the king's approval. Voyne protests but is overruled.

Treila returns to the grotto and engages the voice, which offers freedom in exchange for a finger, then bites her when she reaches in. She holds one of Phosyne's candles to the crack, silencing it. Later, she trades dried fruit to the malnourished Phosyne in exchange for an everburning candle for tunnel exploration.

Four strangers appear inside the gates without anyone opening them, resembling the Constant Lady and Her three saints. They bring impossible food: fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats, all out of season. Prioress Jacynde confronts them as impostors, but the Lady articulates Jacynde's deepest doubts about her faith and presses honeyed wine to her lips until her resistance collapses. Voyne briefly breaks her own entrancement and attacks the Lady but is intercepted. The Lady offers Voyne a new role as Her champion, and Voyne, overwhelmed by the promise of purpose, accepts. Phosyne, watching from outside, fears she may have summoned these beings, though the Lady denies it.

The king announces a feast. Phosyne discovers Jacynde catatonic with her tongue cut out, an act Voyne performed under the Lady's influence. At the feast, the Absolving Saint presents a roasted joint that Phosyne recognizes as a human forearm. She refuses to eat and flees. Treila also recognizes the remains and abstains. The Loving Saint, intrigued by Treila's lucidity, warns her to escape while she can.

Phosyne discovers that the castle's purified water, bearing her imprint rather than the Lady's, can break the enchantment. She lures Voyne into a cistern, and when Voyne drinks from her cupped hands, clarity returns. Voyne remembers everything she did under the Lady's control. They try to flee through Treila's tunnel, but the passage seals around Voyne, whose connection to the Lady prevents escape. Phosyne stays with Voyne while Treila goes on alone.

Through a vision the Lady grants, Phosyne learns that the Lady infiltrated Aymar via tainted honey and arrived in person once the castle's iron, melted for incendiaries, no longer blocked Her. Understanding that territory and ownership govern her power and the Lady's, Phosyne fortifies her tower as sovereign space.

Treila pays the tunnel creature one finger to leave and emerges into autumn; months have passed outside while summer persists within. The siege ended long ago. After agonizing deliberation, she pays her left ear to return. Inside, horrors have intensified: the Lady's lesser creatures mass in the shadows, feeding on inhabitants lost in ecstatic rituals. Leodegardis, still partly lucid, has sacrificed his own limbs to feed his people and makes Voyne swear to trust Phosyne and protect the survivors.

Voyne obtains an iron hammer from the castle blacksmith, whose iron-embedded skin has kept him unbewitched, and kills the Warding Saint. In the overgrown garden, Treila mistakes the armored Voyne for the Loving Saint in disguise and attacks. Voyne recognizes Treila and reveals the truth about her father: He was executed not for smuggling salt but for betraying Carcabonne to Etrebia, causing a massacre. Cardimir cited the lesser charge to appear cruel rather than weak. Treila, reeling, kisses Voyne, then drives her knife into Voyne's throat, still half-believing she fights the Loving Saint. Voyne dies.

Phosyne refuses the Lady's offer to trade for Voyne's body and has Treila carry it to the grotto, beyond the Lady's reach. She offers the Lady a different bargain: Treila's iron knife, the last significant iron in Aymar, in exchange for dominion over the castle and every life within it. The Lady accepts eagerly, since iron is what keeps Her kind from human settlements. As dominion overwhelms Phosyne, the Lady demands her name for guidance. Phosyne surrenders it and, under this influence, butchers King Cardimir and serves his flesh.

In the grotto, Treila pulls the knife from Voyne's throat, an act only Phosyne should be able to perform, revealing a unique metaphysical solidity at Treila's core. Voyne revives with an iron shard lodged in her throat. The tunnel creature, ancient and bound to the castle's bedrock, shares a mandate with Voyne: Destroy the Lady's kind. Treila kills the Loving Saint by tearing out his throat and commands his lesser creatures to devour him.

In the final confrontation, Voyne's sword passes through the Lady without effect, since the surrendered knife has made Her immune to iron. The Lady stabs Treila, but Phosyne heals the wound using the Lady's own food. Phosyne then drags the Lady through the floor into the cistern, where superheated purified water traps Her. Voyne and Treila haul Phosyne back up, and she seals the stone.

Phosyne's unchecked power threatens to shatter the castle. She begs Voyne to kill her, but Voyne refuses. Instead, Voyne sits on the throne and Phosyne kneels, voluntarily transferring dominion in a formal oath of fealty. The castle stabilizes into its proper autumn. The Absolving Saint, the sole remaining visitor, offers to return the iron knife in exchange for his freedom. Voyne accepts on the condition that he grant the survivors a gentle sleep from which they will wake fed and remembering nothing beyond the saints' initial arrival. Voyne, Phosyne, and Treila walk together through the open gates into autumn, the survivors stirring behind them. The siege is over, the king is dead, and the world beyond awaits.