The flesh is oily between her fingertips. It smells divine, driving back and overwhelming the stench of unwashed, filthy bodies all around her. She only stays her own hunger by clinging to a scrap of irrational anger, that this flesh would delight where the bones she had been forced to gnaw bore only raw and frozen gristle, skin that had gone paper-thin, muscle barely more than a memory.

She keeps working at it even as her stomach cramps and lurches, because it is easier to resist a bite of flesh than the perfect apples, oozing berries, roasted courgettes.

Take it, take it all, you know better than to deprive yourself. She has earned her selfishness. It is all that protects her. But she’d be a fool to think she’s any less at risk of bewitchment than Simmonet. She cannot make the gamble.

Across the hall, the Lady still sits at the head of her table, and the king at his. Treila sees no trace of Ser Voyne and hopes that means the madwoman is safe. The seats beside the Lady remain empty. Her saints instead flit around the other tables. They move seats, serve food much as Treila is doing. The Absolving Saint in particular disappears into the kitchens only to return with fresh platters. The cooks are all at Treila’s table. There’s nobody working the fires.

She thinks of saying something, pointing out the incongruity, but decides against it. She waits for somebody at her table to notice she has gone silent, but they hardly notice her at all. It’s like she’s invisible when she isn’t in motion.

What she wouldn’t give for this talent on a normal day.

But then she realizes somebody is looking back at her. Clear skin, shining white hair, long lashes brushing his cheeks as he tilts his head slightly in greeting from across the hall.

The Loving Saint crosses the room, and every body in the way shifts aside so he can pass.

Treila goes through her options: run, and invite a chase; look away, and pretend she is as starry-eyed as all the rest; take hold of her knife below the table, and wait to see if it is needed.

She chooses option three.

She even straightens where she sits on the bench, bold and counting every step he takes. At first, those he passes stare up at him, but as he nears, they don’t spare him a single glance. Nobody at Treila’s table reacts as he reaches it, except to shift aside as if gently nudged with an invisible hand. They clear a space across from her.

He sits.