Her gut gives a renewed pang now that she’s back in a space that is ostensibly safe for her, and she goes to the box she keeps her rations in. All meat, of course, and her stomach twists at the sight. She can’t smell the feast here, her only blessing, but the memory of it, divorced from the evidence of how wrong it is, is enough to make her ache.

Treila. She will just have to wait for Treila. Beg food off her once more, and—

There is food on her workbench.

Phosyne edges closer warily, looking for signs somebody has been here before her. Treila, perhaps? But it’s not dried fruit on her workbench. It’s also not the luscious offerings the Constant Lady had tried to tempt her with. It looks like . . .

“Hardtack,” Ser Voyne says, staring at it. “I thought we gave out the last of it . . .”

The reminder of exactly how bad the situation is, even absent the unnatural feast below, nearly knocks Voyne off her feet. She sinks to a crouch, covering her face with her hands. That she doesn’t moan is, Phosyne thinks, likely only because of her training.

Phosyne picks up the biscuit, turns it over in her hands. Most of it is dry and grainy, what she’d expect, but one corner is covered in a thin film of slime. She lifts the biscuit to her nose, breathes in.

She smells sulfur.

“Oh, you clever boys,” she murmurs, then takes a bite.

Or tries to; it’s so hard it nearly breaks her teeth, and she hisses in pain. No matter; her hands are wet and her robes are soaked. She wraps the brick in her skirts and presses until she feels it give a little. It’s still too hard to bite, but she can scrape the top layer off with her teeth. It’s too salty by far, and otherwise tastes like sawdust, except for the faint hint of sweetness on her tongue as her saliva breaks it down.

Bread. Bread, bread she can eat, and she, too, sinks to the floor.

She has scraped all the soft bits off and is soaking it again in the folds of her robes when Ser Voyne manages to speak again. “I don’t understand what happened to me,” she says.

Phosyne looks over at her. She is still hunched over, almost prostrate.

“I’m afraid I don’t have many answers,” Phosyne says. “I can tell you what I saw, from outside. Would that help?”

Voyne nods.

“I saw you at Her table last night, eating food that She must have conjured from nowhere. And I saw you this morning, at the chapel. I found Jacynde above you, with her tongue cut out. Your hands were covered in blood.”

Voyne shudders. “She said . . . She said a faithless tongue was worth more as food than to eat food.”