With that water, so desperately needed, had come pestilence. It had begun slowly, a few children beginning to vomit, low fevers rolling through, and in their meetings, they had steeled themselves for the sorts of illness that spread among the closely packed. They let the Priory step in, begin segregating the ill, treating them, fumigating the castle with cloying incense.

They had known, at least, that it couldn’t be the water. Water pulled from stone was clean. The cisterns were capped and guarded. It couldn’t be the water.

But it was.

As the well’s level had dropped, the water had turned foul, and they had spread that foulness to every cistern. At first, the water had tasted normal, had looked clear, but eventually the buckets they hauled up stank of shit. There was no other water.

And then, a miracle. Jacynde’s nuns had created a powder that, when mixed with the water, caused the water to heave and shudder and shine with wondrous colors, before finally turning clear and odorless again. Leodegardis had ordered his household to test the cleared water themselves, and when they did not sicken further, when they grew hale once more, the cisterns were cleared.

Voyne reflects that she has not actually tasted the cleared cistern water; there is another tank, one that captured rain before the summer began to dry, that lives just below the madwoman’s room. It delivers clean water via a pipe into the kitchen, and Cardimir drinks from it exclusively, as does she.

Just in case.

Knowing now that it was not the Priory that solved their woes, but this strange, gaunt wraith of a woman who has somehow bewitched her king, Voyne is glad for their caution.

She scrubs at her face, sitting back on her heels. “What of the Priory’s new invention?” she asks, testing out the new landscape beneath her. “Do we also have this madwoman to thank for taking our iron from us?”

Leaving us ill-armed to repel an attack? she does not add.

“That was Jacynde’s order,” the king assures, and the world slows its spin, settling into its new configuration with a groan. It’s only a little off-kilter. “But I do not doubt she could have derived something similar. And until Etrebia strikes again, we have far more need of food. You know this, Ser Voyne.”

“I do, my liege,” she says, then takes a deep breath. Tries to be grateful for the clean water, hopeful for miracles. It does not sit well in her practical breast, which burns instead for a blade, a battle plan.

This will have to suffice.

“What will you have me do?” she asks.

“Her name is Phosyne,” Cardimir tells her. “I want you to go to her tomorrow. Do not let her out of your sight, and do not let her remain idle. Reassure me that she is working as hard as she can. We have only enough time for results.”