Like Prioress Jacynde’s.

She can feel Jacynde’s writhing tongue inside her fist. She can feel many things that should be far away, fogged over, but it is as if the heat of the sun and the clarity of the cistern water has laid her open. She feels the tongue, and the impact of her sword hilt into an unarmored skull, and the frigid chill of a failed campaign in winter, when she and Leodegardis had been left with no choice but to carve up the dead and portion them out to the survivors.

She has seen so much suffering. She has been the instrument of it so many times: the edge of the blade, the lick of the flame. It’s easier to cast it as protecting Aymar, protecting her king. But from another angle, it is only violence. If she serves the wrong master . . .

Voyne cannot allow herself to dwell on it. Not even as she feels acutely every whimper, every keen, every begging tug at the edge of her armor that has ever happened.

Nobody here is begging.

They sleep like the dead. She recognizes many of them; there is no order to who has fallen where. She tells herself that the steady rise and fall of their chests is merciful: sleep stops pain, and they are, at least, alive.

This is no Carcabonne. A battlefield strewn with dead, and a liberated castle empty of everybody she meant to save. There is still a chance here.

She draws up water, bucket by bucket, and fills what oilskins are at the ready. She fills cups, too, after she dumps out honeyed wine. She ignores the bloody remnants where the Absolving Saint bled that woman for Cardimir’s thirst. There are so many people here, lying at her feet, needing to be saved. She tries to save them. She props up first one, then another, tipping water down their throats. Some swallow. Some choke. One wakes up and screams when he sees her, and Voyne remembers, too late, that she is the reason his arms are covered in half a dozen red stripes. Her nails on his flesh, hauling him to this banquet.

After that, she can’t do it anymore.

It won’t be enough, she reasons. Phosyne was right. She could give every person in this yard a drink of water, and wait for them to rise, and she would have no way to keep them safe from another offer of food. There are too many people here to lead. So instead she turns her strength to getting them out of the heat. The sun beats down on her as she hauls limp, helpless bodies into shade.

She hopes it will be enough.