Most that she moves are whole and healthy, save for the burning of their skin. But a few . . . a few have been ravaged. She finds strange wounds: a kitchen boy missing stripes of flesh from his legs, the furrows already healing pink and smooth. A girl with her shirt missing, exposing her belly, where a window of translucent skin covers over the pulsing of her guts. Other injuries she suspects were at her hands the day before, more immediate, some purulent.

She can do nothing for them, and the knowledge tears at her heart.

And she sees no trace of Cardimir, no trace of anybody she can rouse and scream at, beg for help or guidance or leadership.

There is only so much wreckage.

Her muscles are screaming by the time she gives up, and she feels too exposed, too raw. She stumbles to the walled garden. She needs shade herself, a little shelter, but she’s not ready to go back inside. Not yet. Not yet.

The garden has grown green again. She sidesteps broad, shining leaves, sticks to the thin track of dirt that still leads to the center. She sits heavily on the bench. It’s not safe here, either; she remembers the Lady coming to collect her here before the feast. She remembers . . .

Golden hair.

Golden hair, and then the thought is gone again, buried, stolen from her. There is only buzzing left, and emptiness, the same feeling she felt in Phosyne’s tower, in the tunnel below the earth. The nothingness that has replaced something that once was. Voyne fists her hands in her hair, shudders. She can’t even remember what she was thinking of, when the buzzing started. The garden, perhaps? She remembers the Lady. She remembers her king telling her that it was time to begin eating their own, remembers fighting it, but it all runs together. Those weren’t the same day. The Lady came later. But it is the Lady she remembers sitting on this bench with her, taking her hand, shaking the foundations of her world apart.

Voyne jolts away from the bench, on her feet again, retreating. Something foul has happened here, and she cannot think about it without bile rising in her throat.

It’s easier to go back out, to keep moving bodies.

She doesn’t notice how she is gentler with the girls with golden hair.

29

29

Treila can barely see, the sunlight is so intense. It was full night when she crawled beneath the castle, but now it’s midday. It’s midday, and it’s mid-autumn, the air filled with a crisp bite, the trees around her wreathed in blazing orange.

Across the river, there is mud, and rubble, and no other trace of the Etrebian camp.