If Ser Voyne was here, there’s no way Phosyne could explain it in a way that makes sense, but it does. It does. Perhaps the Lady didn’t mean to teach Phosyne at all, with that strange vision of bees and honey and red threads, but Phosyne has learned all the same. Boundaries, territory, translation. This room is hers. She is certain, now, that the Lady could not enter without permission. With Pneio and Ornuo here, the dividing lines blaze a little hotter, because they are Phosyne’s.

Just as the water is Phosyne’s.

Her gaze drops down to the tower room’s floor. Beneath it is an entire cistern. She can’t reach it from here; its pipes extend to the roof’s catchment area and down to the kitchen. But there is water, here. It is not purified yet. It is a threat. It is a resource.

Phosyne pats Pneio’s head, absently, and climbs back down the stairs. She walks past Jacynde’s body, still motionless save for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Her presence barely registers; what is below her is far more important.

This is the first cistern that existed in the castle. The well preceded it, of course, but nothing else. Before them, there was only the long trudge up to the ridge from the riverside. It will not be full; there hasn’t been enough rain. But because of its safety (only rainfed, none of the earth’s filth within it), it is the only source the king drank from, and so fewer hands have tapped it.

She is going to tap it.

If only she had a pick; she laughs at the thought, a hiccuping thing, reminded of Treila. She hopes Treila is okay. She hopes Treila is far away from here, whatever here is becoming. No matter her sentiments, though, she still has no pick, and no knife, and nothing hard and pointed enough to make a dent in the mortar below her.

But just as she has learned fire, she has learned earth, as well. She presses her palms to the floor. She wriggles her fingers. She thinks of Ser Voyne against her back, and feels her hands sink, just a little.

It takes effort, but she can keep the rest of herself from falling if she tries. Her fingers dance through rock as if it is itself water, and she moves them in, then out. In, then out. She remembers water compressing, expanding, roiling when she did the same in a tub, a stream, a river.

The stones melt like butter beneath her touch.