“No,” Voyne says. “No, you wouldn’t.”

And wouldn’t it have been easier if she didn’t know, either?

But she does. He does.

Silence stretches between them, broken only by the occasional ecstatic cry from without.

“They hate iron,” Theophrane says at last. “At least, I think it’s the iron. It’s the only thing I can figure that saved me.” He displays one muscle-corded forearm. His skin is flecked all over with what looks like soot, until Voyne realizes it’s not on the surface of his flesh, but underneath. The blurred edges come not from particulate but from the lens of skin.

“It gets in you,” Theophrane says with a bitter twitch of his lips. “Iron filings, all the rest, in with the burns. Unavoidable. But when one of those things tried to take a bite of me, it slagged its jaw. I built the ring after. They haven’t gotten close since.”

“Iron,” Voyne repeats. She thinks of her sword, skewering Jacynde. All the iron that they gave to the Priory, that was melted down and turned into ammunition. So much lost armor. So many lost weapons. Even the few iron nails in this place, stripped from their moorings, given to Theophrane to melt down and repurpose.

All gone, now, gone over the walls.

And the false saints came in its absence. The False Lady and the bees that have gone mad with Her arrival kept Voyne from her sword. It makes sense, now.

She can use this.

“One piece,” she says, rising to her feet. “Give me one piece from your ring. Anything. I can use it. I will fight them.” It’s as good as a sword, if what Theophrane says is true. If it isn’t, he loses nothing, not really. “Whatever you can spare. Please.”

He glares. He does not move.

“I can take it,” Voyne adds, voice softening, “or you can give it.”

She is stronger than he is. She’s been kept better fed, even before the saints arrived. Not, she understands now, so that she could protect her liege, but because she was a prized possession, and it would not do to let her waste away. So honeyed wine and the last of the cheeses were for her. She feels guilty, so guilty, but not enough to surrender her strength for it.

In another life, Theophrane might have looked on her as his salvation. The hope of rescue. But instead, even as he pulls something from the pile, he glares at her with hatred.

He tosses his offering at her feet. It’s a hammer. Small. The head is rough iron, the handle worn wood. It’s well-loved, but useless now, if only because the metal makes up such a small portion of it.