Voyne is at the window now, reaching out to trail fingers over the jumble of items that block it up. Testing. Evaluating. Phosyne tries not to scowl.

“Do not think to give me orders.”

“I suppose I’m not His Majesty, no,” Phosyne concedes.

Ser Voyne doesn’t like that. She pulls away from the window and levels a cool stare at Phosyne, then retreats back down to the main floor. “Tell me what you have so far. What you’ve spent your day doing.” She has years of experience with that commanding tone she’s using, enough that it makes the skin along Phosyne’s spine prickle and tugs her toward the stairs.

When she realizes she’s coming to heel, she digs in and crosses her arms, refusing to go any farther. She feels, acutely, how close her bones are to the surface of her skin. How much more fragile she is than the other woman.

“What I have is nothing,” Phosyne says. “So far. I’ve just wrapped up one experiment, and it will take time to devise the next one.”

“Tell me what you have ruled out.”

Phosyne doesn’t want to; it will be a waste of time. Voyne won’t be able to understand, will likely respond with anger when she can’t. This is why Phosyne left the Priory—or, if not why (that was a matter of faith), then an early sign that it would one day come to pass. She appreciates how thorough her sisters can be, with their careful measurements, their detailed logs, their mechanical precision, but she is thorough in a different mode, one that defies easy ordering. Concepts are linked, though not always in ways words can capture. They resonate in a way undeniable to her senses, as real as anything she has seen or heard or smelled, but impossible to truly describe. And the proof of her process is this: it all works in the end.

So she says nothing. Ser Leodegardis may trust her enough to keep her housed and fed, but Ser Voyne—

“What is this?”

Oh, no. She has found the dish. Phosyne’s heart sinks as she lifts it up, then wrinkles her nose at the stench.

“Research,” Phosyne says, before she can think to lie and say, Oh, I must have forgotten it. Better, in hindsight, to be thought flighty than willfully . . . whatever she is.

Ser Voyne stares at the rotted meat. “No. No, this is madness,” she says. “This is not research. I have seen the nuns at their calculations. This is filth. How, exactly, did you expect food to appear? Out of nothing?”

“Not nothing,” Phosyne scoffs, coming closer, gesticulating with one clenching hand. “Out of a pattern. The meat is in a process, now, yes? It is rotting. There is growth in it, and decay, both. I thought that if I introduced seeds, that might steer the process more firmly toward growth—”

“Of mold.”