She retreats inside, into the press of too much humanity. Too many people. Even with some in the great hall, even with others in various towers, there are too many people to move. She can’t spot any of the attendants who are trained to help the knights into their plate; she will have to arm herself. She can barely reach the stairs and climb up. If any of these walls collapse, there will be mass death.

Perhaps that is why she finds her king two floors up, in their converted quarters, where she goes to fetch her armor.

That does not explain why he stands by the window.

She feels unaccountably naked as she goes to his side, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s staring out.

“My liege,” she says. “We must get you somewhere safer.”

He doesn’t look at her. He is twisting pinches of his beard into tight spirals. “This is the moment, Voyne,” he says instead. “Look. See what our iron has bought. This may be the moment of our ransom.”

The Priory.

She crouches down so that she can see out the window below him. Out on the far wall, she can see figures working in shadows, the torches doused to deny Etrebia anything to aim by as night falls in earnest. But she can make out enough: the nuns help work small catapults, each of the Priory’s design. They are not, strictly speaking, a martial order, but their designs have always been of use in times of war. Those catapults, she knows, are stronger than their footprint should rightly allow, and around their rotational bases they bear notations she has heard called radians that allow precise calibration, aiming, destruction. From here, she can barely see the nuns at work, their shorn heads wrapped in black fabric hastily donned to hide them in the night. They observe the turning of the machines. They load them with what Voyne can only hope is their precious new invention.

(But what if, her treacherous mind whispers, that invention is as laughable as Phosyne’s rotting meat?)

The catapults release in a wave; she hears the thunk as they reach full extension. She can’t see what they lob out across the field, but when they strike the siege engines below, they explode into bright, multicolored flames that spread fast. She can see the silhouettes of the Etrebians trying to douse the flames, but they’re pushed back.

And then the siege engines begin to buckle.

“Bless the Constant Lady,” Voyne whispers, awestruck.

They stay there, the two of them, her king standing above her, Voyne crouched by his feet. They watch. One by one, every siege engine that is struck by these Priory-derived incendiaries collapses in the flames. And the nuns are skilled at their mathematics, their geometries; they know how to aim, and aim fast.