Time, however, will not wait for her prayers, and the Lady’s gracious girls are on a tight schedule. The candles have burned down to the noontime mark, and the day is hot, the sun blinding. They begin their procession, leaving Ser Voyne on her knees behind. They bear the icons out of the tower and onto the walls of the upper bailey. They will walk the whole perimeter of the castle today, just as they have every day before, and will every day after. Then they will go down to the yard, down among the tents and the starving children, and they will minister as they are able. Help to mend broken things, give the smallest touch of honey to the tongues of all who will kneel before them.

They leave the body behind.

Jacynde remains as well. She drifts to the body’s side once more, and Voyne joins her.

“Are there others?” she asks, when it is only the four of them left in the room: Cardimir, Leodegardis, Jacynde, herself. “That were so badly injured in the attack?”

She wishes she already knew. She should already know.

“No, just the one,” Jacynde says. “He likely would have died soon anyway; he was too weak to recover.” She’s more practical, in private, than she is in her sermons. Voyne appreciates it. She sidles closer. Thinks to speak of Phosyne. If she asks questions, and the king can hear them, can hear what madness is passing under this roof—

She doesn’t get the chance.

“Ser Leodegardis,” Prioress Jacynde says, and Voyne comes back to herself and sees that Jacynde is holding out a knife, hilt first.

The keeper of Aymar takes it with only the slightest hesitation. His fingers wrap tight as he approaches the body.

She rushes to his side before she can think better of it. “Leo—”

“Step aside, Ser Voyne,” he says, and his voice is so strained it nearly breaks. “This must be done.”

“What—”

But he has taken the man’s arm, is stretching it along his side on the platform, fitting the blade to his wrist. He is going to cut the dead man’s hands off.

“Look away, if it distresses you so,” he murmurs.

He begins to cut.

“No,” Voyne says, then, as her overheated brain begins to make sense of this, louder, “No.” She grabs Leodegardis’s hand, and his lips twist in anger.

“Ser Voyne,” her king warns. “You are harder than this. Steel yourself, please.”

“You can’t. You can’t send him to the quartermaster,” she says, looking between them, to Jacynde, desperate. “Things aren’t so bad yet. We have time.”

“Not much of it,” Prioress Jacynde says. “And meat spoils.”

Leodegardis shrugs off her hold.