It’s been many months since she needed this deference, but she learned it well by necessity. It slips over her like the leather of the gloves she makes. That Ser Voyne wears now on her hands. Treila recognizes her own work.

Voyne’s head jerks up; she must have thought she was alone, or followed only incidentally. But she doesn’t turn. Treila’s read on the situation appears correct.

“No,” Ser Voyne says at last. “What is there to get?”

“Water,” Treila suggests.

Ser Voyne laughs, and it is dark and bitter, and Treila wonders if she knows something Treila does not.

She will take her water from the kitchens tonight, then, not the cisterns.

“I apologize,” the knight says, when she has control of herself once more. “It’s been a long few days.” Weeks. Months.

“I have a little extra food,” Treila says, risking some exposure for a greater reward: Voyne’s vulnerability. It breaks over her like ocean surf. Treila can see her shoulders tighten, then unclench, and Ser Voyne sags where she sits.

“I am not in need,” she says, guilt and shame weighing her down. “Keep that for yourself.”

She does not threaten to take it away and redistribute it. Treila feels a pang for the woman she once thought Ser Voyne to be, who Ser Voyne seems to play at being even now.

There is silence, then, and Treila ponders her next move. She wants Ser Voyne weak, reliant, and she has gotten there so swiftly, but the next steps are treacherous. Should Treila reveal her identity, and hope that there is guilt there, too? Or should she stretch this out, encourage Voyne to come back to this spot, meet her here again and hope that they can have another anonymous exchange? Given time, Treila can pry apart this woman’s armor, make her desperate, and then leave her betrayed, broken on the rocks.

The king would allow it. The king has already begun to cut her loose.

But before Treila can decide, Ser Voyne makes a move she was not expecting.

“What I am about to say,” Ser Voyne addresses to the air, “cannot be told to anybody else. Do you understand me?” She doesn’t turn to look at Treila, and that is the measure of how desperate she is, how broken.

Lying is easy. “Of course, ser knight,” she breathes, coming to sit behind her on the bench. Their hips brush, just slightly, and the contact steals Treila’s breath away. She can hear the older woman breathing. Can hear the shaking in her chest. She is going to freely offer up another dagger to point at her breast, and Treila is so eager she could cry.