The girl waggles the fruit. “I’ve only got a little of this left,” she says. “So in return, I want something from you.”

“Oh,” Phosyne says. Blinks owlishly up at her.

“Glad to see you understand,” the girl says, that not-smile still on her lips. “They say you’re a heretic. Is that true?”

Phosyne winces. “More or less.” She’s thinking of Pneio and Ornuo and their new guests. Yes, that probably counts as heresy. Then again, if she can summon whole people now, she really should be able to summon food. Fill this little room with cabbages.

No, better to focus on not falling through the floor.

“Focus, please,” the girl says, but she doesn’t mean about the floor. Phosyne squints up at her. “I want a way out.”

“I’m afraid,” Phosyne replies, “that I’m fresh out of miracles.”

The girl looks at the fruit, then takes a bite herself.

Phosyne groans.

“A way out,” she repeats, hoping the girl has more of an idea than that.

From the way her brow pinches, she does. “There’s a way down,” the girl says after a brief silence. “To where the well fills. But there’s—” She falters. Reorients. “I can feel a breeze, but it’s coming through a very narrow crack.”

“I’m told picks work well on stone.”

That not-smile is back, wider this time. “But we melted down all the iron,” she says.

Ah. So they did. Thank you, Prioress Jacynde, Phosyne thinks. No iron. No iron makes this harder. Makes . . .

A thought almost sticks in her mind, an idea, something that makes her deeply uncomfortable. But then it’s gone again.

“I don’t know,” she says, closing her eyes tightly. She doesn’t want to see the girl finish off that bit of fruit. “Stone is . . . I can’t say with any certainty what to do. I know a little about water. That’s all.” She needs to offer up something, though, if she’s going to get back up to her tower. Maybe, if she gets that far, she can confess to Ser Voyne, and then the knight will slit her throat and go to fix this whole mess.

That thought is far more comforting than it should be.

She tries to wet her cracked lips; it doesn’t work. But she does open her eyes, looking at the faint suggestion of shapes above her, stone pressed against stone. Stone below her, too. It’s very solid, but she knows she could fall through it, if she isn’t careful. That must mean there’s space there, even if she can’t see it.

“You give up?” the girl asks.

“No,” she says, surprising herself, but her mind is already working. Space inside the stone, so if it could be reconfigured—but how?—wind can pass through it, water can pass through it—stone becomes rubble, becomes gravel, becomes pebbles, becomes sand—