Phosyne wakes, sprawled face down among her books and the rags that make up her pallet, two warm, sinuous bodies draped across her back and legs. Ornuo and Pneio are heavy when they want to be, which seems to coincide with when she most wants to throw them across the room. Groaning, stiff and exhausted and hungry like she can’t remember being (really hungry, not just starving, because she understands now that the two are quite distinct), she wriggles out from beneath them and hauls herself over to the window.

It feels like yesterday all over again. The yard is full of bodies, people watching with upturned faces as salvation is once more dangled in front of them. The saints (visitors, guests, impossible creatures) stand in the lower yard. The king and his attendants this time remain in the upper yard, but Ser Voyne is not among them.

No, she stands in the lower yard. She is not wearing armor, so it takes Phosyne longer to spot her, but there she is, half-shorn head turned to the woman who looks like the Constant Lady, gaze unwavering.

Phosyne chews her lip. Peels up a patch of dried skin, swallows it down. It only makes her stomach growl harder.

The trumpets blast again, and this time the noise sends the boys skittering below her blankets, huffing grumpily. Phosyne hesitates just a moment, then pushes on the glass, wriggles it free so that she can breathe a little fresh air and, just barely, make out the words below.

She can’t hear the king himself, of course, but his criers repeat his words at the tops of their lungs.

“We have been delivered,” the criers shout. “Our prayers have been answered. Our saviors bring with them good food and good wine, and tonight we will dine as one people, in gratitude.”

Nothing is said of the army that still (Phosyne checks) masses outside the gates. Nothing is said of how they will leave this place. But at the mention of a feast, Phosyne watches the crowd ripple.

They are falling to their knees. Her own have gone weak as well.

“Every person in Aymar will eat and drink their fill tonight,” the king continues through his speakers. He doesn’t seem to notice that there are no wagons of provisions below him, behind him, or anywhere at all inside the walls. Do they mean to bring them up from beyond the enemy lines? Or will they do what Phosyne was tasked with, and conjure sustenance from nothing? “There will be no rations, and no divisions among us. Rest, today, and make ready for the revels of the evening.”