The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

In fifteen days, there will be no food in Aymar Castle. She has done the arithmetic forward and back. They have been down to strangled rations for weeks now, and there have been mistakes. Thefts. Impulsive, desperate gorgings.

Even if every soul in Aymar Castle keeps to their allotted portion - and Phosyne does not think that is likely - every soul in Aymar Castle will run out of food in fifteen days. And though Phosyne is one of the few outside the Priory who can work sums, everybody else is bound to realise this soon.

They are packed in one atop the other; a castle meant to hold at most three hundred for any length of time now shelters three times that. Every nook and cranny is full to bursting of terrified farmers and a pitiful handful of overwrought knights. They've been living in this unbearable press for almost six months now.


It's a testament to Ser Leodegardis's leadership that they've lasted this long, that the siege outside their walls has not broken them, that plague has not crashed down heavy on their heads. But time is inexorable, as is the human stomach.