Two vien and another vienu ignored Jareen's pleas, slipping off into the Mingling alone. The vienu would not even speak with her, despite her promises to ease their suffering. She noticed that the afflicted tended to leave either just after sunset or just before dawn. so Jareen had started sitting on a chair at the front of the hut near the path, waiting evening and morning. She had little else to do.

At last, a vienu came down the path carrying a young child in her arms. As the vienu approached, Jareen rose and stepped into the middle of the path, blocking her way. The vienu acted as if she would walk around, but Jareen extended her arms.

"Wait, please," Jareen said. The vienu stopped. The little child, a vien lad who could not have been ten years old, clung to her neck, his legs wrapped around her. The vienu's arms were wrapped around him as well. She did not speak.

"Are you both afflicted?" Jareen asked.

"No."

"Just him?"

The vienu didn't answer.

"You will send him to the Mingling alone?"

"Of course not!" the vienu sang in a sharp note of anger. "I will not leave him alone."

Jareen's throat clenched, and tears blurred her vision. She remembered Faro clinging to her like that after a long day of play in the grove. She would not have left him, either. The vienu looked surprised at Jareen's emotion.

"Do not go," Jareen said, her voice breaking.

"It is the law. We have no choice."

"There is a choice," Jareen said. She would not have done it. Laws be damned, she would not have done this thing to her son. Yet the Current had no hold on her. Was that it? Was the enclave enforcing its laws by the Current? Were they no better than the Synod for all their talk? Then again, how many times had she known families to be bricked in Nosh, and she had not railed against the Regency.

"What choice?"

"I have art to care for him," Jareen said. "To keep him from pain, and I can hide you both." Jareen would not tell her the whole truth of her intent, for she would not give the vienu such hope.

"They will find us."

"I have done this before and they did not know."

The vienu looked at her, obviously torn between distrust and need.

"Why do you care, Daughter of Vah?"

"I had. . . I have a son," she said. The vienu still hesitated, so Jareen held out her hand. "Come," she said. "Please."

***

Faro stared at the bodies of the Nethec warriors, their blood running into the dark lichen and moss. They looked ragged, ill-equipped, their spilled arrows pointed with stone. His chest heaved with his heavy breaths.

"How could you?" he asked again.

"They are our enemies," Vireel answered, as she had already.

"They were obeying me!"

"And while you slept? Or grew sorrowful, or fearful? The Currents are weak here. You could have lost control of them at any moment. It is one thing to control the quth. It is another thing to control your enemies. Better for them to die in battle than kill us in our sleep."

Faro raised his hands to the sides of his head, staring down at the face of the plume, placid in death, spiritless eyes gaping skyward.

"This was not battle!"

"Falo," Vireel said, laying a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off. "Falo, you are young. You have not fought long in these wars. You must trust my judgment in this. You are not skilled enough to keep your hold on them. And what would you do? Keep them here forever? The moment they drew nearer the Nethec the Synod would have wrested them from you."

"This was murder," Faro said. "I could have taken them east. They gave up their weapons. You could have taught me."

"Your learning must be done in safety. I promised your mother I would keep you safe. That is why she trusted you with me."

Faro shook his head.

"She would not have done this. She would never. These were her people. . . our people."

Stolen story; please report.

"The warriors of the Nethec are not people. They are slaves of the Synod, no more. Just as they were willing to be your slaves. Like the quth, we do with slaves as we must."

Faro felt nauseous. He had killed before—once, at least, when they fled the glade. Yet it had felt so different. That was battle, or so he thought.

Evening was coming on, and the temperature dropped even more. The quth riffled through the bodies of the massacred vien. They had already stripped the plume of his helm. Nearby, another quth lifted a stone pendant on a snapped rope of silk, holding the rock up to the fading daylight and squinting at its gleam.

Faro turned and walked away, heading back to the garden-copse on the point.

"Falo, wait," Vireel said, following him.

"Leave me be!" he shouted, and ran.

***

Jareen had dosed the little vien three times with tincture, giving him the meagerest drops until he slept soundly. She had separated the doses to keep from giving him too much at once. The lad did not need dosed yet; the Malady had not yet risen above his ankles. Next to the hammock, his mother sat in Jareen's chair, holding her son's hand and stroking his hair. Though she balked when she saw Coir and the meager hut, once she had given in to Jareen's entreaties, the vienu had turned from defensive to tired and grieving. She had not stopped Jareen from dosing the lad, only once asking what Jareen was doing.

"I'm giving him herbs to help him rest," Jareen had answered.

Now, Jareen stood at her table, preparing for her task. Bloodletting was practiced in Nosh by healers. The Voiceless Sisters utilized it as well, but their purpose was not to heal but to comfort. Many believed that bloodletting sometimes helped ease delirium, though Jareen thought it was only due to the subsequent weakness. Jareen had never tried to save a life before returning from Nosh, but then, she was no longer a Sister. The tools the Noshians used were made of fine silver, but Jareen did not have silver, or any other metal for that matter. She could not even request tools be made of glass. So, she had come upon an alternative, using what was available.

Pitthorns. The thorns that grew so rampant in the Mingling, sometimes reaching lengths of six or eight inches, had a pithy, damp core that leaked fluid from the fine tip. The thorns were much thicker at the base. Even when they just grazed the skin, they often left red itchy marks. Yet cut at the right length and maturity, they might serve her purpose. She had experimented for days to get it right, carefully removing the pith and cleansing the irritating sap. She had tested one on herself to ensure they would suffice. It was not pleasant, but it would serve.

Noshians believed that many illnesses lived in the blood, and in some cases, Noshian doctors had bled the sick before transferring blood from the healthy, seeking to replace the diseased. It was best done among close relatives, but the procedure was often fatal. While some had still believed in its efficacy, by Jareen's time transfers of blood were rare, and she had never witnessed one. The Sisters were taught to let blood, but putting something into a vein would be much harder. She had only ever seen the tools for such a transfer once.

Solving the problem had taken her days and much discussion with Coir. In the end, Coir's solution worked, though Jareen had balked at it and still found it disgusting. Some of the quth kids used the inflated bladders of small beasts as playthings. Nevertheless, nothing about this felt natural, and she had to use what was at her disposal. She had covered the outside of the bladder in a scrap of cloth to hide what it really was.

First, she carefully filled the bladder with the thick solution she'd made using water and finely-ground fungus from her cultivation. The white fungus that had spread out from her own blood had overtaken much of the other colonies on the rancid fur, but after a week, it had begun to take on pigments again and lose ground. The bladder she used had a nipple that allowed liquid in and out, carved of wood and adhered to the organ with glue made by the quth. All other outlets were sealed. She friction fit the nipple into the end of one of the thorns, careful to keep the bladder pinched to prevent any of her fluid from draining.

"Coir," she said.

"Yes?" the human emerged around the damp blanket they used as a curtain. He had stayed out of view because of the vienu's clear discomfort when she had seen him. No doubt everyone in the enclave knew about the Daughter of Vah and the human living on their outskirts, but seeing the human up close was another matter.

Jareen looked over her shoulder.

"Please hold her up," she said. The vienu's eyes were rolling back and she tottered. Coir shuffled over and put a hand on the mother's shoulder, leaning her back in the chair. Jareen had offered her a drink of wine while she was dosing her son, and the wine was laced with tincture.

"Your sense of propriety has changed, somewhat," Coir said. Jareen did not respond as she stepped toward the lad in the hammock. Ideally, she would have tried this on a full grown vien first, if only because the blood vessels would be larger. Nevertheless, the veins on the lad's left foot were swollen and hardened from the Malady. She placed her finger on the great vein atop his foot and felt for a pulse. It was thready, but it was still present. The Malady had not yet cut off circulation. She placed the fine tip of the thorn along the vein. It was almost too big, even for the swollen vein. An adult would have been easier.

"Are you sure?" Coir asked.

"No."

"What if it kills him?"

"He was going to die in the Mingling. They both were."

"Should his mother have a say?"

Jareen looked at the vienu. Drool dripped from the side of her mouth. Vireel had done this to Jareen, taking her son for her own purposes. Yet that was different. Faro was not dying.

He was in danger, though.

No, it was not the same. Jareen would not take this vienu's son away from her. The odds that either of them would live apart from her help were not worth considering.

Yet what if it was Jareen sitting there, dosed with tincture while another experimented on her son?

All these things she had considered before reaching this moment. The arguments had played out in her own mind over days as she prepared, and she had never reached a conclusion that satisfied her. But if she did not try. . .

She pressed the point through the skin and into the bulging vein. The hardened vein-walls stretched but did not burst. She felt the give as the tip of the thorn slipped within. Slowly, she squeezed the bladder, trying to feel above the thorn-point for the hum of the fluid passing into the vein. If only she had another hand. Nothing swelled or appeared to burst. At last, the solution was drained. She waited a few more heartbeats, then pulled the thorn free and pressed down on the wound hard.

It was done.

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