"Is there another way we can find out what the population is?" Jareen asked. Coir stood on one side of the small room that now served as their office. One of the vien servants sat nearby, hands folded on the table in front of him, pen and ink at the ready, waiting for commands. Judging from how the servant made no effort to look at them or participate in the conversation, Jareen judged he wished he could be anywhere but there.

"We have asked twice. It cannot be a mistake. Every heartwood omitted the answer in the reports. They don't want us to know."

So far, Jareen knew of eight-hundred and ninety-seven confirmed afflicted of the Malady in Findeluvié. Most of them had already died. The rate of infection appeared relatively stable. Of all those afflicted, only forty-three appeared to have survived the infection, although not without lasting disfigurement. She had yet to have another opportunity to catch the infection in its earliest stages. By the time the afflicted reached the House of Lira, the Malady was too advanced to try an amputation—even if anyone would agree.

"Without knowing the population, we cannot know what the proportion of infection truly is, or how its course might run if the infection rate holds steady."

"Surely we could make an educated guess."

They had already tried educated guesses, but Jareen felt they were far more guess than educated. Yet surely the nearly nine hundred afflicted were as nothing compared to the population of the Embrace. The Malady remained rare, though the incidence among the High Trees was far higher than the general population. She could tell that even without an exact count of the inhabitants of the heartwoods.

Beside the tallies of new afflicted, the latest reports held few insights. Those close enough to be sent to the House of Lira continued to arrive, the most ill carried behind vaela on litters. She glanced down the page again, reading through the list of questions drawn up in the serviceable calligraphy of the vien servant. He had a hand that suggested slight impatience—and perhaps a disinterest in the topic as exhibited by the acute slopes of his downward strokes.

She sighed. Some of the questions were not pertinent to the Malady.

With Coir's help, Jareen was able to focus more on those in her care, but she had quickly realized that Coir's obsessive interest would not stop at the Malady. Yet again, he had added quite a few irrelevant questions, mostly having to do with the Mingling and Vah'tane.

"I am merely trying to broaden our scope," Coir said, anticipating her objection.

"We do not need a broader scope. If we ask too much, they may grow even more wary."

"Yet what can we ask that we haven't already? And what have the answers taught us so far?"

It had taught her plenty. Jareen rubbed her forehead and handed the papers back to the servant. The vien took them with a flat expression that Jareen knew was something akin to abject misery. She had ordered the servant to answer Coir's questions about the Vien, the Mingling, Vah'tane, and whatever else Coir might ask him. The archivist had tortured the vien daily with interrogations. The Synod had ordered the servants to attend to Jareen's commands, and so the vien obeyed. Better he at the man's mercy than she.

"Copy it again, but remove the questions about Vah'Tane," she said. The servant inclined his head and slid a fresh sheet of paper into position.

"We have an unprecedented opportunity to get answers," Coir objected.

"And I do not want to ruin it," she said. "Whether or not Vah'tane is a real place does not bring us closer to understanding the Malady. I still do not know how it spreads."

"It is obvious how it spreads," Coir said. "You just don't want to believe it."

"Even if that were true, there must be some principle, some differentiating factor," she said, "something that makes one susceptible more than another, even in the High Trees."

The servant's fine brush-pen slid across the paper. Sitting nearby on the table was a stack of tenae, the latest reports from the heartwoods. The oldest member of the Synod was two-hundred and eighty-three years old, the Liel of Namian who was reported to be terribly disfigured by the Change. Jareen's own mother was next at two-hundred and forty-four years, and Jareen knew that the Change had greatly affected her in the years Jareen had been in Nosh. Eleven years ago, the previous Liel of Tlorné died at three-hundred and five, and the listed reason was: "overtaken by the Change," though none of the scribes from the heartwoods had given her clear answer as what that meant. How did the Change finally kill someone? What was in store for her mother?

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There was still no indication that anyone else in Findeluvié suffered from the Change. A few reports told of surviving veterans returning from the Mingling with pigmentation changes in the extremities, but when she attempted to find out more, she was told they had all returned to the Mingling to serve again as volunteers, or were otherwise away in service to the Synod. Volunteering to return to the Mingling was a phenomenon she had never heard of before.

On top of that, almost every instance of the Malady they had so far identified was either a relative of a member of the Synod, a veteran, an inhabitant of the easternmost fringes of Findeluvié, or had gone to and from the Mingling to resupply the front. The infections could be traced to these sources either directly or by secondary exposure, with a few exceptions where she suspected they simply hadn't yet found the connection. Her attempts to find out if the Malady had a foothold among the companies serving there had been met with silence. Jareen had written to the High Lielu of Lira to recommend that those who took supplies to the front be quarantined for at least a month upon their return, and so far as she knew, they had done so.

Jareen and Coir waited in outward if not inward silence until the servant laid down his pen, the new list finished.

"Please go get us food and drink," Jareen said to the vien. He stood and hurried from the room as slowly as he could with expressionless relief. Coir watched him go, then turned on Jareen.

"You know this is not like a human disease. This is from the Current. It is real. You cannot deny it any longer."

Jareen had been trying to deny it since she'd received the first reports, striving to think of any other explanation. Yet the Trees of the Synod had not traveled to the Mingling—hadn't even had exposure—and they were the most afflicted with the Malady. The others had clear connection to the Mingling. According to the reports and everything Jareen had learned as a child, the Mingling was where Findel's Current and Isecan's Current mixed together, causing great disturbances. It was said to be a horrid and deadly place, twisted by Canaen sorcery and millennia of war.

Surely there was an explanation. It beggared belief that there was a strange power at the heart of Findeluvié, that the Synod were in fact servants sacrificing themselves for the people and receiving devoted obedience in return. . .

"Lovniele," Coir said.

"Don't call me that," she snapped. Tirlav had been the last to call her that. She could still hear his voice speaking it in her mind. "I'm sorry," Jareen said. "But call me Jareen."

"It's real. And Vah'tane is real."

"Why are you so obsessed with Vah'tane? What difference does it make?"

"Three brothers," Coir said. "Findel, Isecan, and Vah."

"I know the story. It's no different than the story about the whale."

"Wait. The whale?" Coir asked, looking like a cat who had just glimpsed a mouse.

"Yes, about how Drennos was created from the whale who beached itself, mourning her lover."

"Oh, that," Coir said, looking disappointed. "I thought you were saying there was a Vien whale myth. I have found surprisingly few maritime myths among the vien."

Jareen sighed. Coir had gotten that far-off gaze that meant he was lost in his world of atlases or wherever it was he went.

"What were we talking about?" Coir asked.

"What difference does Vah'tane make?"

"Think about it. We know that Findeluvié and Isecan exist. We have learned that the Wellspring is real. The Change is real."

"You always believed that."

"Not always," he said, waving away the comment. "And I'm being generous. But there was a third brother. The Simple Seer. The Preacher of the Third Way."

"The Third Way is for those who wish to escape." That's what she'd heard as a child, anyway. "Its not going to stop the Malady."

Coir shrugged.

"If what Vah preached is true, then who cares about the Malady?"

"The ones dying of it," she said, squinting.

"Yes," Coir said, and stumbled for words: "I meant. I mean. . . in the grander scheme of things."

It had been a long time since Jareen had thought about what the teachings of Vah actually were. It was a dream for those burdened by long years, a goal for those who could no longer bear the weight of time. It was Vah'tane, Vah's Gate, the portal of rest. She figured those "searching" for it simply went to die in the Mingling. The topic had never particularly interested her; in truth, it had irritated her as a child. She would never get the opportunity to grow so tired of life. Sometimes even humans threw away their lives, an inexplicable phenomenon, a reaction to suffering, she supposed.

"The Malady is killing those who would live. What can I do for those who wish to be free of life? And why do you care? You will be free of life soon enough. "

"Do you really think Vah was talking about being free of life?"

"It doesn't matter. Whatever Vah'tane is. . . if it is anything at all, then it is in the Mingling."

Coir pressed his lips together, holding back whatever reply threatened to escape.

"I have to go check the afflicted," she said.

"Are you going to eat?"

"Why?"

"You sent the servant for food and drink."

"Oh," she said, and shrugged. "I'll eat later."

With that, she returned to her duty—her blessed, distracting duty.

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