Teram's condition continued to deteriorate rapidly, and Jareen stayed by her side every moment that she could spare from the other afflicted. Coir she ignored for the most part. There was little information left to be gathered except to receive ongoing reports of new cases. Most cases in the western heartwoods appeared to be acquired from interaction with a member of the High Trees. The rate of infection remained steady, and so far there were no confirmed instances where an infection was a result of a third degree exposure. This was unusual, and she didn't know what to make of it.

Few new questions occurred to her, and she had forbidden the servants from allowing Coir to send any messages without alerting her first. They were happy to undermine any of the human's efforts. In his boredom, Coir had taken afresh to writing his treatises on Vien culture, using the servants as sources. At least he was leaving her alone to do her work and sit by her sister.

Teram's eyes remained closed and apart from a little delirious mumbling, she spoke no more. Keeping her dosed day and night to ease her struggled breathing, Jareen sat beside her hammock and slept in the chair. It was night, and no light came through the stained-glass window. A light drizzle of cool rain fell outside, a gentle sound. The flame of a glass coconut-oil lamp cast a low wavering glow in the room. Its bubbled glass cast a dappled pattern on the walls.

The door swung open, sending a puff of air against Jareen's face. She startled from her drowse.

Lielu Andalai stood in the doorway. Jareen knew it was her mother, even though the Change had overtaken her face, leaving only one patch around her left eye untouched. Her right eye had been overtaken by a scaled growth like the fissures of bark. Raised ridges covered the skin of her neck and face, pigmented with the yellow of wildflowers and the blue of the twilight sky. Her hair had turned from ebony to the green of a stormy sea. Her fingers had elongated, her nails twisted and pigmented. The silks on her shoulders were raised and lumped atop knobby growths.

Jareen stood, surprised and startled both by her mother's sudden arrival and the dramatic worsening of the Change in so short a time. She had seen her only months before. At the harbor of Talanael, the Change was upon her, marking her face, but it looked like it was consuming her now. Jareen had never seen such an advanced case.

Andalai of the High Tree of Talanael stepped into the room without greeting, moving to stand beside the hammock of her eldest daughter. With her remaining eye, she looked down on the damp brow and labored breaths of Teram. Lielu Andalai's face twitched, but all suppleness of the tissues appeared gone, her expression calcified by the Change.

Jareen recovered from the shock of her mother's appearance, but as yet Andalai had not paid her any heed.

"Why are you here?" Jareen asked. The Synod had enacted strict quarantine, keeping members of the High Trees far from any afflicted.

"I am strong of will. Stronger than many others."

What did that mean?

"It is not safe for you," Jareen said.

"Why? Because I might catch the Malady and die? Look at me. I have little time left." Her mother's speech was slurred, like a human who had suffered a stroke. Her mouth and lips did not move as they ought.

"What happened to you?"

"We die as servants to our people that they might live in blessedness." Andalai turned and looked at Jareen. "It is good that you returned to care for your own, Lovniele. It is your chance to serve your own people."

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Jareen flexed her jaw, letting the anger rise. She wanted its help.

"You know I did not come back of my own will. I would not have come. You care about the dying now that it is you and yours, but others die every day and you do not care. You turned your own allies away when they fled the destruction of Drennos, even though they suffered because they aided you!"

"How do you know that?"

"What do you mean?"

"How do you know that they were destroyed for aiding us?" Andalai stared hard at Jareen with her good eye, a blue-green orb in the midst of disfigurement.

"Does it matter?"

"In what way?" Andalai asked. Jareen squinted, not following. Andalai saw her confusion. "Does it matter that you know? Yes. You should not. No one knows it was anything more than a wave. Does it matter that they were destroyed? Also yes. It hurts us. We did not believe that Isecan had the power, though we did not doubt they had the resolve. It was clever though, how they accomplished it, if our guess is correct. It must have cost them many lives. There is comfort in that."

"You turned the refugees away."

"They were allies of profit not of kinship, and their profit has ended. They do us no good, now. They should seek their own kind in the east, not live here as pets."

"They are not pets."

"Not in their own lands." Andalai turned back to Teram. "But I ask you, would we let them live here? Build houses? Breed? Then what? Send them to fight in the Mingling like the Canaen do the quth? It occurred to us. But we gave them food and drink and sent them on their way. It was the will of the Synod."

Teram murmured and tried to raise her shoulders, though her eyes did not open. Andalai made a soft sound, almost like a grunt. Her shoulders fell from the high bearing of a Lielu, making her look suddenly frail.

"She is in pain," she said.

"It is time for a dose of tincture." Jareen went to the small table where sat her bottles and the droppers that Vien glassmakers had fashioned according to her directions. Measuring out the dose, she slipped the glass dropper beneath Teram's tongue and released the liquid. That done, Jareen stood next to her mother, watching Teram's wrinkled brow and rapid, shallow breathing. It would not take long for the tincture to do its work, the Vien constitution being so sensitive to its effects, but Teram should not have grown so uncomfortable. Jareen would need to adjust the dose.

"You were always bitter," Andalai said. "Angry that you were an Insensitive. I tried to shield you as much as I could, but. . . You were not so different from Teram and I. We were all doomed to die young. At least you would be spared this." Andalai motioned to her own face. "And now Velnir. . ." Andalai's voice wavered, and she fell silent.

As a child, Jareen had never understood that similarity. She didn't know how young the Liele died. Maybe if her mother had told her things. Maybe if people talked to her. . . things might have been different. Now, she didn't feel like she had the energy to give up her anger—or succumb to it.

"Could he not say no? Is there no choice?"

"Choice is your blessing, Lovniele. You can't even fathom it. You've never had to feel its lack."

"What choice did I have to be an Insensitive? You did not let me learn music, or study dance, or ride vaela. What use to actually live, when I would die? You kept me alone in the House of Talanael like a shame. None of that was my choice."

Andalai was silent for a long time. Teram's forehead had smoothed, and her breathing was more regular. The muscles of her neck had relaxed as well. A trail of drool dribbled from the corner of her mouth. Jareen grabbed a damp cloth and moved to wipe it, but Andalai laid a disfigured hand on her arm and took the cloth, wiping the drool, herself. When it was done, she clutched the rag.

"I was so glad you left," Andalai said. "You could never truly understand us. You used to resent us so. I feared you would become. . . I don't know. Mad like Vah, maybe. I worried, though. I dispatched a ship after you. They actually arrived before you. I only wanted to know that you were safe, and I made sure that nothing was said. When the embassy found out about you, they sent a report to the Synod. My wish to leave you be was honored. Many times I thought to have you brought back. It was Isecan's threat to destroy Nosh that resigned me to your return."

"You always knew."

"Yes, I knew. What could you accomplish here? What could you master? I hoped you would find some kind of peace across the sea. The humans could hardly exceed you. I never understood your choice to join that Order, but I see it has given you purpose, at least."

"Maybe purpose is not so different from peace," Jareen replied.

Andalai glanced at her with her one eye.

"Perhaps not."

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