The House of Lira held thirty-seven afflicted, relatives of the High Trees and some others from the city. Jareen had little time but for managing doses of tinctures and cleaning the releases of bowels and bladder. The servants would not enter the rooms of the afflicted—she had to put at least two afflicted in each of the rooms—and so she made Coir deliver the food or drink the servants prepared for those who could still partake. Coir also helped to hold the sick on their sides for Jareen to clean. He held his face away, grimacing at sights and smells, but he did not complain.

She napped when she could, ate when she might, but her fatigue had grown day by day. Someone was always in their final moments, gasping and struggling. How could she neglect them to see to her own exhaustion? She thought of her fellow Voiceless Sisters in Nosh who had cared for the sick during the plague even at the loss of their own lives. Some of the Sisters had only been two or three decades old. Yet here the Vien lived without end, and they feared to care for their own.

How could they care so little? She often found herself resting her hand on her belly. What place would her child have in Findeluvié with no father and an Insensitive mother? Would the Tree of Talanael accept her babe born out of wedlock? She had never heard of such a case. Soon, all who saw her would know of her condition. Losing herself in her work had always helped her to avoid her own thoughts, but she could not avoid this forever. One day she would die, and her child would still be young by Vien standards. Often she reminded herself that even if it was not the way of the Vien, she had survived in the world young. She had seen the humans survive even younger. It was not a comforting thought, but it was not a comforting world. Who knew it better? She had been a Voiceless Sister; she had seen the cruelty of nature, and even the Order had died with Nosh.

Too tired to climb into her hammock for a nap, Jareen had dozed in a chair when the first screams startled her awake. Who was it? She had just dosed the suffering. Had she forgotten someone?

No. It was more than one. More screams erupted up and down the hall. She burst from her room at the same time that Coir rushed from his. They both hesitated, unsure where to go first. The piercing cries came from every room. Jareen rushed into the nearest doorway. The two vienu within had flipped out of their hammocks and lay writhing upon the ground, clawing at their faces and screaming. Jareen laid hands on one of the vienu, trying to hold her steady. Her skin was hot—hotter than any fever she had ever felt. Never had Jareen heard such screams.

"Jareen!" Coir yelled from the hall. "What is it?"

What was she to do? She drew back her hands from the heat. They stung as if she had grasped a hot kettle. The vienu's eyes burst as the fluid boiled and steamed from her face, her visage distorted into an expression of agonized rigor. Before Jareen's eyes, the vienu's skin swelled and. blistered. The blisters burst, blood boiling and steaming. Jareen lurched away, crawling backward to the door. Now Jareen was screaming, but she was the only one. The other screams had stopped. The bodies were still and steaming. Coir rushed into the room.

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"Jareen!" he shouted. Grasping her armpits, he pulled her out into the hall. She was still screaming. "Jareen!" He stumbled, falling back, but still he tried to pull her away. She was gasping for breath. Through the door, the steam stopped rising from the bodies. Their skin was shriveling and cracking like a grape turning into a raisin. Then, the dead vienu's silks burst into flame. At the same moment, firelight flickered from doors up and down the hallway.

"Water." Jareen pushed herself up. "Get water."

The servants kept full pitchers on a wheeled cart at the end of the hall. She raced towards the cart, passing room after room of burning bodies. The hall door opened ahead of her, and servants stared through with fear. She ignored them and grabbed a pitcher in each hand, turning into the nearest room. The bodies were already half consumed. She threw the water upon them but it didn't make a difference. The floor was blackening around the bodies. Flames were licking up from the wood. She rushed back into the hallway.

"Coir!" she screamed. He was sitting in the hall with his back to the wall, staring with wide eyes into the opposite room. Firelight gleamed on his face as he turned to look at her. "Get the papers!"

The command launched him into action. He ran to the study, and Jareen rushed to her own room, glancing in each room along the way. It was the same in each. Inside her room she grabbed the the harp in its silk bag and her little satchel. From there, she ran to help Coir. He was trying to fill his arms with the tenae, but he was struggling to hold them all.

"Here!" Jareen said, stuffing some of them into her satchel. "Get a sheet!"

Coir was back in moments with a silk sheet from his room. Using it as a sack, they managed to load the tenae and flee back into the hall. A weight of searing heat pressed against them. They squinted against it as they rushed down the hall. Fire had engulfed the rooms with preternatural speed, and flames licked out the doorways. The heat hurt her as she ran, her shoulders raised to cover her neck, her head down. They burst out of the hall. The servants stood on the landing of the stairway, looking dumbfounded and worthless.

"Get out!" Jareen shouted, leading the way down the stairs. She could hear the fire even on the ground floor. Passing through the archway, she didn't stop until she was well into the gardens and away from the house. Smoke rose in a column out of the windows of the second floor. She heard glass shattering on the third floor. There were shouts of Vien hurrying toward them. Some were calling for buckets. The building was engulfed in flames long before any arrived. The house went up faster than seemed possible. Flames licked up the trunks of the trees of the house. There would be no saving them. There was nothing left for Jareen to do but stand back and watch the House of Lira collapse into swirling ashes. The growing crowd of Vien turned their efforts to preventing the fire from spreading. Once caught by flames, eucalyptus could burn like great roaring candles. The Vien overhead worked to pour water down the trunks of the nearby trees, starting with a towering eucalyptus. Others with blades cut branches away, struggling and coughing against the swirling black smoke, wet scarves across their faces. On the ground, onlookers watched for any sparks that might fall and catch.

Jareen's nose burned and her eyes watered. She looked over a Coir. The man was pale and shaking. What had they just witnessed? Jareen had seen horrors before, but this was a new horror—a horror for which she had no explanation.

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