At some point, Jareen looked away from the remains of the house and saw that the servants of the Tree of Lira were gone. A few vien lingered, watching smoke trailing up. The fire had burned incredibly hot. The whole building was reduced to embers and charred remains within an hour. Much of the surrounding garden had withered. The arbor where Jareen had spent the night with Tirlav was wilted and brown.

"What do we do now?" Coir asked.

Jareen wasn't sure. Whatever horror had befallen, it only harmed those afflicted with the Malady. She had nowhere to go and nothing to do. She could try to return to Talanael and see if her mother would take her in, but. . . Would the Synod have more use for her?

Tirlav was alive, and he was High Liel. Yet he had not come to her. She was not even sure where he was.

Jareen saw motion beside her and turned. A vien approached in the array of a rider of Findel. Her stomach fluttered at the fleeting thought that it might be Tirlav, but it was not. It was a tall vien with hair like polished walnut. His visage was gaunt and scarred, an eye cloudy from injury, but he stood erect and proud.

"Lielu Ja-leen?" he asked, butchering her Noshian name.

"Do you come from the Synod?" Jareen asked. Whatever had happened to the afflicted, the Synod would no doubt want to know. She did not know what she would say, except that it was not natural.

The vien nodded.

"You are to come with me, Lielu. I can carry that for you." He reached out toward the harp.

Jareen let him take the instrument.

"Jareen?" Coir asked. She glanced back at him.

"Come along," Jareen said.

"I was not told to bring him," the rider said.

"Were you told not to bring him?" Jareen asked. The vien cocked his head to the side and squinted, hesitating.

"He was placed in my care by the Tree of Aelor," Jareen added.

At that, the vien shrugged and turned away. Jareen and Coir followed after him.

"I am Coir, formerly the Arch Archivist of Drennos," Coir said. "What is your name?"

The vien glanced back at Coir, his brow furrowed, obviously surprised by this introduction. If it weren't for the horror of the day, Jareen might have smirked. Yet the vien surprised her by responding:

"I am Glentel."

"Well met, Glentel," Coir said, once again using a Noshian idiom that made little sense in Vienwé.

"Why?" Glentel asked.

"Why what?" Coir said, butchering the Vienwé intonation.

"What makes our meeting well? I would have thought the opposite."

Coir hesitated.

"It matters not. How long have you been a rider?"

Glentel looked to Jareen as if to ask for guidance. She said nothing.

"Have you been to the Mingling?" Coir asked.

"Yes."

"I hear it is unusual to meet veterans. Did you serve your one hundred and eleven years?"

Glentel did not answer, quickening his pace and staring ahead, leading them down a path that now reeked of smoke.

"I only ask because—"

Jareen held out a hand to stop Coir and shook her head. Thankfully, he desisted.

Glentel led them toward the western edge of the city. Along a narrow path between dense arbors of grapevines, they came to an arch leading into a shaded glade. Here Glentel stopped.

"Go in," Glentel told Jareen. "Only you." He turned to Coir. "You wait here."

Coir held up his hands in acquiescence. Jareen stepped through the archway. There was a narrow mossy path, and she followed it through the first opening of the glade. Behind her, she heard Coir speaking in his awkward Vienwé, no doubt pressing Glentel for answers about the Mingling.

The path skirted around a dense clump of ten-foot-tall raspberry canes, and there he was. She stopped in her tracks, her heart beating hard. He stood in a long robe of Aelor burgundy, but what she saw first was the Change. His hands were streaked with yellow crusted pigmentation, except for darker hues at the fingertips. Shades of green streaked back from his mouth, his lips rough with raised nodules. His left cheek was ridged.

He tried to smile, but it faltered. She knew he could see her surprise, and so she forced a smile back.

"Lovniele," he said. He took a step forward and stretched out a hand for her, but looked at his own fingers and curled them closed, lowering his arm. Jareen went to him and took his hand, opening the fingers and intertwining her own. Her vision grew blurry from damp. She felt the texture of the Change. How could this be? When she was a child, her mother had been High Liel for years and yet she had not shown so much of the Change.

Despite her despair, over the past months she had imagined one day meeting Tirlav again. Never had she imagined it so soon. It had been a ridiculous fancy. In her mind, she was always old, and he looked the same as ever, looking at her in the perpetual youthfulness of the Vien. She imagined running to him and embracing him, but telling him to forget her and live long years with his harp beneath the canopy.

Now, she could barely meet his gaze for timidness.

"Lovniele," he repeated. His voice was rougher, now, but it was the voice of the father of the babe yet in her womb. That thought melted her hesitation, and she put her arms around him. He returned her embrace as tears fell from her eyelashes. She could tell him about the babe. He could be with her as the time came.

"I never thought I'd see you again," he said. "I had given up hope of life."

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She had nothing to reply except to hold him harder and closer as he continued speaking: "I tried to come to you sooner. I feared that you might not escape the burning."

"What happened?"

"The Synod. . . we attacked the Malady and burned the Mingling—at least, as much of the Mingling as we could."

Jareen stiffened and pulled her face back from his robes.

"You attacked the Malady?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"We burned it. All of it. There is no Malady in the Embrace anymore."

She pushed against his chest, and for a moment he held on, his brow furrowed in confusion, but something must have warned him in her face. He let go and she stepped back.

"You killed them."

"They were already dead, Jareen."

She shook her head.

"No. Some survive the Malady."

"Few."

Jareen shook her head again, her hand instinctively resting on her belly as if to shield it. The Noshians bricked homes, locking families inside to protect others from plague. They could have done that. They did not have to burn them alive, boil their blood in their veins. It was monstrous. She thought of the thousands who must have died in horror at once. How could she express what their end had been like? She was sweating now.

"But, one of the scions of Veroi was afflicted, and of Namian, and others of the High Trees. Their own children!"

"We cannot spare our own. It was the will of the Synod."

"No," Jareen said, taking another step back. He stepped forward.

"It isn't up to any one person. It is—"

"I know what the Synod is!"

She had known of the Synod since her earliest childhood. Though she had stopped believing in the Current while she was in Nosh, it was a reality from which she could no longer hide, no matter how hateful it was.

"Jareen, please," Tirlav said. "We had to stop it before it destroyed Findeluvié."

"And will you keep it from returning?" Jareen asked. She forced herself to take her hand off her belly.

"I. . ." Tirlav hesitated. "I hope."

"The Synod truly killed them?" she asked again. And not just killed them—boiled them inside out. A thought struck her like a wave of dizziness. The Lielu of Lira had asked her how the humans kept illness from spreading. She had told them of the use of fire.

"The Synod must do what is best for everyone," Tirlav said. "We sacrifice even ourselves. It took great power. Lielu Talanael died to accomplish it, and the Liel of Namian barely lives."

There was a bench nearby, and Jareen hurried to it, feeling like the world had become unsteady.

"Velnir," she said.

"Yes," Tirlav answered, sitting down beside her. She wished he would stay standing. "That is the next scion to the Tree of Talanael. He is being brought to join the Synod. I should have been mindful that you are from Talanael and would know of the High Tree."

Jareen glanced at Tirlav. He stared back at her with obvious concern and no trace of deceit. She wiped her tears with the palms of her hand and sat up straighter. She wanted to weep and lie down on the moss, but there was danger. She sensed it even before the thoughts formed themselves clearly. He still did not know who she was. It was obvious. She had known he was a scion to Aelor, but he did not know who she was. She had never even told him about the letters. They had both been doomed to die, and she had not thought she would get with child.

It was absolutely forbidden for the High Trees to intermarry. Each heartwood was responsible for keeping meticulous records for the express purpose of making sure no child risked becoming scion to more than one Tree. She was an Insensitive but still a Daughter of Talanael. Perhaps it would not matter in her case. It was not likely the blessing could pass through an Insensitive. But after what the Synod had just done. . . She felt nauseous. The instinct to wrap her arms around her belly was strong, but she kept herself from it. Her heart beat in the horror that this vien whom she'd thought she loved, the father of the babe in her womb, might be a threat to their child. She needed time to think, to understand the situation. Perhaps with her brother Velnir as High Liel of Talanael, it wouldn't matter so much. . . Yet there were no exceptions, not within seven generations and more if possible. She had not known that Tirlav would become High Liel. He'd been so far from inheritance that they had sent him to the Mingling. It was all a horrible mistake.

"Jareen," Tirlav said, speaking her Noshian name. "I want you to go to the House of Aelor in Tir'Aelor. I will send word ahead to prepare a place for you there. I hope soon to return there myself."

"Why? You will have to marry," Jareen said. "Not to an Insensitive." It would make no sense for a High Liel to marry an Insensitive. She would die too soon, and what if the trait was passed on? The Synod would not arrange such a union.

"Lovniele," Tirlav said. "You could still be with me."

She stiffened. It was insult. Some of the wealthy humans kept mistresses, but she had never heard of such a thing among the Vien. Yet it might be more dangerous to refuse him. What could she do? She did not want to go to the Aelor woods. She wanted to escape. Could she somehow make it back among humans? With Nosh gone, and the eastern lands sending slave ships to the Findeluvié coast, how could she go among them?

"I know it is unusual," Tirlav said. "But our love is unusual. If you would—"

"I wish to stay in the High Tir, at least for a time," she interrupted, deflecting. "But you should take Coir back with you."

"Coir?" Tirlav looked startled to hear the name. "What do you mean, Coir?"

"The Arch Archivist of Drennos. He is here. He has been assisting me with. . . the afflicted."

"How did he come to be here?" Shock was apparent in Tirlav's voice.

"He came as a refugee. The Synod gave him sanctuary with your sister."

"Eldre," Tirlav said, standing up and running a marred hand through his hair. "Where is he?"

"Waiting with Glentel." She pointed outside of the glade.

"Of course," Tirlav said. "Of course he can come with us to Tir'Aelor."

"Please," Jareen said. "I do not want to be sent there. Your wife will be sent there. Can you not find me a place here in the High Tir?"

Tirlav hesitated.

"You can stay here with me for now. I hope to persuade you. And Coir can come with us. We can all go together soon," he said.

Jareen repressed a sigh. Delay at least gave her time to think.

"I cannot stay with you. We are not related or wed. You are a High Liel, now."

Tirlav frowned.

"I did not ask to be!" he snapped. "I would have gladly given it over. I had no choice!"

The outburst startled Jareen. There was no doubt he was sincere. For a moment her fear wavered, and her tenderness toward him returned. Yet her babe moved within her. She could feel it. Ever since. . . since the burning, the babe had been moving, kicking more frequently. Now it reminded her of danger. "If it were up to me," Tirlav said, "I would be no part of the Synod, and we could live our lives in peace—" he motioned to his face, —"without this."

"Would that it were so," Jareen said. "But I could not bear causing disgrace to the Synod." It was perhaps the first lie that Jareen had ever told him. She had withheld knowledge many times before, but she did not care about disgracing the Synod, especially not after what they had done. What he had done with them. She could not go with him. Tirlav sat back down, so close that his body pressed against hers. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

"I will not abandon you," he said. "I will not."

Jareen did not know what to say, and so she did not speak. She felt tired. She had not slept for more than a couple hours at a time in days, and she was hungry. Without knowing it, she raised her hand to her head

"Are you well, Lovniele?" he asked.

"No," she said, speaking truly. "I am exhausted and hungry, and. . ." she trailed off.

"I will find you some—"

"Liel," said a voice. Tirlav pulled his arm from around Jareen and stood. It was Glentel. The vien had come around the turn in the path. Jareen was relieved to see him. The vien ignored impropriety he had seen. "Liel, your younger brothers have arrived from Tir'Aelor."

"How did they find us?" Tirlav asked.

Glentel shrugged.

"A servant of the Synod has come."

Tirlav opened his mouth as if to say, "ah."

"They await you."

Tirlav turned to Jareen.

"I wish I did not have to attend to this, but. . . all those who. . . Eldre and Reniel administered the heartwood. I hardly know where to begin in picking up their labors."

"Coir may be of service. He is a record keeper, and he can read Vienwé. I have had him dictate to someone with a decent hand."

Tirlav nodded but didn't respond to her suggestion, speaking to Glentel instead:

"I will meet with my brothers. Please bring food and drink to Jareen and the human here." Turning to Jareen, he added. "I will make arrangements for you until we are ready to go to Tir'Aelor."

After hesitating a moment longer, Tirlav turned and strode westward, passing beneath the arch of another arbor.

"I will bring you a repast," Glentel said. "Wait here."

As Glentel disappeared around the turn in the path again, Jareen rested her head in her hands. A little while later, Coir wandered around the raspberry canes and found her there.

"That Glentel fellow was not much for talking," he said. "I really would love to interview a veteran who was actually willing to describe the Mingling." The man paused. "Jareen, are you well?"

She just shook her head.

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