Jareen watched the little vien sleeping. His breathing remained steady. On a pallet of ferns next to the hammock, his mother also slept. She had still not asked for their names, and they had not offered. It was better not to know.

For a week, the signs of the Malady had remained unchanged in him, but today for the first time, the creeping discoloration had continued up his veins, moving above the ankles on both feet. Her attempted remedy had not killed him, but at best it had only delayed the progress of the disease.

Perhaps she needed to dose him regularly, but she had harvested all the colonies of the white fungus and pulverized them to dust in order to make the single dose she had given him. She'd need far more infected blood—as well as her own—to make enough for repeated doses, plus the time for the fungus to grow and spread. Two nights before while his mother slept, Jareen had dosed the lad and taken some of his blood. To keep his mother from wondering, Jareen had moved her experiments beneath a little lean-to shelter the quth had built her. It had taken many days for the fungus in the first vien's infected blood to interact with her own and propagate enough for her to use. It was unlikely the new attempt would make a difference for the lad now sleeping peacefully in her hammock.

A few survived on their own. It was rare, but she had seen it. Maybe, if she could delay the progress of the disease long enough, the natural resistance of the body could win the battle. With enough blood and enough hides, perhaps she could speed up the cultivation of the white fungus.

Jareen stared at the little vien, his chest rising and falling. Just in the past half an hour, a sheen of sweat had settled upon his forehead. She moved to his side and lay her head upon his chest. Warmth emanated from his body, and she heard the faintest crackle of fluid in his lungs. Cultivating enough of the fungus would take longer than the child had. In a single day, she had gone from hope to resignation; as soon as the Malady had resumed its progression, it affected his lungs.

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Mixing fungus collected from the quth directly into her blood grew nothing. It was only when she mixed the contaminated blood of the afflicted with her own that the fungus changed and spread. For some time, she'd had a growing conviction about what she must do, but she still resisted. Jareen had always doubted the Noshian theory that blood carried illness. She found spittle a much more likely culprit. Yet she could not deny that the Malady afflicted the blood vessels.

She had taken the child's life in her own hands once already. What was once more? She was not related to the child. Even those Noshians who had believed in the transfer of blood did not practice it between those unrelated. It could cause sudden death. But the affliction was not simply physical; the Current was bound up in it somehow, and she was immune. The child would die either way.

She would start small.

The little table now held only her tinctures, and so she slipped out of the hut, past a sleeping Coir on the other side of the curtain. In her lean-to workshop, she prepared her tools. It was easy to see her own veins through her translucent skin. Finding them in others was much harder. Using one of her thorns to pierce a vein in her hand, she let her blood flow out into the bladder as she held the wooden nipple into the end of the thorn.

Back in the hut, the child's mother slept fitfully. She was not dosed. The vienu resisted sleeping, wanting to watch over her son. It was only when overcome by fatigue that she slept at all. Sometimes Jareen helped without the vienu's knowledge, but she had not done so that night. She had not yet faced the decision.

Jareen approached the little vien. The vein on the back of his foot had swollen, standing out dark. There was hardly any thrill of a pulse there, but a vein on the back of his hand had started to distend. It would serve. She felt little hesitation; she had made her decision, and she was thankful that Coir was not awake to pester her. The child flinched as she slipped the tip of the thorn into the vein, but though he turned his head, his eyes did not open. With one hand holding the thorn in place, she slowly squeezed the blood-filled bladder with the other.

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