Whether or not Jareen had upset Eldre, the daughter of Aelor sent the human without delay, and before Jareen had finished checking on the afflicted, she stepped out of a room and found herself staring at a lanky human walking toward her, a nervous servant waiting at the far end of the hall. The servants hated even approaching the rooms occupied by the afflicted.

It was Coir, and the impact of seeing him again stopped Jareen in her tracks. He was skinny when she'd seen him last, but he looked as if he had suffered more since. A ill-fitting Vien robe of dark blue silk hung from his frame. When he saw Jareen, his brow clouded in a look of confusion, as if he was unsure of something. He cocked his head to the side.

"Jareen?" he asked.

Tears sprang to Jareen's eyes, surprising herself. She walked to him but stopped short. They stood staring, neither knowing how to greet the other. "It's you," he said at last.

"Of course it's me."

Coir motioned to his face.

"I've never seen you before. It's your eyes that I recognized."

Oh. Jareen had forgotten that he had only seen her veiled in the fashion of the Voiceless Sisters. She had given up wearing any head covering since returning to Findeluvié, though she still braided her hair back tight when caring for the afflicted.

"This is me," she said, holding up her palms. Coir smiled and glanced away.

"I never thought I'd say this, but I'm so happy to speak my own language to someone."

"How'd you escape?" she asked, watching the servant bow and retreat through the doorway.

"You saved me, remember? You left the door unlocked."

"You were still in the Manse."

"As it turns out, the guards were not eager to question a veiled Sister of the Order leaving the chambers of an infectious Departing."

"What?" Jareen asked.

"You left your change of clothes."

For the first time since Tirlav had left, Jareen laughed, and Coir laughed with her.

"It is a good thing you are tall. . . at least by Noshian standards," she said, shaking her head and wiping tears from her eyes. "But how did you get off the island?"

The smile on Coir's face dissipated.

"I had friends in the archives helping to preserve some of the most important manuscripts and records. After I fled, I laid low for as long as I could, then we put to sea in a skiff, hoping to be picked up by a departing ship." Coir looked past Jareen as if the memories lay beyond her. "We waited a couple miles off shore for a sail. We drifted for nearly three days. I barely noticed the wave as it went under us. Out at sea, it was nothing. Yet as it reached the shallows, it rose up like a great wall." He shook his head. "I tried to warn them all. Part of me hoped I was the fool they thought me. I tried." Now, tears came to Coir, and before Jareen could stop him, he had planted his face atop her shoulder. Out of habit, Jareen placed one hand on his back. Often in her work in Nosh humans overcome by grief would grasp her like this, forgetting in their distress the foreignness so many had first seen in her. Coir remembered himself and pulled away, wiping his face with his palms.

"A cog found us. We searched for survivors. Those who were out for the night fishing survived."

Someone down the hallway cried out, and Jareen looked back.

"I have to go," she said. "I told the servants to prepare you a room. Come."

Quickly, Jareen led Coir to his door; it was just around a bend in the hall. Leaving him there, she hurried off to go administer tincture to a veteran of the Mingling who raved about Vah'tane as his lungs filled with fluid and purple veins crept across his face. He pulled at his clothes, trying to strip them off and rise from the hammock-bed.

Jareen was occupied with the Departing much of that night, for despite the drops the veteran raved, his eyes wide as if horrors filled the room. He clawed Jareen's arms trying to get out of the bed, and if he'd had more of his strength remaining she would have called Coir to help her. After multiple doses and hours of fighting, he stared at the ceiling, his lungs crackling with fluid at every breath. Every so often, he mouthed: "Vah'tane."

She dozed on a stool beside him, a hand on his arm so that she would wake if he moved. When she roused near morning, her hand still on his arm, and he was gone.

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***

Walking down the hallway as she stretched her stiff neck, Jareen heard voices. They came from the grand entryway of the house. She knew at once that Coir was speaking Vienwé—badly. She smiled as she remembered what Gyon had said about her own speech. What might he have thought of Coir's? It was a bittersweet thought. Of all those she had watched die since she returned to Findeluvié, Gyon's death had grieved her, and she hardly knew why.

In the entryway, Coir stood gesticulating at two of the servants. The vien and vienu stared wide-eyed at the human, their backs toward the wall. When Jareen appeared, they pointed to her.

"Ask the orvu," the vien said. "We do not know what you mean."

"Ah, Jareen," Coir said, still attempting Vienwé. "How does one say 'dossier' in Vienwé?"

"One doesn't," Jareen said in Noshian, smiling.

"Then what do you use to hold your documents?"

"They are rolled and stored in cylinders of ebony or oak called tenae, sealed with beeswax if not often read."

"I know of tenae" Coir muttered. "I thought that was merely for transport."

"Did Tirlav send you his letters thus?"

"No. They always arrived by courier from the embassy, rolled and tied with silk."

Tirlav's letters were being read, Jareen thought, but that wasn't surprising. No doubt Gyon was well aware of the correspondence.

"Come with me," Jareen said, motioning for Coir to follow her. She led him down the hall and into her makeshift office. When the Tree of Lira had abandoned their house to the Malady-afflicted, Jareen had taken over an empty room to set up a table for her papers. Without a word, Coir walked to the table and started moving around inkwells, pens, stacks of paper, and the wooden tenae. It took her a second to realize he was organizing them—her documents, without so much as a by-your-leave. Coir moved a sheaf of papers to the center, scanned over the first page, and flipped to the second—the sketched map onto which Jareen had been plotting instances of the Malady.

"I see," he said, then sat down in the chair and continued to flip through the pages. "It will take me a few hours to organize these notes. I will need more paper."

"Under the table," Jareen said. Coir frowned and looked down. There was a woven basket on the floor full of blank pages. The Vien paper was smooth and fragrant, pressed from aromatic fibers. Coir sighed. "And we will need another table, I need more room to work."

"Don't you want to know what we're working on?"

"Even if Lielu Eldre hadn't told me, it would be obvious from what you have here, disorganized as it is. You're seeking the origin, pattern, and incidence of the Malady." He flipped another page and squinted. "And perhaps attempting cures."

"What I need most is someone to write and request more reports from the heartwoods."

"You want me to gather information about Findeluvié for you?" Coir asked, barely suppressing a look like a child at the Candle Harvest, a septdecennial Vien feast.

"Not on Findeluvié," Jareen asked. "We are trying to learn about the Malady, not complete your atlas." When she said it, she wondered if his work had been saved.

"Of course." Coir smiled and nodded. Jareen found it hard to trust that he would contain his curiosity. "And what information is yet needed?" he asked, taking a blank page, opening a crystal inkwell, and dipping a pen. At the top, in some approximation of Vienwé script, he wrote:

"Request items:"

Jareen frowned and imagined Eldre or her mother receiving a missive written in such a hand. Yet with so many afflicted to care for, she did not have time to manage the calligraphy.

"Once the letter is drafted, you will hand it off to a servant to be copied," she said.

A servant was not likely to have a masterful hand, but a competent one could be expected.

"Very well," Coir answered.

"I want to know the ages of all the living High Liele. But I don't want to draw too much attention to that. So we should ask it in among many other questions."

Coir moved his hand to begin writing, but paused.

"May I ask why?"

"I have my reasons."

"Fair," Coir said. "And you can keep them if you wish. But I will be of more use to you if I know. You were trained to care for the sick. I was trained to seek answers and record them."

"You do not know the ways of the Vien," she said. There was a flutter of hurt in his face, but he recovered almost instantly.

"When it comes to Vien, you are not the most experienced, either. But I do not mean to take over, only that I may be able to contribute."

She sighed, squeezing her temples with her middle finger and thumb.

"Very well," she said. "I want to know the ages of the High Liele because. . . if they are truly young, then there is no way that the Change could be hereditary."

"But we already know that High Liele is a hereditary position."

"I'm speaking of the Change, not the title."

"But the Change is the result of the title. High Liele alone grasp the Current. It is the Current that Changes them."

"That is what I seek to determine." Saying it out loud made Jareen's fear even stronger. How much longer could she seek to deny it—that the Current might be real?

"You still doubt?"

"Just ask the question." Jareen set her jaw.

"Do you remember the vien whom I corresponded with?" Coir asked.

"I took one of his letters, remember?"

"Yes. I remember, now. A lot has happened."

That was true.

"He has been sent to the Mingling," Coir continued. "Lielu Eldre tells me he is the commander of a company of riders. It is to him I owe my life. I believe the Synod would have executed me had I not invoked his name. I wish I could have met him. . . And to hear him play the harp. He was always going on about the harp in his letters."

Jareen didn't know what to say. She had never heard him play the harp, either. Tirlav didn't even know that she had read his letters, or that she knew more than he'd told her. After their first few meetings, it had felt impossible to reveal that. Looking at Coir, she knew she was going to keep other secrets, too.

"You have my condolences," she said, relying on words she had repeated so many times before.

"So what else should we ask?" Coir looked up at her, brows elevated.

"I want to know the genealogy of every person who has been afflicted by the Malady," she began. "To the fifth generation."

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