Jareen was sitting in the hanging garden outside the house. Glass planter pots hung suspended from branches, full of flowering vines and herbs. The narrow wooden platform was surrounded by webbing of Vien rope used for lounging in the open air, but the webs were ill kept, so Jareen stayed on a little bench on the platform where a shaft of sunlight made its way through the eucalyptus and gildenleaf branches. Such a direct ray was unusual beneath the canopy of the High Tir, which was why so many of the Vien lived high in the upper branches, their houses supported by limbs woven together over the centuries as the trees grew and connected by webs of fine rope. In some ways, it was a separate city up there, with its breezes and bright lights. She had visited it once as a child. Beneath the trees, there was perpetual dusk in the gardens of aromatic fruits and herbs. Nowhere else would such gardens thrive in the low light. Some of the Vien who dwelt above still descended at night to walk the paths and listen to the music that lilted among the fireflies. Hormil's house was barely a quarter of the way up the trunk of an eucalyptus.

"Lielu."

She turned. It was Glentel, Tirlav's servant. He wore his mail and blades as always, and over his back was a large satchel. Beneath his arm, he carried a bow and quiver. It looked like he was going on a campaign. Why was he there? Her heart fluttered with fear that perhaps Tirlav wanted to summon her.

"Glentel," she said. "Are you going somewhere?" She forced herself to smile.

"I have arrived where I am going," he said. "Liel Aelor has directed me to remain here and see to your safety."

Jareen knew her feigned pleasantness faltered. How she missed the veil and wimple of the Sisters.

"I am not in danger," she said. "Am I?"

Glentel broke his eye contact, looking aside.

"No, Lielu."

"Then I don't understand. Should you not rather attend to Liel Aelor?"

Glentel did not respond, staring away into the garden.

Perhaps a different approach might divulge more.

"Does Tirlav intend to come see me?" she asked, feigning a naive eagerness as best she could.

"I do not know, Lielu."

She repressed a sigh of relief. It was a better answer than yes. Ever since their last conversation, she feared that Tirlav would seek to continue their intimacy. All she wanted now was to go somewhere alone and hide.

"This is a pleasant garden," she said. Saying something true was helpful—calming. The garden was as poorly kempt as the interior of the house, but whoever had planted it had paid particular attention to useful herbs and flowers. Burdock grew there, and chickory, tlna in abundance, and yarrow. "Would you like to sit?"

"No, Lielu." He looked at her once more. "I am afraid that I must ask you to retire into the house."

She frowned.

"Why?"

Glentel shrugged.

"Please," he said.

"Why?" she asked again.

"It is the command of the Synod that you stay within the house."

She felt a new thrill of fear.

"Why?" she asked again.

"Lielu," he said, extending a hand toward the door. "We are all servants."

She looked around at the garden and sighed.

"Does the Synod mean me harm?" she asked, watching Glentel's face.

"Lielu, I am a servant," he said, but he did not meet her gaze.

A wild thought occurred to her; as soon as they were concealed in the house, he would slay her—he simply did not wish to do so in the open, even though the garden was concealed well enough from stairs and walkways. The vien loved screens of hanging vines. Yet that would not explain why he had come carrying a satchel and quiver and bow. It looked as if he carried all a rider's possessions. If his task was merely to slay her, he could have done so with a knife.

No, he was burdened to stay.

There was little use in resisting. She rose and walked to the door, trying not to shy away as she passed him. The house was dark, and she had not yet cleaned it. She would begin, now.

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"Which is your room?" Glentel asked.

"The fourth here on the right."

Glentel followed her to it, stepped inside, and looked around, paying most attention to the little oval window. He pressed on it as if to check its thickness. Satisfied or not, he stepped back out of the room and into the hallway. No Vien architect allowed one doorway to stand directly across from another. The nearest doorway was across the hall and to the right. Glentel opened it as Jareen watched from her own doorway.

"Um, hello?" she heard Coir ask from within, then: "Oh! Glentel isn't it?"

Glentel ignored the greeting, stepped into the corner of Coir's room, and looked back at Jareen. From the corner, he could see her doorway.

"Get out," he said, looking aside.

"Pardon?" she heard Coir ask. Jareen had tried to tell Coir a number of times that the word pardon made no sense in Vienwé unless there was an actual crime, but Coir constantly committed the error of directly translating Noshian idiom, making him sound absurd and indecipherable to all but Jareen who knew the Noshian meanings.

"Get out of the room. Take your things. Take another room."

"Oh," she heard Coir say. There was a pause, and all she could see was Glentel staring with a hard expression into Coir's room. Coir mumbled something, and soon he exited the room with an armful of tenae.

"It will take me more than one trip," he said over his shoulder.

Glentel didn't respond. Coir passed further down the hall and chose another of the unoccupied rooms. As Coir made a second trip, Hormil stepped from the dining room, looking down the hall with a curious expression. He held a cup of wine in his hand.

"Whose voice do I hear?" he asked. Glentel stepped back into the hallway, saw Hormil, and saluted with a hand to his breast.

"Liel Hormil," he said.

"Who are you?" Hormil asked, approaching him. "Wait. I know your face."

"I was with the Sail Chasers, Aelor contingent, Liel."

"Ah, Sail Chasers," Hormil said, obviously sizing Glentel up. "I suppose you are Liel Aelor's vien?"

"As you say."

"And what are you doing here?"

"The Synod has commanded me to safeguard the Daughter of Talanael."

Hormil squinted at Jareen.

"Has the Mingling fallen, that we must post guards in the High Tir?" Hormil asked.

"Liel," Glentel answered, shifting his weight. "I do not have news of the Mingling."

"No," Hormil said. "I suppose not. Well, the Synod's will is to be done, isn't it?"

"Yes, Liel."

Hormil nodded to Jareen, then to Glentel, and retreated back to the dining room.

When Coir finished transferring the documents and his few possessions, Glentel set a chair in the corner of Coir's old room and sat down. From there, he could see Jareen's door. She shut it, but only a moment later Coir knocked.

"Jareen?"

"Enter."

Coir closed the door behind him.

"What is going on?" he asked in Noshian.

"I am being held captive under watch," she answered in the same tongue.

"Why?"

Jareen had already come up with a number of possibilities. Maybe the Synod did not want her spreading rumors about the burning of the afflicted. Maybe Tirlav had told her too much. In her heart, she feared worse. She knew she carried a babe of two Trees, the fruit of a forbidden union. Never had she dreamed that her mistake with Tirlav could lead to this—and she knew it for a mistake, now.

"He didn't tell me," she said. "Please, Coir, let me be. I need to rest."

Coir nodded, pursing his lips together, and slipped out of the door.

***

Hunger drove Jareen to appear in the dining room that evening. Glentel followed her there. The servants had brought him food as well. Hormil and Coir reclined there already, so they all ate together. Through the meal, Coir continued his discussion with Hormil, and while the commander fell silent at many of Coir's questions, he did not appear to mind the interrogation. The vien had an unusual patience with the human. At least, he had much more patience for questions than Jareen did.

When Hormil did answer, he gestured with his hands and grew excited as he related tales from the Mingling, often with horrid detail. He knocked over his own wine cup once in his arousal. He even laughed at the grotesqueness of his own narratives as if pleased by their horror, and Coir listened with rapt attention. Jareen could understand in a way; the Voiceless Sisters often laughed amongst themselves, sharing dark comments with wry tones that would horrify an outsider, and they held nothing back in discussing weeping sores or discolored emesis—not even at a meal. Perhaps soldiers were the same.

Glentel ate and drank in silence, ignoring the occasional questions Coir directed at him. If she could have, Jareen would have taken her food and wine into the garden to get away from the talk, but she couldn't, and with Glentel watching, her room already felt like a prison even after one day. There was something of defiance in eating with them at the table, the lamplight flickering off the polished wood. She tried to harden her resolve. She must endeavor to do something. There was no telling how much time she had before some greater ill befell her. She must find a means of action, yet few ideas presented themselves.

The next day, she set about cleaning the house. She did not move fast, for more and more she felt the presence of the babe growing within her. She was certain her belly showed the first signs of swelling. The cleaning gave her something to do with her body. Movement helped her think, and certainly the others would not be expecting any desperate action from one who took the effort to scrub and polish the woodwork. But what desperate action? Time was not with her. Things would only grow more difficult as her belly swelled.

***

On the second day after Glentel's arrival, Jareen woke early to sounds outside her window. Pushing up from her hammock, she saw shadows through the stained glass and heard voices. She watched in dismay as servants fixed shutters over the windows and fastened them in place from outside. Now her room was dark even by day. She quickly dressed and opened the door. Glentel was asleep in the chair across the hall, but he roused as she emerged.

"Must you keep me captive even from the daylight?" she asked.

He did not respond, only looked at her with bleary eyes. Sleeping in that straight-backed wooden chair must be uncomfortable, and she had to resist feeling pity. She needed her anger. "Do you think I would crawl out of a window?" she asked. Of course she would, if she had a plan for what came next.

"You sailed to Drennos as a child," Glentel said, his voice morning-thick.

She could not deny the point, but that didn't keep it from irritating her. She strode off toward the dining room, not because she was hungry, but so Glentel would have to rise and follow her. It was a meager bit of control.

Another day and night passed, and every hour felt wasted when none should be wasted.

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