Laevi stood waiting behind the plume of his contingent. Much of his time in the Mingling had been spent waiting in rank and file, or sitting in huddled circles in the rain, or staring into the dark of the jungle on watch with an arrow on the string, expecting any moment to be clawed by some sneaking beast.

The remnants of a contingent of riders rode at the fore, and they had called a halt and sent scouts east. Fresh smoke stung Laevi's nostrils. A swath of jungle was freshly burned, embers still glowing, a haze of smoke held down by the humidity. At least they had a line of sight for some distance, and it was unlikely that anything could sneak up on them. Still, they kept on guard. Laevi had plundered a dagger from a fallen quth. As much as he dislike anything about the beasts, it was solid steel. The weapons and armor of the fallen riders stripped by the Transgressors were given over to the riders. The Transgressors were not allowed to keep any of the Vien steel, but no one had forbidden the taking of quth weapons. He was not the only one who had done so.

One of the Transgressor archers rushed back from the fore and whispered with the plume. Laevi could not hear the words, but the plume lifted his whistle and blew.

North in pursuit.

With nothing else, their plume led them forward. At first, Laevi thought nothing of it until the riders approached, heading the wrong way. Their plume waved the Transgressors aside to let the riders pass on their way south.

"Liel," Shun asked from ahead of Laevi. "Where are they going?"

"Back to their company. We pursue the quth renegades alone."

Shun looked back at Laevi, widening his eyes to portray his thoughts on the matter. A small contingent of Transgressors had come on this foray to support two contingents of riders. The rest of the company of riders had remained further south where the fighting was thickest. Without the riders, there were just over two hundred Transgressors.

Judging by the trail they followed, they at least matched the fleeing quth in numbers, but that did not mean there were no more to the north, or that they wouldn't march into a trap. The northern parts of the Mingling were known to stretch for scores upon scores of miles to a rocky coast where cold winds cut inland. There were no outposts of the Embrace, there.

"For how long will we pursue?" another asked the plume. Without turning, the their plume replied:

"Until we find them."

"Or they find us," Shun muttered.

Laevi pressed his hand against his hardened silk. The dagger was hidden underneath it, but ready to be slipped free. He was glad he'd taken it.

***

The next day, another vien approached Jareen and Coir's hut, apparently following the path alone to the Mingling. It was raining again, and Jareen stood in the door of the hut waiting. When the vien passed by the door, she spoke:"Wait."

The vien paid her no mind.

"Wait!" Jareen hurried after him.

"Leave me alone. Please."

"I know why you're going."

"Everyone knows that."

"I can help you."

"No one can help me, Daughter of Vah."

"I know tinctures from the lands of the humans and the Nethec. I can ease your pain."

"The Mingling will take me before the pain."

"Please stop just for a moment. You cannot get me sick."

The vien stopped and for the first time looked at her. She saw a slight squint, down-turned lips, the flexion of the muscles along the jaw. Despite the vien's attempts to hide it, he was afraid.

"You can go into the Mingling and be torn apart by beasts tonight, or you can stay here and let me help you."

"It is the law of the enclaves. Not Forel alone. The afflicted must seek Vah'tane. If I stay, I risk spreading it to others."

"You cannot spread it to others through me, or through the human." She left off mentioning the quth.

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"I would rather die a quick death than suffer weeks of agony."

"I can take away the suffering. My tinctures are powerful, and I will care for your needs. Do not be torn by beasts."

"Why would you do this? You do not know me, and you are of the Nethec."

"This affliction took my family. I seek to understand it more and perhaps find a cure. In exchange, I will numb your pain." She was speaking more confidently than she felt. Even with tinctures, there was no guarantee the Malady would be painless. Cases that quickly reached the lungs suffered most—a slow drowning.

"And if they find out?" he asked, glancing back along the path.

"Are you afraid they'll kill you?" she asked.

The vien actually laughed, a clear note.

"Or they will punish you," he said.

"Then they can answer to Orvu Vireel. Besides, I am a Daughter of Vah." Jareen did not fully understand the arrangement between Forel and Vireel, or how much true respect they showed to Insensitives, but it was the best she could do.

"It would bring dishonor, if I were found."

"I will lie for you. I found you collapsed."

The vien glanced back to the Mingling. His shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. The rain matted his dark hair to his forehead.

"Come," Jareen said, extending her hand to him. "You can always choose the Mingling later. Come in out of the rain."

***

Jareen slept on the floor, allowing the afflicted vien to have her own hammock. He protested, but she found he was particularly malleable to being ordered about, and so she drew upon the old imperious tone of a Voiceless Sister with a recalcitrant Departing and stopped asking, telling him what to do instead. While it worked to get him to accept her hammock, it was less effective in getting him to allow an examination.

"I need to see your feet," she said. The vien had flatly refused. He wore cloth wraps beneath the straps of his sandals in the Canaen fashion.

"Do they hurt?" she asked after the argument went nowhere.

"A little."

"Would you like something to ease the pain?"

The vien hesitated.

"It is wholesome?"

"It is made from herbs I gathered here in Forel."

He nodded.

Jareen administered three drops of tincture.

"Lie back," she said, "and close your eyes."

With that, she stepped away and pulled the partition sheet closed. Coir sat in his chair near the doorway, but he was watching inside and not out. Jareen folded her arms and waited as the minutes passed. Coir didn't speak, either. He'd spent so long among Vien, perhaps their ways were rubbing off on him a little. When she deemed enough time passed, she pulled the curtain open again. The vien's eyes were closed and his breathing was slow, but not dangerously so. She felt his pulse, satisfying herself that she had not overdone the dose. She began unstrapping the vien's sandals.

"Was this the way of the Sisters when they didn't get what they wanted?" Coir asked. "Just drug them and do it, anyway?"

"I am not a Sister, if you recall," Jareen said.

"Did you drug me for such a purpose?"

Jareen glanced at him, squinting. She had almost asked him what he was talking about when she remembered. How had it slipped her mind that years before, she had cared for Coir during his false illness? So much had happened since then.

She freed the first foot of its sandal and wrap. As she suspected, the Change was not advanced, but the discolored veins stretched up from his toes toward his ankles. When she exposed the other foot, she found it was even less advanced. She had long suspected that the hardening and discoloration of the veins was an inflammation of some kind, the body's attempt to wall off or contain the infection. If what Vireel said about a fungus was true, then perhaps it colonized the walls of the veins first.

Jareen walked to the rough-hewn little table the quth—at Coir's request—had made for her. There, her bottles and other utensils waited already prepared. Taking one of the bottles and a knife, she walked back to the sleeping vien and pricked a vein in his foot, drawing blood. She pressed the mouth of the bottle to the wound and squeezed, massaging the tissue. The vien did not so much as stir. When the bottle was full, she placed her thumb on the small wound and pressed until she was confident of the clot, spinning the little bottle of blood with her other hand to keep it mixed.

Back at her table, she pulled aside a scrap of blanket. Beneath it, she had concealed a small damp animal hide, also the gift of the quth brokered by Coir. She poured a little pool of the blood onto the hide. She hated working with the skin of a living thing, but after consideration, she could think of no better condition for her test, and the quth had already killed the animal. It was for the good of many, hopefully. The blood sank into the short brindled fur, a patch taken from the scraps of some beast she couldn't identify. Based on the pigmentation she saw in the hide, she felt confident the creature was sensitive.

"So," Coir said. "Now you have his blood." He had risen and come to stand next to her, leaning on a walking stick. He didn't say anything more as she took the ground and powdered residue from the quth grooming and sprinkled it onto the pool of blood. She sprinkled some more into the bottle that held the remaining blood and stoppered it, carefully setting it on the table.

"Vireel said that the fungus is sensitive to the Current," Jareen said. "But I cannot sense the Current." She covered the damp hide beneath the blanket again, tenting it above the hide with a branched stick.

"Might covering it hinder its growth?" Coir asked. "No one will find it here."

"It is not for that," Jareen replied. "If it is a fungus, then it grows beneath the outer layer of the quth's hair where it is dark and warm."

"I see. How long before we should see something? If there is anything?"

"I don't know."

She turned to the vien lying in the hammock and counted his breaths. Every night for nearly twenty years, she had counted Faro's breaths while he slept. She couldn't help it. She had spent so many years counting breaths, she felt that if she did not watch, his breathing might stop. She had watched so many stop during her service. It always stopped. She had known Faro was healthy and a vien. It didn't matter. She had counted every night before she herself lay down to sleep.

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