That afternoon, a vien called Tieri arrived at the House of the Tree of Shéna, and Jareen stepped away from her Departing to meet with him. He was clearly an older vien. Often, the vien grew sparser of words after many hundreds of years, as if they had no hurry to complete a conversation in one meeting or reach a conclusion at all.

  Whether or not Tieri could still feel urgency, Jareen did not wish to delay. After asking for paper, pen, and ink she sat at a table with Tieri and drew sketches of leaves and stems and roots. She was a passable hand at drawing plants. The Order taught their young girls with sketches, and it was not difficult for Tieri to identify what plants she meant. As he provided her with the Vienwé names, she wrote them down next to the sketches.

  Only one of the ingredients did not grow in Findeluvié, or at least it was unfamiliar to Tieri, and he assured her that meant the same thing. The missing plant was janeroot, which the Noshians used in a tincture for nausea. She hoped she would not need it; she had not yet heard of the malady causing nausea. As Jareen made out a list of the quantities she would need, along with the mortars, pestles, and liquors, Shelte approached.

  She truly was an elegant vienu, wearing a long gown that left a graceful shoulder exposed, her ebony hair plaited in thick braids, falling over her bare shoulder and down to her waist. No doubt, she would play the part of High Lielu well. She wondered if Shelte would be predisposed to the Change like her mother. As a child, she had only seen one other member of the Synod, and he had suffered from the Change as well.

  A shadow of doubt passed over Jareen. Had she ever seen anyone else with the Change? If it was hereditary, shouldn’t it manifest in other members of the High Trees, and not just the Liele? The Vien tradition said it came upon the High Liele from grasping the Current, but she had thought that was merely a bit of dogma. She would have to ask more if she got the chance.

  “Tieri,” Shelte said. “Can you tell me what it is that this. . . vienu wishes to concoct?”

  “I do not know,” Tieri said.

  “Can you make an inference?” Shelte waited patiently for the vien to continue. It took some time.

  “Much would depend on the quantities and combinations. We know most of these herbs from their culinary and brewing properties, not in the uses the humans may make of them.”

  “And what effects do they have in food?”

  Tieri glanced down at the papers spread before Jareen, reading the list upside down. Jareen counted at least ten breaths before he spoke. At length, he pointed at the names on the paper.

  “This has no purpose that I know, but this can cause stupefaction if brewed or eaten.” He pointed at yet another. “In large amounts, this can make it hard to breathe. It is poisonous.”

  “Poisonous?” Shelte turned to Jareen. “What is it you intend?”

  “It is used to slow breathing,” Jareen said. “To ease the struggle. We mix it with tlna for pain.”

  “Why would you want to slow their breathing? Breathe is life!”

  “It is true that tlna can ease pain,” Tieri said. “It is sometimes placed in the cheeks of the wounded in the Mingling for that purpose, they say.”

  Despite Shelte’s obvious distrust, Jareen was glad to hear that the herbs had some of the same effects upon her folk as the humans, though she would have to test the dosages carefully. Placing a bit of tlna in a human’s cheek would hardly have an effect.

  “I could send her to the Mingling for trying to poison my Tree.”

  “It could be. . .” Tieri began, pausing long. “It could be that the effects are different upon humans. It is likely, even.” Shelte looked from Tieri to Jareen.

  “You will not give any of your concoctions to my Tree,” Shelte said.

  “It could ease their suffering. It is the malady that kills, not the tinctures.”

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  “It needs no help from you.”

  “If you do not trust me, then I will leave their care to you.”

  Shelte hesitated.

  “You will continue to wait upon them. But you will not be left alone with them.”

  With that, the heir of Shéna swept away.

  ***

  Three days later, the High Lielu’s breathing took a turn for the worse. The pauses grew longer and more frequent, and there was a constant rattle. Jareen turned her frequently, both to slow the progression of her wounds and to allow the pooling secretions to drain from her nose and mouth. The creeping discoloration had spread to almost her whole body, and the pulses in her feet and hands had disappeared.

  Many of those who had sat in the room over the past days now found it difficult to remain. Only a few stayed—including Shelte. They stared in silence, though Jareen tried to encourage them to sing or speak, if they insisted on exposing themselves.

  “They always hear,” Jareen told them. But her encouragement had no effect. The Vien looked too scared and confused. With each breath, the lielu’s chest heaved in unnatural contortions, the body’s last efforts to fight for precious air. Her lungs were nearly full of fluid. She was drowning, with no strength left to cough or swallow. By the look of her, the second vienu would only be days behind her mother.

  Every day, Jareen had marked the lad’s veins and the margins of the spreading pigmentation with ink, so that she could more easily track and study the progress of the disease. Yet for the past few days, there had been little increase. In a couple places, his veins appeared to be less inflamed and softer to the touch. She encouraged him to stand and walk, though not to fatigue himself. She needed to know more about the scope and examples of this disease. Gyon had said that some had recovered, at least partially. She felt a pang of guilt. She had barely thought of Gyon in days. Of all deaths she had seen, that was a death she knew she would recall.

  Jareen had seen departures so many times that she had forgotten most of them. These Departing vienu had an unusual interest for her; she was intrigued by how similar and predictable were the signs and progression in her own folk as in the humans. She often found herself watching not the Departing, but the Vien gathered around—those who remained. Their faces and bodies were tense, their own breathing shallow, as if mirroring the distress of the subjects of their riveted attention.

  Sometimes Jareen wished she had counted the number of departures she had witnessed, as if knowing a number could somehow represent the immensity of it all. Those in this room with her had likely never seen a single death. The humans all died; death surrounded them, as much as they wished to hide from it. Except violence in the war, the rare accident in the groves, or the disappearance of those who sought Vah’tane, the Vien did not encounter death. That the body might fail of its own was a horrid idea. The Vien did not know what it was like when the lungs or the stomach or the heart slowly betrayed their owner, how one could drown on dry land, or watch helplessly as one’s own feet turned black and putrefied—that one’s last days in this world could be comprised of indescribable suffering.

  Jareen knew it all too well, and she watched as those around her learned for the first time. Should she feel compassion for those who had lived in such bliss? The lielu groaned, gurgling. The past days would have been easier if Jareen could have used her tinctures, but the lielu was nearly beyond that help, now.

  ***

  The High Lielu died that night. The lad watched her depart from his own hammock with a blank expression, dark rings of fatigue under his eyes. Jareen had told him to rest, but he kept vigil. The lielu’s daughter was not lucid.

  The evening after the High Lielu died, riders came from the High Tir seeking Shelte. Jareen heard the heir of Shéna arguing with them in the courtyard. She couldn’t hear every word, but it was clear that they wished her to go to meet the Synod at once, but Shelte was loath to leave her son and sister. A rider must have been dispatched immediately upon the High Lielu’s death for word to return so quickly.

  Shelte strode back into the room, followed by the two riders of the High Tir. The members of the Tree of Shéna were yet weeping around the body of the High Lielu.

  “The Synod commands me to go to the Wellspring,” Shelte said to those present in the room. “I will not leave my son behind.” She looked at him. “He will accompany me. The malady is in the Tree of the High Tir as well. The Insensitive will come to tend them, as well. We will leave at midday tomorrow.”

  It was said to be the practice of the Vien warriors in the Mingling to inter their fallen beneath mounds of earth near the roots of trees. This, they prepared for the High Lielu, yet before the night was over, the lielu’s daughter departed as well, and they buried them both together beneath the mound.

  With no customs to guide them, they did not linger. Shelte left upon vaela-back with the riders sent from the Synod. Riding hard, they would reach the High Tir by day’s end. The others set out upon the paths afoot, except for the lad. He was carried on a litter held aloft by four vien. Jareen walked beside him where the path was wide enough. It would take two days of walking to reach the High Tir, but there were no cart paths in Findeluvié, and Shelte believed that a litter would be the gentlest way to transport her son. So, they walked the groves in silence. Even the birds hushed at their approach, and those who saw them pass stopped their singing.

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