Coir entered Jareen's little house with an armload of tenae, his walking stick hanging uselessly from the crook of his elbow.

"Here," he said. "Make room."

"Why didn't you ask for help?" Jareen said, hurrying to move the remains of her meager meal from her plank table. Coir dropped the tenae from his arms even before she'd finished. A few of them rolled and fell onto the packed dirt floor. Jareen picked them up as Coir started uncapping others and sliding rolled documents free.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I've been preparing my notes on the location of Vah'tane for you," he said. "Sorry it has taken me so long. I'd neglected my work. I think these are the most relevant documents."

"Coir, I. . . what?"

"I'm not saying I know its exact location," he continued, "but I think I have compiled the most exhaustive collection of maps and stories. They should allow us to make some significant inferences."

"Why do you think I want to locate Vah'tane?" Jareen said.

Coir looked up from his growing stack of documents. He'd been throwing the empty cases on the ground.

"You told the Inevien spy that you would not be here long. Where else would you be going?"

"I—" Jareen sputtered.

Honestly, she hadn't thought about that comment since. She'd been irritated, and her mouth had gotten ahead of her. She certainly hadn't meant that she would go searching for Vah'tane, but she could see why Coir misinterpreted it; the lifespan of an Insensitive was fleeting to the Vien, but not to a human. The quip was about her death.

"Look," Coir said, ignoring her flush. "We're in the Charth Mingling, barely three miles east of where an entire Findelvien company was garrisoned before they pulled back. I do not know their plans, but they could return at any time."

"They've cursed the Mingling with winter," she said.

"Not cursed. I think they've only removed the embrace. Don't you remember? This is what the climate should be."

Old memories returned of a quarantine chamber back in Nosh and a much younger Coir waxing eloquent on the topics of botany and climate.

The winter had lingered for months, but spring had come outside of their little embrace. Leaves had returned to some trees, but not to all. The Canaen kept their embraces limited to their enclaves, and with the Nethec's withdrawal, the Mingling had frozen. Many of the trees were dead, unable to leaf again, shocked by the cold. It was not a foreign concept to Jareen, and certainly not to Coir, who had studied such matters. There were many fruits that could not be grown in Drennos because of the harsh sea climate.

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Even though something like summer approached again, the Mingling was colder than ever before. Throughout the spring, their foragers had found the bodies of birds and beasts thawing out of drifts of melting snow.

Coir pulled a densely rolled paper free and unrolled it on the table. It looked to be more than one sheet glued together, a cross-section map of the Mingling from the northern shore to the southern. It was far less than detailed on the side closer to Findeluvié, with many sections nearly blank. On the Charth side, it showed trails, fortifications, campsites, and water sources—if she understood Coir's abbreviations aright. She saw nothing on it about Vah'tane.

"So, where do you think it is?" she asked after looking it over from top to bottom.

Coir pointed to the northern peninsula of the Mingling. The map marked some low hills there, and far fewer trails traced their way through the woods.

"I am fairly certain we should look here."

"Why there?"

"Well, we know it's not right here," he said.

"Where?"

"Here." Coir pointed at the ground. "Where we're standing."

Jareen gaped at him, and the old man grinned. "It's a joke, Jareen."

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and motioning with her other hand for Coir to continue.

"Alright," he said. "There are a couple reasons. One, that area is the least involved in the fighting, and as far as I can tell, it has always been so. Second, I have found no reports of those who sought Vah'tane appearing in the south of the Mingling, but I have reports from the north."

"How many reports?"

Coir hesitated.

"Three. . . Three sightings by forward sentinels of Forel and Elth."

"That is not many."

"Three more than in the south."

"How did you come by these reports?"

Coir smiled.

"That is an interesting story of itself," he began. "In Findeluvié, it was said that those who sought Vah'tane just disappeared or were seen slipping eastward through Miret. Only those fighting in the Mingling could have seen them searching there. But let me back up—"

"Coir," Jareen said, waving him off. "Nevermind. This is not enough to go on. There may have been less fighting on the peninsula, but that doesn't mean there has been none. It has been thousands of years! Surely it would have been found."

"There is something that the seekers have that no one else does."

"What?"

"They are looking for it."

"Obviously," Jareen said.

"But that's just it," Coir said. "Vah said that those who sought Vah'tane could still find it."

"So what, Vah'tane somehow knows when you're looking for it and just—" she raised her hands and wiggled her fingers "—appears."

Coir rolled his eyes.

"You're acting as if you've never encountered something you couldn't explain. If memory serves, I once met a Silent Sister who didn't believe in the Current. Something about warm seawater and wind patterns?"

Jareen pressed her lips together and arched her eyebrow. She couldn't exactly argue with that.

"We're safe here," Jareen said. "More or less. For now, at least. I couldn't say the same if we went traipsing off into the Mingling. People could die."

Coir motioned to his pile of documents.

"At least let me tell you what I know."

Jareen sighed.

"Alright. Let me get a chair."

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