Scarecrow

Mira Tannock wanted to know who to sell it to.

That’s how it started. Not with anything grand. With a short broad woman with blue in the creases of her hands, sitting at the end of the long table three days after Thole came to its warm sun, with a slate in front of her that the asking group had brought, covered in figures she didn’t understand.

“Lumen,” said Mira Tannock. “Who do I sell it to?”

Okafor looked at her.

“On Thole,” said Mira, “we never sold it. Not really. The Collective told us how much it wanted and what it would pay and when the ships would come. We dug. They took. Four thousand years.” She looked at the slate. “Now the Hedge needs it. Ister needs it. Crane’s forty Cerens need it. And the ore men on the Collective’s band are asking, very quietly, at night, if anyone on Thole would sell them a load.” She put her blue hands flat on the slate. “I don’t know how to decide. I’ve never been allowed to.”

Okafor didn’t know either. She said so. She said she’d run Avalon’s council for a long time and she’d never had to decide what a whole world’s blue was worth.

Halvane didn’t know. He said the Aldri had always bought lumen. They’d never sold it. They’d never had any to sell.

Kyria said Hyrran sold iron and the price was what Odra said it was, and nobody had ever argued with Odra and lived to enjoy it.

Then Mother put the pot down.

“Ask them,” said Mother.

Everybody looked at her.

“The Hedge,” said Mother. “It’s not Avalon’s blue. It’s not mine, and it’s not yours, Okafor, and it’s not even really Mira’s. It’s Thole’s. And Thole’s part of the Hedge now. So ask the Hedge.” She picked the pot up again. “Not by the arches. Not by the ring. Sit them down. All of them. At a table. And put the kettle on.”

“All of them,” said Okafor.

“One from each,” said Mother. “A grandmother, if they’ve got one. Someone who’s been told no a great deal and still asks.” She poured. Turned the handle round for Oona. “And a big enough table.”

Rory made the table.

I’ll say what that means, because it took him a month, and because it’s the most beautiful thing on Avalon now, and because he’d be too modest to say so himself.

He built it on the eastern plain. Out past the Lenn-woven houses, past the place where Dory cut the first arch from Thole, on a low rise where you can see the whole plain and the red glass in the distance and the hill with our house on it. He said a table like that should be where people could see it. He said it shouldn’t be in anyone’s house.

And he built it out of every world.

He sent the asking groups round first. With a message, written very carefully on a slate in his big square hand. Rory Calder, who makes doors, asks for a piece of your world. Not big. The size of two hands. Something that grows there, or something that’s always been there. For a table.

They sent them.

Caddoc sent salt-glass. Clear and white and very hard, from the deep plain, that the Caddi make their lamps from. Tiel sent river wood, grey and smooth from a thousand years of water. Lantern sent red glass, from the shore where the twelve came, and a lamp hook. Sedge sent reed, dried and woven so tight it was harder than oak, by the grandmothers who dug the beds alone. Ostry sent a plank of timber from the first tree that grew back on the burned hills; Eska sent it, with a note from the nine that said they’d planted another one where it came from.

Kiln sent iron. Of course. Hyrran sent ridge-iron and a piece of the black rock from the shelf. Odra struck the iron herself, three-short-one-long, and it has the rain on it, the same as the Cerens. Ithre sent a stone from the place where Ysse was on a frame, that Oss carried through the arch herself, with her ears up. The walkers sent a stone the size of a house, very slowly, all at once, which Rory said was a bit bigger than two hands and he’d make it work.

Root sent soil. From the plateau. Green ground, from beside the iron candle. The eldest asked Dory to take it. She said she’d like to be at the table too.

Ister sent a piece of the bare rock from under the pilots’ wall. Halvane brought it himself, wrapped in grey cloth, the way he carried the painting. He didn’t say why that piece. Rory didn’t ask.

And Thole sent blue.

A slab of lumen. The size of two hands, exactly. Mira Tannock cut it herself, at the top of the third shaft, beside the pick that stands upright on Hesk Varro’s grave.

Rory put them all in.

I watched him do it, some evenings. In the barn on the north field at first, and then out on the rise when the frame was too big for the barn. With Liam helping, and his Rory, who sets fire to things, and who was allowed to hold the lamp. And Luka, sometimes, sitting on the grass beside the frame with his square red head on one side, watching his grandfather the way he watches everything, and reaching out now and then to put his hand on a joint. Which went warm.

“Good,” said Rory, every time. “It’s meant to.”

He didn’t make a table with pieces stuck on. He made a table that was all of them. The legs were Hyrran iron and Kiln iron and the walkers’ stone, cut down. The frame was Ostry timber and Tiel river wood, joined so you couldn’t see where one stopped. And the top was everything. Salt-glass and red glass and reed and black rock and soil from Root, pressed under clear glass he’d asked Dory to make for him, so it would stay. Ithre’s stone in the middle. Ister’s rock beside it.

And all the way down the centre, from one end to the other, a single line of blue. Thole’s lumen. Cut thin. Set into the top like a river.

When the sun goes down on the eastern plain, the blue lights up. Very softly. From inside. The way the veins did when Thole’s engine turned over.

It’s long enough for every world on the Hedge to sit at, with room. Rory says he left room. He says there’ll be more.

He didn’t put a chair at the head. There isn’t a head. Both ends are the same.

He planed it nine times.

The first Hedge Table met on the evening of the thirty-first day after Thole came.

They came through the arches in the afternoon. One from each. The way Mother said.

Caddoc sent the oldest of the salt-plain grandmothers. The one who’d minded the worn soft one for her granddaughter. Tiel sent Wenna, who can see to do the washing now. Lantern sent Ebb, leaning on his granddaughter. Sedge sent Aske’s grandmother, who’d dug the reed beds with her own back for twenty years. Ostry sent Eska, who sits up with the nine. Kiln sent a smith with burns up both arms. Ithre sent Oss. The walkers sent the oldest one, the one in the first pair of shoes, who stood at the end of the table on the grass because there was no chair big enough, and said she preferred it.

Hyrran sent Kyria. Root sent Varra, with a bowl of soil from the plateau that the eldest asked her to put on the table, so she’d be there. Ister sent Ilas. Not Halvane. Ilas. Halvane said she’d been told no more times than he had, in all the years of being married to him.

Avalon sent Mother.

And Thole sent Mira Tannock.

They sat down. All of them. At a table on a rise on a plain under an evening sky, with the blue running down the middle of it like a river.

Mother put the kettle on. On a small iron stove Rory had built at one end, so she wouldn’t have to walk back to the house. She poured. For every one of them. And turned the handle round, every time, for Oona, who’d come to lift.

And then she sat down. At the side. Not at either end.

“Well,” said Mother. “Mira’s got a question.”

I wasn’t at the table. Nobody from the house was, except Mother. That was Mother’s rule. She said the Hedge Table wasn’t for the people who did the carrying. It was for the people who’d been carried.

So I sat on the grass a long way off, on the slope of the rise, with Dory and Okafor and Halvane and Senna Thale, and watched. And listened. The wind was coming the right way. You could hear nearly everything.

Mira asked her question.

She asked it plainly, the way she does. She said Thole had more lumen under it than the rest of the sky put together. She said the Hedge needed it, and Ister needed it, and the Cerens. She said the Collective needed it too, and was asking, quietly, at night, on the ore men’s band. And she said: How much do we ask? And who do we sell it to?

Then she sat back. And waited.

Nobody answered for a long time.

Then the Kiln smith said what I think everyone on the slope was thinking. He said it very loudly, the way smiths do, because they spend their lives next to a forge.

“Not them,” said the smith. “Not the Collective. Not one load. They pointed the dark at your sun. They let your people die for four thousand years and then they tried to steal the bodies. Let them run their arches on nothing. Let their ships sit still.”

Some of them nodded. Oss’s ears went flat, which on Ithre means yes. The walker at the end made a sound very low, like a mountain clearing its throat.

Mira Tannock didn’t say anything.

Then Ebb spoke.

He’s very old. He leaned on the table to stand, and his granddaughter held his elbow, and he stood there for a long time getting his breath before he said anything at all.

“When Lantern was on the list,” said Ebb, “the Collective sent twelve ships to eliminate us. Lucas stood in the arch. Eleven didn’t come home.” He looked down the table. At the blue. “I poured tea on the ground for him. I’d do it again.” A pause. “But I’ve thought about the twelve ships every night since. And the men in them. And the eleven that didn’t come home.”

Nobody said anything.

“There were children’s soft ones in their bunks,” said Ebb. “Some of them. I’d bet my lamp on it.”

He sat down.

Wenna spoke next. Then Oss. Then the Sedge grandmother. They went round the table the way the asking groups go round a house, one at a time, everyone getting a turn, and Mother pouring between.

Some said not them. Some said the price should be very high for the Collective, high enough to hurt. Some said it should be free for the Hedge and dear for everyone else. The walker at the end said, very slowly, that her people had always believed you should never sell anything to anyone you wouldn’t also give it to if they were cold, and that took a long time to say, and everyone waited.

Then Kyria spoke.

“On the ridge,” said Kyria, “we have never struck first.”

She was sitting very straight, in her armour, with her old blade on her back. The blue from the table was on her face.

“We have struck last every time. In four hundred years. That’s what makes us the ridge and not something else.” She looked at Mira. “If you sell to the Hedge at one price and the Collective at another to hurt them, that’s a blow. Not the last. The first.” She put her scarred hand flat on the table. On the river of blue. “It’s your blue. I won’t tell you what to do with it. But if Hyrran’s at this table, Hyrran says: one price. For everyone. A fair one. And if they want to buy at it, let them buy.”

“Even after Thole?” said the Kiln smith.

“Especially after Thole,” said Kyria. “Let them come and buy their engines from the world they tried to steal. At a fair price. From the woman they tried to kill. And have to say thank you.” She looked down the table. “That’s not a blow. That’s the last line. That’s the one that doesn’t break.”

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Mira Tannock put her blue hands flat on the river of blue in the middle of the table.

“Hesk would have said that,” said Mira. Very quietly. “Hesk always said, Mira, the day we stop being fair is the day we start being them.”

She looked round the table. At all of them. One from every world.

“One price,” said Mira Tannock. “For everyone. The Hedge, and Ister, and the ore men at night on their band, and the Collective, if it asks. A fair one. What it costs to dig, and what the diggers need, and what the pits need, and a bit over for the children.” She stopped. “And if they want it, they can come to Thole and ask. In daylight. Under the warm sun. At the top of the third shaft. Where Hesk is.”

They agreed.

All of them. Not straight away. The Kiln smith took longest. He sat there with his burned arms folded for a long time while Mother poured him a third cup, and then he unfolded them and said, very loudly, that he thought it was wrong and he’d do it anyway, because the walker had said the thing about the cold and he couldn’t get it out of his head.

The walker at the end made the mountain sound again. Mira says it means thank you. Ebb’s granddaughter says it means I know.

Then they decided some other things. Since they were there. Since the kettle was on.

They decided the Hedge Table would meet every thirty days. On the rise. At dusk. One from every world, and room for more.

They decided that any world that asked to join the Hedge could send someone to sit at it and ask. And that the answer would come from the Table, and not from Avalon, and not from me. Mother said that was the best thing anyone had decided since she’d been on Avalon, and she’d been on Avalon a long time.

They decided the asking groups would answer to the Table, and the Table would decide where they went next.

And they decided, at the very end, when the blue was the brightest thing on the plain and the stars were out, that the Hedge Table should have a name. Not a long one. Something you could say across a field.

The Caddi grandmother said it. Two words. The way the Caddi say everything.

The Asking.

Okafor, on the slope beside me, in the dark, wrote it on her slate.

Then she sat and looked at it for a long time.

“I’ve run Avalon for a long time,” said Okafor. “I’ve never once thought to do that.”

“Do what?” I said.

“Ask them,” said Okafor. “All of them. At once. And then do what they said.” She put the slate down. “Your mother thought of it while she was pouring.”

“She does that.”

“I know,” said Okafor. “It’s very annoying.”

The eldest heard it. Through the bowl of soil Varra put on the table. Dory says she heard every word. Dory says she’d never heard so many worlds agree on anything at once, and she sang, very quietly, the whole time, under the plain.

Then, at the end, she told Dory something else.

She’d been listening. The way she said she would. All the time. Since the night she found them. To the houses in the deepest cracks at the bottom of her, with the old voice going out, very thin, into the dark. To a man in a long hall.

She said the houses had stopped telling the Prime things. For now. She said they’d told him a great deal; they’d told him how Lio was made, and how the collars work, and the old ways they put silver into stock. She said it had made her very cold to hear it. She said she’d had to go and sit with the Scarecrow queen in her mountains for a while after, to be warm again.

And she said that now they’d started asking him for something.

“What?” said Dory.

A door, said the eldest.

Dory went very still.

A door that needs no arch, said the eldest. That is how they said it. A way to go from one place to another without the thread. Without a queen to hold it open. Without asking. A pause. His people have been making one. In secret. For a long time. His scientists. The houses know. The houses want it.

“Why?” said Dory.

The eldest was quiet for a very long time.

To leave, said the eldest.

Dory told me on the slope. In the dark. With the blue river on the table a long way off and the Hedge Table getting up from it, one world at a time, and Mother clearing the cups.

“They want to get out,” said Dory. Very quietly. “Of her. Out of the eldest. She buried them so they’d learn. So they’d listen. And they’ve been listening the whole time. To him.” She put her hands over her face. “He’s going to give them a door, Dad. And they’re going to give him something back for it. She doesn’t know what yet. They haven’t said.”

“What do they want to give him?”

“She doesn’t know,” said Dory. “She says they keep saying the same thing. Over and over. When he asks what he gets. They say: You will be what he is.”

I sat on the slope for a long time after that.

Mother came and found me. With two cups. The way she does. She sat down beside me on the grass, slowly, and gave me one, and didn’t say anything.

“Gran,” I said. “If someone wanted to be what I am. Badly. More than anything. And someone else said they could make him.” I looked at the cup. “What would they actually make?”

Mother thought about it for a long time.

“Not you,” said Mother. “Whatever it is. Not you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you never wanted to be what you are,” said Mother. “Not once. Not for a single day. You’d have given it back on the cadet field if anyone had asked. You’d give it back now, if it weren’t for the people it holds up.” She drank her tea. “A man who wants it that badly isn’t going to get you. He’s going to get whatever they put in him. And they’ll put something in him. They always do. They put collars on everyone.”

The first ore ship came to Thole in daylight on the fortieth day.

I was there. Mira asked me to be. Not to do anything. She said she wanted the ore men to see me standing at the top of the third shaft and not doing anything, because that was the part they’d remember.

It came down slowly. Grey and square and very heavy, the way they are. It landed on the blue rock beside the biggest pit, where the miners have their loading ground, and sat there for a long time with its engines ticking as they cooled, and nobody came out.

Then the hatch opened. And a man came down the ramp.

He was ordinary. That’s what I want written down. Not tall. Not pale. Not Refined. A big tired man of about fifty in a stained grey work coat, with heavy hands and a face that had been looking at instruments for a long time. He came down the ramp very slowly and stopped at the bottom of it, on the blue, and looked round. At the pits. At the miners standing along the lips of them, with their picks. At the warm yellow sun.

At me.

He stood very still.

Then Mira Tannock walked across the loading ground to him. Short and broad, with her grey hair and her blue hands. She stopped in front of him.

“You’re the captain,” said Mira. “Ore fleet nine.”

“Yes,” said the man.

“You said, he carried it. On your band. When you came to the coordinates and there was nothing there.”

The man looked at her for a long time.

“I didn’t know anyone was listening,” he said.

“Somebody always is,” said Mira.

She held out her hand.

He looked at it. At the blue in the creases. He looked at it for so long I thought he wasn’t going to take it.

Then he took it.

“Fair price,” said Mira Tannock. “Same as everyone. What it costs to dig, and what the diggers need, and a bit over for the children.”

“That’s less than we paid,” said the man. “Before.” His voice was odd. “That’s a lot less than we paid before.”

“You were paying the Collective,” said Mira. “Not us. We never saw most of it.”

He didn’t let go of her hand.

“My daughter,” said the captain. Very quietly. “She’s eleven. On the inner worlds. She had one of them. A soft one. Of the woman with the pot.” He stopped. “They took it. At her school. In the spring. They burned it in the yard.”

Mira didn’t say anything.

“She asked me where I was going,” said the captain. “This trip. I said Thole. She said, isn’t that where he carried the world to. I said yes.” He looked at the blue rock. “She said, bring me a stone.”

Mira Tannock let go of his hand.

Then she bent down. Very slowly; she’s not young. And picked up a piece of lumen from the loading ground. Small. The size of a child’s fist. Blue all the way through.

She put it in his hand.

“For her,” said Mira. “No price.”

The captain looked at it for a long time.

Then he went back up the ramp and came down again with his crew. Eleven of them. Ordinary. Tired. In stained grey coats. And they loaded their lumen at the fair price, from the miners of Thole, at the top of the third shaft, under the warm sun.

And before they went, every one of them went over to the pick that stands upright on Hesk Varro’s grave. And put a hand on it.

Nobody told them to. Mira says nobody told them about Hesk at all. She thinks they’d heard the miners talking. She says it doesn’t matter how.

When the grey ship lifted off, every miner on the lips of the pits banged their picks on the rock. Once.

The captain flashed his lights twice. The way the small worlds’ traders do, at the edge of a place they mean to come back to.

Lio heard about the door from Dory.

Dory didn’t mean to tell her. She told Mother, on the porch, the night after the Table. And Lio was in the doorway. Where Lio always is.

“They want to leave,” said Lio. Very quietly. “Don’t they. The houses. They want to get out.”

Dory looked up.

“Yes,” said Dory.

Lio was quiet for a long time. Her hands were in her sleeves.

“I wanted to leave too,” said Lio. “In the middle. Before you came. Every day. I used to lie in the grey and think about a door. A door that needed nobody. That I could just walk through and be somewhere else.” She looked out at the dark. “They made me wanting that. It’s in me. It’s one of the things they put in.”

“Lio—”

“I’m not frightened,” said Lio. “You told me I’m not allowed to be.” She almost smiled. “I’m just saying I know what it’s like. To be in the dark and want a door.” She was quiet again. “But I stopped wanting it. When I came here. When Gran started tying my hair. I didn’t need a door any more. I had somewhere to be.”

She came out of the doorway. And sat down on the porch step next to Dory. Which she never does.

“The eldest gave them somewhere to be,” said Lio. “And they still want a door.” She looked at her hands. “That’s the difference. Between me and them. That’s the only difference there’s ever been.”

Dory put her arm round her. Lio let her.

Mother poured them both a cup. And didn’t turn the handle round, because Oona was asleep. And then turned it round anyway, out of habit, for nobody, and Lio watched her do it and laughed.

The other things. The way I do.

The first load of Thole’s lumen went out through the Hedge arches eleven days after the Table met. To Ister, first. Halvane says it’s the first time in eleven thousand years an Aldri engineer has opened a crate of lumen and not had to sit down at the price. He says Asha cried. Asha says she didn’t. Crane says she did, and so did he.

The ore men’s band has been very busy. Ilka says three more of the twelve grey ships that sat out past Thole’s old sun have asked, quietly, at night, if they could come to Thole in daylight and buy a load at the fair price, the way ore fleet nine did. Mira Tannock has said yes. She says she’s going to make every one of them shake her hand.

The Asker, volume twelve, came out on Ister twenty days after Thole moved. Imre Oshan says it’s the fastest she’s ever written anything. She says she didn’t sleep. The cover is Thole lit up blue, every vein, with a small figure on the lip of a pit with her hand out flat into the air, and four hundred thousand very small miners with picks. It’s called He Carried It. The ink for the blue is real lumen dust, from the bottom of the third shaft, that Mira Tannock sent. Every copy glows a bit in the dark.

Inside, there’s a page that’s all black. Just black. With one very small figure kneeling in the bottom corner, with her hand on something you can’t see. Nobody’s said anything about that page. Dory’s read it more times than any of the others.

There’s no soft Hesk Varro. Mira asked. She said Hesk would have hated being on a shelf; he’d have said there were better men to put up there. But the toymakers have made a soft pick. Small. With a blue handle. You hold it upright, the way the miners hold them on the grave. Children on Thole bang it on the floor in the mornings. Once.

The Thole book in the long record has three hundred and nine names in it now. Twenty-two of them are Hesk.

Crane’s wall is round Root. All the way round the plateau. It came up out of the ground at dusk on the twenty-third day, so fine you could only see it when the iron candle caught it, and held, and went down again. The eldest said it tickled. Crane said that wasn’t a word he’d ever wanted said about one of his walls. The eldest said she’d meant it nicely.

Kyrie can say four words now. No, still. And Gran, which she says to Kyria in a voice exactly like Andraste’s. And blade. And up, which means she wants to be carried to the shelf again, and which she says to anyone who’ll listen, including the cat that comes up from the town.

Queenie still says leaf more than anything. Hana says she says it about people now. She looks at you all the way down, and then she comes back out, and says leaf. Hana says it means you’re all right. Halloway says it means she likes the word. Hana says those are the same thing.

Luka can walk on his own. Everything he walks past is warm.

And on the last morning of those days, Ilka came down from the Meridian before the count.

She found Dory on the red glass. With Sorrel. With a C. on both their wrists.

She didn’t shake her head.

It was very short. Locked by shape. Six words.

Not yet. Soon. Wait for my word.

And then, under it, the letter.

C.

Dory read it three times. Then she gave it to Sorrel, who can’t read the Collective’s script, but who looked at it for a long time anyway, at the shape of the letters, and then at the one at the bottom.

“Is he safe?” said Sorrel.

“He didn’t say,” said Dory.

Sorrel looked at her wrist. At the C.

Then she licked her thumb. And didn’t rub it off.

“Then he stays on,” said Sorrel.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Two hundred and eighty-four.

Wren wrote it at the top of the slate. And under the ring, which hears nothing. And under Root is listening.

And under that, in her careful hand, very small:

Corvan: soon.

Days 9727–9768. The Hedge Table.

Mira: who do I sell it to? I’ve never been allowed to decide. Mother: ask them; sit them down, one from each, someone who’s been told no a great deal and still asks; and a big enough table. Rory, who makes doors, asked every world for a piece the size of two hands: Caddoc’s salt-glass, Tiel’s river wood, Lantern’s red glass and a lamp hook, Sedge’s reed, Ostry’s first tree back on the burned hills, Kiln and Hyrran iron with the rain on it, the black rock from the shelf, Ithre’s stone from where Ysse was, the walkers’ stone the size of a house, soil from beside the iron candle, rock from under the pilots’ wall, and Thole’s blue, cut by Mira beside Hesk’s pick. A table on a rise on the eastern plain that is all of them, with a river of lumen down the middle that lights at dusk; no head, both ends the same; room for more; planed nine times; Luka’s hand on the joints: good, it’s meant to. The first Hedge Table: the Caddi grandmother, Wenna, Ebb, Aske’s grandmother, Eska, a Kiln smith, Oss, the walker standing on the grass, Kyria, Varra with the eldest’s soil, Ilas, Mother, Mira. Mother’s rule: not for the ones who carry, for the ones who were carried. The smith: not them, not one load. Ebb: the twelve ships, and the soft ones in their bunks. The walker: never sell what you wouldn’t give if they were cold. Kyria: we have never struck first; one price for everyone, a fair one; let them buy their engines from the woman they tried to kill and say thank you; that’s the last line. Mira: Hesk said, the day we stop being fair is the day we start being them; one price, and ask in daylight, at the top of the third shaft, where Hesk is. The smith: it’s wrong and I’ll do it anyway. Every thirty days; worlds that want to join ask the Table, not Avalon, not me; the asking groups answer to it; its name, in two words, from Caddoc: The Asking. Okafor: your mother thought of it while she was pouring; it’s very annoying. The eldest sang under the plain. The houses have stopped telling and started asking: for a door that needs no arch, which the Prime’s scientists have been making in secret; to leave. What they’ll give him: you will be what he is. Mother: not you; you never wanted it; he’ll get whatever they put in him; they put collars on everyone. The first lumen to Ister; Asha cried. The captain of ore fleet nine came in daylight: I didn’t know anyone was listening; somebody always is; he shook her hand; fair price, less than before; his daughter’s soft Dot burned in a schoolyard; bring me a stone; Mira gave him one, no price; eleven ore men put a hand on Hesk’s pick; he flashed twice. Lio: I wanted a door too, in the middle; I stopped when Gran started tying my hair; the eldest gave them somewhere to be and they still want a door; that’s the only difference there’s ever been. Volume twelve, He Carried It, in lumen ink that glows; one black page with a small figure kneeling. No soft Hesk; a soft pick, struck once each morning. Twenty-two Hesks. Crane’s wall round Root; the eldest: it tickled. Kyrie: no, Gran, blade, up. Queenie: leaf means you’re all right. Luka walks. Corvan: Not yet. Soon. Wait for my word. Sorrel: then he stays on. Wren: Corvan, soon.