The Eleventh moved on the two hundred and fortieth day.
Not a formal challenge — Dren had been right that eleven votes were required, and the Eleventh had nine, which was two short. What he moved with instead was a formal petition to the First: a request that the First issue a divine ordinance restricting the translation function on the grounds that it constituted an unregulated passage between states.
The petition was, Dren explained, a political instrument rather than a legal one. It did not have immediate force. What it did was require the First to respond, which would either establish the First as an ally of the restriction or an obstacle to it, and either outcome moved pieces in the configuration that the Eleventh was building.
Kael sat with it.
He said: "The First made a sound in the Conclave Hall."
Dren said: "Recognition. Yes."
He said: "Recognition of what."
Dren said: "I have been trying to determine that since the Conclave Hall vote. The First is the oldest god in the current framework. Their origin is not in the records. Their seat was here before the framework was established."
Kael said: "Like Soa."
Dren said: "Not like Soa. Soa is in the first stratum and has been there since before the records. The First's seat is in the fifth stratum, which is deep enough to suggest the same kind of age, but the location is different. Less concerned with arrivals. More concerned with—" He paused. "I don't know. The territory's character is not something I've been able to read cleanly."
Kael said: "What is their name."
Dren said it.
Kael did not know the word. He added it to the slate. Three hundred and eight words. A proper name, which he filed under its own category: the category of things that required more than language to understand.
He said: "The petition will take how long to require a response."
Dren said: "By the framework's convention, the First has thirty days to respond to a formal petition. After which the petition is either upheld by silence or requires a Conclave vote."
He said: "Thirty days."
Dren said: "You have thirty days to do whatever you are going to do with the translation function before the Eleventh uses the petition's response to build his eleventh vote."
He said: "Or before I make the petition irrelevant."
Dren looked at him.
He said: "If the translation function has been performed — if it is an established, completed fact before the ordinance request is resolved — the petition's premise shifts. You cannot restrict what has already happened. You can only argue about what happened and whether it was permitted."
Dren said: "That is a very specific reading of the framework's procedure."
He said: "I have been studying the framework for eight months. Casvar has been teaching me the parts that are relevant." He paused. "This part is relevant."
Dren was quiet.
Then he said: "You are going to perform the translation."
He said: "I am going to understand it well enough to perform it correctly. And then I am going to perform it."
Dren said: "In less than thirty days."
He said: "In the time it takes to understand it. Which I expect to be less than thirty days."
Dren looked at the wall for a moment. His soldier's Fractures caught the coldlight.
He said: "I need to know one thing."
He said: "Ask."
Dren said: "The translation. The living speaking through the crossing to what is here. Are you prepared for what that produces? Not mechanically. Not politically. What it will mean, in practice, for the specific souls in your territory who have things they have not been able to say to the people they left behind."
Kael sat with the question.
He thought about the six hundred and twelve. The teacher who had been mid-explanation. The tall one's introduction. The accumulated weight of lives that had arrived in his territory carrying the specific residue of things that had been left unfinished not because the person had not tried to finish them but because death had arrived before the finishing.
He thought: I have been the only one who could hear them. For eight months. I have been the sole recipient of what they were carrying.
He thought: the translation changes that. What they have been trying to say can reach the person they were trying to say it to.
He thought: I am not prepared for the specific emotional weight of that. No preparation exists for the specific emotional weight of that. The inventory does not cover it.
He said: "No. I am not prepared for what it produces in the specific emotional sense. I am prepared to do it anyway."
Dren looked at him.
He said: "That is the correct answer."