The kingdom asked when and the answer was now and now turned out to be complicated.
Not in the way that opposition is complicated — not the three eastern senior clergy or the regional council challenge or the institutional machinery of suppression pushing back. That kind of complicated Kael had frameworks for. The Kingdom Agreement, the oversight board model, the liberation teams, the conversation approach, Oren's targeted transmission, Dael's pattern documentation.
The complicated of now was different.
It was the complicated of scale.
Four point eight million people asking when meant four point eight million people needing an answer specific enough to act on. Not the abstract answer of the combined signal — the practical answer. The what-do-I-do-tomorrow-morning answer. The how-do-I-find-the-oversight-board-in-my-city answer. The what-if-there-isn't-one-yet answer.
The school had fourteen graduates.
Deployed to fourteen cities.
The kingdom had three hundred.
