The school was supposed to open in three months.
It opened in six weeks.
Not because the building was finished — it wasn't. The second floor was still framing, the eastern classroom had no ceiling yet, and the kitchen that Aldren's architectural drawings had specified as essential to a school where students stayed long enough to need feeding was a foundation outline and a pile of materials. The building was half a school, structurally speaking, and completely a school in every way that mattered.
It opened because of Wren.
Specifically because of what Wren sent through the threading network on the ninth day after first contact — a transmission that arrived in twenty-two minutes, the threading quality improving daily, and that Nara translated at the kitchen table while Kael's mother set tea down and waited.
"Twelve cities," Nara said.
The kitchen went quiet.
