Dear reader,
My publisher, who has views on everything and opinions on the rest, asked me sixteen years ago to write a few columns about Emarrea while I was passing through. I am still passing through. I come to Biozuri whenever the road allows, which over sixteen years has been more often than my other subjects would like. In that time I have been fed at the House of a Thousand Flavors more often than is good for a chronicler or his waistcoat, lodged by Hearts who knew perfectly well I would write about them, and corrected, once, by one of them, who read a column before it went to press and suggested, kindly, that I had given a remark to the wrong Heart. I revised it. She was right. She is usually right, which the kingdom finds restful and visiting envoys do not.
A word on manners, for readers elsewhere. In most kingdoms, gossip about the court is something done behind the court's back. In Emarrea it is done in front of the court, with the court's help, and frequently at the court's table. The kitsune do not consider gossip beneath the dignity of governance; they consider it the texture of governance, and they would think a ruler nobody talked about had failed at something. The Hearts rule in public, love in public and argue in public, and once in a while, as readers of this column will discover, do rather more than argue in public. My task is to write down what the whole of Biozuri already knows, and to know when to stop.
I do know when to stop. I have stopped, in sixteen years, more often than my readers would credit and less often than the Hearts would like. Where a column ends a sentence early, the reader may assume the sentence was finished in Biozuri, by someone else, over tea.
What follows are dispatches from a court that wants to be written about. May the kingdom of Emarrea remain as marvellously itself as it has always been, and may the rest of Talan go on under-estimating it at its own expense.
The ruling body of Emarrea: a living polycule of between four and nine Hearts, each a monarch in their own right, bound to each other by love, trust, and public acclaim, not by bloodline or conquest. Each Heart oversees one of the kingdom's nine great pillars and wears a richly embroidered ceremonial sash, a Tail: in that pillar's colour. When the court runs short of nine, the remaining Hearts wear multiple Tails, carrying the responsibilities of absent peers. The more Tails a Heart wears, the greater the honour, and the heavier the burden.
| Pillar | Portfolio | Symbol |
|---|---|---|
| Crimson | Military & War | A fox's head crowned with a laurel of crimson silk. |
| Azure | Diplomacy & Foreign Relations | Two entwined fox tails over a calm wave. |
| Golden | Commerce & Wealth | A fox's paw clutching a golden coin. |
| Emerald | Nature & Stewardship | A fox curled within a wreath of ivy. |
| Ivory | Law & Justice | A fox's mask split black and white. |
| Violet | Magic & Mysticism | A fox tail wreathed in stars. |
| Rose | Arts & Festivals | A fox dancing with a ribbon. |
| Sapphire | Knowledge & Education | An open scroll beneath a fox's gaze. |
| Onyx | Secrets & Shadows | A fox's eye half-hidden in shadow. |
Succession · The Growing Circle. Hearts choose heirs from any walk of life: noble-born, commoner, foreigner, lover, rival, friend, anyone they believe embodies the spirit of the kingdom. The heirs form the Growing Circle, living alongside the Hearts and learning. When a Heart retires, dies, or steps aside, one heir is elevated by unanimous consent and a public celebration.
Spectacles of Selection. In times of crisis, or if the Heartcircle falls below four members, a new Heart is chosen by public courtship, sacred duels, or festival trials: multi-day national spectacles blending politics, performance, and romance. (The current Onyx Spectacle, see below, is the smaller per-pillar variant; the crisis-trigger Spectacle is rare.)
The Passing of the Tails. The transfer ritual. The retiring Heart removes their Tail before the gathered people and personally drapes it across the new Heart's shoulders. Both a transfer of authority and a declaration of unity, witnessed by the kingdom. The Tails are enchanted silk that shimmers faintly in torch- and moonlight; some are centuries old, passed through dozens of Hearts. Losing a Tail in battle or theft is both a political crisis and a personal disgrace.
Courtly life. The Heartcourt is famously dramatic. Romances between Hearts, lovers brought into the circle, shifting alliances, and passionate debates are played out in public view. Political disputes are resolved through open negotiation, often accompanied by wit, poetry, or friendly competition. Major decisions are announced during grand festivals, where citizens may petition the Hearts directly, a tradition that keeps the court rooted in the people's voice.
The Heartcircle currently sits with seven Hearts seated and two pillars vacant. What follows is each seated Heart in turn: who they are, what they carry, the two or three moments that the kingdom has come to associate with them, and what Golivander's Letters from Biozuri has said about each.
Poised, dryly funny, half the year on the road to Frae City and the Lautaran trade-courts. The kingdom's window outward, and the Heart who has best learned that silence is itself a position. Raised in the Saiken-Veksir spice-trade family of three generations' standing; she signed the inheritance over to her younger brother the day the Azure Tail was offered. He still sends her quarterly statements she does not read.
The Azure Heart, Saemi, has been a Heart for twenty-two years and a diplomat for all of them. She spends half the year on the road to Frae City and the trade-courts of Lautara, so the kingdom knows she travels well. What the kingdom under-estimates is how much she listens.
I offer the trade-talks at Frae City five years ago as evidence. A Cronus-clergy envoy sat across the table from her for three days of sessions. She let her clerk read the Emarrean terms, poured the envoy's water, nodded at his points and said nothing herself beyond courtesies; once she passed him the salt before he had asked for it, which he later told me was the most unnerving moment of the week. On the fourth morning he broke, addressed her directly and asked the question she had been waiting for, and the answer was already drafted, in her hand, in the folder under her elbow. Emarrea came away with a trade preference it still enjoys. The envoy came away with a great deal of respect and, I believe, a mild fear of condiments.
She was raised to inherit the Saiken-Veksir spice fortune, three generations of Lautaran trade. When the Azure Tail was offered, she signed the inheritance over to her younger brother, who still sends her a statement of accounts every quarter. She does not read them. I asked whether this was a principle. She said it was a filing system.
She has lately developed a fondness for walking in the Heartplaza gardens at sunrise. She is never alone. I shall not name the Heart who keeps the early hours with her; you all know which Heart it is, and the discretion is the point.
Magnetic big-host energy; built her fortune in the Lautaran spice trade before elevation and never quite stopped running it. Her spice contracts continue to operate; the fortune is what pays for her festival robes. Finances half the House of a Thousand Flavors' menu changes (the Nine Tails of Autumn menu still bears her seal-cipher in the dessert course, courtesy of an underwriting of three seasons' specialty ingredients that kept three chefs of the Cook's Circle from walking out). Her receptions are the kingdom's most-coveted invitations. To Saemi, once: "Being a Heart is interesting work. It is not the work I would have chosen if interesting were what I wanted."
The Golden Heart, Houreni, gives the best receptions in the kingdom, and knows it. An invitation to one is the most coveted object in Biozuri, narrowly ahead of a seat at the Spectacle and well ahead of this column. Her generosity is real, and it is also a wager.
Some autumns ago, three chefs of the Cook's Circle threatened to walk out of the House of a Thousand Flavors over a dispute about where the mushrooms came from. Houreni underwrote three seasons of their specialty ingredients from her own purse, the chefs stayed, and the Nine Tails of Autumn menu is still served every autumn, with her seal-cipher worked into the dessert course. I have eaten it, and searched it for the seal as I went, and found it on the last spoonful.
Lately she sent the Rose Heart a lantern. It was made by a Honokage-cult artisan who has, I am reliably told, refused commissions from three Hearts in the past decade because the work would not be sufficiently meant. This one was meant. It took six weeks. The Rose Heart's unpublished verses are woven into the paper so that they emerge only at certain angles as the lantern turns. He received it at a Heartplaza banquet so public that the kingdom now calls it the Lantern Banquet, and he wept, openly. The Golden Heart watched him weep with the air of a woman who has won by gift what others compete for by courtship.
The Violet Heart was also present. The Violet Heart smiled.
The Ivory Heart, who considers the Golden Heart's style vulgar, was not present, and has mentioned this to me twice.
No one in this kingdom does anything by halves, and I find it exhausting and enlivening in equal measure.
Eldest seated Heart in living memory; one of the vanishingly-rare eight-tailed kitsune the kingdom holds. Walks the orchards barefoot, slow-speaking. The court's moral gravity. Confidant of every other Heart. Their last partnership ended two decades ago when one of three lovers passed; they stepped out rather than seek a fifth. "I have been loved enough; now I love the orchards." The two surviving Hearts of that polycule still visit them at the kingdom's Birch Grove twice a year. The morning after the kiss, Reien came to the orchard at first light still in court-dress, said only "I do not know what happened," sat, drank tea, and left two hours later having said no more.
The Emerald Heart, Shionori, is one hundred and forty-two years old and has eight tails. There are perhaps three living kitsune of whom this is true, and Shionori is the only one I have ever seen forget they have them. They walk the orchards barefoot, speak slowly enough that visitors finish their sentences for them and are wrong, and are, by the agreement of the other six Hearts, the one each of them goes to first when something has gone badly.
Twenty years ago, when the last polycule they belonged to lost one of its four to age, Shionori stepped out of it and did not seek another. The two who remain still visit them at the Birch Grove twice a year, and the visits, I am told, are cheerful.
They dine every week with the Golden Heart, a pairing the court found surprising for about a fortnight and has found obvious ever since. The Golden Heart asks after the orchards. Shionori asks whom the Golden Heart most wants to impress this season. Both, I gather, find the answers more useful than either expected.
I asked them once whether they meant to keep the seat into a ninth tail. They considered the question for long enough that I finished my tea and began to wonder whether I had asked it aloud. Then they said: "I do not think the orchards would forgive me."
I have turned that answer over for some years now and am no nearer a reply. I print it as it stands.
Freshly a junior professor of jurisprudence at Lograth (Forseti's city) before his elevation; the only seated Heart with formal off-Emarrea training. His doctoral thesis argued that Forseti's law-tradition could be made to admit the kitsune by-consent succession model without doctrinal violation; it is still cited in Lograth jurisprudence circles. Idealistic, energetic, sticks to the letter of the law with the rawness of someone whose academic theory has just collided with kingdom-scale practice. His first ruling as Ivory Heart, six months in, took four hours: a three-lover vineyard contract whose walking-out lover had absconded with the year's harvest in a sealed wagon. The precedent has been cited eleven times since, and the wagon was returned.
The Ivory Heart, Norikaze, was thirty years old when he was elevated, and until that morning had been a junior professor of jurisprudence at Lograth, where Forseti's clergy taught him law as a structure of weighed evidence and ratified precedent. He told the Hearts he was not ready. They elevated him anyway, which is the most Emarrean thing I have seen a government do, and I have seen this one settle a tariff at a banquet.
His doctoral thesis argued that Forseti's law could admit the kitsune way of choosing rulers by consent without any violence to doctrine. It is still cited at Lograth. He has not been back to hear it cited.
He is a precise jurist. Six months into his seat he heard a household dispute the court expected to be over by lunch: three lovers had held a vineyard together, and one of them had walked out with the year's harvest in a sealed wagon. Norikaze took four hours. He asked about the vines, the contract, the wagon and the seal, and he drafted a ruling the court has cited eleven times since. The lover returned the wagon. I am told the wine was good.
I have watched his hairline retreat half an inch in the eighteen months he has worn the white-and-black Tail. He is also, as the kingdom knows, the subject of the most-discussed unfinished sentence in recent memory. I shall not finish it for him. He cannot finish it for himself. Whether anyone will is, at present, the kingdom's favourite open question.
Norikaze, my publisher sends his sympathies and his subscription rates.
Foxfire master, Honokage's de facto high-priest, the most theatrical Heart. Currently double-Tailed (covering the active Onyx Spectacle); exhausted but will not admit it. Her oldest perfected foxfire technique animates the enchanted-paper memorial that lights Biozuri's Festival of the Fox Lanterns each year; she developed it twelve years ago at the House of Names, working until dawn with Shirae. To her Onyx-candidate Kasumi she teaches: "Illusion is mercy; secrecy is mercy; foxfire is mercy; the trick that ends in laughter is mercy. Choose mercy. The Onyx Heart decides when truth would harm, and when it would not."
The Violet Heart, Yorume, has carried the Onyx Tail for nine months, since the Onyx seat fell vacant and the Spectacle of Selection began. She is therefore two Hearts and does the work of both. By every report she sleeps four hours a night, which she denies convincingly, being the finest illusionist in the kingdom.
Her tea deserves a sentence of its own. I have been served it on three visits. It is brewed to a strength I cannot reproduce at home, though I have tried, and it is right.
By morning she is at the foxfire-masters' atelier with Kasumi, whom she chose at sixteen, when Kasumi's second tail had already come, a decade before most kitsune grow one. She is also somehow at court. She is also somehow at the Lantern Banquet, smiling. She was also, on the afternoon the kingdom will be discussing for a generation, on a balcony above Heartplaza, watching, and has said nothing about it since. She is also, on certain nights I shall not specify, somewhere quieter than any of the above. (I shall not say where. The Heart who keeps that quiet knows already.)
I asked her what she teaches Kasumi. She said: "Illusion is mercy. Secrecy is mercy. The trick that ends in laughter is mercy. Choose mercy. The Onyx Heart decides when truth would harm, and when it would not."
Yorume, the kingdom would like you to sleep. The kingdom would also like the Spectacle to conclude. The kingdom would, on balance, like the Spectacle to conclude first.
Youngest seated Heart; the kingdom's creative explosion. Poet, dancer, host of festivals. Hahane's informal high-priest. The most-publicly-romantic figure in court; the gossip mill's perennial subject. His elevation Spectacle two years ago was a seven-act festival cycle of his own composition titled Cycle of the First Lantern, which the kingdom voted by acclaim before the seventh act ended.
The Rose Heart, Reien, was twenty-six when he stood on the Spectacle stage and performed a festival cycle of his own composition in seven acts, the Cycle of the First Lantern. The kingdom voted by acclaim before the seventh act ended, so he finished his own audition as a Heart. He wept. The kingdom wept. The Violet Heart lit the air gold with foxfire, and I wept too, which my publisher asked me to leave out and which I have left in.
He has been a Heart for two years. In that time he has hosted a festival for nearly every reason the calendar offers and two it does not, been loved by two Hearts I can name and possibly by one I will not, and published, in the last fortnight, a slim octavo titled Of Lanterns and the Lighting of Them, which the literate classes of Lautara are already pretending not to read aloud at parties.
Two of the verses, transcribed with his publisher's grumbling permission:
Two lanterns make a path home.
A third lantern is for the friend
who hasn't decided yet whether to come.
Light it anyway. Light it kindly.
You say I am shallow because I dance.
I say you are deep because you do not.
Neither of us has bothered to ask
what the river thinks of either.
The Ivory Heart has not, by any account I trust, read the volume. I find this very hard to believe.
Scholar-archivist, head of Biozuri's House of Names (Yumegatari's archive of every kitsune death across four centuries, each entry annotated with the stories told at funeral; district copy-houses gather the funeral stories from across the kingdom, so the youngest entries are always about five days old; the oldest are four hundred and twelve years). Carries the Crimson Tail reluctantly; the only seated Heart who can read the old strategic treatises, and she has read all of them. Heaviest mental load in court.
The Sapphire Heart, Shirae, keeps the House of Names, an archive begun four hundred and twelve years ago of every kitsune death the kingdom remembers, each entry annotated with the stories told at the funeral. Some fifty kitsune die in Emarrea on an ordinary day, and their stories come in from the district copy-houses, so the youngest entries are always about five days old. She reads in it every day, which is either the gloomiest habit in Biozuri or the most cheerful, depending on the stories, and she will tell you it is the second.
I have read in it. I will not tell you what I read. She once told me, kindly and firmly, that "a chronicler who quotes from the House of Names without leaving an offering at the lantern is a chronicler I do not next welcome". I have left an offering on every visit since, and been welcomed on every visit since, and drawn the obvious conclusion.
Since the Crimson seat fell empty she has also carried its Tail, for the plain reason that she is the only Heart who can read the old strategic treatises in the Sapphire archives. She has read all of them. I asked her what the kingdom should build with what she had learned. She said: "A library, Golivander. Build the library. The army can wait for a reason to exist."
The court reads her coolness toward the Azure Heart as a feud. It is two people who would both rather be reading.
She keeps her evenings to herself, and I keep them out of this column. Shirae, this is the closest the column will come.
The Heartcourt is famously dramatic; the structure under that drama is not an equal seven-polycule.
Frictions · good drama, not destructive.
Pure friendships (no romance): Emerald and Sapphire walk the orchards together. Emerald and Golden are surprising friends. Rose and Azure share gossip from Saemi's travels; pure platonic delight.
Two candidates from the Growing Circle compete through public trials of misdirection, intelligence-gathering, and clever-without-malicious trickster-proof. Each is publicly mentored by a sitting Heart. The trials are scheduled to conclude before the next Festival of the Fox Lanterns. The kingdom is genuinely split between the two readings of what Onyx means.
The Onyx Spectacle has produced two candidates, two schools of secrecy, and an unprecedented run on the box-stands of Heartplaza, which now sell numbered seats for the trial-days at prices I would call extortionate if I had not paid them. It is drawing more spectators than the last harvest festival.
I attended the third trial. I sat in row C. I have an opinion, and I shall keep it, since both candidates are trained in the art of finding out what people think.
Kasumi, mentored by the Violet Heart, is twenty-five years old and has two tails, the second grown at sixteen. In three trials she has made the audience laugh, made the audience gasp, made the audience unsure whether the trick had happened yet, and on one occasion made the audience cry. Her school is secrets-as-illusion: the foxfire that misdirects, the kindness that hides what should not be seen. Her foxfire is, to my eye (and I have seen foxfire in seven kingdoms), the cleanest I have witnessed outside her mentor's own.
Murasaki, mentored by the Azure Heart, is forty-one years old, has four tails, and spent the past decade learning her trade in the trade-courts of Lautara. In three trials she has said almost nothing, won twice, and lost the third in a manner widely judged afterwards to have been on purpose. Her school is secrets-as-information: the well-placed ear, the quiet record, the network of trusted strangers. She is the candidate the merchants prefer. She is the candidate the rest of the kingdom finds faintly unsettling, which is, I suspect, also a vote in her favour.
The seventh and final trial is set before the next Festival of the Fox Lanterns. Place no wagers. The Heartcourt has formally disapproved of public betting on a Spectacle, the kingdom has formally ignored the disapproval, and I am formally not advising anyone.
Three weeks ago, in Heartplaza at the open afternoon session, the Ivory Heart (Norikaze) and the Rose Heart (Reien) were arguing, as they argue every fortnight, about the trial-rules of the present Onyx Spectacle. Voices rose. The crowd thickened. At some moment the chronicle cannot precisely fix, the two of them kissed in full public view for a single long second, separated, looked at one another, and walked off in opposite directions.
Both have kept silent since. The kingdom is genuinely split on whether this was a one-time eruption never to be repeated, or the first crack in a longer-running, deeply-unspoken thing. Each reading has its partisans. The arguments are conducted at every tea-house, every Catjomin tasting, every workshop in Biozuri's potters' quarter.
The page below preserves the kingdom's open question. Golivander's column, the longest he has ever filed from Biozuri, follows.
Reader, I have written this column for sixteen years. I have reported elevations, retirements, marriages, three deaths, one war-vote and sixteen Festivals of the Fox Lanterns, and in all that time I have never written a dispatch I expected the kingdom to learn by heart. I expect it of this one, and I would like it noted that I tried to make it dull.
Three weeks ago, on the eighteenth day of the second month of autumn, at the open afternoon session in Heartplaza, the Ivory Heart and the Rose Heart were arguing about the trial-rules of the Onyx Spectacle, as they argue about something every fortnight. The Ivory Heart held the stricter view and the Rose Heart the freer. Between them they had exhausted every arguable position some months earlier and were arguing now chiefly for the pleasure of it, and the kingdom, which turns out for these sessions the way other kingdoms turn out for a hanging, approved.
Voices rose. The crowd thickened, as crowds do. At a moment the chronicle cannot fix precisely (I have spoken with eleven witnesses, who agree on the fact and on nothing else, including where they themselves were standing), the Ivory Heart and the Rose Heart kissed, in full view of the assembled people of Biozuri, for one long second. Then they separated, looked at each other for another second, and walked off in opposite directions, which in a square of that size takes some time, and was watched for all of it.
Both have kept silent since. Their next public meeting was so formal that a visiting envoy asked whether they had been introduced.
I have asked. I have asked carefully, and indirectly, and once, I regret to say, at dinner. The Ivory Heart's answer, given in court on each of the three occasions I raised the matter, has been that "the question is not properly framed", which from a professor of jurisprudence is either a dismissal or an invitation to frame it better, and I have not yet worked out which. The Rose Heart's answer, given at a banquet, was to recite a verse he had not previously published, which I include for completeness:
Some questions are mine.
Some questions are not mine.
The kingdom does not always get to know which is which.
The kingdom finds this answer wanting. The kingdom finds it, in fact, more wanting than any answer in the present generation. It has been three weeks.
What the kingdom is split on is this: was it a single eruption, never to be repeated, or the first crack in something longer, unspoken, running underneath? Each reading has its partisans, and the argument is held at every tea-house, every Catjomin tasting and every workshop in the potters' quarter. I have heard sixty-year-old kitsune put down their cups to argue it. I have heard the lantern-makers' apprentices argue it. I once watched a Komo-clergy visitor from Eldara stop on the path to Heartplaza and ask a passing kitsune to explain "the entire situation, please, from the beginning, slowly." The kitsune did. It took an hour. The visitor missed her appointment and did not mind.
The Violet Heart, who watched the whole of it from a balcony and is known to be the Rose Heart's other public love, has said nothing whatever, and from the most theatrical Heart in the kingdom, nothing whatever has been noticed by everyone.
I have my own view. I shall keep it. This is a chronicle, reader, and not a verdict. The verdict is yours.
Yorimichi, 7 Tails aged ~140, was Crimson Heart through several Dark-Era-residue crises in the late twenty-fourth century MR. She retired at age circa 2522 MR and now lives at Kawaakari as a master Catjomin Sake brewer. Her bottles brew reliably at the Kōmyōzen (six-stripe) tier; her rare Kinkanrou (seven-stripe) editions are the bottles noble courts across Lautara fight over.
She still attends Heartcourt sessions twice a year as an honoured elder; her opinions on the empty Crimson seat are listened to but no longer binding. On the record, she has said the seat should stay vacant "until someone the kingdom would follow into a fight stands up of their own accord." No such kitsune has yet stood up.
Golivander attended one of her tastings at Kawaakari this past summer and filed the following:
Reader, indulge me. I am not the kingdom's tasting-critic; I am its chronicler, and my publisher's note at the head of this supplement reminds me of the difference. I have ignored my publisher, who is paid either way.
Yorimichi, formerly the Crimson Heart and presently the most sought-after Catjomin brewer working at Kawaakari, has seven tails and some hundred and forty years, and looks, in afternoon light through the steam of the bath-house pavilion, perhaps sixty. On the seventh day of the eighth month she held a tasting for ten. I had the eighth seat. I was, I will confess, honoured, and I wore the waistcoat.
She poured five. I shall not number them in order; she would not approve.
The Shirohana came first, young and pale and bright as the river below the pavilion: her apprentices' work, poured first because "the palate should remember it is still capable of being surprised by a small thing." I was surprised.
The Hanatsuyu opened on stone-fruit and closed on cold cedar, and I held my second cup for some minutes, because the closing note did not seem to want to be hurried.
The Togetsu I will not describe. It was, quite simply, the best sake I have ever drunk. I am told that to be a connoisseur of Catjomin is to learn never to say this aloud. I have said it in print, which is worse. Take it as the chronicle's confession.
The Kōmyōzen, her usual, brewed in the still that has stood in her brewery for the ten years of her retirement, drank like a memory. I cannot put it more precisely, and I have tried for a week. The other guests put down their cups and said nothing for some time. Yorimichi watched us say nothing and was satisfied.
The Kinkanrou she opened only because, she said, "the chronicler should know what the noble courts of Lautara fight over before he writes about it." Reader, the noble courts of Lautara are right to fight. I will not describe this either. Some things deserve to stay in the bottle they were brewed for.
Between the pours she told us of the Crimson seat. She was offered it in 2487, accepted, and served thirty-five years, and retired on a morning when she woke and could not, for the first time in thirty-five years, see a reason to put the Tail on. She walked it to the next session of the Heartcourt and laid it on the table. Her Growing Circle heir had been seated as the Onyx Heart three years before she laid her Tail down; he died on the dais last year, of a heart-stoppage in his sleep, "a kind death," she said, and she said it in a tone that closed the subject. Of the Crimson seat, empty since, she said: "Let it stay empty until someone the kingdom would follow into a fight stands up of their own accord. The kingdom has yet to produce that kitsune. Until one stands up, the seat does its work by being visible."
The pavilion's foxfire-lanterns came on as we finished the fifth pour, and the steam caught the gold. I have written this column three times trying to find a closing that does not over-state, and have failed three times, so I shall only write what I thought as I left:
Some afternoons are not, in fact, for the column.