The third-year report came in a bound set of tablets.

Not the usual weekly summary — a full annual review, the kind Arsini produced at the end of each school year with the thoroughness of someone who understood that the most important information lived in the accumulation of small data points rather than in any single event. She had been doing this since the first year. Each report was thicker than the last. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

This one was the thickest yet.

She came to the supply office on a Tuesday morning with the tablets under one arm and the leather satchel over the other shoulder and the specific quality she sometimes had — not urgency, not formality, the quality of someone who had been thinking about a conversation for several days and had finally decided it was time to have it.

She sat across from him without being asked.

She placed the bound tablets on the table between them.

"The third-year review," she said. "I want to take you through the significant changes before you read it."

"Tell me."

"One hundred and twenty-seven students across the six schools. Up from seventy-three at the end of the second year."

He had known the number was growing. He had not known it had grown this much.

"The pace of growth increased," he said.

"Yes. In the first year, growth was slow — families were uncertain about the value and cautious about the time commitment. In the second year, it accelerated when families began seeing results from the first year’s students. In the third year it accelerated again because the results became visible to people who had not been watching closely."

"What kind of results."

She opened the report to the second section.

"Three students from the first year’s cohort are now in administrative roles. Two in the palace supply system — Doros approved their placement after reviewing their work. One in the harbor master’s office. These are not training positions. These are working roles with actual responsibilities."

"Doros approved them himself."

"He tested them first. He set problems and evaluated the results without knowing whose students they were. When I told him afterward, he said—" she paused briefly "—he said: send me two more when they are ready."

Lysander sat with that for a moment.

Doros asking for more. Not being asked to accept — asking to receive.

"The second cohort," he said.

"On track. Fourteen students completing their second year. Several are already distinguishing themselves in ways that suggest the first cohort’s results were not exceptional — they were the expected output of the method."

"And Deia."

Something shifted slightly in Arsini’s expression — not softness exactly, the specific quality of someone describing something they had watched develop and were still slightly surprised by how far it had gone.

"She turned twelve last month. She has been helping teach the younger students in the harbor school two afternoons a week since the beginning of this year. I formalized it three months ago. She teaches the basic counting work and the first reading exercises — the material from her own first year."

"How does she teach."

"Differently than I do," Arsini said. "I teach by explaining the structure of a problem first and then showing how to move through it. She teaches by finding what the student already knows and building from that. She figured this out herself — I did not teach her to teach this way."

"She found the method independently."

"Yes. When I asked her about it she said: I remember what confused me when I was learning it. So I start there."

Lysander looked at the report on the table.

He had planted this seed in the first year, in a craftsmen’s quarter school that had felt provisional and uncertain. He had not known what it would become. He had known that it would become something — that it had to, because the alternative was a city that could not read its own supply records, could not train its own administrators, could not build institutional memory faster than it lost it.

He had not expected Deia.

"The third thing," Arsini said. "This is what I wanted to discuss."

She turned to the final section of the report.

"In the past two months, I have received seventeen requests for enrollment from families in the organized settlement outside the walls. Not informal inquiries — formal requests, in writing, with the children’s names and ages and the families’ statements of what they hoped the education would provide."

"Seventeen."

"The number will grow. Once one family in a community does something, others watch to see what happens. If I enroll seventeen, I will receive forty requests by the end of the season."

"And if you do not enroll them."

"Then forty families watch one decision and draw conclusions about what this city thinks of them."

She said it simply, without inflection. Not as an argument — as a fact she had observed and was presenting with the same precision she presented all facts.

"The schools were built for Troy," Lysander said. Not as an objection. As a statement he was holding up to examine.

"Yes."

"The method, the resources, the administrative integration with the palace supply system — all of it was designed for a specific purpose within a specific community."

"Yes."

"Opening to the settlement changes the character of the schools."

"It changes some things," Arsini said. "Not all things. The method works for any child who is ready to learn. I have seen this — the builder from the settlement that I brought in for the structural assessments. Her reading is basic but her spatial reasoning is exceptional. A child with her background and her capability, given three years of the method — I do not know what she becomes. I know it is something the city does not currently have."

"The families who already have children enrolled," Lysander said. "How will they receive it."

"Some will accept it without difficulty. Some will object. The ones who object will object not because they believe their children will learn less — they will object because they are afraid the city they know is changing faster than they can follow."

"Which it is."

"Which it is," she agreed. "The question is whether the change happens with their children learning beside settlement children, or whether it happens to them while their children are kept separate."

He sat with that.

Outside, the harbor was at its morning rhythm — the sounds coming through the stone walls, the specific percussion of a working port. He had made decisions in this room with that sound behind them for two years. He had learned to let it be background. Right now he let it be there.

He said: "Not a full opening. A parallel structure."

She looked at him. Waiting.

"A shared session. Not merged classes — a session that runs alongside the existing structure where children from both communities attend together, on a topic that does not require the full prerequisite knowledge of the existing curriculum. Practical mathematics. Basic measurement. The kind of content that a settlement child can enter without two years of prior preparation."

"A contact session rather than full integration."

"Yes. We see what happens. We see which children flourish, which families adapt, which objections are real and which dissolve on contact with the actual experience. In a year, we know whether to expand it."

Arsini was quiet for a moment.

He had the specific sensation he sometimes had with her — not that she was evaluating his answer, that she was checking it against something she had already thought through from a different direction and was seeing whether the two directions arrived at the same place.

"I proposed something similar to myself three weeks ago," she said.

"And."

"I decided I wanted to hear what you said before I decided whether I had been right."

He looked at her.

She was looking at the report, not at him, with the expression of someone who had said a precise thing and was waiting to see what the other person did with the precision of it.

"Were you right," he said.

"Largely." She gathered the bound tablets. "The difference is that I proposed starting with one school. You did not specify."

"Start with one school," he said. "The harbor school. Deia is already there. If anyone can make a mixed session work, it is someone who finds what a student already knows and builds from that."

She stood.

She was at the door when she stopped.

Not her Cassandra-stop. Not his stop. Her own specific pause — the pause of someone who had one more thing that was not administrative.

She said: "When you planted the first school — did you know it would become this."

He thought about the craftsmen’s quarter building in the first year. The twelve students. The provisionalness of it. The way he had not been certain it would survive the second month.

"I knew it needed to exist," he said. "I did not know what it would become."

She nodded once.

"That is the honest answer," she said.

She went out.

He sat for a long moment.

I proposed something similar to myself three weeks ago. I wanted to hear what you said before I decided whether I had been right.

He pulled the bound tablets toward him and opened the first page of the annual review.

He read all of it.

He picked up his shard.

Nine hundred and ninety-two words.

Keep going.