Chương 78: CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT: WHAT THE SPRING PRODUCED

The spring was good. Not dramatically — spring was not a dramatic season, it was a working season, the season when everything planted in autumn became visible and everything needed for summer was put in place.

But it was good in the accumulating way of things that had been built correctly: the harvest projection was stronger than any previous year, the garrison's training program had produced three new qualified soldiers from the winter's assessment candidates, the school's enrollment had crossed two hundred for the first time. The Charter of Common Education's first external school opened in May, in the farming community two days' ride east that had applied through Vance's administrative mechanism three months prior.

Danny had trained the two teachers who staffed it — a week in Greyhold, working through the curriculum and the methods, with the specific quality of attention that Danny brought to any teaching that was teaching rather than content delivery. Marcus had attended one session of the training. He had sat in the back and watched Danny teach the teachers the way Danny had learned, from the inside — not the curriculum, the approach, the questions-first orientation, the why before the how.

The two teachers had been uncertain when they arrived and fluent in the method by the end of the week, which was the best outcome the training could produce. The school opened. Seventeen children on the first day. Twenty-three on the second, when word had carried to the surrounding farms. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Danny came to Marcus's study on the evening of the second day with the report — numbers, initial observations, a preliminary assessment of the curriculum adjustments that the specific student population would require. Marcus read it and then set it down and looked at him.

"Twenty-three children," he said.

"On the second day," Danny said.

"The projection for end of first month is forty."

"Forty children," Marcus said, "in a community that had no school three weeks ago."

"Yes," Danny said. He said it with the specific composed quality of someone who understood what the number meant and was holding it appropriately — not performing emotion, but not dismissing it either.

"Forty children who will learn to read and do mathematics and think about problems in a way that uses what they can actually do." He paused.

"Some of them will be the people who run that community in twenty years."

"Yes," Marcus said.

"They will." Danny looked at the report in Marcus's hands.

"Three more applications for external schools are in processing," he said.

"Vance has them. If all three are approved, we'll have four external schools operational by autumn."

"Vance will approve them," Marcus said.

"I know," Danny said.

"I wanted you to know the number." Marcus looked at him. Thirteen years old, in body. Whatever else, in everything that was not body. Standing in the study in the spring evening with the same direct gaze that had looked at Marcus across a smithy in Coppermill when he had said the word sir in English, and not looked away.

"Forty children," Marcus said again.

"Forty children," Danny said.