Chapter 84: Deia
Teron came with his wife.
Lysander did not go to the school that morning. Arsini had said: let them see it without you in the room. You change what happens when you are present.
She was right. He stayed at the supply office and worked through the coastal watch report and waited.
Arsini came to him at the fifth hour.
She said: "They are staying."
"Alexion comes back."
"Tomorrow. Teron’s wife asked if she could come again next week and watch a different session. I said yes." She sat down. "She cried."
"During the session."
"At the end. When Deia finished. Teron’s wife was at the back of the room and she watched Deia for an hour and at the end she was crying." Arsini set a tablet on the table. "She said to me: I thought they were taking the school from us. She is giving it back."
’She is giving it back,’ Lysander thought.
’A twelve-year-old girl who has been in this school since the first year, teaching what she learned there to children who arrived on boats, and a Troy-born mother watching it and understanding that the school she trusted had not become something else — it had become more of what it was.’
He looked at the tablet.
"The other families," he said.
"Three of the five observation visits happened this week. Two more next week. One family withdrew their inquiry after seeing the session — they sent a note this morning asking to re-enroll."
"Three sessions and one re-enrollment."
"And two families who have not withdrawn. The observation visits are doing what you said they would."
"What Deia is doing."
"Yes."
He sat with that.
"I want to speak with her," he said.
Arsini looked at him.
"Today," he said.
"She finishes at the sixth hour," Arsini said. "I will bring her."
________________________________________
Deia came to the supply office at the sixth hour.
She was taller than the last time he had seen her up close — the growth of a year, the specific change of a child moving into the beginning of something else. She had a tablet under her arm, which she had clearly been writing on that day, and she came into the office with the directness of someone who had been told this was not a formal occasion and had decided to take that at face value.
She sat across from him.
She looked at the coastal watch report on his table.
"What does the pattern mean," she said. "The numbers in the third column."
He looked at the report. The third column was the boat count from the northern stations.
"The rate of arrival," he said. "How many boats are being seen at each station per day."
"And the number is going down."
"This week. Yes."
"That is good."
"Possibly. It might mean the wave is slowing. It might mean the movement is happening further east and has not reached the coast yet."
She looked at the column.
"How do you tell the difference," she said.
"You look at the pattern over time. One week of lower numbers is not a pattern. Three weeks is."
"So you wait."
"You watch while you wait. They are different things."
She thought about that.
He let the silence sit. She was the kind of person who did not fill silence with noise and he had learned to recognize that kind of person and not fill the silence for them.
"Arsini said you wanted to talk to me," she said.
"Yes."
"About the knowledge cataloguing."
"Yes. She told you."
"She told me what it was. She did not tell me what you wanted from me." She looked at him directly. "What do you want from me."
He looked at her.
’Thirteen years old,’ he thought. ’What do you want from me. Not: what would my role be. Not: how could I help. What do you want from me.’
"I want to know if you would be willing to do it," he said. "The conversations. With people in the settlement. Finding what they know."
"Arsini said the skills register lists what people can do. You want to know what they know."
"Yes."
"Those are different things," she said. "What someone knows is not always what they have done. My mother knows how cloth fades in different kinds of water. She has never been paid to know that. It is not on any list."
"Yes. Exactly that."
She looked at the coastal watch report again.
"Why me," she said.
He thought about how to answer.
"Because you learn by finding what someone already knows and building from there. You figured that out yourself. No one taught you." He paused. "The people in the settlement — they have been carrying their knowledge through displacement. Some of them do not know what they know is valuable because no one has ever asked the right question. You ask the right questions."
She was quiet.
"I am thirteen," she said.
"Yes."
"The people in the settlement are adults."
"Some of them."
"They will not take me seriously."
"Some of them will not," he said. "Some of them will. The ones who take you seriously will be the ones worth talking to."
She looked at her tablet. She had been writing something before she came — he could see the marks on it from across the table, dense and organized, the notation of someone who had already developed their own system for recording information.
"I want to understand something," she said.
"Tell me."
"The woman who knows how cloth fades in different water. If I find her and record what she knows — what happens to that record."
"It goes into the palace knowledge archive. It becomes part of what Troy knows."
"And Troy uses it."
"If it is useful. Yes."
"And the woman."
He looked at her.
"What about the woman," he said.
"Does she know her knowledge is being used. Does she benefit from it. Or does it just—" She paused. "Become Troy’s."
’She is asking about ownership,’ Lysander thought. ’Thirteen years old and she is asking about the ethics of knowledge appropriation before she agrees to participate in the process.’
’Of course she is.’
"What would you want the arrangement to be," he said.
"I want the people to know what I am doing. Not just — someone is asking me questions. I want them to know their knowledge will be recorded and used and by whom."
"Yes."
"And I want them to have the choice to say no."
"Yes."
"And if something they know leads to something valuable — a medicine, a building technique, a crop — I want them to know. Not to receive money. Just to know."
"Yes," he said. "All of that."
She looked at him.
"You agreed very quickly."
"I agreed because you were right. When someone is right immediately I try not to take the time to appear as though I considered it."
Something shifted in her face — not a smile, the thing before a smile.
"I will do it," she said. "Starting with the water knowledge. There are three women in the settlement’s northern cluster who have been managing water in drought conditions. Reos told me about them."
"Reos."
"I have been talking to the physicians in the settlement clinic. They know things I want to understand." She picked up her tablet. "I have been doing informal versions of this for two months."
’Of course she has,’ Lysander thought.
He looked at Arsini, who was standing at the doorway where she had been since bringing Deia in.
Arsini was watching Deia with the expression she had when something had developed past the point she had been tracking and had arrived somewhere she had not entirely predicted.
"Good," Lysander said. "Start with the water knowledge. Report to Arsini weekly."
Deia stood.
At the door she stopped — her stop, not performed, a genuine pause.
"The boy in my session. The one who understood the multiplication method after I asked him two questions."
"Yes."
"He explained it to his mother that evening. She came to school the next morning and told me." She looked at her tablet. "I want to record that too. Not the knowledge. The path it took."
He looked at her.
"Yes," he said. "Record the path."
She went out.
________________________________________
Arsini came fully into the office and sat in the secondary chair.
She did not speak for a moment.
"She has been talking to Reos for two months," Lysander said.
"I know," Arsini said. "I found out three weeks ago."
"You did not tell me."
"I wanted to see where it went on its own." She looked at the door through which Deia had left. "That is where it went."
He sat back.
"She asked about the ethics before she agreed," he said.
"Yes."
"She was thinking about the woman whose knowledge becomes Troy’s. Before she knew what the role would pay or require. Before she knew if she would have help. The first question was: what happens to the person whose knowledge you take."
"Yes."
"You have been teaching her for three years."
"Yes."
"Did you teach her that."
Arsini was quiet.
"No," she said. "I taught her the multiplication method. I taught her the reading. I gave her a space and a problem." She looked at the door. "She taught herself that."
They sat for a moment.
The supply office. The lamp. The coastal watch report with the third column that might mean the wave was slowing or might mean it was gathering further east.
"Arsini," he said.
She looked at him.
He looked at the report.
"Nothing," he said. "I was going to say something and it seemed better not to."
She looked at him for a moment.
"Yes," she said. "Sometimes that is better."
She stood and gathered her tablets.
At the door — her stop. The light one. But she held it longer than usual.
She said: "What were you going to say."
He looked at the coastal watch report.
"That you built something remarkable without knowing the full shape of what you were building."
She held the tablets.
"You built it too," she said.
"I gave you resources and space," he said. "You gave her a space and a problem. She did the rest."
"That is what teaching is," she said.
"Yes," he said. "And what you have been doing is more than teaching."
She stood at the door for a moment.
She did not say anything else. She went out.
He sat in the supply office.
’That was the closest,’ he thought. ’To the thing neither of us has said. She asked what I was going to say. I told her. It was true and it was also not the thing I was going to say. The thing I was going to say was different. But the true thing was also true.’
’I do not know if she understood both things.’
’I think she did.’
’I think that is why she held the door longer than usual.’
He picked up his shard.
