He visited all six schools in six days.
Not inspections — visits. The difference mattered. An inspection produced performance. A visit produced the thing that happened when people did not know they were being watched.
He came at different hours. Sometimes at the opening, sometimes in the middle of a session, twice at the end when the children were leaving and the teachers were still in the room reviewing the day. He said very little. He watched what the room was doing when it thought no one important was paying attention.
The first school — craftsmen's quarter — was the original one.
He sat at the back for forty minutes. Deia was teaching. She had eleven children in front of her, five from Troy and six from the settlement, and she was moving between them with the specific attention of someone who had learned to read the moment a student stopped understanding and to address it before the student decided they did not understand.
