It was Cecily who said it first, which surprised nobody who had been paying attention to her for the past three years.
"We're teaching wrong," she told the council, on an ordinary evening in the seventh year, with the flat directness that had long since stopped startling anyone. "Not badly. Wrong. Wat teaches building to whoever turns up at the forge. Aldith and I teach medicine to whoever turns up at the fever house. Hamo and Thomas teach the young ones their letters and the water principles. Elias teaches survey to precisely one apprentice at a time because that's how many he can stand. Every one of those is good. Not one of them is a system."
"They've served for seven years," Diccon said.
"They've served because the people doing them are exceptional and there aren't very many students. Both of those things are changing." Cecily laid out a sheet of her own careful figures. "We had eleven children in the schoolhouse the year I arrived. We have sixty-three. Four of them have come from outside the valley specifically to learn medicine, and I've had to turn away nine more because I have nowhere to put them and no structure to put them into. Whitcombe's sending people now. Oakhaven's asking. I am nineteen — twenty-two — I am too young to be the only answer to that question and I would like a better one."
Alaric, who had been listening with the particular attention he gave to anything structural, spoke next. "You're describing a foundation. A studium. What the cathedral schools do, and Bologna, and Paris — a place with a charter of its own, masters, a fixed course of study, and standing to certify that someone has actually learned the thing rather than merely sat near it."
"I don't know the words for it. That's what I'm describing, yes."
"It is considerably harder than it sounds," Alaric said. "Not the building. The standing. A school without recognized authority produces students nobody outside this valley is obliged to take seriously, which means the best of them will leave to be certified somewhere that matters, and you will have spent a great deal of effort training people for other institutions."
"Then we get the standing," Victoria said.
Everyone looked at her.
"We got a charter. We got a currency accepted in three Genoese ports. We got a King's justiciar to personally confirm our tenure." Victoria's tone was entirely matter-of-fact. "I'm not saying it's easy, Alaric, I'm saying it's the same category of problem we've solved four times already, and I'd rather attempt it than accept that this valley builds everything except the thing that would let it keep building after we're gone."
Thomas had said nothing for the entire conversation.
He was thinking about a number that had been at three for eleven months and had that morning read two, and about how strange it was to sit in a room where people were seriously debating an institution that would take fifteen years to establish properly.
"Thomas?" Aldith said. "You've gone somewhere."
"I'm here." He gathered himself. "I think Cecily's right and I think Alaric's right about the difficulty and I think Victoria's right that difficulty isn't a reason." He looked around the table. "I want to say one thing, though, and I want it heard properly rather than politely. I should not lead this."
"That isn't—"
"Aldith, let me finish, because I've had this thought for about ninety seconds and I want to get it out before I talk myself out of it." Thomas set his hands flat on the table. "Everything this valley has that lasts, we built in the years when I was one voice among several. The charter was Hamo's idea and Victoria's execution. The rail was Wat's. The tower network was Elias's. The fever protocols were Aldith's and then better under Cecily's. The things that are genuinely mine — the wire, the first works — are the parts most dependent on me still being here to explain them."
He looked at Cecily.
"It's your idea. You should build it. I'll write anything you need written and open any door I can open, and I would like to be told what to do rather than consulted about what should be done. I mean that as a working arrangement, not a courtesy."
Cecily went red, and then — visibly, with effort — did not deflect.
"All right," she said. "Then the first thing I need is Alaric explaining to me exactly what standing means and what we'd have to prove to get it. And I need six months before anybody expects a proposal, because I intend to actually understand the problem before I start solving it."
"That," Alaric said, with real approval, "is the correct first request."