I was frustrated but I had no choice but to accept that all that I could do was be patient and hope that Bandor came to his senses soon. There were many opportunities available for the Okwari to take advantage of but only if they chose to do so. I wanted the Okwari to benefit from my rule as much as possible, but I had an entire kingdom to govern and projects to oversee that had the full support of the citizens whose lives those projects were meant to improve. Before returning to the palace I stopped at Galand once more and asked if Brumli if he would send some men south to the capital city to help accelerate construction of the teacher's academy. With most of my plans now in motion my impatience to see them come to fruition was growing. My impatience was such that I needed Ferland to consistently remind me that a ruler's legacy was constructed over many decades and that greed and impatience would only serve to undermine my ambitions. To take my mind off of the construction of the teacher's academy and the schoolhouses I applied myself to the task of designing and crafting the syllabus that would be taught to the students. I based the syllabus mostly on what I learned from reading my father's books during our exile in the north. The mathematics, literacy and geography syllabi were easy enough to put together; the history syllabus however proved a challenge. I wanted the history syllabus to cover the entire history of Aseron and the major historical events of the realm as a whole, but when it came to Aseron there were events that the palace historian had omitted from the record, in particular the events around the relationship between the first pilgrims and the Okwari. Knowing Ferland to be a keen student of history I asked him if he knew of any texts that provide a full account of those events. Ferland had such a book in his private library, a firsthand account of the pilgrims' persecution of the Okwari written by Peter DeLange, whose family would go on to become one of the seven noble families. The book contained details and anecdotes about the various injustices committed against the Okwari by the first settlers of Aseron: the campaigns of violence that were waged against them, the theft of their livestock, the razing of their villages, the kidnapping of their children who they attempted to 'civilize' by educating and assimilating them. After suffering for years at the hands of the white settlers, the Okwari determined that their only hope was to abandon their lands and go north, where they would be able to live in peace.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Reading about all of the atrocities that the Okwari had had inflicted upon them, I was amazed that Chief Kendor had ever gotten the Okwari to agree to help us when we were exiles and even more amazed that he had gotten them to fight for me. Getting the Okwari to trust that they were now the equal of any other citizen in Aseron was going to take a long time and a lot of effort, an effort I was prepared to commit myself to fully.