The fire had burned down since it was first lit, and the place had gone quiet. A space like this did that once movement stopped. The air stilled. Sound carried less. No one acting meant fewer things demanding attention.
It also made it easier to miss changes if he wasn't careful.
It was a good room. That had been Beorn's first conclusion when they found it.
The scale matched its purpose. High ceiling, which meant heat would disperse unless managed. Enough space to breathe. Windows facing east and west. Light would come predictably, morning from one side, evening from the other.
A wide bed stood against the far wall, the frame still solid even if the linens were old. The fireplace was large enough to warm the room if fed correctly.
Aestrith had taken the couch immediately. She saw it and went straight to it.
There was a writing desk, a chair, shelves that had once held materials and now held dust left untouched for years. Everything in the room carried the feeling of having been used and abandoned.
The room smelled of old stone. Beneath it lingered a dry herbal trace from the garden below, carried upward through the crack in the window by the evening air. The breeze explained the uneven warmth he'd already noticed.
Beorn had taken the desk. Eadric's list lay in front of him beside the notes he'd been building since their arrival. Candle to the right for steady light. Ledger open to the working page. Everything within reach.
Aestrith lay on her back on the couch, one arm tucked behind her head. In her other hand, she rotated a crystal pendant she'd taken from the chandelier while passing beneath it.
She had been turning it for twenty minutes.
Firelight fractured through the crystal and drifted across the ceiling. The pattern changed with every slow rotation, though it always returned to the same places.
"Are you actually a prince?"
Beorn kept writing. "What makes you ask?"
"This room."
He didn't look up. "What about it?"
"You chose it immediately." The crystal turned again between her fingers. "Out of the entire wing. You didn't check alternatives, just walked in and stopped."
Beorn set the quill down.
He looked around the room again, properly this time.
When they'd first arrived, his attention had been elsewhere. Eadric's list. The need to record details before memory blurred them together.
Now he studied the room itself.
One entrance. The corridor leading here ran straight from the main passage with no branches, meaning anyone approaching would make noise before arrival. The windows sat close enough to the courtyard wall that a fall would stop there.
The service passage outside connected to a secondary stair. Multiple exits. All manageable.
He had not consciously processed any of it earlier. He had entered and stopped.
"Hm."
Aestrith watched him without speaking.
That was a problem.
His training had been moving beneath his awareness the entire time. He might be making other decisions the same way.
He sat with the thought for a moment, then picked the quill back up.
"Good instincts," Aestrith murmured.
"Apparently."
She returned to turning the crystal.
The fire shifted as a log collapsed inward. Heat brushed the left side of the room before the breeze from the window thinned it out again.
Above her, the broken light drifted slowly across the ceiling. She watched it without moving.
Beorn turned a page in the ledger. "You're sleeping in here?"
"Of course. I'm your bodyguard."
"That will create rumors."
"I know."
He glanced toward her. She was still watching the ceiling.
"The mistress kind."
"Yes." Another slow turn. One fragment of light crossed the far wall and vanished. "I know."
"And that doesn't concern you."
She tilted her head slightly toward him. "A mistress doesn't have to justify her position. She occupies space without explanation. No one questions it or writes it down formally."
The crystal turned once more.
"A bodyguard walks through the front door and people start asking why. They want somewhere to place it."
Beorn considered that.
"One explanation solves two problems."
He returned to the ledger. "Pragmatic."
"Naturally."
The fire crackled once and sank lower.
Outside, night had fully closed in. The Scar would be visible above the courtyard wall if he bothered to look. He didn't. His attention stayed on the papers in front of him.
"Wulfric appeared today," he said after a while. "Same day we arrived."
Aestrith said nothing.
"Information moved from the gate or the road. Possibly Eadric transmitted it, possibly multiple sources." He wrote in the margin. "Coss receives information quickly and acts on it immediately. That's the result of his network."
"He's had twenty years to build one."
"Right."
He added it beneath the others, in the column reserved for uncertain things.
"Gate. Warehouse district. Eadric. Minimum three reporting points before I entered the building."
He thought about the man at the loading bay who had lowered his eyes a beat too early. The merchant who stopped watching before they'd fully passed him. There were likely more. He kept the lower estimate and moved on.
"Eadric," Aestrith said.
"Insufficient information."
"He didn't warn you."
"He may not have known in advance."
"He may not consider warning you part of his responsibilities." She rolled the crystal lazily between her fingers. "Those are different things."
Beorn wrote it down.
A man outmaneuvered and a man choosing not to act looked identical from the outside. He needed more before he could tell which Eadric was.
"We'll see."
Aestrith snorted softly and went back to watching the ceiling.
Beorn pushed aside the margin notes and pulled the list closer to the candle.
Eadric had compiled it quickly. That much was obvious.
Some entries were precise. Name, role, tenure.
Others were loose, clearly written from memory. Two names had no roles assigned. One had been crossed out without explanation.
He read the list twice.
Then he picked up the quill.
The cook worked across three households. He struck a line through it.
The senior attendant maintained ties with a salt merchant in the high quarter and two families near the south side. He marked that as well.
The quill scratched softly against the paper.
The archivist appeared twice under different roles. He crossed out both entries.
The attending staff were listed as four. One was marked irregular due to a family illness.
The unnamed entries were useless until he identified them. The crossed-out name was a different problem entirely.
When he reached the end, he set the quill down and exhaled slowly.
He had expected it to be bad.
It was worse.
The candle had burned down by nearly a third now, giving off the faint smell of hot wax. The flames sat lower. The warmth held steady.
Above Aestrith, the fractured light had faded as the angles changed.
She might have been asleep. Probably not.
Her breathing remained even. The crystal rested motionless against her chest.
Beorn looked at the list again.
Then he turned to a fresh page in the ledger and wrote a number at the top. Beneath it, a second number. Smaller.
He held the distance between them in his head for a moment.
Then he began writing down what he had.