Morning light entered Eadric's office through the south-facing window. It struck the air above the desk and revealed a suspended layer of dust, nearly motionless in the beam.
Beorn sat without waiting to be invited.
Eadric had been halfway to his feet to greet him. He completed the motion anyway, smoothing it into something intentional before lowering himself back into his chair. The composed warmth returned to his face. His hands folded together on the desk in their usual place.
"My lord. Good morning."
"Morning."
Beorn already had the ledger open across his knee. A piece of charcoal rested in his other hand. He had taken it from the desk drawer moments earlier and slipped it into his coat pocket out of habit.
His hand moved along the ledger's margin almost without thought.
The marks never became anything clear. One line curved toward a rectangle and failed to close. Another briefly resembled a wall section seen from above before breaking apart. A row of parallel strokes began like columns, then wandered away from each other.
He let the charcoal move.
Eadric watched it for a few seconds without comment. Then he continued.
"I hope the full staff accounting was fitting to your wishes."
"It was fine."
Beorn turned the page. The charcoal kept moving.
"I'm handling the staff arrangements myself. If I need anything further, I'll let you know."
Eadric waited just long enough to confirm nothing more was coming, then inclined his head.
"Of course. Is there something I can help you with this morning?"
"Yes."
Beorn lifted his gaze from the page.
"Ashmark's formal allocation. What funds arrive from the capital each year?"
Eadric answered without consulting anything. "Sixty gold marks annually, my lord. The funds are disbursed in quarterly installments. The first quarter for this year arrived in late winter and was entered into the accounts. The next installment is expected in two months."
"So fifteen marks a quarter."
Beorn wrote the number down.
"What does it cover?"
"Administrative operation. Correspondence costs, messenger fees, seal usage, maintenance of the citadel structure. The crown fixed the amount several years ago when its assessment of the territory's administrative requirements was..."
He paused, choosing the word.
"Modest."
"Modest," Beorn echoed.
"The territory has generally been considered self-sustaining in practical terms, my lord. The crown allocation exists to satisfy formal obligations. Most funds come from territorial revenue."
Beorn studied him.
"And how much does the territory actually generate?"
Eadric's hands shifted slightly on the desk. A small movement, but Beorn caught it at once.
"Revenue comes from several sources. Mining levies, settlement taxation, road and gate fees, and a portion of merchant traffic using the Badlands routes."
He paused again.
"In practice, the amount collected has remained well below the expected figure for some time."
"How far below?"
"The collection process is..."
Eadric turned one hand faintly, as if weighing the matter in the air between them.
"It depends on several layers, my lord. Mining operations, for example, function under their own agreements with the crews running them. The levy is applied to output, and output has been declining as the nearest shafts encounter their troublesome conditions."
"Right."
Beorn set the charcoal aside and picked up the quill instead. That meant the number mattered.
"The mining levies. Who collects them?"
A brief silence followed.
"The contracted operations submit their production figures to this office quarterly. Collection is then..."
"Who handles the collection on the ground?"
Eadric separated his hands before folding them together again.
"Historically, the practical side of it has been managed through the mining operations themselves, my lord. They maintain internal accounts and submit the figures here."
"The figures are compared against estimated production before the levy is calculated."
Beorn met his eyes.
"So the operations report their own output and pay based on what they claim they produced."
"The system depends on good-faith accounting, yes. It's common in territories of this type where the administrative resources for independent verification are... limited."
"And there's no independent verification."
"There hasn't been in recent years."
The faint scratch of quill against paper filled the room.
Beorn wrote another note.
The charcoal had already returned to his other hand and resumed moving without his noticing. Loose shapes drifted across the margin again. A circle drawn too tightly. A diagonal stroke abandoned halfway through.
He noticed the movement and set the charcoal down once more.
"The merchant traffic," he said. "Road and gate fees. Who manages those?"
"The gate fees are collected by the garrison, my lord. Road tolls on the routes..."
Eadric stopped, then began again more carefully. "The established toll points on the major roads are maintained and operated by the groups that built them. Their accounts are submitted here in the same manner as the mining reports."
"The people who built the roads."
"Yes, my lord."
Beorn looked down at the notes in front of him. The picture assembled itself quickly.
Mining operations reported their own output. Road tolls were controlled by the people who built the roads. Gate fees passed through a garrison that had gone years without real command.
Every source of revenue passed first through the hands of the people profiting from it before anything reached the crown's seat.
He knew exactly who had built those roads.
"Settlement taxation."
"The settlements submit annual assessments, my lord. The process..."
Eadric cut himself off again. His voice carried the weary tone of a man explaining an old problem he no longer expected anyone to solve.
"Compliance has varied. Settlements farther from Ashmark operate under their own pressures, and enforcement has been limited by the garrison's strength."
Beorn picked up the quill again.
At the top of a new page he wrote another note. Beneath it, a second one in smaller script.
He looked at the space between them for a moment.
"So what actually reaches this office," he said. "Not the expected figure. What came in last year?"
Eadric drew a slow breath.
He opened the drawer to his right and removed a narrow ledger, the sort that should have been far thicker for its purpose. Turning to a marked page, he placed it between them.
Beorn leaned forward.
He read in silence for several seconds before sitting back again.
The number was technically not zero. In practical terms, it might as well have been.
It was the record of a territory that had spent years operating as a private commercial zone while the crown's seat remained at the center receiving the bare minimum required to preserve the illusion of legitimacy.
Coss, he thought. The most visible operation, not the source of the rot.
The structure had existed long before him. This was what happened in a territory where official authority had never been strong enough to enforce its own claims. Private interests had filled the void completely.
And over time the void itself had become part of the structure. Remove one piece and the rest would feel it immediately.
He wrote another note in the margin.
The lines had tightened. Sharper now. Somewhere between ease and alarm, and closer to alarm.
He set the charcoal aside and continued with the quill.
"I'm going to need the records."
"Of course, my lord. Which records?"
"Census, most recent. Garrison payroll. The original establishment document and whatever current version exists. Supply records for three years. Revenue accounts for three years. Correspondence from the last three representatives, formal and informal."
He looked up.
"And the capital correspondence going back five years."
Eadric's expression never changed. He turned toward the young attendant seated near the entrance.
"Aldred. Begin with the garrison records."
Then he faced Beorn again.
"The census is eleven years old, my lord. It may not..."
"I'll take it."
"Of course."
Aldred had already left the room.
Eadric folded his hands together once more.
"Some correspondence from earlier representatives may be incomplete. The previous administration's records contained... gaps."
"I'll take whatever exists."
The next hour passed in Aldred's repeated trips to the archive.
As the search pushed deeper into the storage stacks, the trips grew longer. The documents arrived in bundles tied with cord, their outer pages coated in dust from years without handling.
Eadric presented each bundle methodically, setting it on the desk and identifying it aloud with the exactness of a man who knew the filing system by heart.
Beorn filled the first page and moved into the margins of the next.
When the supply records arrived in three tied stacks, he studied their thickness.
"These represent three years."
"Yes, my lord."
"They're thin."
"The recording practices have been... consistent with the administrative capacity available."
Beorn added them to the growing pile without comment.
Aldred returned for a fourth trip.
The accounts came as a single slim volume, confirming what the earlier figure had already suggested. The correspondence arrived in two stacks.
One belonged to the most recent representative.
The other Aldred placed quietly between them.
Eadric did not touch either stack.
His gaze fixed slightly to the left of them, his face unreadable.
Beorn looked at the older stack, then at Eadric.
"That should be everything."
"Yes, my lord. I believe so."
"Thank you for your time."
"Of course."
Eadric paused.
"Is there anything else I can clarify while you're here?"
"I'll come back after I've read them."
Beorn stood, lifting the nearest bundle before glancing at the rest of the documents.
"These will come to my office."
It took two trips each for Aldred and the second attendant who joined midway through the morning.
The corridor between Eadric's office and the residential wing looked no different from the nights before. The stone floor was worn smooth. The wall sconces stood dark in the daylight. The air carried the cold scent of morning stone.
But walking it now felt different.
The attendants moved ahead beneath the weight of the records. Years of quiet neglect were leaving their shelves and going somewhere they would finally be read.
Eadric remained in his doorway, watching the last trip disappear down the corridor.
He never stepped outside.
The room looked different once the documents arrived.
More bundles than the desk could hold spread across the chair, the floor near the window, and the windowsill itself.
Beorn paused in the doorway, studying the clutter.
Then he stepped inside.
He moved the displaced chair back into place, cleared enough space to work, and sat.
Opening the garrison payroll, he began with the original establishment document. The paper had gone soft along the folds, left closed in the same position so long it no longer remembered another shape.
He began to read.