The warehouse wing had been built for goods that no longer arrived. The ceiling rose high overhead, narrow light slots cut near the top of the wall let pale bars of morning light fall across the floor, but by afternoon they provided nothing useful.
Old rope lay coiled against one wall, left where someone had dropped it long ago. Iron fittings still lined the beams above, hooks fixed in place but holding nothing now. Along the far wall, crates sat stacked in uneven rows.
Aestrith looked up at the ceiling first, taking in the height and the old fittings, then lowered her gaze to the cluttered floor.
"This looks cheerful," she said.
"It works," Beorn replied. "High ceiling, thick walls, and no one using the rooms on either side." He stepped around a coil of rope without slowing his pace.
"It doesn't explain why we're cutting through the section of the citadel that looks like three different stewards gave up trying to maintain it."
"Shorter route."
She glanced at a tilted crate as they passed.
"What's in those."
"Who knows."
"You haven't checked."
"I've been busy," he said, continuing forward. "The crates aren't going anywhere."
She walked another step in silence, thinking about that answer.
"Could be anything," she said. "Could be bones."
"Could be, maybe from a forgotten murder," he agreed.
She looked sideways at him, waiting for elaboration. He kept walking and offered none.
Back on his desk, a stack of candidate applications waited for him. They had been screened only for basic legibility before being passed directly to his attention. The garrison decree had drawn more responses than he had expected. Processing them properly would consume time he did not have yet.
"How many," Aestrith asked over the unseen topic.
"A few dozen. More still coming in."
"From where."
"Mostly the city. A few from outlying settlements that saw the decree posted." He stepped over a low shelf someone had knocked loose from the wall and simply propped against the base instead of fixing properly.
"Godric thinks three of them deserve immediate review. The rest he described as fine."
"Encouraging."
"It's a garrison that existed without a commander for years," Beorn said. "At this stage, fine is an improvement over what was there before."
She glanced toward a smaller crate sitting near the corner as they passed. It differed from the others. The wood was tighter, the joinery more careful. It looked like the sort of container meant for something fragile.
"What's that one," she said.
"No idea."
"You could open that one."
"Are we curious now." He glanced at it briefly while walking past.
"Maybe after the applications, the contract, the limestone contractor, the wall section."
She watched him continue past the crate without slowing even slightly.
"Right," she said.
The contract with Cerdic was the next piece in motion. The agreement existed on paper already. The guild was ready to move.
The real constraint lay elsewhere. Before a single batch of material moved outside Coss's existing transport network, the transit contract with the quarry crews had to be secured. That meant locating the correct limestone contractor first.
He needed someone who understood the quarry roads north of the walls, maintained working relationships with the crew chiefs, and carried no existing obligation that Coss could exploit.
"He knows you went to the guild," Aestrith said.
"Yes." Beorn reached the door at the end of the wing and tested the handle. It turned freely.
"He knows I went in and came out. Not what happened inside."
"As soon as lime starts moving toward Cerdic's sites outside his deals, he'll know something came out of that meeting. So you have a window."
"A narrow one. But I need to find a contractor first."
He pushed the door open and paused, letting her pass.
"I have a description of who I'm looking for. Someone with quarry access and no leverage Coss can pull. That's already a short list in this city."
"Shorter than you'd like," she said, stepping through the doorway.
"Everything here is shorter than I want," Beorn replied as he followed her inside.
The room beyond was small. Probably a counting room once, or an overseer's office.
Marks on the walls showed where shelving had been mounted and later ripped free. A clean rectangular patch on the floor marked where a desk had stood long enough to protect the stone beneath it.
Now the room had a workbench against the far wall, a lamp already burning beside it, and objects Beorn had placed there earlier that morning.
Iron pieces of different sizes lay across the surface. A flat plate. A short rod. Two rings. A bar. Several smaller fragments arranged near the near edge.
At the far end of the bench, kept separate from the iron, three stone samples from the northeastern wall section rested side by side. Their broken edges showed pale where he had ordered them knocked loose.
Aestrith studied the objects for a moment. Then she looked at him.
"You've been planning this for a while," she said.
"A while is an understatement."
She moved closer to the bench and examined the stone samples without touching them.
"What do you want," she said.
Beorn pulled a stool from the corner and positioned it several feet back from the workbench, giving himself a clear view of the setup.
He opened the ledger to a blank page, settled a quill in his hand, and looked at her.
"I need to build a foundry," he said. "Something that can support actual production runs."
He tapped the quill lightly against the page while organizing the explanation.
"The problem with cast iron is tolerances. You can melt iron in a furnace and pour it into a mold, but the result isn't reliable. Defects appear wherever the metal cools unevenly or pressure across the casting shifts during the pour."
She waited, letting him finish defining the problem.
"What I need," he continued, "is a way to keep the metal under consistent pressure while it sets inside the mold. Even pressure across the entire batch. Every mold in the run experiencing the same distribution while it cools, from the first pour to the last."
He met her eyes.
"If that works, the defect rate drops. The output becomes predictable." He gestured toward the iron pieces. "That's the part you can help with."
She picked up the flat plate briefly, weighed it in her hand, then set it down again before crossing her arms.
Her gaze moved across the objects on the bench as if mapping the system he was proposing, then returned to him.
"You want me to press over the molds while they're cooling," she said slowly.
"Over the full batch," he confirmed. "Every mold in the run at once. If I'm relying on you to stabilize one casting at a time, the system collapses. The whole advantage here comes from scale."
She stood quietly for a moment, processing the scope of that requirement. He watched her adjust her mental model the same way she approached any unfamiliar problem.
"That's not small thing," she said.
"No."
"And you want to know what I can actually manage before you design the furnace around it."
"That's the idea."
She exhaled slowly.
"There's something you need to understand first."
She kept her arms crossed and looked back down at the objects on the bench.
"Every time I use this power, it can cause accidents." Her expression tightened slightly.
She lifted the iron plate again and set it back down in the same place.
"I don't know why either," she continued. "Just that it can lapse back into an explosion, or worse."
Beorn said nothing yet. He needed the full rule before responding.
"A small amount is fine," she said. "But if we do it in excess it can cause a flare. Some say it might even destroy a city."
She looked directly at him.
Something from the prince's life stirred. A tutor's voice, or something close to it, a lesson half-remembered the way lessons are when you were twelve and not paying full attention.
Sinbound near a settlement, heavy use over days, and then the animals started coming wrong. That was how the tutor had put it. Coming wrong. The livestock first, then the things past the walls. He had thought it was a story meant to frighten. He had clearly not been paying enough attention.
"How much is too much," he asked.
"It depends," she said. "How much I'm using it, for how long. If it's only me."
She glanced toward the lamp and then toward the stone walls enclosing them.
"One person working alone in a closed room. We should be fine."
She looked back at him.
"That's not the scenario I'm warning about."
"So we're fine today."
"Probably."
Beorn lowered the quill to the page again. The risk parameters mattered, but the next step was still measurement.
"Then show me your magic."