Heinrich answered before the room had fully moved into silence.
"I would not need long," he said. "I have been here two weeks."
He folded his hands. Beorn recognized the gesture from their previous exchange, Heinrich used it when he intended to organize his thoughts from the ground up instead of isolated points.
"The city was not built as a unified structure, but repaired one failure at a time."
He tapped one finger lightly against his hand as he continued. "Currently, Ashmark's administration is a series of patches implemented as a partial correction to stop the immediate damage. The food distribution system exists because of the refugee influx and crisis, not because anyone designed a stable civic mechanism. The military force was built as an emergency militia to the immediate conflict in a hurry."
His voice remained steady. "I'm inclined to believe the mine revenue has returned, yet the system is still essentially the one that permitted systematic corruption for decades."
