The high quarter belonged to the seat because the people who had once owned the buildings there no longer possessed any legal claim. The evidence for that existed in Lewin's seized documents, Wulfric's testimony dragged out between broken ribs in the dungeon, the financial records taken from the warehouse district.
The oligarchic class had either run when the network collapsed or now sat imprisoned beneath the citadel. Every property had reverted through forfeit.
The reason to place a garrison company in the empty buildings afterward had been a practical answer to an immediate problem. Soldiers in a district were better than nobody in a district, and over time, the temporary decision had hardened into the present situation.
