The report from Harr used the direct format from a soldier, with the event order, facts only. The handwriting was a mirror of the man himself, compressed and efficient, like commands delivered under pressure. Harr had reduced the nest extermination, the matriarch encounter, and the mine condition into eleven lines.
The twelfth line contained the casualty figure.
Beorn read that line twice.
Roughly one third of the company lost to death or injury. That ant around thirty n either would not return to Ashmark or return injured badly enough to leave service, from days to permanently.
Sothing dark moved at the corner of the page.
He realized after a mont that it was the charcoal in his own hand, he had started sketching without noticing. The drawing beside the casualty figure had nothing to do with the mine, the kind his hand created when his thoughts were working through problems faster than words could contain.
He noted the habit, dropped the charcoal for the quill, and continued reading.
The pension disbursents would begin imdiately. Multiple nas, either dead or permanently injured. Each one represented a household that would receive a year’s salary from the seat funds before the month ended.
That part at least required no judgnt call. Godric could execute the paynts without escalating the matter to him.
Then ca the other side of the report.
This was the third mine.
The projected revenue that had existed only as theory since the first shaft drainage effort now had asurable output behind it. They still were not trading surplus material, most of the materials vanished directly into internal production, feeding the foundry and the army demands.
But the production ceiling had changed, and the new ceiling was significantly higher.
Longer foundry shifts beca possible. With mine production stabilized, the precision work could resu at scale.
He wrote the three-mine estimate in the margin, then set the quill down.
Aestrith sat on the couch nearby.
The crutches were gone.
She had not ntioned that fact. Beorn tried to determine whether the omission had been intentional or simply practical.
She sat the way she had before the library incident, with her arms loose, legs stretched forward.
In one hand she held a scrap of paper taken from the desk. She tossed it upward, then snapped it back into her palm with a gravity field before it could drift naturally downward.
Naturally, paper should have floated.
This piece did not. It crashed directly into her hand each ti with sharp precision. Whatever she was doing had already beco routine enough that her attention no longer needed to remain on it.
She had been practicing.
"When are you planning to tell what changed?" Beorn asked.
She tossed the paper again before answering.
"I have no clue what you’re talking about."
Deflection, in the tone to redirect attention instead of answering directly. Beorn had learned to distinguish between her actual neutrality and the version she used as armor. The difference reminded him of inspecting forged steel, a flawed bore and a proper one looked nearly identical until you understood where to examine.
"Allow then."
Beorn scratched his chin in feigned rembrance, "When it was Leof’s turn, you created a gravity shell you had never managed before."
He leaned back slightly in the chair. "During the Mab’s turn, you redirected her ability instead of simply containing it. I’m confident you weren’t capable to do neither of these before the incident and your short coma."
The paper landed in her palm, in a way it hid her expression.
She shifted slightly, not quite a flinch. More like soone bracing internally after realizing avoidance would no longer work.
"I wasn’t sure how much of it was real."
She whispered quietly. "I didn’t want to bring it up and give a wrong idea."
"Very well," Beorn said.
He picked the quill back up and returned to the report.
The office returned into its normal mid-morning quiet. Stone carried sound strangely through the citadel. Beorn could hear activity from the kitchen, movent sowhere down the corridor, distant conversation from the garrison.
Ordinary, daily sounds of routine.
He added another notation beneath the pension figures. Then another.
Aestrith spoke before he was done with the report.
"The obvious part is that my control improved," she said.
Beorn stopped writing and looked back at her.
"It’s way easier now."
She continued. "Takes less effort to maintain the field, the precision stays steady farther out than it used to. Before, it started to blur around thirty feet."
She glanced toward the scrap of paper in her hand.
"Now I can reach fifty and the border still stays exactly where I placed it."
That was a start. He imdiately moved to the next variable.
"If the target moves, can you maintain the boundary without rebuilding the field manually?"
She thought about it for a few seconds before answering. "More easily than before. It used to consu most of my concentration, but now the field compensates when the target changes position. I don’t have to manage every adjustnt individually."
He wrote that down.
"How you interacted with the girls abilities."
He asked. "Does the effect operate at range, or only inside your field?"
"Inside the field."
She said imdiately. "Well, more or less. For example, I can sense Mod’s power through the field if she activates it nearby. Outside my range, I lose the sensation."
She paused briefly, thinking through the next part more carefully. "The girls don’t feel too different. Their powers differ, obviously, but there’s sothing underneath them. Sothing deeper than the power itself, like they’re drawing from the sa underlying source."
She frowned slightly.
"It’s probably the case for too, but I can’t exactly say for sure."
Beorn stopped writing.
That mattered.
"Don’t ask what it is."
She added almost in a rush to not set up expectations. "I only know what I can feel. There’s sothing there, but I have no idea what."
"I don’t have a theory for it either," Beorn admitted.
He set the quill down beside the report. "Nothing I know explains these magical, or arcane energy. So we tackle it systematically, by docunting every observation in the near future. We should also try to understand... why you advanced, so to speak. It evidently happened either due or after the mansion incident."
She made a quiet sound that landed sowhere between agreent and resignation.
Then she stood.
Weeks ago, standing had required arduous effort. Now it was normal again.
She picked up her coat from the arm of the couch.
"I’ve been sitting in this office long enough," she said. "The foundry won’t run itself."
"That’s my lead engineer."
Beorn chuckled. "Wynn has both the cutting tool and the boring machine under construction. There has been so prototypes, and they can definitely use your abilities for the precision work necessary for a reliable chanism."
He tapped the desk lightly.
"Without proper tolerance correction, neither system will do much in the short run."
"On it," she said, and left the office.
Beorn turned back toward the desk.
The knock ca roughly twenty minutes later.
Short, Lewin’s rhythm.
He entered, crossed the room without wasting movent, and placed a folded note beside the report from Harr.
"We found a steward candidate," he said. "He’s on the city right now."
Beorn unfolded the note and read the first line.
The solution to many problems was here.
He set the note beside the report and stood up imdiately.
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