The fire had burned down since it was first lit, and the place had settled into calmness. A space like this did that when movement stopped. The air went still. Sound carried less. It meant no one was acting, which made it easier to think.
It also made it easier to miss changes if he wasn't careful.
It was a good room. That had been Beorn's first conclusion when they found it. The scale matched its purpose. High ceiling, which meant heat would disperse unless managed, and space enough to breathe. Windows positioned east and west. Light would come predictably, morning from one side, evening from the other.
A wide bed stood against the far wall, the frame still solid even if the linens were old. The fireplace was large enough to warm the space if fed correctly.
Aestrith had taken the couch immediately. She had seen it and gone straight to it. A writing desk, a chair, shelves that had once held materials and now held dust arranged by neglect. Everything in it had been used and then left.
The room smelled of old stone. There was also a dry herbal trace from the garden below, carried upward through the window gap by the evening air. That airflow meant a breeze, which explained the uneven warmth he'd already noticed.
Beorn had taken the desk. Eadric's list lay in front of him, alongside the notes he had been building since their arrival. Candle positioned to the right for consistent light. Ledger open to the working page. Everything close to hand.
Aestrith lay on her back on the couch, one arm behind her head. In her other hand, she rotated a crystal pendant. She had taken it from the chandelier while passing beneath it.
She had been turning it for twenty minutes. The firelight refracted through it, casting broken light across the ceiling. The pattern changed with each rotation, always landing in predictable places.
"Are you actually a prince?" she said.
Beorn kept writing. "What makes you ask."
"This room."
He didn't look up. "What about it."
"You chose it immediately." She continued rotating the crystal. The light moved with it. "Out of the entire wing. You didn't check alternatives. You entered and stopped."
Beorn set the quill down.
He looked at the room again, properly this time. When they had first arrived, his focus had been elsewhere, on Eadric's list and the need to record details before memory degraded. Now he gave it proper attention.
One entrance. The corridor leading here ran straight from the main passage with no branches, which meant any approach would generate sound before arrival. The windows were close enough to the courtyard wall that a fall would stop there.
The service passage outside connected to a secondary stair. Multiple exits. Each one manageable. He had not consciously processed any of that earlier. He had entered and stopped.
"Hm," he said.
Aestrith watched him without adding anything.
That was a problem. His training had been running beneath him the whole time, without him tracking it. He might be making other decisions the same way. He sat with that, then picked the quill back up.
"Good instincts," Aestrith said, indifferently.
"Apparently."
She went back to it.
The fire shifted as a log settled. Warmth pushed up on the left side for a moment. The breeze from the window evened it out. Above Aestrith, the fractured light patterns moved slowly. She watched them, unmoving.
Beorn turned a page in the ledger. "You're sleeping in here."
"Of course. I'm your bodyguard."
"That will create rumors."
"I know."
He glanced at her. She was still focused on the ceiling.
"The mistress kind," he said.
"Yes." She turned it again. One fragment crossed the far wall and disappeared. "I know."
"And that doesn't concern you."
She turned her head slightly toward him. "A mistress doesn't have to justify her position." She turned back. "She occupies space without explanation. No one questions it or records it formally. A bodyguard walks in through the front. They write it down and want to know why. People want to know where to fit it."
Beorn considered that.
"One explanation solves two problems," she said.
He returned to his work. "Pragmatic."
"Naturally."
The fire crackled once, then settled to a low burn. Outside, the night had fully closed in. The Scar would be visible above the courtyard wall if he checked. He didn't. His attention stayed on the documents.
"Wulfric appeared today," he said. "Same day we arrived."
Aestrith didn't respond.
"Information moved from the gate or the approach road. Possibly Eadric transmitted it. Possibly multiple sources." He wrote in the margin. "Coss receives information quickly and acts on it immediately. That's the result of his network."
"He's had twenty years to build one."
"Right." He wrote it in the margin, in the column where he kept the uncertain things. "Gate, warehouse district, Eadric. Minimum three reporting points before I entered the building."
He thought about the man at the loading bay who had dropped his eyes a beat early, the merchant who stopped watching before they'd cleared his sightline. There were likely more. He held the lower figure and moved on.
"Eadric," Aestrith said.
"Insufficient information."
"He didn't warn you."
"He may not have known in advance."
"He may not consider warning you part of his responsibilities." She gave it another slow turn. "Those are different cases."
Beorn wrote it down. A man outmaneuvered and a man choosing not to act were identical from the outside. He'd need more before he could tell which one Eadric was.
"We'll see," he said.
Aestrith snorted and returned her attention to the ceiling.
Beorn set aside the margin notes and pulled the list closer to the candle.
Eadric had compiled it quickly. That was evident. Some entries were precise. Name, role, tenure. Others were loose, clearly written from memory. Two names had no roles assigned. One name had been crossed out without explanation.
He read the list twice.
He picked up the quill.
The cook worked across three households. He put a line through it.
The senior attendant maintained arrangements with a salt merchant in the high quarter and two families near the south side. He marked that too.
The quill made a small sound against the paper. He kept going.
The archivist appeared twice under different roles. He drew a line through both entries.
The attending staff were listed as four. One was marked as irregular, managing a family illness.
The unnamed entries couldn't be used until he knew who they were. The crossed-out entry was a different problem.
When he reached the end, he set the quill down.
He exhaled.
He had expected it to be bad. It was worse than that.
The candle had burned down by a third, putting out a faint smell of hot wax. The flames were lower now. The warmth held. The light above Aestrith had faded as the angles changed.
She might have been asleep. Probably not. Her breathing was even. The crystal rested on her chest, no longer moving.
Beorn looked at the list again.
He turned to a fresh page in the ledger and wrote a number at the top. Then a second number below it, smaller. He held the gap in his head for a moment.
Then he began writing down what he had.