The morning came grey and cold into the courtyard. The sky was the pale, ordinary color it always was above Ashmark’s roofline. The Scar was faint in the early light, its jagged line barely visible against the washed-out east.

Beorn had come here from her room when the first sounds of the kitchen started below, carrying the ledger, the quill and the charcoal and nothing else.

There was a table the near corner, where the wall caught the morning light before the sun cleared the far roofline. He set the ledger open to the funds page and the working margin facing each other. He stood with the charcoal in his hand for a moment, looking at the four crossed-out attempts still sitting in the margin from the night before.

The cutting tool advance problem had not resolved itself while he waited for morning. He had not expected it to. He made a fifth attempt in a spare corner of the margin, a different plan using the rotation of the boring bar itself to drive a simple cam that moved the whole assembly forward.

He stopped halfway through when he recognized the same precision problem showing up from a different direction. The cam needed to be exact to produce a steady rate. He did not have a way to make it exact. He put a diagonal line through it.

Cerdic came through the courtyard gate with one of his senior men before the kitchen’s sounds had faded. He crossed to the table and stopped. He had the manner when he had already run through the relevant numbers before arriving.

"Final repairs go down today," he said. "Three days to the cap, weather allowing."

He looked at the ledger briefly.

"What’s next after the wall breach is repaired?"

"The entirety of Ashmark’s walls."

Beorn said. "I want a foundation improvement for every section. Anything that needs to come down comes down."

He paused. "Then the miners’ quarter streets after, we’ll make them stone-paved. The slums district follows when that’s done."

Cerdic’s senior man was already working through the scope in his head, his eyes moving to a point in the air beside the table. Cerdic watched Beorn instead.

"That’s many times the current labor," he said.

It was not an objection. It was a constraint, stated plainly, so the decision addressing it could be made.

"Then hire more, expand the guild. The wages come through this office."

Beorn tapped the ledger once with the charcoal.

"The terms expansion needs to be in writing before midday."

Cerdic acknowledged the commitment with a brief nod. "Before midday," he said, and left with his senior man behind him.

Beorn looked at the funds page. His hand moved to it and marked the allocated figure in the outgoing column. One line. He capped the charcoal and picked up the quill.

Dunna arrived with Osen a few minutes later. Godric followed through the gate behind them and took a position slightly apart, which was his habit when the information belonged primarily to someone else.

"Got news about the mines. Both are up and running," Dunna said.

He gave Beorn the numbers, expected weekly throughput from each, the ramp-up projection as the crews found their pace again after the suspended period. He delivered them without being asked, because he already knew they were what Beorn needed first.

Beorn wrote them in the margin.

Osen spoke when the numbers were down. "The third mine."

He said. "The nest is in the east gallery, where it widens behind the first turn. The route in is narrow, maybe five feet across, sixty feet back to the main chamber."

He looked at the table rather than at Beorn, the way he talked about underground spaces, as though picturing the gallery layout.

"The nest has been there for two seasons at minimum, maybe three."

He paused. "The workers won’t accept that much risk. You’ll need to exterminate the nest for us to move in and start the work."

"Godric," Beorn said.

Godric answered at once. "Sixteen men, Harr commanding. If they rush, it can be done in a few days but with casualties. With time, about a week and none expected."

"Have them take the time to prepare." Beorn said.

He noted the operation in the supplies margin, ammunition for the engagement.

"It will be Harr’s first command under the new hierarchy. Put that in writing today."

Dunna and Osen left. Godric did not. He had more to deliver and had been waiting through the other items to reach it.

"The casualties report," Godric said.

He delivered it in the order he always did, dead by engagement, beginning with the first residential district skirmishes and continuing through the warehouse district operations, the plaza, the high quarter, the mansion. A handful there, a dozen here, dead and injured.

He named the totals for each phase and the cumulative figure at the end. He did not hedge the numbers or explain the circumstances around any of them.

Beorn wrote each phase’s figure in a separate column. When Godric finished, the column was longer than he had written in a single sitting before. He looked at it for a moment, then set the quill down.

He opened the ledger to the page he had prepared before the morning’s first visitor. He set it flat on the table and turned it toward Godric.

"The militia is disbanded from today onward. On its place, I’m founding Ashmark’s professional army. "

Beorn said. "We will recruit up to ten thousand men. The structure will change, ten to a squad, ten squads into company, ten companies into regiment."

He moved his finger down the page. "Every squad has a leader, every company has a captain and every regiment has a marshal. There will be auxiliary corps in the future separated from the companies but answering to the marshal."

He indicated the lower section of the page. "The crown soldiers at the gate get the same offer as any new recruit, reinstatement under this structure at current terms, or one month’s pay and dismissal. No exceptions."

Godric read the document through without asking questions. When he looked up his question was immediate.

"How fast should we fill the positions?"

"Slow and steady."

Beorn said. "Don’t dilute the training to reach any number faster."

Godric closed the document. He produced a second page from inside his coat, shorter, handwritten, five names with one line of notation beside each. He set it on the table.

Beorn read through it. Harr. Sig. Three others, including the broad-shouldered captain from the pistol demonstration in the inner courtyard, whom Godric had finally placed in the formal record. Each notation was specific.

What the action was, which engagement, what decision it required.

"We’ll set up a decoration ceremony soon." Beorn said.

He looked at the list once more.

"Before Harr leaves for the third mine."

Godric collected both documents and left.

The courtyard had its silence for a while. Beorn looked at the funds page. The expenses column was long now, substantially longer than it had been when Cerdic arrived.

The total funds at the bottom was smaller than it had been this morning and still workable, and it would not remain workable indefinitely without the mine revenue ramping fully.

He looked at the engine margin. Five crossed-out attempts at the tool advance mechanism, and the condenser sketch that did not belong there, and the V3 engine’s outline waiting in the corner of the page for the prerequisite that had not arrived yet.

He wrote one word at the bottom of the administrative page, steward, and put a question mark below it and a circle around both. Eadric had been dead for weeks. The gap in the seat’s administration had been manageable while the city was fighting itself.

It was becoming something else now, visible in the fact that he had reviewed production records thrice in the last five days rather than examining them once and handing them off.

Lewin appeared at the courtyard gate. His shoulder moved without problem, the arm working fully. He crossed to the table and stopped.

"The disease cases," he said. "The ones you asked me to find."

Beorn set the charcoal down.

"I found a group." Lewin said. "Five people. Three teenagers and two younger girls, living together in a building in the outer slums district."

He gave the street and the building marker, and Beorn wrote it down while he spoke.

"They haven’t left the building in days. A neighbor has been leaving food, an older woman who used to work as a physician assistant before everything broke. She recognized they were sick and chose not to report it to anyone."

"The symptoms," Beorn said.

"All present. It’s worse in the younger ones. The oldest has been taking care of them."

Lewin’s gaze was steady. "She’s been doing it by noticing what makes it worse and staying away from those things. There hasn’t been any major problems so far."

"But not stable," Beorn said.

"No. They are only getting worse slower."

Beorn looked at the location in the margin. Then he closed the ledger.