The militia rider was already standing near the inner post of the south gate when Beorn arrived, and that confirmed he had found Lewin in the barrenland before the team reached the city on its own.

Lewin sat against the inner wall with his legs stretched out and his left arm pinned carefully against his ribs. One of the gate’s two medics worked around the bolt entry point, cleaning the surface instead of extracting it, which was proper with so much still embedded in the shoulder.

Orm stood four feet away with both arms hanging loose at his sides. Ern held a cloth against the cut above his eye. All three had the same worn look of people who had been moving for days without enough rest and had not yet fully accepted that the moving was over.

Beorn read the condition of all three in the time it took to cross the gate interior. Then he stopped in front of Lewin.

"What did you find at the settlement," he asked.

Lewin looked up from where his attention had been resting on the middle distance. He drew a breath that could be heard because the shoulder limited how deep he could take it.

"The cache was where Wulfric said it would be," he said. "A document case in oilcloth, behind a locked storage box on the third shelf of the back room."

He paused briefly, steadying his breathing.

"I opened it and confirmed the first page before I took it. Financial accounts. Merchant operation names with figures ordered by settlement and date. I have it."

He moved his right hand to his coat and produced the case. Beorn took it without looking away from him.

Lewin continued. "They had been waiting. They let all three of us through the gate and into the merchant house before they ambushed us."

He shifted slightly against the wall, a brief expression of pain in his eyes.

Beorn kept his voice even.

"Did they have a leader?"

Lewin said. "An older man. He asked for the document and offered to let us walk out."

Lewin’s eyes flicked downward, then back up.

"When I denied it, the crossbows fired."

His tone did not change between the sentences. He was giving the report in order, without adjustment.

"Then the fractures," Beorn said.

Lewin nodded once.

"There is a shimmer in the sky outside the city. I had watched it the whole journey east."

He drew another forced breath.

"Above the settlement it was worse, directly over some ruins near the town. The fractures opened there during the ambush."

His brow tightened slightly.

"I-I don’t know how to explain it. It was like someone cut reality."

Aestrith stood two feet behind Beorn’s left shoulder. She had not moved.

"What came through," Beorn said.

"Two kinds of monsters," Lewin said. "The first was very large. Six limbs along the length of the body, cart-horse sized."

He blinked once, recalling it.

"It moved through the ambush and killed several of their men through like it was harvesting wheat."

A brief pause.

"I did not engage it."

He shifted his attention slightly to the side, toward Orm and Ern.

"The second kind was smaller, approximately a man’s height, with three knees in each leg. It moved in odd pauses."

His gaze flicked to his shoulder again.

"I fought one of these. Orm and Ern assisted with a second. We found that the skin where the leg meets the torso was a weak spot."

Beorn inclined his head slightly.

"How you were able to escape? Did they not pursue?"

Lewin answered immediately.

"Through the north, into the barrenland. The large creature had moved into the town center, and we were already at the back before it changed direction."

He exhaled slowly.

"Their men... everyone was too busy trying to survive to track us down.

Beorn opened the document case. He read the first page fully, then moved through the second and third more quickly.

He was checking the information, confirming what Wulfric had implied.

The merchant names were in a left column with figures on the right and settlement labels at each section header. Ald’s name was at the top of the warehouse district section, which he had expected.

Below it were eleven other names he did not know in the same district.

The high quarter section had the salt merchant, Cenwulf’s stocks. Beside it were six names he was seeing for the first time.

He closed the case.

"One more detail," Lewin said.

Beorn looked back at him.

Lewin straightened slightly against the wall.

"Near the ruins, before we started to move."

He frowned faintly. "There was a huge figure. Ash white, very large, limbs longer than whole sections of the walls."

A short pause.

"It appeared to be looking at something above the settlement."

He narrowed his eyes slightly, recalling the moment.

"I watched it for approximately two breaths, and then something made me avert my gaze. When I looked back, it was gone."

Beorn’s expression did not change.

"How close to the ruins was it."

"In the middle of them." Lewin said.

Beorn held that in mind for a moment. He said nothing.

He looked at Lewin, then at the document case in his hand, then opened the ledger to the working page.

He wrote one word in the margin. Ald.

He closed the ledger partway and looked at the three men in turn.

"You went into Coss’s territory with a faulty cover," he said.

His gaze rested on Lewin.

"You found the documents, confirmed its contents, and kept it through a fight, an ambush, and days of travelling through the Badlands with that bolt in your shoulder."

He shifted his attention to Orm. Then to Ern.

"You two supported and fought together with him when it would be easier to desert and run away. That is the only reason all three of you are standing here."

None of them spoke.

Lewin watched him with the look of who had expected a different kind of conversation.

"You are all relieved of duties for the next weeks," Beorn said. "Stay with your family."

Lewin held the silence for two or three seconds before answering.

"Yes, my lord," he said quietly.

Beorn closed the ledger. He handed the document case to Aestrith, who took it without comment.

He turned toward the gate passage that led back toward the citadel quarter.

The document’s structure was already organizing itself into steps in the order the page layout suggested. Each one was a contract with Harvin Coss that could be revoked through the seat’s formal authority.

And know Beorn had evidence to move against the merchants, warehouse owners and the whole oligarchic class that sided against him without splitting apart the city even further than it already had.

The ledger rested under his arm.

The word Ald was the first step on a very short list.