The Iron Revolution Chapter 64: Secret Plan

Chapter 64: Secret Plan

The nitre sample lay in a small cloth folded into quarters, the way the courier had packed it for the trip. Beorn opened it on the desk and looked inside.

White crystals, uneven in size, with the look of a mineral that had ford slowly inside sealed stone.

He lifted the cloth and brought it close enough to catch the sll, faint, with the sharp note that set it apart from an ordinary deposit.

He did not need to force the recognition. It was already there, the clean certainty of stored information that did not need to be rembered before it surfaced.

He knew the material by sight and by sll. He knew what it beca.

He set the cloth down and picked up the quill, then wrote the confirmation in the margin.

Below that he added a shorter note. The convoy north of the second quarry had been attacked on the route.

The militia escort pushed back the assailants. Seven were injured, none dead. Their side wasn’t so fortunate.

He recorded it like a machine. Numbers that sotis ant those that survived, and that sotis ant a visit to a mother, a wife, children.

Then there were the discovered conspiracy in the slums.

Lewin’s docunts placed the hidden cells in more locations than Beorn had estimated before the operation.

Each cell had a target and an action. Fires at specific buildings, brawls at specific streets.

The two-part plan had been designed to split the defense before it could gather into one coherent response.

If all of it had gone off on the sa night, the militia would have been unable to hold the gate, contain the fires, and manage civilian panic at the sa ti.

The reason it had not gone still remained open.

Coss might not have sent the signal. The signal might not have reached the cells. Or he might have been waiting for an opportunity that never ca.

The cells needed to be removed.

He had been working on the militia presence in the slums for two hours, and the sketch in the margin had grown beyond its bounds onto the surrounding page.

That had not happened since the day he discovered the city was split into an underworld war.

The marks were put together in an attempt to organize and ti the militia operations, in that they could take down the highest number of cells before the others realized sothing was wrong and disappeared from their known position.

Then the door opened without a knock, while he was already setting the quill against the next page.

Aestrith ca through and looked at the room before she looked at him.

The observation took two seconds and covered the desk, the cloth with the sample, the state of the ledger, and his face when he looked up.

She raised a brow.

Then she walked toward him instead of toward the window, which was not her habit when she was working through a thought.

She was not working through a thought.

"What do you want to know," she said.

He set the quill down.

He looked at her for a mont.

She had read him from the doorway, which ant either he had been obvious or she had beco very good at this.

There was no way to argue against this accuracy either way.

"Sit down," he said.

She sat.

He glanced at the desk, then back at her.

He had spent the morning finding a way to ask this and had not found a version he liked.

He would use the plain one.

"Have you ever killed soone with your power," he said.

She stopped on that for a mont.

From her expression, it was obvious enough she wasn’t surprised.

"Yes," she said. "More than you’d expect."

The indifference in the answer was genuine.

She kept his gaze.

"Is that important."

He realized the question he made gave the wrong impression.

The way she returned it, as mattering or not, had an implication he had not intended.

She was asking whether he was judging her.

That was not what he was doing.

"It matters because I need to know if I can use it," he said. "Not because I’m judging you against it."

She looked at him.

He had corrected himself quickly, which was expected, and carefully, which was less like him.

She seed to notice both at once, because sothing changed in her expression that he had not expected.

She chuckled.

A bona fide one, out of amusent.

This was different than the sarcastic snickers she had show before.

It ca out before she had fully decided to let it, and it lasted exactly as long as it would for her to realize, then cut it off.

"How thoughtful," she said.

The words were chosen on purpose, and the delivery turned them into the opposite of their aning.

He looked at her.

She had already shrugged the minor event away.

She set one hand on the arm of the chair and leaned forward slightly.

The warmth that had shown for a few seconds was covered again as if it had never been there.

"What is the actual problem," she said.

His expression turned serious.

He back at her.

"I have an event to attend," he said. "And a plan."

He paused.

It was not that the words were hard.

It was that saying them aloud would give form to what he had been holding as a future problem.

Naming it changed what it was.

He was aware of that weight, which was unusual for him.

Being aware that he was aware of it made it worse.

He cleared his throat, short and quiet.

One hand left the ledger and touched his chin briefly, half a second at most, then returned.

He had not done that before in a conversation with her.

She would notice.

There was nothing to do about that.

"I need you in it," he said. "It is the only way it can work."

She watched him across the desk with the attention she gave to things that were only partly visible.

The way he put it was different from the foundry, from the engine, from everything else he had asked her before.

She suddenly felt a little more interested about the reason.