Chapter 809: Bank

Two days after the bank stopped the house transfer, Beatrice read the release a second time before handing it to her father.

The clerk had spent those days matching the company’s authorizations to the money and securities still held locally. Her father had spent most of them asleep. Food, treatment and rest had let him sit up with help. Even trying to stand left him breathless.

His house was no longer listed for disposal.

The document did more than suspend the transfer. Darius had authorized the family-controlled company to release its claim on that property and return the unspent portion of the money still held against the disputed account.

Her father would not have to withdraw his complaint. Beatrice had made the bank clerk show her that part before she brought the papers to his bed.

"He signed it?" her father asked.

"The company did. The bank checked the authorization."

"What did you give them?"

"Nothing they didn’t already have to answer for."

She sat beside him while he read.

Darius had not called again. His written message described the return as a way to reduce hardship during the emergency. It said nothing about Halden, the false demonstration, or the names bought through the approvals.

Beatrice had kept that message with the rest.

The return would help them, but it would not make the fraud disappear.

Her father reached the end of the release and lowered it slowly.

"The staff?"

"The money reached your account this morning. We paid the first part of the dispensary assistant’s wages before I came here."

"All of them?"

"Half of what we owe her. She checked it against her own book."

Beatrice showed him the acknowledgment. The woman had added a message asking whether he would still need her when the shop reopened.

"We’ll do the rest as the clerk matches the accounts," Beatrice said. "There isn’t enough to pay everyone in full."

He closed his eyes.

For a moment, Beatrice thought he was too tired to continue. Then he pressed the paper against his chest and breathed out in a way she had not heard since before the loan.

"I kept thinking I’d leave you with all of it."

Beatrice took his hand.

"You’re still here."

His fingers closed around hers, weak but deliberate.

The healer had agreed to a short visit to the house, with attendants supporting him and a return to the ward afterward. He was still too weak to walk. Beatrice had watched the healer check his breathing after he sat upright; relief over a piece of paper had not repaired what the illness and exhaustion had done.

Beatrice told him they would see the house after she returned from the claims office.

He opened his eyes.

"Together?"

"Yes."

She left the release where he could reach it.

Rovan was reading a message on his bracelet in the passage. He closed it as she approached.

"The transfer is finished," she told him.

"Good."

He sounded genuinely pleased, but something in his face made her stop beside him.

"What happened?"

"Nothing that didn’t already get said."

Beatrice waited.

He opened the message again and turned it slightly toward her. The company that had arranged his lodging had ended its guarantee. Another notice withdrew the spending access he had used through the family.

He could still read the messages. He could no longer use the accounts as though the money belonged to him.

"Your uncle did it," she said.

"He told me he would."

Rovan tried to make his tone careless. It failed when he checked the second notice again.

Beatrice looked toward the receiving room. Petricia was still finding beds for the latest arrivals.

"They’re giving people places to sleep," she said. "Petricia knows which rooms are ready."

"I know."

"If you need one, ask."

Rovan looked at her, then away.

A bed assigned by the same people handing them out to everyone else was a long way from the future he had expected on Proxima.

He followed her toward the claims office without answering.

***

The observation-post supervisor was being heard in the next room when they arrived.

Beatrice recognized Mingyue’s voice before she saw her. The surviving local officers had opened a temporary custody review. They were recording why each prisoner was being held so those decisions could be challenged and taken to a magistrate when the ordinary courts reopened. Mingyue was there as the rescuer who had seen the upper station; she was not hearing the cases herself.

The supervisor kept returning to one explanation.

"The Prince gave the order."

An officer asked who had started the disposal formation.

"I did. That was my station."

"Were the people below clear of it?"

"I believed they had been told to leave."

The younger operator lifted his bandaged hands from his knees.

"I told you they were still below."

"You were panicking."

"I asked you to open it."

The officer played the operator’s saved order beside the control log recovered from the device Mingyue had taken from the supervisor. His acknowledgment of the disposal command appeared beside the internal warning that the lower room remained occupied.

Mingyue stood near the doorway with her arms folded. The cut across her forearm had regenerated during the intervening days.

"You were still running it when I reached the building," she said. "Your own exit failed. After we got them out, I had to come back for you."

The supervisor stared at her.

For the first time, he seemed to understand that he could not dismiss the people contradicting him.

The officer kept him in guarded custody on the recorded accusation of knowingly leaving the lower staff inside the burning site. The supervisor demanded a full hearing and was told his answer would go with the evidence. The observation work remained under investigation; this room had not settled every charge against him.

Once the supervisor had been taken away, the officer turned to the younger operator. He already had the man’s account of the latch and the receipt. This time he asked about the observation reports carrying the operator’s acknowledgments before the fire.

His shoulders sagged, but he answered.

Beatrice left while the officer was still questioning him about his reports to Andrew.

In the claims room, the bank manager had brought the checked holdings list.

The manager had marked the completed credits beside the released properties. Beatrice found her father’s account among them and the smaller outgoing payment to his assistant. Other claims were still disputed. One family had no original papers, only receipts showing that they had paid.

Beatrice placed her blue case on the table.

"My father kept letters from two of the suppliers," she said. "If the same introduction appears in their claim, you can compare it."

The clerk opened the file and called the waiting family forward.

The letters gave them a name and a date they had been missing, enough to keep them at the table instead of being sent away for bringing the wrong papers.

Rovan stood behind Beatrice until the security officer came for his statement.

He had to repeat what Varyn said on the earlier call, identify the contact who arranged his residence, and describe how he had used the family’s position when he first arrived.