Frista entered the Rame front hall before the last of their wagon tracks had dried in the forecourt.
The house still smelled like them. Lamp smoke. Wet wool. Soap. The faint sour edge left behind by fear and too many bodies moving through too little sleep. Men were already carrying in Ranjit trunks through a doorway built for another family's habits. A servant girl stood near the wall with a bucket and rag, staring at the floor where muddy boots had crossed the crest worked into the tiles.
Karot waited by the inner arch with a wax tablet in one hand and the morning's irritation already sorted into neat lines on his face.
"Report," Frista said.
"Outer gates secured. Stores counted once, being counted again. Eight household servants remained when we took formal possession. Four claim kitchen duty. Two say they were told to keep the sick room clean. One old porter cannot hear well enough to lie quickly. One junior maid is trying."
"Missing?"
"Better goods than the public wagons suggested. Good plate mostly gone. Better ledgers gone. Supplier letters gone. Two city store copies missing from the account room. Riverhouse keys absent."
Frista looked down the length of the hall.
The carpets were real. The wall hangings were good wool. The bronze lamps had been left because they were fixed to the wall and annoying to move. House Rame had stripped what mattered and left behind enough visible decline to make people laugh.
"They panicked in useful order," he said.
Karot understood at once. "Yes, my lord."
"That makes them dangerous, not bold."
He walked on.
The great reception room opened to his right, chairs still out of place from the morning witnesses. A clerk's wax drip had hardened on the floorboards near the window. Beyond that stood the study, the real room he wanted.
The outer shelves had been cleared with speed but not chaos. Cheap record books left. Decorative maps left. Two cracked seal cases left. The heavy account chest in the corner had been emptied so thoroughly the dust mark around it looked fresh.
Frista crouched by the hearth and ran a finger over the stone lip.
No ash.
No one had burned anything here in a hurry. They had taken it.
"Who oversaw their withdrawal?" he asked.
"Lucius, from the look of it. The servants use his name carefully."
"And the steward?"
"Gone with them."
Frista stood. "Of course."
He preferred enemies who left obvious damage. Broken locks. Slashed books. Petty theft in the corners. House Rame had done better than that. They had chosen what to look weak with.
Karot offered the tablet. "There is more. Three shopkeepers from the river lane are asking which contracts still bind. The council clerk wants confirmation that you mean to hold the Rame seal suspension. A stable boy says one of the rear walls sounds hollow."
"Everyone in a seized house discovers hollow walls by noon."
"Should I ignore him?"
"No. Search it after the stores."
Frista moved toward the side corridor leading to the service wing. Two of his men were stationed at the turn, alert enough to be useful and tired enough to make mistakes if not watched. He watched them.
"No looting," he said as he passed.
Both straightened.
"If I find table silver in your kits, I will hang one of you and flog the other for making me choose. We are not raiders now. We are ownership. Ownership counts before it takes."
"Yes, my lord."
That was one lesson. The other waited in the kitchen court.
Four retained servants stood there under watch: a cook too old to start elsewhere, a laundry woman with split knuckles, the half-deaf porter, and the junior maid Karot had mentioned. The maid kept her eyes down with such effort that Frista knew she had been told not to look frightened and failed anyway.
The kitchen smelled of cooling broth, wet ashes, and resentment.
"Names," Frista said.
Karot read them off the tablet. "Mira, pantry maid. Seben, lower porter. Hedd, kitchen cook. Lysa, laundry hand."
Frista looked at the maid. "Where are the riverhouse keys?"
"I don't know, my lord."
"No one asked whether you knew. I asked where they are."
Her throat moved. "I only carry bread and coal."
"And messages, when told."
She said nothing.
Frista picked up a kitchen knife from the table, tested its weight, then set it back down exactly where it had been.
"If I frighten you too early, I get bad answers," he said. "If I go soft, I get worse ones. So listen carefully. Anyone here who gives me a useful truth keeps wages and food. Anyone who lies because House Rame might come back someday is betting on a future that cannot feed them tonight."
Hedd the cook snorted before she could stop herself.
Frista turned to her.
"You disagree?"
"I think hungry houses remember who kept the fire lit," she said. "That is all."
Karot shifted, ready to make an example of her.
Frista lifted two fingers and stopped him.
There it was. The second lesson. Fear was quick. Loyalty took longer to break and longer still to replace.
"Keep her," he said. "Double watches on the kitchen doors. Half wages until the stores are fully counted. If food goes missing, take it from the pay of the whole wing."
That landed the right way. Four faces hardened at once, not against him alone, but against each other as well.
Divide first. Punish second. It was cheaper.
He went next to the stores, where the shape of the Rames' departure became even clearer.
The best lamp oil was gone. The good winter salt was half gone. Medicine shelves had been stripped with insulting precision. Someone had left behind lesser herbs in labeled jars, as if to mock the men who would search them later. In the stable court, the best harness sets were missing but the older tack remained. Not a blind flight. A ranked one.
"List every absence that speaks of foresight," Frista said.
Karot began dictating to the clerk at once.
"And send word to the civic factors," Frista added. "By dusk I want every merchant house with overlapping trade to report its holdings, suppliers, and open debts. If they complain, remind them I already own the front gate they hoped would hold."
"What of the smaller families?"
"Squeeze them later. First I want the city to see order."
One of the council factors arrived before the ink on that answer had time to dry. He was a square man with careful sleeves and the expression of someone hoping precise language might make conquest feel temporary.
"Lord Frista," he said, bowing just enough to stay employed. "The market ward asks whether the Rame seal suspension applies to existing wool contracts or only to new issue."
Frista took the question seriously because money usually arrived dressed as paperwork.
"Existing and new," he said. "Anything bearing their seal waits for review. Anything that must move by dusk moves under council mark and my clerk's list. If your ward wants trade to remain calm, it can start by counting honestly."
The factor hesitated. "Some houses may call that overreach."
"Then they can call it that while still obeying it."
He sent the man away with written instructions, two stamped copies, and no room to pretend misunderstanding later.
That was the difference between seizure and rule. Any brute could take a door with enough men. Keeping the street outside it profitable required arithmetic and patience, which was why so many nobles preferred threats. Threats were easier to remember than numbers.
He crossed back through the family corridor on the way to the upper rooms.
This was where the Rames had lived rather than received. Narrower passages. Less show. A cracked toy wheel under a side table. A dropped ribbon by the linen press. Signs of a household interrupted at the level that mattered.
Frista paused at the nursery threshold before he meant to.
One of the mastiffs brought up from the gate had planted itself outside the door with its hackles half-raised. It would not enter.
Karot frowned. "Stupid beast."
"No," Frista said. "Stupid beasts charge first."
He stepped into the room himself.
The cradle was gone. Most linen was gone. A nursing chair had been left near the cold hearth, one leg wrapped with cloth to stop a wobble. The room should have felt merely emptied. Instead it felt wrong in a smaller way. The air was cooler here than in the corridor. Not by much. Enough to notice.
Frista checked the window latch.
Shut.
He stood still.
Below the ordinary smells of milk, old ash, and rush matting sat something mineral and damp, like stone opened after a long time sealed. He had smelled cave air on old campaign routes. This was thinner than that, and closer.
"Did they dig under this wing?" he asked.
Karot looked to the retained porter, who had been brought upstairs for the room inventory.
Seben shook his head too fast for a deaf old man.
Frista crossed the room and pressed his palm to the floorboards near the cradle space.
Cold.
Not winter-cold. Cellar-cold.
He moved two steps toward the hearth. Warmer there. Back again. Cold under the same patch, as if the boards had been laid over a mouth.
"Open the nursery ledger chest," he said.
Karot blinked. "There wasn't one."
"Then find out why there wasn't one."
He crouched, tapped the floor once with his knuckles, then again nearer the wall.
The second note came back wrong.
Not hollow exactly. Interrupted.
Frista stood and looked around the room one more time. Empty cradle place. Missing linens. Animal refusing the threshold. Floor temperature wrong. A family leaving in too much order.
He did not need superstition. He needed leverage.
"Pull the floor after dark," he said.
Karot's head came up. "The whole room?"
"Start with the cold patch. Then the wall behind the hearth. Then the cellar below, if there is one. Quietly. I want whatever they hid before the city starts making their absence sound nobler than it was."
"And the servants?"
"Separate them by duty. No two from the same wing sleep together tonight. Keep the porter alive until he remembers how much he can hear."
Karot gave the order at once.
Frista took one last look at the room.
He still believed the Rames were beaten. Families who fled before dawn usually were. But beaten families did not always stop being useful, and they did not always stop being dangerous.
Behind him the mastiff let out a low sound and backed another step away from the threshold.
Frista did not turn.
"Search deeper," he said.