Chapter 89: The Price of a Vote (2)
Tolm Bree of the Fourth Watch did not offer him wine, a fire, or even a chair.
He simply pointed at the table.
"Put it there."
Encrid had not even stepped fully through the door.
"Whatever you have brought."
Bree looked at him.
"If you have brought nothing and are hoping I will simply hand you my vote, then we can save ourselves an hour."
The room was a working office.
Three ledgers lay open across the table. A rack of tally sticks stood against the wall, and a slate displayed the Fourth Watch’s current strength at the top.
The number appeared to have been changed recently.
There were traces of constant erasing and rewriting across the slate.
Bree was around forty. Narrow through the shoulders, with ink staining one cuff and the tired expression of a man who had not enjoyed a proper meal in years.
Encrid placed the book he was carrying on the desk.
Bree looked at it but did not touch it.
"Is this the book Vess took to the Commander?"
"Part of it."
"Which part?"
"The part that is useful for our conversation."
Bree finally looked up.
"Sit down."
✧ ✧ ✧
Bree read the book for hours.
Encrid had expected questions.
He received almost none.
Bree simply read with a pen in hand, making notes on a second sheet of paper. Every so often, he returned to an earlier page, checked something again, then pulled a ledger from his shelf and compared the figures.
Two hours passed.
Then Bree put the pen down.
"Your calculation of winter oil is wrong."
Encrid raised an eyebrow.
"By how much?"
"Eleven percent in the fourth quarter."
Bree turned the book around.
"And it is wrong in your favour, which is worse."
He pointed at a figure.
"You took the burn rate from the Lampwrights’ draw. That is the oil leaving their stores, not the oil actually being burned."
Encrid looked at the number.
"So the amount taken from storage and the amount actually burned are different."
"Yes."
"Where does the difference go?"
"Into the masts."
Bree turned another page.
"The reservoirs at the top hold more than the fittings say. Nobody has measured them properly in years."
Encrid stared at the page.
"How do you know that?"
Bree gave a small smirk.
"You must have thought all the commanders were brutes."
He leaned back.
"I may not be as well-versed in numbers as you, young master, but I have dealt with them longer than you have been breathing."
Encrid said nothing.
Bree looked down at the book again.
"That is the only mistake I have found."
He tapped the page.
"That is impressive."
He said it without pride.
The book Encrid had given him contained a hundred and forty pages, countless calculations, supply projections, consumption estimates, and reports.
Finding a single mistake in all of that was almost absurd.
"Do not mistake me for a man who is easily impressed," Bree said.
"I am a man who checks things."
He turned the second sheet toward Encrid.
"I checked some of your figures against my own books before you arrived because I assumed you would come."
He pushed the sheet forward.
"All of them matched."
His eyes met Encrid’s.
"That is the only reason you are still sitting here."
The sheet contained Encrid’s own document, reduced to a page and a half in handwriting far neater than his.
"Now explain something to me."
Bree folded his hands.
"Why does a fourth son of a Duke who has been on this Wall for five months have the numbers for a fortress planned for thirty weeks?"
So Encrid explained.
He gave Bree what he knew.
He told him about the strange silence in the forest.
The doubled patrols.
The missing Far-Watch scouts.
The unusual movements of the Roamers.
And what he believed might be coming.
Bree listened without interrupting.
When Encrid finished, the commander looked down at the figures again.
"You want the seat so you can prepare the Wall for a siege."
"Yes."
"There has never been a siege here."
Bree tapped the page.
"Roamers do not besiege. They leak through the forest, and we kill those leaks."
He closed the book.
"Come back tomorrow morning."
"Commander-"
"I am going to check the rest of it."
He reached for another ledger.
"Tonight."
He opened it.
"I will compare your figures with the Fourth Watch’s books, the crossing records, and the Span tolls."
Bree looked up.
"Three sets of numbers you did not write and could not have changed."
"And if they hold?"
"Then either you are right..."
He turned a page.
"...or you are the most thorough liar in the Empire."
Bree looked at him.
"I will have learned something either way."
He reached for another ledger.
"Also, bring the rest of the book."
✧ ✧ ✧
Encrid returned at the seventh hour.
Bree had not slept.
The book was exactly where Encrid had left it.
Beside it were four of the Fourth Watch’s ledgers, a stack of crossing records, and eleven sheets covered in small, neat handwriting.
Bree looked exhausted.
"Sit down."
Encrid sat.
"Your consumption curve for a full-strength garrison under sustained contact is four percent too low."
"Why?"
"The Surge of Thirty-Nine."
Bree pointed at one of the sheets.
"My section burned more than your numbers allow for."
"I could not have known that."
"No."
Bree nodded.
"The records from Thirty-Nine were never filed properly."
He placed a hand over the eleven sheets.
"Everything else holds."
Encrid waited.
Bree leaned back.
"I have been on this Wall for twenty-one years."
He looked at the ledgers scattered across his desk.
"I have signed a great many documents."
A pause.
"And believed almost none of them."
His eyes settled on Encrid.
"This is the first thing anyone has put in front of me that I could not break."
"Then-"
"You have my vote."
"Thank you."
"Do not thank me."
Bree gathered the eleven sheets and straightened them carefully against the edge of the desk.
"I am not giving you my vote because I believe you are right about the forest."
He looked at Encrid.
"I have no opinion on that."
A pause.
"And I am not qualified to have one."
"Then why?"
"Because this fortress runs on numbers."
Bree glanced toward the slate on the wall.
"The man sitting at that table should be able to produce numbers that survive being checked."
He looked back at Encrid.
"There is nobody at that table who can do it. Not even me."
Bree pushed the book toward him.
"Take it."
Encrid picked it up.
The business was done.
He understood that Bree was not the sort of man who enjoyed talking once a matter had been settled.
So Encrid stood and headed for the door.
He had almost reached it when he stopped.
"Commander."
Bree did not look up.
"I’ll make sure your vote saves many lives."
Bree’s hand paused over the ledger.
He said nothing.
He did not need to.
Encrid understood that the commander was glad.
✦ ✦ ✦