Chapter 92: He could. So he did.
Encrid did not sleep that night.
Or rather, he couldn’t.
He sat at the desk with the Third Office’s ledgers open before him and kept thinking about the people Rael was taking care of.
It took him about two hours to realize that the food was never the problem.
The Wall wasted an obscene amount of it, and Encrid could account for every ounce because he had rebuilt the returns himself in the autumn.
Scraps. Burnt ends. Pot scrapings. The fourth-day bread the kitchens condemned on a schedule set years ago by a Steward who had since died of something entirely unrelated.
The problem was that all of it belonged to a roster line.
And there was no roster line to give it to the people living beneath the Shambles.
So he made one.
He opened a new entry at the bottom of the Third Office’s own accounts, where it would sit beneath his signature and nobody else’s.
He headed it in the flattest language the Quartermastery had.
Waste Reclamation - Third Office. Standing allocation.
Disposal at the discretion of Encrid Gannon.
Then he assigned it against every condemned load on the kitchens’ schedule.
He put the pen down at the fourth hour.
Then he wrote a second thing, much shorter, and sealed it.
He gave it to Gus at breakfast, along with two porters and a handcart.
"Take it to them."
Gus looked at the cart.
"Young Master-"
"Don’t say who sent it. Just deliver it and return."
"What if they ask?"
"They will ask."
Encrid handed him the paper.
"Tell them it is a standing allocation from the Third Office. There is a paper. Show it to the girl and let her read it herself."
"She can read?"
Gus went quiet.
There was something strange about his expression.
Encrid looked at him.
"What?"
"Nothing, Young Master."
"You look offended."
"I am not offended."
"Yes, you are."
Gus frowned at the ground.
"It’s just that I only learned to read recently."
"Yes?"
"And that’s after you taught me."
"And?"
Gus was silent for another moment.
Then, very quietly, he said, "She didn’t seem older than thirteen."
Encrid stared at him.
"And nobody taught her."
"So it seems."
Gus’s expression tightened.
For a moment, he looked genuinely troubled by this information.
Then Encrid understood.
He was jealous.
Not of the girl.
Of the fact that she could read.
"You are competing with a thirteen-year-old," Encrid said.
"I am not."
"You are."
Gus folded his arms.
"How does a girl who has never had a teacher learn to read before someone who has had you teaching him for months?"
Encrid looked at him.
"Perhaps she is more intelligent."
Gus looked personally wounded.
"Young Master."
Encrid smiled.
"Take the cart."
He took the cart, sulking.
He came back four hours later with the cart empty.
Encrid did not ask him anything.
Gus did not say anything.
The matter ended there.
Or at least, that was what Encrid intended.
It was during dinner that Gus finally broke the silence.
"Young Master, you could have told Rael if you were sending support."
"Do you think I am doing this to recruit him?"
Gus looked at him.
It was obvious that he had thought exactly that.
Encrid smiled but did not explain.
If he went to Rael now, the food became a purchase.
Rael would take it, because sixty-one people ate either way, and no reasonable man would refuse on their behalf.
But then it would become a trade.
Something Encrid had given with the expectation of receiving something in return.
He did not like that.
Encrid knew himself to be a cruel man.
He had never pretended otherwise.
But cruelty and kindness were not opposites in his mind.
If he had the power to help someone and doing so did not cost him anything that mattered, then he simply did.
There was no grand logic behind it.
He could.
So he did.
✧ ✧ ✧
As of that morning, Encrid had seven votes.
He still needed three more to secure his seat on the Council.
So he made his way toward the Fifth Watch office.
Serapha Lund, commander of the Fifth Watch, heard him out for an hour and eleven minutes.
She asked several questions during that time, and every one of them was good.
She was small and precise, with grey coming into her temples and a habit of resting two fingers against her mouth while she listened. Her office had one chair besides her own and more books than Encrid had expected to find in any Watch office.
She took notes while he spoke.
That surprised him.
When he finished, she read through her notes twice before putting down the pen.
"I believe you," she said.
Encrid had expected something else.
"Then-"
"I believed you before you came in, if I am being honest."
She folded her hands.
"Kass has been walking around like a man with a stone in his boot since autumn, and I have known him for nineteen years. I can tell when something is wrong."
She paused.
"But I am going to vote against you."
There was no apology in her voice.
Encrid would be lying if he said it did not take him aback. But he kept his expression composed.
"May I ask why?"
"Because this Council has had fifteen seats for two hundred and six years."
She paused again.
"And it has survived four surges, two plagues, one mutiny, and nine Lord Commanders."
"And that is tradition?"
"No."
Lund shook her head.
"That is what people get wrong."
She gestured toward the empty chair in her office.
"Every one of those chairs is attached to something. Mine is attached to four hundred people in the Fifth Watch. The Steward’s is attached to the stores. Kass’s is attached to the Far-Watch."
She looked directly at him.
"What would yours be attached to?"
Encrid opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
The honest answer was nothing.
And she already knew it.
"A seat attached to nothing is attached to a man," Lund said.
"Men change. They leave. They die. But the chair stays."
Her fingers tightened slightly against one another.
"And an incompetent man in that chair does not merely become an incompetent man. He becomes an incompetent institution."
Encrid said nothing.
Lund stood and offered her hand.
"I have nothing against you, my lord. But I have a problem with the chair."
She held his gaze.
"If you find an answer to that question, come back and give it to me."
"I will listen."
Encrid shook her hand.
Then he left.
✦ ✦ ✦