Chapter 94: I am still voting against you
Erol Vask, the commander of the Seventh Watch, spent an hour with Encrid. He listened patiently to everything Encrid had to say. In response, he asked four questions and told him nothing.
Encrid thought about that meeting more than any other conversation he had on the Wall.
Vask was an unremarkable man. He was about fifty, heavy through the shoulders and beginning to thicken around the waist. His dark hair was streaked with grey and cropped close, and his broad face was weathered from years of cold and wind. Nothing about him was particularly striking, but there was a deliberate care in everything he did, especially with his hands.
His office was equally unremarkable. There were no books or piles of papers, only a map of the Wall with no pins on it and a single chair positioned at a deliberate distance from the desk.
The four questions were simple.
"When did you first start believing it?"
"Who else have you told?"
"Has anyone on this Wall asked you to stop what you are doing?"
And then, after a pause long enough that Encrid thought the meeting was over, Vask asked one final question.
"Do you think it will come from outside?"
Encrid frowned.
"I’m sorry. From outside?"
Vask looked at him for a moment before deciding to end their meeting there.
"Thank you for your time, my lord."
That was the end of it.
He did not say whether he would vote for Encrid or against him. He simply stood, opened the door, and waited beside it with perfect courtesy until Encrid walked through.
Halfway down the stairs, Encrid stopped.
Everyone else had told him what they thought.
Dane had refused him in a corridor. Ostrand had tried to bargain with him over wine. Lund had explained her position carefully and at length. Even the
Vask, however, had asked four questions and given away nothing. One of those questions had not made any sense at all.
Encrid added Vask to the list of people he did not understand. There were already two people in that list.
Lampwriter’s Leader - Iolan Vire
The second Watch Commander - Ysolde Marr
Now it also had the seventh watch commander - Erol Vask.
Encrid continued down the stairs and made his way toward his next destination.
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Neriah Fold refused him before he had even finished his first sentence.
She then spent the next forty minutes explaining why, which somehow made the refusal more difficult to accept.
She was perhaps sixty years old. A small shrine stood in the corner of her office, carefully maintained despite the otherwise practical nature of the room. She had commanded the Eighth Watch for eleven years, and the ledgers described her record in simple terms: genuine competence.
"The Wall has a shape," she said.
"Fifteen seats. Nine Watches. Two hundred paces to a bastion, four hundred to a stake line, and two hundred and six steps from the ground to the walk."
"Those are measurements."
"They are part of the shape."
She placed both hands on the table.
"Men raised this stone in a year I cannot name, against something the histories do not describe. They built it this way, and it has held for hundreds of years."
"Four surges. Two plagues. A mutiny," Encrid said, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia as he remembered the conversation he had with Serapha Lund, the fifth watch commander.
Fold nodded.
"And it held because the shape did not change."
"Commander, the thing coming out of that forest has never read your shape. It is not something that can be stopped simply because the Wall has always been defended the same way."
"Have you seen what it is?"
She looked at him for several seconds.
"And yet you are asking me to change it."
Encrid had no answer to that.
She was not stupid, which made the argument considerably more difficult. Fold understood the danger. She simply believed that the Wall had survived for generations because its people had learned not to interfere with what already worked.
The Wall had kept eleven thousand people alive for generations, and every change made to it had seemed like an improvement until someone died because of it.
Encrid left without moving her opinion even a finger’s width.
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Bastian Ryn of the Ninth Watch was thirty-one and had been its commander for only eight months. He was the youngest of all the watch commanders.
He was also the only one who seemed genuinely pleased to see Encrid.
"Sit, sit."
Ryn poured two cups of wine himself and pushed one across the table.
"So. The famous book."
"You have heard about the book?"
"Everybody has heard about the book. Bree stayed up all night with it and has been walking around for two days looking like a man who found a rat in his flour."
He grinned.
"You have caused more trouble in five months than the last three Stewards managed between them. I mean that as a compliment."
"Thank you."
"I am still voting against you."
He said it while pouring the wine, using the same cheerful tone he had used for everything else.
Encrid put his cup down and frowned. For the first time that day, he understood why someone might want to strangle a watch commander.
"May I ask why?"
"Because I am thirty-one, and I still want to be the commander of the Ninth Watch."
Ryn leaned back in his chair.
"Do you know how long it took Dane to get the position of First Watch Commander?"
He waited for an answer, knowing full well that Encrid did not have one.
"Twenty-two years. Marr took nineteen. And do you know how long I took?"
He smiled.
"Nine."
He slowly turned his cup between his fingers.
"There are four men on that Council who hate me for getting there so quickly. You are twenty-four, and you have been here for five months. If you get that chair, they will spend the next decade telling each other that this is what happens now. That the Wall has started handing seats to boys."
Ryn’s grin disappeared.
"It is not personal. I simply do not want to make more enemies than I already have."
Encrid had some sympathy for that.
It was also the least defensible reason anyone had given him all week.
"That is an honest reason."
"It is the only one I have. I would rather give you an honest reason than dress it up as something noble."
Ryn drained his cup.
"Come back in ten years, and I will vote for you."
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Encrid walked back to the Third Office in the dark and wrote the tally out properly.
Three votes from the Lord Commander.
One from Steward Vess.
Two from the Far Watch Captain, Kass.
One from Bree of the Fourth Watch.
That gave him a total of seven votes.
Dane, Ostrand, Lund, Trask, Fold, and Ryn were against him.
Vire remained unknown, although Encrid suspected he would vote against him.
Vask was impossible to read.
He had not met Danel either. The Vice-Commander had given the excuse that he was too busy, which was perhaps the most reasonable refusal Encrid had received all day. Danel would either follow the Commander’s decision or make his own. There was no way to know which until the vote was called.
Then there was Ysolde Marr.
In two days, at a time and place of her choosing, they would meet and decide how she would cast her vote.
Encrid already had a plan for that.
That brought the potential total to nine, assuming Marr gave him her vote and Danel came across.
But Encrid needed ten.
Six people had already refused him, and not one of their reasons was entirely wrong.
That was the part that bothered him most.
They were not simply stubborn old men protecting their positions. Each of them had a reason they believed was good enough to justify keeping things as they were. Some were cautious. Some were afraid of setting a precedent. Some simply wanted to protect what they had spent years earning.
Encrid could understand all of them.
Unfortunately, understanding them did not make the problem any easier.
There was only one person left to approach.
The Chief of Healers.
Tomorrow, Encrid would go there.
A great deal would depend on what they decided.
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