Chapter 120: The Gleaning (2)

The other half of the arrangement was what eventually made the Council notice the Gleaning.

For generations, the Wall’s outer contracts had been handled individually.

A man took a salvage contract.

Another man took a corpse recovery.

A third accepted a night stake repair.

The prices were negotiated separately, the crews were formed whenever enough people happened to be available, and everyone involved understood the same unpleasant rule - if something went wrong beyond the stakes, the person who had accepted the contract was responsible for surviving it.

Encrid changed that.

Under the new charter, the Gleaning accepted outer-Wall contracts as a company rather than as individual mercenaries.

The terms were fixed.

The rates were written down.

The schedules were recorded in advance.

And one clause mattered more than all the others.

’No contract could be worked by fewer than four people.’

Rael initially thought Encrid was being overly cautious.

He stopped thinking that after the first month.

The salvage figures improved by eleven percent.

The reason was not complicated.

Four people could search more thoroughly than one.

Four people could carry more.

Four people could cover one another while cutting cores.

Four people were less likely to make a desperate decision because one of them had become frightened, injured, or exhausted.

Most importantly, four people were much less likely to die because nobody was there to notice the danger.

The death figures were even more interesting.

Zero.

No deaths.

Bree noticed the numbers within six weeks.

He brought them before the Council himself.

Encrid had not asked him to.

That made the argument considerably more effective.

"The out-Wall salvage figures are the best they have been in nine years," Bree said, standing beside the Council table with the report in his hand. "The Gleaning’s four-man rule appears to be the reason."

Several people looked toward Encrid.

By now, everyone was aware of the fact that Encrid was the man behind the mercenary company - but they remained silent.

Bree continued.

"A man who is not alone does not have to make bad decisions simply because he has nobody else to ask."

He turned a page.

"I would like the Council to consider extending the same rule to the night stake details."

That drew immediate attention.

"The night stake details are not guild work," one of the commanders pointed out.

"I know."

"And the Gleaning does not control them."

"I know that too."

Bree looked around the table.

"Six men died on those details last year."

That ended the objection.

The proposal passed without argument.

Encrid said nothing.

He was beginning to understand something about his position that had taken him several months to learn.

Sometimes the most useful thing he could do was not stand in front of the Council and argue until people agreed with him.

Sometimes it was better to build something, let it work, and wait for somebody else to notice.

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Encrid visited the Gleaning’s hall once in the fifth month.

Rael had invited him, although Encrid suspected the invitation was partly because Rael wanted to show him what had become of the place.

There were nearly sixty people inside when Encrid arrived with Gus.

Some were eating.

Some were repairing equipment.

Several were gathered around the contract board near the wall, where the week’s assignments had been written in chalk with the names of the crews underneath them.

Proper benches had been built along one side of the room.

There was a fire burning.

Someone had repaired the old windows.

Someone else had drawn an obscene picture in the corner of the contract board, and whoever was responsible had apparently decided that it was funny enough to deserve permanent preservation because nobody had bothered to erase it.

It looked less like a mercenary company than Encrid had expected.

It looked like a community.

Rael showed him around without ceremony, pointing out the storage area, the physician’s room, the sleeping quarters, and the place where the crews gathered before heading beyond the stakes.

Encrid noticed something within the first few minutes.

Rael had changed.

His cultivation had not.

The panel still showed him to be in the Apex realm with two Stars, exactly as it had months earlier, and Encrid expected those numbers to remain unchanged for some time yet.

But the way Rael carried himself had changed.

He no longer moved like a man who existed entirely by himself.

He knew people’s names.

He knew which crews were outside and which had returned.

He noticed when someone was missing.

Twice while speaking with Encrid, he stopped to adjust something without seeming to think about it, once correcting a crew assignment and once telling a young porter to stop carrying a bundle that was clearly too heavy for him.

None of it was dramatic.

That was what made it noticeable.

Rael had spent most of his life surviving alone.

Now he was responsible for other people, and somewhere along the way he had started behaving like it.

At the far end of the hall, Wren sat at a table with a ledger open in front of her.

Two smaller children sat beside her.

One was holding a piece of chalk.

Wren was teaching him how to write numbers.

Rael followed Encrid’s gaze.

"She asked for that ledger during the second week."

Encrid looked at him.

"Why?"

Rael shrugged.

"She said that if the guild was going to feed sixty-one people, someone had to know exactly how much it cost."

He smiled faintly.

"In case anybody ever asked."

"Has anybody asked?"

"No."

Rael looked at Encrid.

"You have not asked."

Encrid glanced toward the ledger again.

"It is not my guild."

"No," Rael said.

He looked around the hall.

"It isn’t."

Encrid stayed for another quarter of an hour.

He spoke with Rael, checked the contract board, watched Wren argue with one of the cooks about the price of flour, and listened to two crews discussing whether a damaged harness could be repaired or needed replacing.

Then he left.

He walked back toward the Wall through the Shambles, the cold air settling over the roofs as evening approached, and thought about what he had actually built.

It was not the School.

It was not the grain reserve.

It was not the Council seat.

Those were all useful things, and perhaps some of them would matter greatly in the years ahead, but they were still pieces of the Wall’s larger machinery.

The Gleaning was different.

For the first time since arriving at the Wall, Encrid had built something that could continue functioning without him.

A hall.

A guild.

A place where people who had once been nothing more than names on a list could work, eat, sleep, and belong to something that would still be there if Encrid disappeared tomorrow.

He did not know yet whether that made it important.

He only knew that, for once, he had built something that was no longer his to carry.

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