Chapter 267: The Dead Man Speaks [BONUS]

"Lord Encrid Gannon. I’m Odric Grane, Inquisitor-Captain of the Crown. Forgive me for intruding on your first evening."

Grane said it from the doorway, with his hat in his hand. Behind him, Gus filled most of the corridor and did not look as though he intended to move.

Encrid was sitting on a narrow bed in a room at the top of the keep, with a bowl of Merta’s soup going cold beside him.

The whole ridge had wanted to see him that afternoon, and he had been passed from one pair of arms to the next until his legs gave out. Then Elder Wode, the Wall’s old chief healer, had examined him for a long time and said that whoever had treated him had divine skills.

Encrid couldn’t have agreed more for the fact.

"It’s all right," Encrid said. "Gus, let him in."

Gus let him in, though he did not close the door. Grane sat down on the only chair. He was older than Encrid had expected, with grey hair, broad shoulders and a plain black coat, the Crown’s seal at its collar. He sat the way patient men sit, as if he had nowhere else to be.

Encrid used Appraisal on him, for the first time.

[ Name: Odric Grane ]

[ Age: 56 ]

[ Realm: Master ]

[ Condition: Tired. Curious. ]

He closed the window. It was probably the most honest description of an Inquisitor he would ever get.

"I’ll be brief," Grane said. "You’ve walked a long way today with a box if I am not wrong." His eyes went to the foot of the bed. "May I ask what’s in it?"

"A pillow."

Grane waited.

"My doctor insists I keep it close," Encrid said.

It was true, in its way. Grane let it pass, though Encrid suspected he had not forgotten it.

"For more than a month," Grane said, "the Crown has called you dead. Dozens of people on this ridge saw you on the north end of the bridge when it fell. So I’ll start with the simplest question I have. Where have you been?"

"Recovering, in a friend’s house."

"Which friend?"

"A friend who asked me not to reveal his name."

Grane narrowed his eyes, realizing that the Strategist would be no easier to deal with than the others he had encountered so far.

"Where is this house?"

"South." Encrid smiled a little. "I’m sorry, Inquisitor. It isn’t much of an answer. But my friend has a family, and he took me in when he had no reason to. I won’t repay him by bringing the Inquisition to his door."

"You understand how that sounds."

"Like a man hiding something."

"Yes."

"I am hiding something," Encrid said. "My friend’s address."

Grane studied him. There was no anger in his face. There was not much of anything, except attention.

"How did you leave the bridge?"

"I don’t know. I remember the cold, and the stone starting to fall. After that, I remember waking in a bed with someone shouting at me for trying to sit up."

That was true as well. The Divine Sage had shouted at him a great deal. Grane took a folded paper from inside his coat and opened it on his knee.

"Then I’m obliged to tell you formally," he said. "This writ, from the Lord Inquisitor, places the conduct of the Wall’s northern command under Crown inquiry. That includes its Strategist. Until today, you were part of that inquiry as a dead man. Now you are part of it as a living one."

He folded the paper again. "I’ll write to the capital tonight that you’re alive. I expect the Crown will send for you."

"I expected that too."

"Did you?"

"I knew you’d be here, Inquisitor. I came anyway."

For the first time, Grane looked slightly surprised. It lasted only a moment.

"Why?"

"Because of what’s been said about my people while I was gone." Encrid set the cold soup aside. "Which brings me to something I’d like to ask of you."

"Go on."

"You’ve been on this ridge for a few days now. In that time, you must have questioned many people. And they should have answered as well as they could. Most of them are still burying people in their sleep." He met Grane’s eyes. "So stop asking them about me. Ask me instead. Whatever you need to know, I’ll answer what I can, and I’ll tell you plainly when I won’t."

"You’re asking me to stop questioning witnesses."

"I’m asking you to question the one who was there for all of it."

Grane was quiet. Outside the door, Gus shifted his weight, and the floorboards creaked.

"And if I don’t like your answers?" Grane asked.

"Then you can go back to them. They’ll still be here. Nobody on this ridge is going anywhere this winter."

Grane almost smiled. Then he rose and put on his hat.

"Very well. I’ll leave your people alone, for now. Inquisitor Varne will hold a full interview tomorrow. In the morning, if your healer allows it."

"He won’t," Encrid said. "But I’ll be there."

Grane paused in the doorway, beside Gus.

"Most men I question try very hard to make me like them, Lord Encrid."

"Is it working?"

"You haven’t tried," Grane said, and left.

? ? ?

When his footsteps had gone, Gus came in and sat down on the floor with his back against the wall beside the door. He did it as naturally as if he had done it every night, and Encrid supposed that, in a way, he had, only beside a stone instead of a door. Down in the yard, someone was singing badly. Encrid had a feeling it was the same person who sang to goats that the dragon mentioned.

"You should sleep in a bed, Gus."

"I’m all right here, young master."

Encrid did not argue. He lay back and looked at the ceiling, where a crack ran through the old plaster like a river on a map.

He had expected to feel afraid, meeting the Inquisitor - he had spent most of the walk north imagining it. Instead, he mostly felt relieved.

For days, other people had been answering for him. Tomorrow, at least, he could answer for himself.

? ? ?

Bonus Chapter for 500 powerstones (1/3). Thank you~