Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1040: Victor’s Plan

Leaf had appeared in The Witch Diaries picture-story book early enough that her name was known well beyond Neverwinter — the witch whose cultivation had tripled grain yields, whose contributions to food production had been documented and sold at the Convenience Market for some time. It was not strange for a foreign merchant to know her name.

What was strange was asking for her specifically. The four kingdoms’ people were, unlike the adventurous communities of the Fjords, deeply shaped by the Church’s teachings. Prejudice against witches ran through every level of society in Graycastle, Dawn, Wolfheart, and Everwinter — not as malice, necessarily, but as a background condition that went unexamined. Victor Lothar was the first merchant Roland had encountered who was willing to seek out a witch by name, for a specific task, as part of a business proposal.

That alone made the letter worth reading carefully.

“Someone from the Kingdom of Dawn,” Roland said, touching his chin. “Do we know where he’s staying in Neverwinter?”

“Yes. The Administrative Office has tracked him.” Barov nodded. “I asked Lady Scroll to verify his tax history — his records go back six years, starting when he was trading in Longsong Stronghold. Gemstones mostly, some furs. Nothing related to cotton.”

Roland thought about that. The tax system in this era was simple to the point of being porous. Local lords collected what they could observe; merchants who moved between cities had any number of ways to reduce their declared liability. A record that went back six years, unbroken, was not the product of carelessness — it was a deliberate choice. Either Victor Lothar was unusually principled or he was unusually calculating about his reputation for principled behavior.

Either way, it was worth a direct conversation.

“Send for him,” Roland said, setting the letter down. “I want to speak with him privately.”

“As you command, Your Majesty.”

Victor Lothar looked exactly like what he was: a citizen of the Kingdom of Dawn.

Pale golden hair, fine features, skin that suggested careful maintenance. The overall impression was of a well-born noble’s son who had been raised to understand what certain social signals communicated. Roland had expected someone visibly marked by years of long-distance travel. Victor looked as though he had spent those years somewhere comfortable.

He explained the discrepancy cleanly: family conflict. An elder brother’s pressure, the need to prove something. He had left and taken the trade routes himself.

The explanation was vague in the details Roland might have found interesting, but Nightingale gave no signal — no subtle shift of weight, no carefully neutral expression — which meant Victor was telling the truth as he understood it. Roland let it go.

“You want Leaf to cultivate a high-yield cotton strain,” Roland said, moving to the point, “and then build a business system around it — farm to textile to finished garment, sold across the kingdom at competitive prices.”

He was not inferring. That was what the letter had said, plainly, in language more direct than most official reports.

“Not just Graycastle,” Victor said, and something in his posture came forward slightly — a man in his element. “I’ve modeled the transport costs to the Kingdom of Dawn. Even with shipping, the finished products will be competitive against local alternatives.”

Competitive pricing could break into new markets. But breaking in was not maintaining position. “How do you guarantee both cheap and fine?”

“The cotton itself, Your Majesty.” Victor leaned forward. “If Miss Leaf can triple the yield — and based on what she achieved with grain, I believe she can — the cost of raw material drops to a third of the current price. That change propagates through the whole supply chain.”

The logic had a surface plausibility and an underlying flaw. Roland considered whether to say it aloud. Leaf could triple the yield. Probably. But grain prices in Neverwinter are controlled artificially — held low as a stability policy, not because we can’t charge more. Cotton is different. Cotton has alternatives. Linen, hemp, fur. The market for cotton is competitive in a way the food market isn’t. If we give Victor a yield advantage and charge market rate for the seed, we capture the value. If we discount the seed to make his product cheap—

“Let’s say Leaf can triple the yield,” Roland said. “Why should I sell you this cotton at a discount when I can sell it to anyone else at market rate?”

“Because I bring the operation with me.” Victor did not hesitate. “Two thousand jobs, generated by my investment, managed by my people. Tax revenue from a productive enterprise, without any capital expenditure from your side. You provide the seeds. I build everything else.”

Roland had noticed the vocabulary before reading the letter — production line, employment, tax revenue — and it had sat oddly in the context of a Kingdom of Dawn merchant. Victor’s explanation for it was simple: the newspapers. Every public announcement Neverwinter had issued. He had read all of them, he said, and some of the terms had initially sounded strange to him, but had given him a new way of thinking about commerce.

If I throw him out now, I’m no different from the lords he’s contrasting me with. Roland let a small smile occur. “Tell me your plan.”

Victor spoke for nearly an hour.

The plan was not complicated. House Lothar had a long history in garments — experience in production, a trained pool of skilled tailors who had designed clothing for nobles in the City of Glow, spinning tools capable of processing three times the raw material input of a standard operation. The plantation would go in the Southern Territory, where sunshine was intense and temperatures sustained year-round. Labor was available: Sand Nation people were still relocating, and the growing settlements at Port of Clearwater and Fallen Dragon Ridge had created a pool of workers looking for stable employment. The plantation and textile operations would concentrate there. Sewing and garment finishing would be in Neverwinter, where the purchasing power existed.

Victor would fund the initial investment: land, recruitment, construction, equipment. Neverwinter would contribute seeds and step back. The output could be verified from the input — cotton was simple enough in its processing chain that the tax assessment would be straightforward for both parties.

Two things stood out as genuinely solid rather than merely attractive.

First: the spinning capacity. House Lothar’s tools could process three times the yield — meaning the high-yield cotton, if produced, would not create a bottleneck at the textile stage.

Second: the tailoring talent. Garments designed for nobles in the City of Glow had a proven audience. Translating that aesthetic competence to a mass-market product was not guaranteed, but it was not a fantasy either.

The spark for all of it, Victor admitted, had been The Wolf Princess. He had watched the film and noticed that the citizens of Neverwinter — residents of a new capital, a prosperous city — were still, for the most part, plainly dressed. A new capital deserved better. And a business model that made better affordable was a business model with no natural ceiling.

Roland listened to the whole thing.

It was, in embryo, what another world would have called vertical integration — production, supply, and marketing unified in a single operation. He had not expected to encounter the concept here. He had expected to spend years quietly building the preconditions for private industry before anyone arrived with a proposal like this. Victor Lothar had arrived instead, with his own capital and his own plan, needing only seeds and permission.

There was no reason to refuse him.

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