Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1049: The Princess’s Reward

“Rise,” Tilly said simply. “I know you have questions. Why does the army recruit unofficial residents? Why were the tests so strange? Why am I the one explaining this to you?” She looked along the row of faces. “These things are difficult to explain in the abstract, but they will become clear once you experience them. So I will not go into detail. A few points, only.”

“First: you are joining neither the First Army nor the Second Army. This is a new formation my brother intends to establish—unlike any army that has existed before. The selection criteria are correspondingly unusual.”

A sound moved through the group. Good felt it ripple through his own chest: a new army meant no established hierarchy, no entrenched officers, no one already occupying the position he wanted. For people who arrived with nothing, a new army was the widest possible door.

Every fool in the room understood it.

“That said, you are reserve members only,” the princess continued. “There is no precedent for what I am about to build, which means everything must begin from the foundation up. The difficulties will exceed anything you have imagined. What you experienced today in the tests—that is nothing by comparison. Sixteen people are here. I expect one or two of you, possibly none, will eventually become an Aerial Knight.”

Good’s breath caught.

What surprised him was not the odds. Difficulty he had expected.

What surprised him was the first word.

Knight. An actual knight. Not a squire’s post, not a soldier’s rank—a knight, however the title was shaped, coming to someone from a mud hut in the immigrant quarter. He had no frame for this.

His heart was burning.

“Furthermore,” Tilly said, “in this city—in the world—only my brother and I fully understand what this new force requires. The king is too occupied to give it the time it needs. I will be responsible for your instruction.”

That sentence struck him like a blow.

Her Royal Highness would teach them personally.

Which meant—if they survived long enough, if they proved good enough—they would be knights shaped by the hand of the Graycastle princess herself. No domain. No noble title, perhaps. But that would be an honor of a different kind entirely, and for a man who had crossed from Wolfheart with nothing, it was more than he had ever allowed himself to want.

Around him, breath was coming fast and shallow. If they had not been standing before royalty, he suspected someone would have cheered.

“All qualified trainees will be housed in the Shallow Beach New District together,” Tilly said, pressing her hand down in a settling motion. “You will receive new residences and official identities. From that point you are members of the new king’s city. Remember: though you are only trainees, you are also members of an armed force. Your conduct will be governed accordingly. Abandoning the program will be treated as desertion. Any violation of military orders will be punished under military law. Is that understood?”

“Yes—Your Highness!” The answers were not loud—shock had swallowed most of the volume—but no one wavered.

“Good.” She turned to the tall man at the desk. “Vader.”

He pressed his fist to his chest and produced a folded sheet from his pocket. “Repeat every word I say.”

The oath was short and plainly worded—almost startlingly so.

I will never be disloyal to King Roland. I hold no hostility toward the witches.

Good’s voice came out louder than the others’ when he reached those lines. Her Highness was said to be a witch herself. He let his volume speak for him.

After the oath, guards came forward and distributed packages—one to each of them.

“From this moment,” Tilly said, “you are members of this army.” A slight smile. “The first round of recruitment should last another week. Training begins after that. The items in the package are my personal gift to you. They are also what you must master.”

By the time Good reached the central square again, it was fully dark. The crowd that had filled the square that morning was long gone. Uncle Bucky and Sanko had left too—no one could be expected to wait that long for someone who might never emerge.

He did not mind. He held the package against his chest and walked fast, not feeling the cold. The snow underfoot cracked with each step. The road the foot traffic had worn down showed dark against the white, a brown-black ribbon guiding him back through the residential area toward the mud hut. Tomorrow the road would be covered again. Tonight it led him home.

He pushed open the door. Warmth, the smell of oatmeal, Rachel at the fire.

“Sorry—I’m back late—”

“I know.” She didn’t look up from the pot. “Uncle Bucky told me. You found a good job, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, she extended her right hand toward him.

“Where’s the food?”

“The—what?”

“You promised an egg pancake.” She pulled her mouth to one side. “I waited.”

He had completely forgotten. “Next time—one pancake every week! No—two!”

“Two?” The skepticism was thorough. “Really?”

“It’s not an ordinary job. I saw Her Highness in person.” He pulled off his wet shoes, rolled his trouser legs up to the shins, settled by the fire, and carefully drew the package from inside his coat. “Look. She gave this to me herself.”

Rachel’s curiosity overwhelmed her grievance immediately. “What’s inside?”

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

He unfolded the package, and felt a small jolt of surprise. “This is…”

“A book?” Rachel said.

He laid everything out. A stack of books, each cover printed with different images, the work clearly deliberate—detailed, attractive. The text on the covers meant nothing to him.

“Can you read them for me?”

She smiled, the proprietary pleasure of someone with a skill the other person needs. “I can try. This one is Reading and Writing Skills. This is Common Quick Vocab. And this third one…”

So: the same things Sanko was studying at night. He recognized the design logic now—a quill on the writing manual’s cover, letters of different sizes on the vocabulary book. The covers illustrated the content.

He felt a flicker of something he would not quite call disappointment.

He had imagined—without meaning to—that a princess’s personal reward might be something with weight. A seal. A document. Even a scroll. Something a man could show as proof that she had seen him and considered him worth singling out.

If anyone heard what I was thinking, they’d laugh. Primary school textbooks from the Administrative Office, handed out to a bunch of barely-literate immigrants. Not exactly a mark of special recognition.

And then he stopped.

Of course. A knight who could not read was only half a knight. He had been given a direction. He had been given work to do.

He was reaching to stack the books together when one cover stopped him.

He had never seen anything like the image on it. Something enormous, like a kite or a great bird—two pairs of wings far larger than any human—and a woman sitting on it, poised above the sea. Beneath her, what should have been a vast continent was visible as a narrow strip. The ocean sparkled. Everything that was supposed to be immense looked small.

He knew this view.

It was exactly what he had seen from the stool, in the tent, during the first test.

He held the book and did not breathe.

“Rachel—what does this one say?”

She leaned in. Her finger traced the characters on the cover, lips moving. “Flight… and Operation—” She clapped her hands. “Flight Principle and Operation Manual.”

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