Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1092: An Arrest Warrant

“So,” said Marl Tokat, his brows pulled together, “you’re going to help him. A remnant of the church.”

Sean had sent Joe back under guard and summoned the emissary of the City of Glow immediately — no point waiting. The three noble families didn’t know what the Ceremony Cube actually was; if they’d understood its value, they wouldn’t have let it get smuggled out of the Kingdom of Dawn in the first place.

“That’s not my call to make,” Sean said. “My orders are to find the treasure. I’ve finally got a lead that sounds credible, so I’m going to verify it. What happens after that belongs to His Majesty.” He leveled his gaze at Marl. “Do you have a plan? Or would you rather I ask someone else?”

The First Army was the most powerful thing moving through these borderlands, but power was useless without something to aim it at. The church’s old tradecraft — the careful placement of people in crowds, the patient cultivation of unremarkable faces — was not a problem that cannon or rifle could solve. The three noble families knew this territory. Their Rats knew its streets.

Marl leaned back and sighed with the theatrical weight of a man who knows he’s going to help and resents that he knows it. “Honestly, I’d have preferred never hearing any of this. Lady Quinn was expelled from the Kingdom of Dawn because of the church. Without the church, she’d probably have married my brother by now.” He caught himself. “Ahem. But since you’re asking — it shouldn’t be too difficult to narrow things down.”

“Narrow things down to what?”

“The passage through the Cage Mountain is blocked. Coming from the Kingdom of Wolfheart, the fastest route is by sea — through Coral Bay, the port in the northeast.” Marl began counting on his fingers with the crisp efficiency of a man who has thought about logistics his whole life. “We’re looking for vessels coming from the east. Ten to fifteen crew members. Light Wolfheart accent. Wolfheart dress. Applying those criteria, I’d estimate fewer than five fleets currently in harbor.” He spread his hands. “That’s a manageable number.”

“We circle those fleets, then detain and question everyone aboard?”

“Something like that. The tool for the work is the same tool it always is in port cities.” Marl smiled. “Rats. A problem that can be solved with money isn’t really a problem. The Tokats will bear the expense — consider it the three families’ contribution to the effort.”

In a rented house on the suburb’s edge, Hagrid was losing a private war against mosquitoes.

The butler of the Earl of Archduke Island had come prepared for intrigue and espionage. He had not come prepared for this — the thin curtains, the absence of netting, the particular humidity of Thorn Town in late spring that made every evening an exercise in slow misery. He waved the fan again, achieved nothing, and thought uncharitably of his lord, who was sitting in a proper house on the Archduke Island while Hagrid sweated through his collar in someone else’s suburb.

The Magic Ceremony Cube had begun to glow. That much was certain. The reason — less so.

Hagrid had spent two months watching the Graycastle Exploration Team from a distance, and nothing he had observed made particular sense. They’d built a road through the mountain. They’d recruited condemned prisoners. They’d turned the temple on the mountainside inside out. Every day, soldiers hauled bricks and slabs of dark stone down from the ruins and stacked them in the open air before shipping them east to Coral Bay by carriage.

A man excavating treasure ought to be more interested in what he found than in the stone he found it in. The King of Graycastle, apparently, was not that man.

Hagrid had managed to acquire samples of the black stone and send them to Earl Lorenzo. As he’d expected, the stone did not restore the Cube’s legendary power. The key was something else.

He was still turning this over when his man lifted the curtain. “The person you sent for, sir. He’s here.”

“Send him in.”

The guide came in looking like what he was: a villager who’d been handed more money than he normally saw in a month and was trying not to show how much that frightened him. Knaff knelt on the floor, met Hagrid’s eyes with the practiced deference of a man who’d made his living showing richer people around difficult country, and confirmed what Hagrid already half-suspected — he had guided the Graycastle team up the Cage Mountain when they first arrived.

Hagrid let him talk. He listened past the details about the temple and the ruins and the soldiers, waiting for the thing that mattered, and then Knaff described the witch.

“Azima,” Knaff said, feeling his way through the name. “She held a coin in front of her and looked at it every time we took a turn. A plain thing — not silver, not bronze. Like a thin slice of polished metal. No pattern on it.”

Hagrid went very still. “Was she holding it constantly?”

“Most of the time. The whole group followed her. Every fork in the path, she’d stop and look at the coin.” Knaff’s expression shifted as the significance of it dawned even on him. “Come to think of it, yes — they all followed where she pointed.”

A navigating device. A key. Not the stone — the coin.

Hagrid clenched his fist beneath the table.

The witch Azima had already left Thorn Town, which meant she’d left before Hagrid arrived from the Archduke Island, which meant the coin wasn’t with her. She’d left it behind. With the expedition’s leadership.

He turned this over methodically. The Exploration Team had two men of rank: the commander-in-chief, Sean, who was the King’s Guard; and Marl Tokat, the second son of a noble family. Between a career guardsman and a nobleman’s son, the fortress crumbled from within at the easier target. Gold worked on guardsmen.

How much would it take? Five hundred? A thousand?

Earl Lorenzo would pay whatever the number was. And when Hagrid placed the key to the Cube in his lord’s hands, he would rise from butler to something considerably more interesting.

He was still building this future in his imagination when he heard running outside. A thump, a half-formed shout cut short, the percussive rattle of equipment —

The door came open hard.

Men in the livery of Thorn Town’s patrol flooded through it. Hagrid found himself face-down on the floor before he had finished processing what was happening.

“I’m a merchant,” he said into the planking, as firmly as a man could manage in that position. “Law-abiding. I can offer you whatever figure you name —”

“The lord of Thorn Town suspects church remnants are sheltering among your crew.” The voice was professional and entirely uninterested in negotiation. “You’ll be explaining yourself to his lordship. Save the rest of it for him.”

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