Rewrite That Witch
CH1097 · Rewrite
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Chapter 1097: Friend and Old Acquaintance

Barov rounded on him before the door had finished closing.

“Your Majesty — why?” The governor’s voice carried the compressed distress of a man watching opportunity walk down a staircase. “Kajen Fels, Your Majesty. The Kajen Fels. Every troupe in the kingdom would give their best venue for a decade to have him on their boards. Ms. May is extraordinary — no criticism intended — but she is not yet Kajen Fels. If he joined Star Flower, the company would become the preeminent troupe in Graycastle overnight. Actors would come from every corner of the —”

“Have you heard the saying,” Roland said, “that people rarely value what they receive without effort?”

Barov blinked. “I — forgive me, Your Majesty, in which text —”

“I said it.” Roland reached for his pen. “It’s common sense. Kajen wants access to the Magic Movie badly enough to accept a long detour. A straight acceptance would have satisfied him immediately — which is to say, too completely. A difficult objective keeps him engaged. He may even thank me eventually. If I’d simply said yes, he’d have taken it as his due.” He set down the pen. “That’s the difference between yes and no.”

Barov considered this. “But you allowed him to accompany the rescue operation —”

“His own choice. I’m curious what he produces when he’s this far past his peak and still willing to cross a kingdom on foot for a story.” Roland glanced up. “Is your statistical report finished? If you have time to audit my personnel decisions, you have time to complete your own work.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Forgive me.” Barov bowed and removed himself with commendable speed.

The room held the particular quiet of a space recently vacated by nervous energy.

“You’re becoming more and more like a king.” Nightingale stepped out of the fold between one shadow and the next, arms crossed, head tilted. “Your Majesty.”

Roland registered the formality — she hadn’t called him that in months, not in private. “You don’t need to be formal with me.”

“I’m not sure informal is wise,” she said, the solemnity faintly crinkled at the corners. “You just told me that people don’t value things they receive too easily. I should take care not to be taken for granted. I’ll remind Anna as well, in case someone has started to feel entitled.”

The cold sweat arrived before he could stop it. “That’s — people and the Magic Movie are categorically different situations —”

“But you agreed with the principle.” Nightingale pressed two fingers to her sternum, just below the collarbone. “My power tells me you believe at least fifty-five percent of your own theory.”

He looked at her fingers. “Did you actually use your ability just now?”

She laughed — a real one, brief and unguarded. “You noticed. But the point stands. If the other witches learned how you truly think about giving things away too freely, what would they conclude?”

“Five Chaos Drinks,” Roland said. “For your continued discretion.”

“Ten.” She ran her tongue across her teeth. “Different flavors.”

“That many would raise questions —”

“Questions about what?”

“Someone might find it unfair.”

“I’ll keep them hidden. No one will find them.”

“Eight. If you receive too many without effort —”

“Will what?”

“Nothing. I need to think.”

They negotiated with the gravity of a treaty council and the dignity of two people pretending they weren’t enjoying themselves.

In the end, Roland signed away ten Chaos Drinks.

He watched Nightingale eat dried fish with the composure of a general after a decisive victory. He shook his head. The defeat had a certain quality to it — like a flaw he’d designed into the system on purpose.

By nightfall, Barov’s voice came through the telephone, crisp and efficient, as if the afternoon’s conversation had never happened.

“Ms. Scroll and I reviewed the family records and the Powers of Attorney. We’ve selected approximately sixteen hundred people for the first round of family visits to the Fertile Plains — priority to immediate family. The detailed proposal is in progress. If nothing delays us, departure is in two days.”

“Go ahead,” Roland said. He found himself genuinely satisfied — not just with the result, but with the machinery that had produced it. The Administrative Office processed the city’s human complexity the way a good engineer designed a load-bearing joint: strength invisible until tested, failure inconceivable until it wasn’t.

“One worker’s listed family member is a witch,” Barov added.

“Oh?”

“A construction laborer from Longsong District. Former Rat. Name on record as Snaketooth. The family member he listed is Miss Paper.”

Roland set down his pen.

Paper — the witch whose ability accelerated reaction rates, who had arrived in Neverwinter under something like a cloud and had stepped out of it with quiet determination. The dispute when Petrov had brought her. The way she’d looked at Neverwinter like a person who had never been allowed to expect anything.

And the man who used to guard her back on Black Street put her name on an official form two years later.

“Should I remove him?” Barov asked carefully. “Miss Paper has severed ties with that life.”

“She severed ties with the work,” Roland said. “Not the person. The whole point of rehabilitation is that prior occupation doesn’t define who someone is permitted to know.” He picked the pen up again. “Leave him on the list. I’ll tell Paper myself.”

“As you wish.”

He held the phone for a moment after the line went quiet. Somewhere to the southwest, a man named Snaketooth had written down a name he probably rehearsed putting aside, and then hadn’t.

That sounds like a story too.

At the clearing southwest of Tower Station No. 1, the First Army held its memorial.

Nearly three hundred white tombstones stood in the afternoon light, arranged with the geometric precision the First Army applied to everything — straight lines, even spacing, permanent. No bodies lay beneath them. The soldiers had died at the front, or in places where the ground belonged to the enemy now. The stones marked what could not be retrieved.

Iron Axe stood at the front of the assembled ranks. His salute came first; the formation followed as one body.

Lightning landed on the roof of the nearest barrack, quiet as a settling bird.

She had seen the memorial from high altitude — a white rectangle against brown earth — and had descended without quite deciding to. Now she crouched at the roof’s edge and looked down at the rows of people who had survived, paying their respects to the rows of names that had not.

At the head of the formation, an old man stood very still.

She recognized him. The conductor of the Blackriver.

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