Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1143: The Difference Between Martialists

One night in the Dream World ran two days long against the waking world’s clock. By the time Roland collected Dawnen, Saint Miran, and Dido and drove them toward Crown Hotel the following evening, it felt both later and earlier than it should.

“Your Majesty.” Dawnen pressed her face against the rear window like a child on a long journey. “Is it true that we can eat whatever we want?”

“It’s not so different from a noble’s banquet,” Roland said. “You’ve attended enough of those.”

“But you couldn’t eat whatever you wanted at those.”

He glanced at her in the mirror. “Why not?”

“Because those parties were for prominent figures.” Saint Miran, occupying the passenger seat with her hands folded precisely in her lap, supplied the explanation in her usual tone — the one that had spent four hundred years thinking through the implications of things. “Networking, not feasting. A person who ate with any enthusiasm became a subject of conversation. At larger functions, most people ate beforehand.” She swallowed, just slightly, and looked at her hands. “If Your Majesty fears we’ll disgrace him, we’ll exercise restraint.”

Roland glanced in the mirror again. Dawnen and Dido had gone elaborately neutral, the expressions of people pretending not to want something very badly.

He laughed.

“Eat whatever you like,” he said. “This isn’t the Union age. You aren’t in the king’s city. We’re all just ordinary people, and the only rule is don’t make trouble.”

“Can I bring some back?” Dido’s voice went hopeful. “For the others. Many of my friends said they wished—”

“Make sure nobody sees you doing it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Stay close when we arrive. If someone approaches you, let me handle it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” all three of them said at once.

Crown Hotel occupied a corner of the city’s financial district, all glass and granite, its entrance crowded with cars that cost more than most buildings Roland had built in Border Town. His van sat among them like a boot among dress shoes. The valet maintained his professional neutrality and took the keys without comment.

Roland noted the hotel’s exterior, the angle of the lights, the spacing of the security checkpoints — entry control, single funnel, card-verified, two-tier check — and filed it as a matter of habit.

Inside, the witches didn’t look at the chandelier.

He’d expected that. The chandelier was extraordinary by this world’s standards — three hundred points of white light, staggered in tiers, each one precisely aimed to wash the marble floor in even illumination. The Union of Taquila had lit its halls with Stones of Lighting. These women had walked corridors that made this lobby look provincial.

What stopped them was the dessert table.

It was positioned in the hotel’s atrium, beside a champagne tower, and it held twelve varieties of cake. Roland watched all three of them go very still.

“The fish here,” Dawnen breathed later, as if to herself, “is so tender it feels like it’s dissolving.”

“Are these really grapes?” Dido turned one over in her fingers with something close to reverence.

“You visited the Dream World last month,” Saint Miran said.

“I ate fast food. Elena only knows KFC.”

Roland stood apart and watched them. The hall moved around him — businessmen making conversation shaped like negotiation, martialists wearing the careful ease of people used to being looked at, journalists working the perimeter — and he stood in the middle of it and watched three ancient women argue over whether the grapes were sweeter than the last time they’d tasted grapes, four centuries ago.

For him, this world was a dream. The thought arrived without announcement, the way the truest ones did. For them, it is the only place left where they can feel anything.

The battle with the demons had taken everything — the taste of real food, the sensation of sunlight on skin, the ordinary irreplaceable fact of being alive in a body that was your own. The God’s Punishment Army had preserved their souls and surrendered everything else. The Dream World gave it back. Not completely, and not forever, but enough: a champagne tower, a plate of foie gras, grapes that were sweeter than the ones in memory.

Even if he gained nothing else here, Roland thought, this was worth sustaining.

He pulled his attention back to the room.

Two categories of guest, easy enough to read. Business attire: public figures, city money, the Clover Group’s ecosystem. Robes: martialists from the Association. A few exceptions at the margins. The distinction wasn’t wealth — several of the martialists clearly had money. It was bearing. The robed martialists wore their power close, something kept in reserve. The business guests wore theirs outward, performed.

Professional versus amateur. He remembered Garcia’s explanation: the Association’s internal divide, old-school martialists versus those shaped by the contest circuit. He’d favored the conservative party, instinctively — the people focused on hunting Fallen Evils rather than accumulating match points.

Standing in this room, for the first time, he understood what the contest party had been doing.

They hadn’t drifted from the mission. They’d been building an institution. Rosters, rankings, media presence, financial sponsors — the infrastructure that turned a small secret organization into something with public legitimacy and a funding base. Without that, the Association would have stayed exactly what it was: a handful of people with supernatural abilities and no support structure.

He turned the hunting license over in his mind. They needed someone like him in the room — old-school, fight-focused, uncorrupted by the circuit. Someone the conservative faction could point to as proof that the original mission still existed.

He dimly recognized that he was being used as a symbol.

He didn’t particularly mind.

What mattered was finding Garde Clover. What mattered was the three hundred witches who needed papers, schooling, a path into this world that didn’t require them to remain invisible.

He scanned the hall and found his target near the front, working the tables with the practiced fluency of a man who had been networking since before Roland was born — in any world.

The evening, Roland decided, was about to become more interesting.

Behind him, Dawnen issued a muffled exclamation of joy over something new on the dessert table. Saint Miran told her to slow down. Dido was quietly filling her bag.

Roland allowed himself a small smile and started across the room.

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