Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1172: A New Population Policy

Neverwinter, Graycastle. The castle boardroom.

The Administrative Office had grown until the meeting room could barely contain it. Ministers and deputy ministers filled the main seats; their clerks and assistants lined the walls shoulder to shoulder. Close to two hundred people packed the hall, and the air had the dense, warm quality of a crowd that had been waiting.

Roland noted the problem and made a note: build a larger conference hall. When the regional officials eventually came to the capital to report their work, they would need the entire ground floor of the castle just to stand in the same room.

He set the notebook aside, clapped his hands. The room went quiet.

“I believe you’ve all heard about the success of the ‘Torch’ project — ten months of campaign, the demons driven from the Fertile Plains, our territory extended to the west.” He let it settle for a beat. “From now on, the land west of Neverwinter will not be a wasteland of traps and dangers. It will be ours. Food. Resources. Room to grow.” Another pause. “That land is larger than all Four Kingdoms combined. It will be what we build on for the next hundred years.”

The applause broke like a dam giving way.

Territory expansion was the oldest measure of a king’s worth — and the fastest route to personal profit for every official in the room. Even common citizens would feel the yield of so much new land, land that dwarfed anything Graycastle had ever held before.

“The Four Kingdoms will probably become a historical term within a few years,” Barov said with evident satisfaction, working his beard between his fingers. “The other three are not remotely comparable to us in power.”

“Calling it ‘the Four Great Kingdoms’ in the records would start to seem absurd.”

“‘One Great and Three Small’?”

“Clumsy. We should invent something new.”

“I think ‘empire’ suits our situation well enough.”

The ministers talked over one another, riding the warmth of it. Roland let them. They had earned the moment. But he steered the discussion back before it ran too long.

“I hope we can agree that this victory is the beginning of the war — not the end of it.” The room quieted. “We drove the demons from the Fertile Plains. That doesn’t mean they won’t return. The peace is temporary. The real test is the Battle of Divine Will, when the Bloody Moon rises, and when it comes, our enemy will commit everything they have. We must be ready.”

“In other words — no complacency. Work harder. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

The shout was clean and unanimous.

Roland looked to Nightingale. She pulled the curtain back from the wall.

Where the map of the Western Region had hung, there was now a blackboard with a single word on it.

People.

“This is what I want,” Roland said.

The Western Region was at peace. The army had returned. Local administration was consolidating across the municipalities, and Graycastle’s citizens were more united than they had ever been. Of all the plans Roland was ready to set in motion, increasing the population ranked first — above even the post-war analysis. He had deliberately prioritized it there.

The reason was simple and uncomfortable. Neverwinter’s greatest problem was that it did not have enough people.

If the First Army had fielded an armored unit during the Torch campaign, the demons who ambushed the witches could have been repelled with a basic infantry fighting vehicle — first-generation piston engine, nothing elegant, but functional. It would have changed the shape of the battle.

But there had been no such unit, because there had been no way to build one. The city’s production had reached its ceiling in every direction at once.

The smelters could yield no more steel. The battle had burned through ninety percent of the shells accumulated over years. The railway threading across the plain had eaten the rest of the steel reserves. Agatha was struggling to keep up with acid production at the plant. The RPG manufacturing program had hollowed out what remained of the ammunition stockpile.

Dead ends. Many of them. All at once.

Roland needed people to expand production — and people to staff the new projects — and more people still to coordinate between the departments running both. Neverwinter’s population was growing steadily and had reached two hundred thousand, which was enormous by the standards of this era. At a normal pace, the city might reach a million residents in another decade.

A normal pace was no longer acceptable.

The demons’ behavior in the last campaign had disturbed him deeply. Their retreat had been too swift, too clean, too far from the bitter months-long siege Roland had planned for. He had prepared for a battle that ground down half his army at Taquila. Instead, the enemy had simply pulled back. The deviation from all prediction meant something had changed — and he did not know what. The uncertainty was worse than a clear threat. It pushed him toward drastic measures.

“Your Majesty,” Barov said, rising to his feet, “the Administrative Office has been tracking this. Based on current immigration rates, I estimate the population will double within five years—”

“I can’t wait five years,” Roland said. “I want to see it this year. More than what was originally planned, if possible.”

The intake of breath ran around the room like a ripple.

“200,000 in a single year?” Barov’s composure slipped. “Your Majesty, I’m afraid that’s not possible under normal circumstances. Only a famine or an uprising drives movement on that scale.”

“You’re describing voluntary immigration under normal conditions. I’m issuing an administrative order. If relocation is mandatory, the target becomes achievable.” Roland raised three fingers. “This plan has three parts: relocation, cross-border recruitment, and birth incentives. These are the directives you’ll work from.”

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