Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 119: Ransom (Part 1)

Petrov Hull turned the parchment over in his hands and did not read it.

It was this week’s theater program — the afternoon bill, light fare, the kind of thing he would normally have glanced at over breakfast and marked two or three items before sending Hedee to pay the deposit. He had been holding it for forty minutes without reading a word.

Today was the seventh day since the expedition had departed.

His father should have been back yesterday, riding alongside the Duke’s retinue, mud-spattered and triumphant and ready to tell the story over dinner for a week. The explanations were easy to reach: the horses were tired, they’d stopped an extra night in Border Town, the road was worse than expected after the spring rains. Any of these would account for one day’s delay. He had been reaching for them all morning and putting them down again.

He had met the fourth prince. He had watched Roland Wimbledon listen and think and respond. He had ridden back to Longsong Stronghold genuinely uncertain, which was not a state he was accustomed to, and that uncertainty had calcified into this dull anxiety that now sat in his chest and made the theater program impossible to parse.

Hedee.

“A letter, Master Petrov,” his housekeeper called from the entrance hall. “Just arrived from the Stronghold.”

He was on his feet before he had decided to stand.

The seal on the cover stopped him. Not his father’s. Not the Duke’s.

The fourth prince’s.

He broke it and read.

Duke Osman Ryan used military forces to attack a territory under the King’s rule, trying in vain to start a rebellion. Furthermore, the Duke was already executed on the battlefield, and now the Longsong Stronghold is once more under the rule of the Kingdom.

His father’s name was first on the list of prisoners.

Petrov read the ransom terms twice, then set the letter down, then picked it up and read it again. The phrasing was blunt — no diplomatic softening, no courtly construction — but the meaning was clear enough. Ryan was dead. The coalition had collapsed. The prisoners would be ransomed according to a point value attached to each name; the exchange point was the Stronghold’s castle.

“Hedee.” His voice came out steadier than he expected. “Prepare the carriage.”

The castle had changed.

He had been here dozens of times over the years — for the Duke’s seasonal assemblies, for negotiations, for the elaborate social machinery of noble obligation. He knew every guard by face and most by name. The men standing in the corridors now were strangers: no shining armor, no crests, no cloaks. Leather coats and that strange shortened weapon with the bayonet fixed at the top, and a quality of stillness that was not quite the same as a sentry’s trained posture. It was the stillness of men who were not performing their vigilance but actually practicing it.

He identified himself at the door. A knight stopped him before the hall.

“State your name.”

“Petrov Hull.” He let a fraction of his irritation show. “Lord Hull.”

The knight glanced at his parchment. “Shalafi Hull, Count Honeysuckle, is your—”

“Father.”

“Carter Lannis. Chief Knight, fourth prince’s service.” He gestured toward a side room. “Standard procedure — we check for weapons before any meeting.”

They found no weapons. They found the God’s Stone of Retaliation around his neck — fifty gold royals of deep-blue crystal, certified, one of the strongest grades — and the knight removed it without comment.

“That isn’t a weapon,” Petrov said.

“Of course not. You’ll receive it back after the meeting.”

He didn’t argue. He told himself it didn’t matter — that if the stone was swapped for a cheap imitation it was simply the cost of the ransom and he’d account for it accordingly. He believed this for approximately the time it took to walk from the side room to the hall door.

Roland Wimbledon was at the Duke’s throne writing something, and when he looked up his expression was startled and then amused.

“We meet again, Mr. Ambassador.”

The familiar tone loosened something in Petrov’s chest that he hadn’t realized was clenched. He bowed. “My respects, Your Royal Highness.”

“Sit.” Roland set down his pen. “Your father wasn’t hurt. He was among the first to surrender — that counted in his favor.”

“I’m grateful for Your Highness’s forbearance.” He paused. “Whatever the ransom value attached to his name, I am prepared to pay it.”

“I don’t want money.” Roland held up one finger. “I want livestock. And people.”

Livestock was old precedent — even Petrov’s history books contained accounts of post-battle settlements paid in cattle and horses, the standard tender when gold was scarce. But people. “Your Highness, cattle and sheep and horses — the Honeysuckle territory has a good supply of those. For people, I’m not certain I understand—”

Roland slid a scroll across the table.

Petrov unrolled it.

The structure was immediately legible: a table of categories with point values attached. Cattle, three points. Sheep, two. Mason, ten. Carpenter, eight. Farmer, five. Serf, three. The list went on — bricklayers, smiths, mill workers, agricultural specialists. At the bottom, the total required for his father’s release: three thousand points.

He read it twice, then looked up.

“One day,” Roland said, before he could speak. “You have one day to calculate your optimal combination and declare your terms. I’ll be here for a week. After that, I leave.”

“One day is sufficient.” The arithmetic was already running in the back of his mind — ratios, supply estimates, which category yielded the most points per unit of economic cost to the territory. It was the kind of problem he found genuinely interesting, which felt faintly indecent given the circumstances. “But, Your Highness — you said you’ll be leaving. If the Duke is dead—”

“Then Longsong Stronghold belongs to me, yes.” Roland waited.

Petrov’s mouth was slightly ahead of his planning. He heard himself ask the question before he had fully decided to ask it.

“Your Royal Highness — is there a ransom price for the Stronghold itself?”

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