Rewrite That Witch
CH121 · Rewrite
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Chapter 121: Looting

By the time Roland had spoken with all five noble families, he was tired in a specific way that had nothing to do with the body.

He leaned back in the Duke’s chair and closed his eyes, and Nightingale, without being asked, stepped behind him and began working on his shoulders. The pressure was exactly right. He filed this under things not to examine too closely and let his mind go still.

The day after the battle had moved faster than he’d expected.

Ryan’s death had cleared the field of any organizing principle. Mercenaries didn’t fight for dead men — they were on their knees within the hour, declaring, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that they had always been prepared to serve the fourth prince. He put them to work guarding the captured knights and nobles, put the First Army to work guarding the mercenaries, and the whole mass moved east at walking pace. By mid-afternoon they were at Longsong Stronghold’s gate.

He didn’t announce himself or wait for the city to organize a proper welcome. He’d sent a man ahead with the Duke’s signet and instructions to open the gate; by the time the column arrived, the guards had looked at the situation — captured nobles, disarmed mercenaries, and a small precise army with unfamiliar weapons moving in step — and made a sensible decision. The gate was open.

The castle had required more effort. The main grounds fell without serious resistance, but a garden entrance required Nightingale to use an explosion cachet, and twenty of Ryan’s personal loyalists were inside who chose to fight rather than surrender. The First Army dealt with them efficiently, at a cost of five injured — two seriously enough that Nana had to work immediately in the field. She did, with her quiet focus and her small hands, and both men would live.

Ten guards escaped through a back door with the Duke’s wife and sons, got approximately a quarter of a mile, and discovered that Lightning was overhead. They were brought back with their hands tied. Ryan’s family was in the castle’s basement prison by evening, still not fully understanding that the battle was over.

The looting, Roland had not anticipated enjoying.

He had expected it to feel pragmatic. It was pragmatic — after a successful military campaign, the victor claimed the loser’s material assets, and those assets needed to be inventoried and transported. He understood this intellectually. What he had not expected was the particular sensation of opening the second locked chest in the basement and finding that it alone contained more gold than he had collected in two full seasons in Border Town.

Ten thousand royals. Just in that chest.

Then Nightingale found the hidden chamber behind the bedroom wall — eyeball-sized gems by the score, in a simple wooden casket, not even sorted. Then Echo found the chamber behind the fireplace: gold ceremonial objects, a scepter, something that might have been a crown, jewelry hung in neat rows on a wooden frame like the inventory of a shop that had never opened.

Roland stood in the fireplace chamber and looked at it for a long moment and felt something he recognized, embarrassingly, as want.

He was from a world where this kind of wealth was abstract — numbers in a system, redistributed through policy rather than seized through force. He had read about conquest, about the economics of plunder, had understood it as historical phenomenon. Standing in this room, he understood it differently. The allure was not about the gold. It was about the weight of possibility — everything this represented in terms of people hired, materials purchased, projects initiated.

He packed it up and sent it home.

All of it. Hummingbird lightened the boxes and Iron Axe organized the escort to Border Town. Three days’ travel. By the second day, he’d stopped accepting gold as ransom payment at all — he had enough gold. What he needed was what the point system was designed to capture: workers, animals, people with skills he couldn’t manufacture.

“Your Highness.” Nightingale’s hands found a knot between his shoulder blades and worked at it. “Do you really plan to leave after one week?”

“That’s the plan.”

“This is the largest city in the West.” Her voice was quiet, careful. “Compared to Border Town—”

“The power structure here is a hundred years old,” he said. “Competing families, divided territories, loyalty chains that run in every direction. I could spend the next five years untangling it, and at the end of five years I’d have a city that resented me.” He let her work at the knot for a moment. “Or I can put someone in place who already knows the territory, take my percentage, and spend those five years doing what I actually want to do in Border Town.”

“And the witches.”

“And the witches.” He opened his eyes. “I promised that they’d walk freely through the streets. In Border Town, that’s true now. Here—” He glanced at the hall windows, the distant sounds of a city going about its business. “The Church has had a hundred years here too. That’s not a problem I can solve with a point system.”

Nightingale didn’t respond immediately. Then: “You’ve already kept your promise.”

“I’m still keeping it,” he said. “That’s different.”

Petrov Hull arrived on the third morning with his list already written.

Roland read it in under a minute. Serfs, eight hundred, at two points each — the highest-volume lowest-cost option, correctly identified. One hundred cattle, three hundred sheep. The remainder in craftsmen, the mix optimized for minimum territorial impact. He did this overnight, Roland thought, and filed that observation.

“Acceptable. When can you deliver?”

“The people and animals are already in the Honeysuckle territory — today, if Your Highness requires it. Transport to Border Town will take two weeks to organize.”

“You organize it. You have the experience.” Roland picked up the scroll he’d prepared and slid it across the table. “Your father goes home with you today. But first—”

Petrov was already reading.

He read carefully — not skimming for the headline, but working through each clause in order, occasionally backing up. Roland watched this with something close to approval. Careless signing was how territories were lost.

“This contract,” Petrov said, when he reached the end. “It matches what you told me. But this last line—” He pointed. “You’ve written my name. Shouldn’t it be my father’s? He’s the Count.”

“You came to me,” Roland said. “Not your father. You negotiated, you asked the right question, you brought the optimized list by morning three.” He paused. “The Count is going home today. You’re staying to govern Longsong Stronghold.”

The silence that followed was complete.

“Your Highness—” Petrov stopped. Started again. “You’re saying—”

“That you’ll hold the Duke’s seat, yes. Thirty percent of the tax base and a thousand points a month, as we discussed, and the remainder is yours to govern with. If you fulfill the contract, the arrangement continues even after I take the throne.” Roland met his eyes. “And if you break it, you’ll find I’ve been here before and can find my way back. We understand each other.”

He held out his hand across the table.

Petrov Hull looked at the hand of the fourth prince, and then at the contract, and then at the hand again. He picked up the pen.

“Let’s work well together,” Roland said. “Mr. Ambassador.”

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