Rewrite That Witch
CH1296 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 1296: A Visitor from the Sky

“Father, do we really have to do this much for them?”

Hawn Quinn stood beside his father and watched the work crews labor across the clearing outside the City of Glow. The rectangular expanse — a thousand meters long, five hundred wide by the new Graycastle measurements — was being laid in plain cement, grey and unadorned. The Graycastle construction team had arrived, and the Quinn family workers had been drawn away from every other project to build this featureless square in less than a week.

Hawn had been counting the costs in his head since morning.

“Hmm.” Horford Quinn, King of Dawn, turned to look at his son with something like interest. “What exactly are you referring to?”

“Everything.” Hawn ticked items on his fingers. “King Roland asked for a bridge. Then a road. Both enormous projects. You’ve pulled all the family workers off to build them, so who’s managing the domain? The castle needs repair as well.”

This was the visible complaint. Underneath it ran a deeper current.

His father was too accommodating. Too eager, too willing to prejudice his own interests for a foreign king’s requests.

Cement, for instance — clearly a transformative material, clearly the kind of thing a monopoly could be built on. But when Roland’s letter had arrived instructing them to “produce as much cement as possible,” Horford had called all the great nobles to the palace and taught them the formula. Chamber of commerce, local lords, every family that wanted to learn: they learned. The Quinn Family’s advantage evaporated before they’d had time to use it.

And then the road. The great nobles refused to contribute — reasonably, Hawn thought, since the road from the Northside River to Cage Mountain passed outside every major family’s territory and would profit strangers before it profited them. But rather than negotiate or let the project slow, Horford had simply absorbed the entire cost. Recruitment, labor, coordination with the Graycastle teams. The Quinn treasury bled gold every day, and the road would carry goods for other people’s merchants.

Now this — a cement square in a clearing, serving no visible purpose, useful to no one in the Quinn family.

Hawn’s heart ached at the arithmetic of it.

What is he building toward?

And then there were the social absurdities: Horford asking after the Graycastle clerks’ needs, summoning their construction men to the palace for meals, sitting equal with them at the table though every one of them was a civilian, not a nobleman. A king, treating functionaries like peers.

Today Horford had gone out past the city walls to greet the arriving ambassadors in person. In person, outside the walls. No ruler of standing did that. Guests were received in the throne room.

Hawn suspected it was about Andrea. Everything since his adopted sister left had had this quality — his father bending toward Graycastle as though she had created a permanent gravitational pull.

“What can I do?” Horford said, shrugging, unhurried. “The other families won’t work. I can’t let them act as they please. You’ve seen what Graycastle can do. Do you think, without the Wimbledon family’s support, I would still be king of this country?”

“Father — I’m not asking you to resist Graycastle,” Hawn said, keeping his voice level. “I’m asking you to let others carry the cost. Negotiate with the local lords for their share of the construction funds. You’ve always told me that a good businessman stays calm to maximize his position.”

“But the Battle of Divine Will isn’t a trade.”

“That’s true, but—” Hawn stopped himself, but what was inside him had been building for months and finally arrived: “You don’t act like the King of Dawn at all. You act like a minister working for King Roland Wimbledon.”

He expected his father to stiffen, to correct him sharply, to reach for the authority of rank.

Horford only looked at him for a moment, then asked, mildly: “Why do you think there are only four kingdoms on this continent, and not three or five?”

Hawn hadn’t expected the question. “Because — because we’re the four strongest families?”

“More precisely, we are the strongest within our own domains.” Horford turned back to the workers below, watching the grey cement spread and smooth. “Our power doesn’t extend across the continent. What we call a border is really just the farthest reach of our strength. And that balance between four kingdoms has already been broken. Roland Wimbledon could take all four kingdoms if he wished. Given that — why should I not submit?”

“Father!” Hawn’s composure cracked. “The Graycastle army is powerful, but they can’t control the whole continent! You’re exaggerating—”

“You haven’t been watching what has changed in Graycastle, child.” Horford’s voice was patient; it had the patience of someone who has already arrived where the other person is still traveling toward. “Perhaps Roland couldn’t do it before. But now he has extended his reach beyond his own borders. You’ve not looked closely at what he’s actually built, so of course you don’t believe it.”

“How — how do you know this?”

“Andrea wrote back.”

Hawn’s chest went cold.

He was searching for the next argument when someone screamed.

Then a sound came — low, building, wrong in a way that reached the body before the mind could name it. A vast droning buzz rolling in from a distance.

Hawn looked north and found a line of black shapes against the sky, streaming toward the City of Glow.

Birds. Migrating birds.

But the black dots were expanding — already larger than any bird he’d seen, and still growing. Too large. Too fast. Too loud.

The workers below dropped their tools. The caravans on the road stopped. Every face tilted up toward the same impossible shapes.

Hawn’s mouth was open. They were artifacts. Man-made things, flying.

How?

“Incredible,” Horford murmured beside him, a faint smile on his face. “He really did it.” He raised his chin toward the sky. “My guests are arriving.”

Hawn stood frozen, watching the iron birds descend on the grey square that suddenly made perfect sense.

Discussion

Suggest a change