Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1297: Arrive at the Front

What Hawn had dismissed as impossible was landing in front of him.

The iron birds circled low over the square, and he could see the pilot clearly — a person, an actual person seated inside — and the craft was larger than a carriage and somehow carrying itself in the sky. He still couldn’t work out the physics. The workers who had been laying the cement were on their knees, some of them, hands pressed together.

They would have called it a miracle. Hawn had no better word.

“Your sister Andrea is also there,” Horford said, watching the descent with the placid expression of someone whose expectations have been met exactly. “Her letter was dated yesterday.”

It took Hawn a moment to extract the full meaning. Yesterday. She had been in Graycastle yesterday.

Thousands of miles. One day.

Every hair along his spine stood up. He thought of the words he’d said to his father — the balance between the four kingdoms, the army can’t control the whole continent — and felt the ground shift under the argument. Not figuratively. In his chest, where the certainties lived.

The iron birds landed one by one, quiet and deliberate. When Andrea walked down from the aircraft, Horford was already moving to meet her.

A banquet was held that afternoon, in the palace, though no nobles were summoned. They hadn’t needed to be: the news of guests descending from the sky had spread through the entire City of Glow before the dishes were served. Half the population of the southern city had been watching from the streets.

After the meal, Horford found a moment alone with his daughter.

He was glad, he admitted to himself, that she called him father now. That alone had taken years.

“You’re leaving this afternoon?” he asked.

“We need to be at Cage Mountain by sunset and meet the First Army,” Andrea said. “If this were a routine trip, the Seagull could make it in one day. We added the City of Glow stop because it was our first time abroad. Otherwise we might not have had time to eat.”

Horford had read it in the letter. Hearing it was different. One country to another in a day. He’d read it and still not quite believed it; he had stood on that runway and watched it happen and still had to absorb it. He stroked his beard and said, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? The long hover before landing.”

Andrea smiled — first real one he’d seen today. “You knew?”

“The planes shouldn’t have circled that long before setting down. In that case, everyone in the southern city would hear them.” He tilted his head. “A useful demonstration for the nobles considering restlessness.”

“That was one reason. The other: we need to establish confidence here.” She shrugged. “I’ve heard that Devilbeasts and demons have been sighted around the Kingdom of Dawn. If the residents know that the Graycastle army can also fly—”

“They won’t panic so easily. Two birds, one stone.” He glanced at her. “Is this the Pearl of the Northern Region’s idea?”

“Princess Tilly’s.”

He noticed how she said it — the slight lift that came with the name, as though it were a title she was proud to speak. She had made genuine friends in Neverwinter; he could hear the texture of them in her voice. He nodded and set the topic aside. “By the way — are you truly not interested in the throne?”

Andrea’s brows went up. “We’ve had this conversation.”

“Indulge an old man.” He waved her objection away. “Hawn is capable. He has a talent for commerce, and I think he’ll be a good earl. But like all nobles he cares primarily about personal gain. Many in the family don’t understand what I’m doing with these construction projects. They don’t see that I’m using this moment to consolidate our position rather than spend it.”

After Horford had become King of Dawn, the Quinn family had changed — the way power always changed the people around it. Hawn would never have spoken to him as he had this morning before someone had begun whispering in his ear. Someone who saw Hawn as a king-in-waiting, and wanted to be near that future. He did not want Hawn to end up like Appen. And there was another thing he hadn’t told his son: the Luoxi Family and the Tokat Family had supported Horford largely because of Andrea. An adopted son ascending the throne was a problem the other families would not accept quietly.

“That’s your problem to solve,” Andrea said.

“If you won’t take the throne, I’ll have to share power with the other two families.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not particularly,” Horford said, half-serious, half not. “It saves me trouble. After the war, I might simply move to Neverwinter. Live out my remaining years somewhere less complicated.”

He meant it more than he let on. If Roland Wimbledon won the Battle of Divine Will — and the four iron birds now parked outside the City of Glow made Horford believe he would — the question of whether four separate kingdoms continued to exist was genuinely open. The Quinn family had risen on the back of wartime chaos. If Andrea took the throne, Roland would probably leave the Kingdom of Dawn intact as a courtesy. If someone else ruled, the calculation might be entirely different.

The balance had already broken. Horford had said it to Hawn, but he had only believed it fully himself when he saw those craft descend.

Andrea looked at him for a long time. He could read in her face that she was less certain of her position than she’d been when she arrived.

“I have to go,” she said finally.

“Take care of yourself.” He kept his voice steady and suppressed the impulse to reach for her — an old habit, a thing he’d never managed easily. “Come to the front, if I can arrange it.”

”… You too,” Andrea said, and turned, and left the study.

Horford leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

He had not forgotten the decision he’d made the year before. He intended to spend whatever time remained correcting what he’d gotten wrong. That was all he could do.

Four hours later, the fleet landed safely at Thorn Town, at the foot of Cage Mountain.

Two days. Four cities. More than a thousand kilometers, by routes no army had ever traveled at this speed. Whatever was written about this operation in the years after — and something would be written — it would be the first of its kind.

Iron Axe, Brian, and Edith were waiting at the airport. After brief greetings, the witches were taken up to the headquarters at the mountain’s peak. The faces of the General Staff clerks said everything: the First Army’s position was not comfortable.

Iron Axe spread the large map across the table and looked at everyone before he began.

“Let me tell you about the current situation.”

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