Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 13: City Wall

Once cement production found its footing, Roland imposed a limit: two or three kiln firings a day, no more. Anna needed rest. But limiting the firings meant stretching every batch as far as it would go, which meant more raw material per load, which meant more hands to quarry, crush, and haul it. He issued the recruitment orders. The workforce doubled.

He knew, even then, that he could not build his future on one girl’s fire. Long exposure to stone dust would ruin a person’s lungs. And as production scaled, a single pair of hands would never be enough. The witches were not consumables to be burned through — they were the engine of something, and engines had to be maintained. He was aware of this. He set it aside. The wall came first. If the demon beasts overran Border Town before the first winter was out, nothing else would matter.

Work on the foundation began immediately: a trench line connecting the northern slope to the Chishui River, long enough to close the gap in the terrain’s natural defenses. Roland broke ground himself, drove the first shovel into the earth while the onlookers stood around him with expressions ranging from surprise to polite disbelief. Then he handed the shovel to a laborer and stepped back, satisfied with the gesture.

The satisfaction did not last.

He had assumed, without examining the assumption, that construction was construction — that his general understanding of engineering would carry him through the specifics. It did not. He did not know how deep to set the foundation, how wide, how to account for the varying elevations along six hundred yards of uneven ground. A theodolite and a level would have answered all of it in an afternoon. Neither existed here. The mud artisans he hired had built walls, yes — garden walls, low walls, the kind that required no particular expertise. None of them had worked on anything of scale. When Roland compared his own knowledge to theirs, he was appalled to discover he was the most qualified person on the site.

A week passed. Half the required foundation had been dug. What had been dug resembled, at best, a drainage channel — the depth inconsistent, the width narrowing and widening at the whim of individual workers, the whole line curving gently like a sleeping snake. He did not stop the project. He went out to the slope every morning that Anna did not need him, adjusting the line by eye, nudging the laborers back toward something that might, in a favorable light, be called straight. He doubled the reward for experienced stonemasons and waited.

Salvation arrived on the sixth calcining. Barov, his assistant minister, came to find him: a man had answered the recruitment notice. Former member of the Graycastle mason guild.

Roland nearly knocked over his chair.

He remembered the guild — even the old prince had known the name, that reputation for precision, for walls that stood when others fell. The guild had been dissolved after some construction disaster, the details lost. But the man was here, and that was the point.

“Send him in.” Roland set his face into something calm.

He had meant to ask Anna to step out before the audience, then decided it was unnecessary. Border Town had over two thousand people; almost none of them had seen her face before her execution. And the girl standing beside him now — in her clean new dress, with her composed eyes and the particular stillness she carried — bore little resemblance to the hollow-eyed figure who had walked to the gallows. He judged the risk acceptable.

Karl van Bart was led into the courtyard by one of Carter’s men. He was preparing an argument — Roland could see it in his posture, the held-back tension of a man rehearsing an unwelcome truth. Then he raised his head and stopped entirely.

He looked at Anna as though she were the only thing in the yard.

”…Anna?”

Roland’s chest tightened. Of course. He had sent for a mason and gotten the witch’s neighbor. He glanced at Carter. The chief knight was already moving, quietly, to the gate.

The girl at Roland’s side had gone very still. “Venerable teacher?”

What followed was not what Roland had expected from a professional mason responding to a summons. Karl van Bart dropped to his knees on the stone, his composure coming apart in slow stages — the voice first, then the eyes, his hands pressing flat to the ground. He repeated the same two phrases until he ran out of breath. I’m sorry. Very good. Too well.

When it was over he stood, straightened his clothes, and bowed to Roland with a formality that acknowledged he had entirely forgotten his manners. “I beg Your Highness’s pardon.”

“Never mind that. What is going on between the two of you?”

It came out steadily, once Karl had gathered himself. He had fled Graycastle after the guild’s dissolution, settled in Border Town, opened a small school. Among his students was a girl named Nana Paien, who had, some weeks ago, manifested as a witch. He had come to offer his skills in exchange for her protection.

Roland listened. He thought, as Karl spoke, about Nana Paien — the name was vaguely familiar. He caught Barov’s eye and raised an eyebrow. Barov mouthed local nobility, minor house. That complicated things slightly.

“Bring Nana to me,” Roland said when Karl finished. “If she’s a witch I’ll keep her safe. But I can’t pull her from her family when her family hasn’t turned on her yet.” He paused. “And what you think I’ve done with Anna is not what I’ve done. I need her help. The idea that witches are the devil’s instrument is nonsense. Whatever the source of their power, it can be directed toward good ends. Anna, Nana — any witch, so long as she commits no actual crime, will not be condemned in Border Town. Not by me.”

He let a beat settle, then shifted. “Now. The city wall. You worked on Graycastle’s walls?”

Karl van Bart straightened. His voice, when he spoke of masonry, lost the tremor entirely. “I did.”

“Good.” Roland spread his hands. “I need one built. From the Chishui River to the foot of the northern slope. It needs to hold against demon beasts. The project is yours.”

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