Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 134: Morning Light

The next prisoner was the most handsome man Roland had seen in this era.

He noted it the way he noted a variable: it was there, it was relevant in the context of how other people related to this man, and the relevant question was what else was there. He checked the list. Ferlin Eltek. Head of the Lions’ Knight. “Morning Light.” First Knight of the Western Territory. Then an unusual addition, a comment in Nightingale’s handwriting from the holding cell observation: avoided the charge front. How?

“Ferlin Eltek,” Roland said. “You have an impressive collection of titles.”

The man went to one knee smoothly, without ostentation. “I do, Your Highness.”

“Then explain to me how the head of the Lions avoided the front line of the charge.”

A pause — not the pause of someone caught, but the pause of someone deciding to speak plainly. “I controlled my horse’s pace,” Ferlin said. “When you manage the stride length carefully enough, a horse can look like it’s sprinting at full speed while barely above a canter. As long as the formation around you is moving faster, you fall back.”

Roland set down his quill. He had expected an excuse, or silence, or an angry deflection. “And you did this because—”

“Because I had been looking for a chance to kill Duke Ryan for three years.” His voice didn’t change register. “The morning of the Duke’s death, I was near enough to reach him. But his personal guard had him surrounded too tightly, and I couldn’t find a clean approach before your army reached him.” A small pause. “I’m grateful that you did. I wanted to express that before whatever judgment you’ve reached.”

He told the story.

His wife, Irene, had been a performer at a theater in the Stronghold — good enough to get her first formal booking, which was also how the Duke had noticed her. The Duke had broken into their rented rooms while Ferlin was on assignment. It had taken him a long time to understand why Irene wouldn’t tell him what had happened, and longer still to understand why she had wept when he’d proposed going to the Duke directly.

“She knew what would happen,” Ferlin said. “She knew I couldn’t win, and if I tried, she’d be the one who paid for it afterward.” The cadence of his voice was that of someone who had rehearsed this sentence by living with it. “So I waited. And when the Duke decided to ride against Border Town, I went with him.”

Roland tapped his quill against the table — once, lightly — and felt Nightingale pinch his left shoulder blade in confirmation. He made a note to tell her the signal didn’t require enthusiasm.

“You can read and write?”

Ferlin blinked. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“Then the verdict. Two options.” He recited them: the mine, the teaching position, the respective terms for each. “Your choice.”

“I would rather fight for you.” Ferlin said it without appeal, simply as information. “Any formation, any opponent—”

“No,” Roland said. “There are no nobles in my army and there won’t be. Not as officers, not as specialists. You’re welcome to retire from arms permanently and teach instead.” He watched the man absorb this. “The teaching position is the better deal.”

“Then I choose teaching.” A silence, then: “Yes. I understand.”

Roland gave the dismissal. Ferlin stood — then stopped.

“Your Highness. One request, if you’ll hear it.”

“Speak.”

“The old knight in my cell — Halon. He’s nearly fifty, he can’t read, and twenty years in the mine will destroy him. He isn’t wealthy enough to pay his own ransom, and his territory is small.” He said it steadily, not begging. “Is there any way to buy his freedom?”

“Not with gold royals,” Roland said. “That would make the arrangement worthless.”

“I have something else.” Ferlin sat down uninvited, in the chair across from Roland, and placed both hands flat on the table — not aggression, just a man removing distance. “My family has a map. Four hundred years old, possibly more. Not drawn on paper — on a material I’ve never been able to identify, fine and smooth and completely unfaded despite the age. My father said it shows a treasure location deep in the Concealing Forest, past the Desolate Lands. We always assumed it was beyond reach.”

Roland looked at him. “And you have the map itself?”

“I memorized it. The original is in my family’s basement, which I’ve since forfeited.” A slight self-deprecation entered his voice. “Though as a former head of the Lions, my memory for formations and maps is professionally sound.”

“Draw it.”

He handed Ferlin the quill. The man drew with the clean efficiency of someone who regularly converted spatial reality into tactical notation. The map appeared in two minutes: topographic lines indicating the land behind the Impassable Mountain Range, mountains occupying the lower right corner, and at the center, an equilateral triangle with three corners pointing outward to three marked locations.

One corner indicated the foot of the North Slope. One indicated a hexagonal star within the Concealing Forest — the treasure location, presumably. Roland’s eyes moved to the third corner, pointing into the middle of the Wild Lands, to a sawtooth mountain peak.

Above it, in careful script, was a single word.

Taquila.

Roland looked at it for a long moment without speaking.

“Halon is released from the mine obligation,” he said. “He’ll need to find another occupation — the teaching option applies if he can learn to read. Bring him to the steward.” He stood. “You may go, Eltek.”

Ferlin picked up the drawing and then set it back down on Roland’s desk. “You’ll need the original map’s exact dimensions to scale this properly. I can provide measurements from memory if that would help.”

“It would,” Roland said. “Come back this afternoon.”

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