Rewrite That Witch
CH169 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 169: Farewell

The sun was already at the mountains’ rim when Ashes walked into the office, throwing long gold shadows across the floor. Roland was at his desk with a quill. He set it down when she entered.

“I won,” she said.

“Yes.” He acknowledged it without hesitation, without qualification.

That surprised her. She had been ready for argument — for the kind of deflection that powerful men deployed when the result had not gone the way they’d planned. He had done none of that.

“And I acknowledge,” she said carefully, “that you have the means to resist the God’s Punishment Army.” She settled into the chair across from him. “They are stronger than ordinary soldiers — their body strength is comparable to mine. But they have no consciousness, no capacity for tactical adaptation. Which is also why they can be managed in groups of three — they cannot communicate, cannot coordinate. They only go forward.” A pause. “If your knight had faced a God’s Punishment soldier instead of me, the soldier would have charged in a straight line from the opening bell. No misdirection, no sand screen, no reading of the weapon.” She looked at Roland. “The Church cannot deploy them the way they deploy the Judges. They need a handler — someone to direct them from behind.”

“Thank you,” Roland said. “This is useful.”

“What was the weapon?”

“A firearm. In time, every soldier in my army will carry one. An untrained farmer with a rifle will be able to stop a trained Judge.”

She held the thought for a moment. Then: “Could you give one to me?”

“Unless you join the Witch Union — no. They’re still rare.” He didn’t say it harshly. Just evenly. “When the shortage changes, so might the answer.”

She had expected the refusal and didn’t waste energy resisting it. “I’ll leave at dawn tomorrow. Maggie and I both.” She looked at the desk rather than at him. “If you can’t hold against the Church, you can come to the Fjords. Ask for asylum.”

“And tell Tilly—” A pause. “Tell my sister that the Western Territory is sheltering witches. If she has witches who need somewhere to land, this is somewhere.”

Ashes was quiet for a moment.

“I’ll consider it,” she said, and stood.

“Wait.”

He said it easily, not urgently. She stopped.

“Behind the door.”

She had walked past it coming in. In the shadow of the door, leaning against the wall, was a sword.

She stepped closer.

One blade, not two. The edge was single — the other side was thick, the width of a small finger, a heavy spine that added weight without adding sharpness. The tip was trapezoidal, not pointed. Strange for a sword. In the first quarter of the blade, near the hilt, a sequence of letters had been worked into the steel. At the blunt edge: a half-moon shape, painted in gold, catching the last of the sunset light.

She ran her thumb along the flat. Smooth, even, tempering lines visible in the surface of the metal. The balance point was further forward than she expected, which suited the style the weapon required — not thrust and recovery but committed strikes, weight behind edge. Anna’s work. Obviously Anna’s work.

She picked it up.

“Why does it have such a strange shape?”

“It’s not a conventional weapon,” Roland said. “It’s called Ashbringer.”

She did not particularly want to be moved by this. She was moved by it anyway.

“I’ll accept your gift.” She rested the flat of the blade against her palm. “In return I’ll give you something.”

“What?”

She didn’t answer. She walked out.

In the morning, when Roland opened the office door, Nightingale was at his desk with a piece of dried fish.

“Both gone,” she said, without looking up. “Left at first light. Wendy went to see them off.”

Roland stood in the doorway for a moment with that thought. Wendy, who had been the first to refuse Ashes’s invitation, who had been the most absolute about staying — going to the road before dawn to say goodbye.

She cares for every sister, he thought. Even the ones who leave.

“Do you think they’ll tell other witches? On the other side of the channel?”

“Maybe.” Nightingale broke off a piece of fish and chewed. “Maybe not. But when they face something they can’t solve alone—” A slight tilt of her chin. “They’ll remember Border Town.”

He came in and sat down. The gold had gone from the morning sky; it was grey now, the ordinary grey of the Western Territory in its quiet seasons. He thought about Tilly Wimbledon — whom he had known in his predecessor’s memory as a girl with careful eyes who kept deliberate distance from everyone, including their father. Who had, apparently, been planning this for years before anyone noticed.

A natural ally, he thought. Or something like one. She’s fighting the Church with different means, toward a different goal, but the same enemy.

He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and began writing notes about what Ashes had told him. The God’s Punishment Army: no tactical adaptation, no coordination, requires a handler. The handler was the vulnerability. A decapitating strike on the handler before engagement began—

“There was something,” Nightingale said.

He looked up.

“Wendy asked me to pass it to you.” She was looking out the window, and her voice had the particular quality it got when she was pretending to be casual about something that mattered. “She said, ‘Thank you.’”

Roland held the words for a moment.

Outside, the Chishui River moved in its ordinary way against the bank. Somewhere in the training yard, someone was shouting counts for a drill formation. The Months of Demons were months away. He had an army to arm, a laboratory to scale, a church’s advance force already reported on the road, and twelve witches in this castle who had chosen, one by one, to stay.

“Tell her she’s welcome,” he said, and went back to work.

Discussion

Suggest a change