Rewrite That Witch
CH188 · Rewrite
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Chapter 188: On with the Show

The North Slope Mine visit took two days. Hogg had not expected the rail system and had required considerable time to walk its length, examine its components, and ask questions in the specific order of a man building a complete technical picture before he would commit to anything. Roland answered all of them. By the end, Hogg had signed the contract and had also, quietly, inquired about building a factory in Border Town to produce rail equipment locally. Roland had declined: the bottleneck was people, not investment, and adding more investors without adding more workers made the bottleneck worse.

With the contracts signed, the town had three days until the premiere.

The square was larger than it had been six months ago. The surrounding buildings on the west and south sides had been cleared to expand it, and even expanded it was full by mid-afternoon — packed, as Roland noted from the wooden platform Karl had erected at the focal point, in the way that made counting individual people feel like counting individual drops of rain.

He’d announced the performance a week in advance and sent Ministry of Agriculture staff to the outlying farm areas to bring word to the serfs. The response had apparently been enthusiastic; looking at the crowd, he thought the agricultural contingent might outnumber the town residents.

The platform held three rows of wooden benches, capacity roughly a hundred. Roland sat in the center of the third row, which was also the elevated row, giving him a clear line to the stage. Anna was at his right. On his other side: Margaret, who had confirmed her attendance the day she arrived and had shown up early enough to secure a position she was clearly satisfied with. Beyond her, the merchants. Beyond them, City Hall officials filling the first two rows, their apprentices behind them. The First Army perimeter made the platform its own small island in the square, which served double duty as crowd management and protocol.

The afternoon sun was angled enough that it wasn’t directly in anyone’s eyes. Wendy was producing a light, steady movement of air over the platform’s seating area, converting the summer warmth into something approaching comfort. Roland had not specifically asked for this, but acknowledged its effect.

He was, honestly, uncertain about what was going to happen.

He had given Irene the three scripts and stepped back. The casting, the rehearsal, the staging — all of it had been her work and Ferlin’s, and he had not checked in beyond confirming dates. Irene had performed formally once; her colleagues were people the Longsong theater had never put on stage. He had built a program around an untested director and an untested cast, performing new material to an audience that had never seen theater before.

None of this, he reminded himself, was the point. The ideology was the point. Even a rough performance in front of this crowd would plant the seed; a second performance would grow it; a third would make it ordinary. He did not require perfection from the first.

The crowd settled into something approaching quiet. On the stage, the actors were taking their positions.

“I finally understand your confidence,” Margaret said, from his left. “You brought in Miss May.”

Roland looked at her. “Who?”

Margaret stared at him.

“Who is May?” he asked.

“The lead actress,” she said, with the tone of someone performing patience under unusual strain. “The star of the Longsong theater. Before I came here I saw her performance in King’s City — she played a supporting role in The Prince Seeking for Love at the Tower Theater and I’ve seen the full cast of that production. She held the room by herself, she moved the whole audience to tears, Kadin Faso called her extraordinary.” She paused. “You did not know she was here?”

“This is the first I’m hearing the name,” Roland said.

Margaret looked at him for a moment. “Who is the most famous person in King’s City? Outside the court?”

“Yorko,” Roland said, before his social instincts could correct him. “Yorko ‘The Devil’s Hand.’”

“The playboy,” Margaret said, in a tone that contained extensive context. “I’ve heard of him. One hand only, if the stories are accurate. I see.”

“What’s so special about one hand?” Anna said, from his right side, leaning over slightly. “What can he do with one hand?”

“Nothing,” Roland said, too fast. “Nothing notable. We should watch the play.” He fixed his eyes on the stage with the focus of someone grateful for an alternative subject.

The actors had arranged themselves. The crowd went quiet of its own accord, which was the most hopeful thing Roland had observed so far — that this crowd, most of whom had never seen a stage performance, understood from whatever instinct or communal sense that silence was the right response to this moment.

Then the voice from the stage reached the back of the square.

Echo. He had almost forgotten he’d arranged for this. The sound projection carried clear and even through the entire crowd, which for an outdoor venue was extraordinary — normally the back half of a large outdoor audience missed half the words. Here, every syllable arrived intact.

The play was Cinderella. The crowd was quiet. Then the crowd was leaning forward. Then, at a moment Roland could not have predicted in advance, the square laughed — not politely, not with the cultivated appreciation of a theater audience taught to respond at the right moments, but genuinely, from the body, the way laughter sounds when it surprises the person laughing.

Roland looked at Margaret. She was watching the stage with an expression he read as satisfaction combined with technical appraisal.

“She’s good,” Margaret said, without looking at him.

“Apparently,” Roland said.

He settled back and watched.

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