Rewrite That Witch
CH214 · Rewrite
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Chapter 214: The Journey to King’s City

The merchant fleet followed the Redwater River’s northern branch, passed through Silver City, and entered the Grand Canal that ran to King’s City.

Theo stood at the rail and watched the banks unspool on either side. He had read, somewhere in Chronicles of Graycastle, that two hundred years ago all of this had been wasteland. Wimbledon I had wanted a direct route from the silver mines to the capital—had summoned stonemasons and nearly ten thousand laborers and spent twenty years cutting a channel through the earth. In the process, a city had grown up around the mines almost without anyone deciding it should, and the late king had named it Silver City as a matter of record.

But there was no wasteland here now. Both banks were thick with farmland, the fields breaking into villages every few kilometers, smoke rising from chimneys in the middle distance. He thought of Kingdom Avenue—the road being built between Border Town and Longsong Stronghold. When it was finished, he suspected, those hills would fill the same way. People followed infrastructure; they always had.

“I heard you used to live in King’s City.”

He turned. Margaret stood behind him, her hands loose at her sides, her expression pleasant in the way of a woman who asks questions carefully.

“Before I joined the palace guard,” he said. “I lived in the inner city.”

“How does it feel to return?”

Theo considered the question. “Honestly? Not bad—I’d rather stay in Border Town if I had the choice. King’s City is lively, but there’s a weight to it. Suffocating, in a way.” He didn’t say: especially for men like me, who understand exactly how the weight is distributed. He kept that part.

Margaret smiled, lightly. “What do you make of His Highness Roland? I’m curious.”

The question tightened something in his chest—not alarm, exactly. Caution. “Why do you ask?”

“He’s unusual,” she said simply. “The rumors in King’s City paint him a certain way. But Border Town is nothing like those rumors. His behavior, his ideas—they’re not what anyone would expect. The steam engine I could attribute to learning. But the soldiers he trains…” She glanced toward the men sitting on the deck. “That’s something else.”

Theo followed her gaze. The hundred soldiers of the First Army were scattered across the open deck—no uniforms, no guns, armor swapped for varied leather, wooden spears on their backs. Ordinary caravan guards on paper. First time most of them had left the Western Territory, and they showed it: they were looking at everything, talking to each other, pointing at the far bank. But none of them had taken off their boots. None of them had sprawled out in the shade the way the caravan’s own mercenaries had—three or four of those spread flat across the stern, arms outstretched, hats over their faces.

“I’m not sure,” Theo said, and he meant it. “I think the person His Highness was before Border Town might have been a performance.”

“Is it?” She said nothing more for a moment. Then she pointed east. “Look—there’s the wall. We’ll arrive soon.”

At the edge of his vision, the city wall materialized from the distance—a grey mass first, then a structure, then something that deserved the word magnificent whether you wanted to use it or not. The stonemason guild’s best work before they were dissolved. Every measurement second to none in the kingdom; rooms and channels inside the wall itself, enough space to rest close to a thousand soldiers, to guarantee continuous patrol and rapid response. He had forgotten how it looked arriving from the water.

He had also, apparently, forgotten what gathered at its feet.

The fugitives had built their camp along the outer wall—simple sheds, fires burning low in the summer heat, white smoke rising from pots of thin porridge. Their faces, at this distance, were unreadable. Fed enough that they weren’t desperate. Not fed enough that they were comfortable. King’s City would not sustain them indefinitely; once the nobles had selected the laborers they wanted, the rest would be driven off.

“How do you plan to work?” Margaret asked, watching the camp approach. “Will you have the soldiers recruit by announcement?”

“That would be slow, and it would draw attention.” He shook his head. “In King’s City, you either bribe an official or you hire rats. You understand that better than most.”

She laughed. “I was going to offer advice, but apparently you don’t need it.” She produced a token—a deep red stone, engraved with markings he didn’t recognize—and held it out. “Show this at any of my shops. The manager will contact me directly. Anything under a hundred gold royals, they’ll give you on the spot.”

Theo took the stone. “Thank you.”

“His Highness will repay it. With interest.” She was still smiling. “No politeness required.”

At the canal pier, he ordered the soldiers to remain outside the city walls. Their task for now: avoid patrols, stay quiet, wait. He entered King’s City with the caravan.

The gate inspection had tightened. Guards checked each face with a particular attention that hadn’t been there six months ago. Nobody who looked like a refugee was getting through.

Past the gate, the first thing he saw was the gallows.

A row of them. Four women, hands bound at their backs, left in the summer sun until the heat had done what heat does. The stench reached him before he was close enough to see their faces clearly.

“Timothy is hunting witches in the city,” Margaret said, quiet. “Though some of them were simply women whose owners grew bored. Hard to say which fate is worse—a dark cell or this.” She paused. “I hope they’ve found some peace.”

Six months in Border Town had changed how Theo read these things. The Church had taught that witches were categorically other—not human in the ways that mattered, deserving what they got. But he had sat at tables with witches. He had watched them laugh and argue and fall asleep over books. He had seen Nana Pine heal men who should have died. Whatever the Church said, he knew what he had seen.

The smallest of the four women on the gallows couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Fifteen at most.

The suffocating feeling came back, familiar and unwelcome.

The rest of King’s City was largely unchanged. The main avenue—blue-paved stone, the city’s best—ran to the gate and nowhere else; the side streets were packed mud baked hard and cracked by summer. Carriages raised small storms of yellow dust as they passed. It was difficult, standing here, to reconcile this city with the grimy efficiency of what was being built at Border Town—a small town on the western edge of the kingdom, by most measures still a backwater, already outpacing its capital in basic infrastructure.

Theo waved goodbye to Margaret where the caravan entered the market district and turned alone into an alley.

He found the Underground Trumpeter Tavern by memory—the facade, the door, the particular smell of a place that kept different hours than the rest of the street. He pushed through without knocking.

“We’re closed until night!” someone shouted from the back.

He ignored this and went to the bar, where a large man was wiping a glass with the focused expression of a person who found such work genuinely satisfying. The man looked up at being disturbed. His expression arranged itself into displeasure, then sharpened into something else entirely.

“Sir—Theo?”

“Good morning.” Theo set his elbows on the bar. “I have a business opportunity for you.”

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