Rewrite That Witch
CH229 · Rewrite
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Chapter 229: On the Eve of Return

Third day. Eastern gate of King’s City.

Nightingale stood in her fog-world and watched.

The grey of it made everything soft at the edges — people moved through it like shapes seen through water, their urgent colors muted, their desperation a thing she perceived in motion rather than expression. Under Echo’s ability, wave after wave of refugees gathered and followed Brian toward the pier. What had been a close, grinding operation two days ago — pushing through the camp’s edges, breaking off small groups, coaxing them into movement — had become something else entirely. Word had spread through the refugee settlement the way fire spreads through dry grass, person to person, until the camp was moving of its own accord. The city guards on the wall above watched it happen. From their vantage, it was only the thing they had wished for: the stinking mass of the dispossessed, finally going somewhere else.

The operation was very nearly finished. The eastern camp was almost cleared. The refugees at the north gate had started moving toward them voluntarily. By sundown, Nightingale thought, they could be on the water.

She surveyed the work. Echo, ringed by the soldiers who passed as mercenaries, threading her voice through the camp with practiced precision. Lily, under the heaviest guard the First Army could provide, working continuously at the long table — water in, purified water out, one bag after another, her hands never quite still. Everyone had something to do.

Nightingale mostly had things to watch.

She noticed Echo pause and look up at the east gate — the ornate stonework of it, the massive doors still closed — and sigh, softly, in a way that wasn’t about the gate itself.

“What is it?” Nightingale asked, moving closer.

“Nothing important.” Echo’s expression went somewhere private. “I was just thinking — before I was sold and brought to King’s City, the journey was terrible. I assumed it was because I was a Sand person, that Graycastle’s people saw me as foreign and showed me accordingly. But looking at all of this—” her gaze moved across the camp, the bodies still lying on the ground, the guards who had shot down people at the walls without particular feeling— “they treat their own people the same way. There isn’t much difference between here and Iron Sand City.”

Nightingale had no answer for it. She put her hand on Echo’s shoulder instead and held it there.

“Not everyone,” she finally said. “Your sisters in the Witch Cooperation Association aren’t like that. And His Highness.”

Echo glanced at her sideways. “Do you think His Highness can actually end it? Not just in one place — all of it. Kingdoms, Sand Nation, the Fjord. Ordinary people and witches. People who’ve been enemies for a hundred years. Do you believe it’s possible?”

“If anyone can do it, it’s him.” Nightingale said it without thinking, and was surprised to find it was true. “And it’s not the machines, or the guns, or the steam engines that make me think so. It’s something in him. He’s not—” She paused. “I always feel as though His Highness is not quite the same kind of person as anyone else I’ve met.”

“He’s a prince, of course he’s different.”

“Not that way. It has nothing to do with rank.” She shook her head, trying to name what she meant and coming up against the edge of language. “He asks questions no one else asks. He wants to understand our abilities in a way that’s not about using them — he wants to understand them the way you’d understand something you found fascinating. Someone who thinks like that…” She trailed off. “It’s only a feeling. I can’t explain it properly. But it doesn’t seem strange to me that a person like that might accomplish something extraordinary.”

“You have a great deal of faith in him,” Echo said, and laughed — a small, real laugh that briefly chased the sadness from her face. “I hope one day to go back south. To find my people again.”

Faith. In some things — yes. In others, Nightingale was less certain. She found herself looking west without meaning to, back toward Border Town, trying to picture what he was doing now. Drawing plans. Working through equations. And possibly — probably — sitting beside Anna in the evenings.

She made herself stop and look elsewhere.

By tonight we leave. And when I’m back, I can ask him anything I want, and he can’t lie to me.

At noon, they returned to camp to rest.

Lightning came down from the sky in stages, low and slow, like something that had been wrung out and needed a moment before it could function again. She was wearing the camouflage coat Roland had designed — grey-blue pattern that matched the sky, covering everything including her head, the windproof glasses leaving faint pink ovals on her cheeks when she finally pulled them off. Her clothes beneath were saturated with sweat. She grabbed a water pouch before anything else and drank most of it in one go.

“Well done,” Nightingale said, crouching in front of her to wipe the sweat from her face.

“Three days of sun,” Lightning said, sticking out her tongue. “If the refugees had kept coming from the east, I genuinely think I would have passed out up there.”

Lily appeared at Lightning’s side, looking as though the world owed her a particular kind of apology. “Are we going home tomorrow? I haven’t bathed in days. I feel terrible all over.”

Nightingale covered a laugh. In the old days — the early months of the Witch Cooperation Association — there had been times they’d gone half a month without bathing and no one mentioned it. Now it was barely a week and Lily looked like she might negotiate her way back. She found herself thinking, with a warmth that was almost rueful: His Highness and his soap and his hot water. He’s made it impossible for us to go anywhere without missing it.

The calm didn’t last through the afternoon.

Theo arrived at camp looking like a man carrying news he hadn’t enjoyed carrying. “Dreamland is mobilizing,” he said, when Iron Axe had assembled the key people. “The intelligence I have is partial — confirmed that they’re gathering forces, suspected that the pier is the target, but my sources aren’t certain of that part. They may have been told something vague, or they may have let the information out deliberately to shake the other rats. That’s not unusual — most of these organizations are half made up of cowards who bully each other. But if the information is accurate, then Dreamland is moving at someone else’s instruction, which changes what this is.”

Iron Axe had the look of a man calculating.

“A gang of scoundrels,” he said at last, without particular concern. “If they scatter in all directions, does it affect your medicine distribution?”

“It shouldn’t. The patrol won’t interfere with my movement through the side gate. And the Skeleton Fingers have agreed to provide protection for the water convoy inside the city. My main worry is the camp, not the city side.” He paused. “I’ll have to stay in the city tonight — the distribution runs until sunrise — so I won’t be here when you sail tomorrow.”

“We’ll manage.” Iron Axe put a hand on his arm, a brief and unceremonious gesture. “When His Highness comes to King’s City himself, we’ll see you again.”

By dusk, the last ship carrying refugees cast off into the canal’s current and turned southwest toward Silver City. The remaining three hundred or so who had declined to leave were given the order to scatter and go where they would. Iron Axe watched them go, then signaled the withdrawal.

The army crossed the canal. They made camp on the far bank and waited for the dark.

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