Rewrite That Witch
CH257 · Rewrite
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Chapter 257: Mystery

The banquet ended late, and sleep would not come.

Roland lay in the dark with the ceiling for company and the particular restlessness of a man whose mind was still running through the evening’s events — the introductions, the witches’ faces, Sylvie’s careful courtesy — until he gave up, went to the cabinet, and drank half a cup of white spirit in measured silence. Then he went back to bed.

By the time the first cicadas struck up in the courtyard he was already awake, clear-headed, and dressed. He was at his office desk before the sun had fully cleared the eastern wall, the morning light coming through the window in long pale strips across the surface of a new notebook. He pulled it open to the first blank page.

The Sleeping Island witches would need a transition week before any work assignments made sense — time to learn the streets, meet the townspeople, settle into the rhythms of a life that was like Sleeping Island in some ways and unlike it in others. Wendy and Scroll were the natural guides for this. Beyond the week: Wendy handling the initial integration, structured education classes in the evenings, formal ability assessments to follow once everyone had their footing.

The next part required more thought. He worked through it with the careful pleasure of someone building something piece by piece, and was deep enough into the planning that he almost missed the familiar absence: there was no one asleep in the chair by the window.

He had grown used to Nightingale being there when he came in. The corner of his mouth moved, rueful and fond at once. He returned to the notebook.

The sun had climbed to the top of the window frame when Nightingale finally arrived.

“You’re actually up early,” she said, dropping into the vacated chair and looking at him with faint suspicion. “Did Lily tell the truth? Were you really too impatient about the new witches to sleep?”

“What nonsense,” Roland said mildly. He opened his desk drawer, produced a bag of dried fish, and pushed it across the table. “How did you get on with your new room-partner?”

Nightingale’s lip curled slightly. “I wouldn’t trust her too far.”

“What happened?”

She reached for the bag and turned it in her hands before answering. “Of the ten sentences she spoke last night, five were lies. Not dangerous lies — she doesn’t wish anyone harm. But she’s concealing a great deal.”

“That seems reasonable.” Roland showed no particular concern. “She was probably trying to determine whether I’m actually Roland Wimbledon.”

A pause. “What?”

“Think about it. If someone close to you changed completely — stopped running from every difficulty, started making decisions that contradicted everything you knew about them — you’d start asking whether they’d been replaced or were being controlled, wouldn’t you?”

He set down his pen. “In King’s City I had a reputation. Everyone who knew the fourth prince knew him as someone who drifted, borrowed his father’s authority to bully those below him and avoided those above him. Someone who had never worked for anything. That was the person Tilly grew up with.” He paused. “She had her reasons for thinking a stranger might be wearing her brother’s face. Sending Sylvie was intelligent. I’m not offended.”

There was a silence while Nightingale thought this through.

“In that case,” she said, “I also want to know. Are you actually Roland Wimbledon, or not?”

“Both things are true,” Roland said. “Which means yes and no.”

Nightingale’s expression went carefully still. “My ability is telling me that’s not a lie.”

“Because it isn’t.”

She pressed her fingers to her forehead and held them there for a long moment. Then she dropped her hand. “Fine. I’ll ask Anna later. In the meantime — as long as the Roland I know keeps being the Roland I know, I’m satisfied.”

“From the moment you met me, I’ve always been exactly myself,” Roland said, and smiled.

After breakfast, Wendy brought the five witches into the office.

Roland studied them as they arranged themselves — a loosely formal line, attentiveness mixed with uncertainty, the posture of people who were not sure yet what register of deference this room required.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m not particular about etiquette. Address me the way you’d address Tilly.”

He outlined the first week: no assigned work, free movement through the town, no one would arrest them or mark them for the Church’s reward — the Church had been fully expelled from the Western Territory, and Border Town was as safe as Sleeping Island. Practice was required daily; he explained magic devouring and the necessity of keeping abilities active. Evening education classes were available for anyone interested — reading, writing, basic mathematics, natural philosophy. Monthly wages, weekends free, paid leave.

He watched their expressions shift through surprise and into something that was beginning to resemble cautious belief.

“Before we proceed to the ability tests,” he concluded, “is there anything anyone wants to give me?”

Sylvie stepped forward.

She untied the cloth package in her hands and laid its contents on the table: several sheets of yellowed parchment and a sealed letter from Tilly.

“Lady Tilly found these documents in ruins in the Fjords. She wants to know whether you recognize the script.”

Roland took the letter first. Short — Tilly’s letters were always economical. He reached the last line and stopped.

An artificial island. Set on the ocean floor. Four hundred and fifty years of tidal change, and inside it: a functioning observation apparatus, a stone gate built into the cliff face. He read the final questions Tilly had written and felt the unease arrive before the thinking did — a cold clarity, the way you notice the air has changed before you can name what caused it.

He looked at the parchment. The characters were familiar. Not from any language he’d studied in his previous life, but from here — from Scroll’s holy book, the one Cara had brought back from the ruins in the eastern forest. The same hand, the same system, the same choices of symbol.

“Go and get Scroll,” he said to Nightingale. “Now.”

She was back within minutes, Scroll arriving from City Hall with the purposeful haste of someone who had been interrupted at work and accepted the necessity. She summoned her magic book, laid it open, and held the parchment beside it.

The match was exact.

The characters used in the Fjords ruins were identical to those in the ruins of the eastern forest Sea Wind Region. Tilly’s guess confirmed, letter by letter: both structures had been built by the same people.

If it was the Church who built them — why did they abandon everything? Why leave the records without erasing them? What were they trying to hide?

The summer sun outside was at its most relentless. Roland should have felt it through the window glass; the office was warm. But what he felt instead was a cold rising from somewhere beneath his feet — indistinct and gloomy, the kind of cold that a temperature could not explain.

The stone tower in the Concealing Forest. The demonic beasts. The Devils. The Holy City of Taquila, four hundred and fifty years silent. All of it waiting at the edge of the map, patient and enormous and not yet understood.

What happened four hundred and fifty years ago?

He was aware of Scroll and Nightingale watching him. He assembled his expression with care.

“I understand what Tilly is trying to do,” he said. “I’ll write her a full reply — the Devils, the Holy City, Soraya’s illustrated records. Everything.” He paused. “But we should proceed with the ability tests first. Developing our strength during peacetime is still the right choice. When the war comes, at least we’ll have something to fight with.”

The unease did not leave. It settled lower, somewhere behind his ribs, and stayed there as he stood and reached for his coat.

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