Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 310: The Purified

The walls of Wolfsheart City had changed.

Mayne remembered them as they had been — stone from the Kingdom of Eternal Winter, clean and white as new teeth, the whole line of them catching the light in a way that suggested something almost civic, almost proud. That had been three months ago. What stood before him now was something assembled from crisis: the gaps filled with local black boulders, the breaches plugged with wooden palisades where the stone hadn’t arrived in time, the blood-soaked sections gone the color of rusted iron. From the hilltop, two and a half miles distant, the walls resembled the teeth of something that had been feeding — not the clean jaws of a newborn wolf but the worn and darkened mouth of a scavenger, patient, experienced, and dangerous in a different way.

They look more frightening now, Mayne thought, and allowed himself the observation without pleasure.

The Church’s army had set camp at a measured distance from the city. This force was smaller than the last — they had not brought their full strength here, not while the former Queen of Clear Water still posed a threat to the Old Holy City and could not be allowed to find the army depleted at their backs. The Army of Judges and their supply train numbered around five thousand; the God’s Punishment Army, eight hundred. But they had the siege weapon. And they had the Purified.

A priest climbed the hill and bowed. “Your Excellency. The Siege Beast is in position and ready.”

“The Purified who control it?”

“Also prepared.”

Mayne lifted the observation mirror. Two miles out, in what had been farmland, the shapes lay half-concealed beneath camouflage boards and grass-covered roofing. You could look directly at them and believe you were looking at nothing. Only the silhouette betrayed it — angles too deliberate for anything organic, too large for anything a man could have built in secret. He held the glass on them for a moment, then moved it to the God’s Punishment Army ranked in the autumn wind.

They stood motionless. They would remain motionless until the order reached them. This was their particular genius and their only limitation — extraordinary warriors who could not act on their own authority, who required a commander to direct them in the field. That commander had never appeared publicly; in battle, he fought disguised within their ranks, invisible to everyone except the three Archbishops and the Pope. It was a system of concealment that had protected the Church’s deepest asset for generations.

“Very good,” Mayne said. “Return to your position and wait for the attack signal.”

The priest departed. Mayne descended the hill to meet the Purified the Pope had assigned him.

He could already feel the particular displeasure settling in his chest, the one that arrived whenever he thought about these two. Zero and Isabella were unlike any of the Church’s other witches — the ones who had accepted purification willingly, who moved through the ranks with deference, who understood their role as the function of something larger than themselves. Zero and Isabella did not understand their role that way, or if they did, they had interpreted it to suit themselves. During the march they had pursued their own occupations without consultation, and since their position within the Church was equal to his own, Mayne could not direct them. His Holiness had sent them to provide assistance, not to obey.

He reminded himself: he needed their abilities to complete what this siege required. What he needed to prevent was irreplaceable. Their behavior was not.

When I am Pope, he thought, and set the thought aside. Later.

The tent at the east edge of camp was unsurprisingly empty. He turned to the judge standing at the entrance.

“Zero and Isabella?”

“They are conducting an interrogation on the east side. There is an open area — you will see it immediately.”

He would have sent a messenger if a messenger would have worked. He walked.

He found the space the guard had described.

Two women stood at its center. One had white hair and a white robe that moved in the wind with a quality that suggested no connection to the body beneath — she was leaning close to three prisoners whose wrists were bound, speaking into their space with the patience of a woman who had all the time she required. Her face held an expression of gentle concentration, almost devotional. The other was broad-shouldered, golden-haired, and laughed at intervals with the satisfaction of someone watching a performance go precisely as expected.

Mayne stopped. He issued his instructions to his guard quietly: clear the surrounding Judges, relieve the men assigned to watch the prisoners. The guard went. Mayne waited.

The blonde witch noticed him before he’d finished. She said something to her companion and walked over.

“Your Excellency.” Isabella inclined her head. “Why send the audience away? The trial was about to begin.”

“The all-out assault on Wolfsheart will begin soon,” Mayne said. “Interrogating prisoners has become pointless — whatever these men know, our other sources have already provided. I need you and Zero at the front line.”

“Don’t worry.” Isabella spread her hands. “We had to come this far anyway. As for the trial — there’s nothing I can do to stop her. You’re welcome to watch. It won’t take long.”

“The same format as before?”

“The rules will be roughly the same.” She smiled. “Zero enjoys this kind of game.”

“Then proceed quickly.”

He kept his face composed. The word game was correctly chosen — what Zero conducted was not an interrogation. It was something closer to what a cat performed with a mouse that still had some running left in it. The prisoners were offered a defined escape condition: flee beyond a marked boundary, or defeat the witch, and you could live. The condition was real enough to function as bait. It was not real enough to be achieved.

He had removed the watching Judges because the process was not consistent with the behavior expected of Purified, and because watching it had a way of loosening things inside men that were better kept tightly wound. The ones responsible for monitoring the Purified had faith to protect.

After I am Pope, he thought again. Then I will teach them what it means to follow orders.

Zero had already freed the prisoners from their ropes and laid weapons on the ground before them — a sword, a machete, a light crossbow. She stood empty-handed, her white robe settling in the wind.

“Fight or flee,” she said, pleasantly. “Follow your heart. Only God can issue a ruling.”

One of the prisoners moved before the words had finished. He lifted the crossbow, shot without checking whether it landed, grabbed the sword with his second hand, and charged. The whole sequence was fluid, economical, the work of someone who had been trained in something other than ceremony — militia did not move like that.

The bolt hit nothing. Zero had already stepped back twice, easily, and was now holding the arrow between her teeth with the mild expression of someone who has found something harmless to chew on.

She spat it out. “Please,” she said. “Continue.”

The prisoner looked at her. The courage he had gathered — Mayne could see it leaving him, could watch the specific moment it went. The man’s hands had started to shake. He raised his head, released a roar that was mostly despair, and charged again.

Mayne had spent long enough in Zero’s company to know how it ended. Her body moved slightly aside, one degree of adjustment in angle, and her hands — which looked like the hands of a woman who had never lifted anything heavier than a pen — took the prisoner’s head and used his forward momentum to redirect it. A small sound. And then no more movement from that direction.

She turned to the remaining two.

“Now,” she said, “it’s your turn.”

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