Chapter 420: The Lord’s Response
That night Roland held a banquet at the castle.
The five witches who had participated in the battle took the floor of the hall together, and the applause that followed was sustained and genuine. Even Roland, who rarely drank, finished two glasses of Evelyn’s chilled white liquor and didn’t particularly regret it. The Months of Demons were long. The pressure was chronic and without natural breaks. He took the opportunity when it arrived.
He paid for it the next morning: a raging headache, grey light through the windows, and the peculiar shame of having celebrated something real in a way that left him useless for an hour.
Nightingale was already in his office when he got there, sitting cross-legged on the desk with a piece of dried fish in her hand.
“Shouldn’t you still be sleeping?” He managed a smile despite the headache.
She’d been on his mind the entire time she was gone—not the anxious variety, more the steady background frequency of someone tracking a variable they can’t directly observe. He’d known the geometry of the operation was sound: the open ground gave her advantages the tower room hadn’t, the revolver’s range exceeded the whip’s. He’d known it. He’d still spent three days checking the window.
Nightingale swallowed the last of the fish. “I’m in excellent condition.”
As soon as he sat down she slid off the desk, crossed to the back of his chair, and wrapped her arms around him from behind.
“I actually wanted to do this yesterday in the courtyard,” she said quietly, close to his ear. “But now isn’t so bad either.”
He went still. Then the footsteps outside the door registered, and she was already gone—dissolved into the Mist without a sound, as though she had never been anywhere but standing watch.
“Your Highness.” The guard’s voice through the door. “Marquess Spear Passi requests an audience.”
“Send her in.”
Spear Passi entered, bowed, and took the seat across the desk. She folded her hands. “I’ve finished thinking through your proposal.”
“And?” Roland poured tea.
While the witches had been finishing the operation at Fallen Dragon Ridge, he had been working on the Marquess. She’d needed the full picture: the church’s origins, the origins of the witch hunts, what the demons actually were, what the Battle of Divine Will meant for every living person in the kingdom regardless of title or territory. Tilly’s testimony had helped. Agatha’s had helped more—a Taquila survivor speaking directly about what had been lost and what was coming had a weight that Roland’s explanations couldn’t quite replicate on their own.
When Spear heard that witches had once ruled the entire continent, her composure had cracked visibly. She’d rebuilt it. But something underneath it had shifted.
“Repealing feudal power. Universal law and administrative institutions. No inheritance or sale of titles.” She said it like a list she’d memorized in order to be sure she had it right. “I can accept these. What I’m curious about is—do you intend to extend this to every territory?”
“Yes.” He set the teapot down. “If we don’t, Graycastle is loose sand. Before the final battle arrives, every resource in the kingdom needs to be reachable by one hand.”
“You’ll make enemies of every noble in the kingdom,” Spear said. “Especially the title provision—a lord’s title is also a title. This will confirm the ‘rebel king’ reputation you’ve been working with for a year.”
“That’s precisely why I’m not expecting them to step aside voluntarily.” He knocked on the desk—once, a habit he’d developed somewhere in the last year. “I don’t need to eliminate the nobility. I need to centralize the power they currently hold. As long as they accept new terms, they can keep their territories—their feudal authority is what ends. I believe they’ll make the rational decision when the alternatives become clear.”
Centralization only worked when authority actually concentrated. Local power, left intact, became a competing system. The town had the capacity to enforce a revolution now in a way it hadn’t a year ago—the army, the rail line, the revenue. After this step, he would be the single ruler of Graycastle in practice, not just by title.
“You seem decided,” Spear said. A small sigh. “And if I refuse, your army will overturn my ruling anyway.”
“I need experienced people,” Roland said. “Specifically people who know how to govern a city. You won’t lose your territory. And you can be what you are, openly, without fearing the church.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I have a condition.”
“Go ahead.”
“After you recover Fallen Dragon Ridge for me,” she said, “I want nothing changed there. I’ll give you my full support when Timothy is no longer king.”
Clever. She’d avoided a hard refusal and left herself room to move. What she meant, in plain terms, was this: prove the conquest isn’t empty talk, prove you can actually do it, and then we’ll discuss what support looks like. She wasn’t pledging herself to a plan that might not exist in six months.
Roland didn’t find this irritating. It was exactly what a competent administrator would do.
“Agreed.” He thought: if the spring campaign went as planned, overthrowing Timothy might prove faster than recovering Fallen Dragon Ridge. The sequence was negotiable.
“One more thing, Your Highness.” Spear hesitated. “The witches have classes tonight, I’m told. I wondered if I might attend.”
This surprised him. “Those are beginner courses. Very foundational material. You likely won’t encounter anything you haven’t seen.”
“I’m interested in the calculation methods,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”
Multiplication table? Algebra? Either was plausible. “Of course. Join the Witch Union first.”
After lunch, Iron Axe came in with the afternoon’s one genuinely good piece of news.
“The priest is willing to talk?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“That was faster than I expected.” Roland set down his pen. “I was told he was stubborn.”
“Not everyone has steel in them when it counts.” Iron Axe’s expression didn’t change, but something in his posture had the particular quality of a man who has found the work satisfying. “The Sand Nation has methods that leave the body largely intact while the mind becomes—cooperative. He lasted longer than most.”
Trained spies held out. Men who’d spent their careers in administration and ecclesiastical politics, surrounded by deference and routine, less so. No one in this era had been conditioned specifically for professional interrogation resistance. They broke the way things break when the right pressure finds the right angle.
“Take me to him,” Roland said. “I have quite a few questions.”