Chapter 423: The “Connection”
Spear Passi read both contracts twice through before she signed.
The first was the Memorandum of Unification: she would lead Fallen Dragon Ridge to give allegiance to Roland Wimbledon once Timothy Wimbledon’s rule was overthrown. In exchange, Roland guaranteed her position as Lord of Fallen Dragon Ridge, along with the rights to administer her territory across the three categories the document laid out — human affairs, administrative, and financial. The categorization was unfamiliar to her in name, but she recognized its shape immediately. It was simply the framework of her daily life, made explicit and written down.
The second contract took longer. The Memorandum of the Witch Union bound its members to serve Prince Roland — that was undeniable — and she had not come to Border Town intending to bind herself to anyone. He occupied only a corner of the Kingdom of Graycastle. His position was precarious in any reading of the political map she could construct.
But the evening lectures. The mathematics the teachers used in their calculation methods had lodged in her mind like a splinter. She could feel its utility — could already see, dimly, how such a framework might change what she could do with Fallen Dragon Ridge’s accounts and crop projections. And when she had raised the question of restrictions, Roland had answered plainly: the memorandum was loose, more a formal consensus than a binding compact, and members could leave whenever they chose.
She signed.
“I’ve signed it.”
She set the two parchments on the table. Roland did not respond. He was looking at the empty air beside the window, as if something in the grey winter light required sustained attention.
“Your Highness?”
“Ah.” He blinked. “Let me see.”
He had not been this distracted in any of the earlier negotiations. It was the trial, she thought — something about yesterday had unsettled him, though it should not have. The public trial had been an absolute success by any measure she knew. The crowd had moved as one organism, fists raised, voices merged into a single demand that shook the square’s cold air. She had never seen that before: ordinary people, laborers and craftsmen and soldiers’ families, moving with the coherent force of a military unit and not a blade between them. It had revised something in her understanding of what a noble’s power actually rested on.
Yet here was His Highness, distracted.
She needed to understand it. Whatever was troubling him was potentially relevant to the direction of their future cooperation. She raised it carefully, diplomatically.
He looked up from the parchments with something like surprise. Then he shook his head and smiled — a small, wry thing.
“I’m not regretting having opposed the church publicly. They’re enemies that have to be defeated. That much is simple.”
“Then why—”
“I have some mixed feelings.”
She waited.
“I feel a little embarrassed.” He shrugged. “What I said was true. The crimes I described were real. And still — I used them in front of a crowd to produce a particular effect.” He tapped the edge of the parchment once. “Apparently I’m not a qualified politician.”
Politician. She turned the word over. She had heard him use it before. Someone who devoted themselves to the study and practice of political life, she supposed — like an astronomer devoted to stars, but pointed at courts and power structures instead of the sky.
He moved the conversation before she could ask. “I’ll hold onto these. I was told your ability involves controlling the flow of magical power?”
She let the previous thread drop. “To be precise — I can extract magical power from one witch and make it available to another. I can also recover and recycle my own power.” She paused. “Since the process has no visible external effect, I can repeat it as many times as needed.”
“How did you discover the ability?”
“After my awakening.” She thought about how to describe it. “I don’t know how other witches come to know what they can do. For me, it was more like — suddenly possessing an extra organ. You feel it the way you feel your own hands. You simply know it’s there.”
“An interesting description.” He nodded. “You should know that my reason for sending Nightingale to Fallen Dragon Ridge was to deliver an invitation. I needed your ability specifically.”
“I understand.” She bowed. “It is my honor to be useful.”
She meant it, or most of it. She had been in Border Town for only a week, but the town was unlike any place she had governed or visited. It sat at the far edge of the kingdom, surrounded by forest and winter, and yet it moved with the energy of a capital. The streets had a logic to them. The people had money in their pockets and purpose in their walks. A lord with sufficient curiosity could learn something here.
What surprised her more than the town’s energy was the witches. She had expected — she was not proud to admit it — something closer to possession. Powerful noblemen who sheltered witches rarely did so from benevolence. She had expected tighter control, or at minimum the kind of proprietary attention that dressed itself up as care.
Instead: Nightingale had taken a leave of absence that Roland had agreed to without visible complaint, even though he clearly wanted her back. The women moved freely through the castle and the town. He did not treat them as servants.
Was the old rumor true? That the prince was both lecherous and incompetent?
She had accepted it as baseline court gossip and moved on. But now that she had spent a week observing him, the lecherous part felt increasingly implausible. He was remarkably self-contained for a man his age surrounded by women who lived in his house.
Nightingale had said as much. It had seemed like loyalty talking. Now it seemed like accuracy.
He walked her out through the castle’s back passages and into a yard behind the main building. Two witches waited there in the cold.
“This is Anna,” Roland said. “And this is Mystery Moon. Mystery Moon’s magical reserves are relatively limited, but her consumption rate is extraordinarily high.”
“I’m clearly at a middle level!” Mystery Moon objected.
“Among the witches who have awakened,” Roland added.
Mystery Moon fell quiet immediately.
Spear looked at Anna. “Do you want me to connect their magical flows?” She turned back to Roland. “Is Anna the one with the greatest reserves in the Union? If this is a serious experiment, I’d suggest bringing more witches — the total stock of magical power tends to track with age, and the variance between individuals isn’t usually dramatic.”
“It’s an experiment for now,” he said, touching his chin. “If it works the way I hope, I’ll ask the others to come.”
She nodded. Then she reached inward and summoned the passage — the sphere of blue light materialized in the space before her, floating at chest height, steady and quiet. Under her direction, two threads extended from it, thin as wire, and reached toward Anna and Mystery Moon.
“You’ll feel something unfamiliar when it connects. Relax and it will pass.” She spoke carefully. “If you resist, the transfer won’t work.”
The thread touched Anna’s chest.
Anna went still.
Something was wrong — or rather, something was larger than she had expected. It was not a flow she felt but a presence: like a solid mass of iron, colossal, a structure so vast she could not see its edges. Standing beneath it was like standing at the base of a mountain and looking up at the summit.
This was Spear’s magic. This was what connected to her.