Rewrite That Witch
CH435 · Rewrite
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Chapter 435: Arrested

“Why did you give me this?”

Tilly had put the panda down. She looked at it from a short distance, then back at Roland.

“Do you remember your eighteenth birthday?” he asked.

She pursed her lips. “You did that?”

“Timothy and Garcia.” He told her the story from the beginning—how he had known what they planned, and said nothing. “But I share the responsibility. If I’d told father, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“They would have beaten you for it,” Tilly said. “It was reasonable not to tell.”

“It won’t happen again.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I assumed the extra space in your head was all stored knowledge. It seems that isn’t the only thing in there.” She tilted her head. “Besides this panda—what else is there? What other strange things?”

He could hear her getting tangled on the foreign word and smiled. “Countless things. I’ll tell you more when there’s time.”

She studied him with thoughtful eyes, and he believed she understood more than he’d said.

Then, from the other side of the door:

“Lady Tilly—I have a gift for you—you, step aside.”

“I was here first.”

“I was here first!”

Roland stood. “A great many unpleasant things have happened between us. But the past is done. Whatever came before, you and I—and Border Town and Sleeping Island—shouldn’t be held by it.” He paused. “If you have trouble in the future, come to me. I’ll be your elder brother.” Another pause. “Happy birthday, Tilly.”

He opened the door. Andrea and Ashes stopped mid-argument and stared at him with identical expressions of surprise.

“Stop quarreling,” he said. “I was first.”

Otto wandered the streets with Andrea’s words still turning in his mind.

The lady of the Quinn family died five years ago—exactly what father wanted.

He could not agree with her. He could not find a way to disagree with her either.

He had spent his days in Border Town doing what he’d come here to do—observing, recording, building a picture of the place. Every corner outside the military districts he had walked. He understood this settlement now in ways that no report from King’s City could have given him. The villagers’ lives, by all evidence, had once been indistinguishable from any borderland slum. These streets, these buildings, this air of purposeful motion—all of it traceable to one man’s tenure as lord.

He had watched the iron machines working in the mine district. Two or three of them turned out the labor of dozens. The tall tower on the Redwater supplied water to every home. The new city walls. The residential districts built as if from a plan. The ditches going in now—for a heating system, the posted notices said—that would free people from the cold.

And most of the people could read those notices. That was the detail that stayed with him.

He sat on a stone bench near the square, brushed snow from the seat, and opened his notebook. He had uncapped his pen and was about to write when a hand closed around his wrist.

Two men in black uniforms stood over him. A third had appeared to his left; another pair had positioned themselves across the square. They were not moving toward him—simply watching.

They came for me.

His chest tightened. He kept his voice level. “What do you want?”

“Are you Silver Eye?”

That was the false name on his merchant papers. He had used it since arriving. “What’s this about?”

“We have reason to believe you’re conducting espionage. Keep your hands behind you and follow quietly. Any resistance, and we can’t be responsible for your safety.”

Espionage. He had been careful. He had been careful for days, and still—how long have they been watching?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He moved to pull his arm free. “I’m from the Luoxi Family in the City of Glow. A noble of the Kingdom of Dawn. I’m not—”

The blow to his stomach came without warning. Half his strength disappeared; his body curled on instinct, and the acidic burn of bile filled his throat. Before he could recover, they had him face-down in the snow, hands bound behind him.

“A noble?” One of them sneered. “You told us you were a merchant.”

“Told you not to resist.” A kick landed on his ribs. “You asked for it.”

Several days ago—they’ve been watching me for days. He tried to find breath to speak. “My writ of—the documents are in my bag—”

“Tell it to His Excellency Carter.”

They held him for a day.

He was hungry and thirsty and had spent the hours alternating between anger and calculation when a man who had to be the Chief Knight finally appeared in the corridor outside the cell. Otto gripped the iron bars before the man could speak.

“I am Otto Luoxi from the City of Glow in the Kingdom of Dawn. I was sent by the King of Dawn to find allies against the church. I am not a spy. I want to see your lord, His Highness Roland Wimbledon.”

He had weighed the words during his hours in the cell. In places he knew, prisoners who looked like unimportant strangers had a way of not surviving to their hearings. He was not going to allow them to believe he was unimportant.

Carter blinked at him. “I hadn’t asked you anything yet.” He glanced to his side. “What do you think?”

From the shadows along the wall, a figure stepped forward. White robe, hood drawn close—but the figure beneath it was unmistakable. Her bearing. The particular way she moved.

“What he said is true,” she said, with a shrug.

Carter looked at her, then back at the cell. He pressed one hand over his eyes.

“So he really is an envoy from the Kingdom of Dawn.” He exhaled. “It appears we’ve caused His Highness some trouble.”

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