Rewrite That Witch
CH005 · Rewrite
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Chapter 5: Reasons

Second Law of Thermodynamics: Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other changes; or, it is impossible to convert heat from a single source into useful work without causing other effects; in an irreversible or spontaneous change from one equilibrium state to another, entropy always increases.

Roland copied it carefully into the language of this world—a language that still felt foreign in his hand, every character an argument with a pen. He had always believed, if pressed, that the Second Law was the saddest thing physics had discovered: not the violence of entropy but its patience, the way it accumulated without announcement until everything was very cold and very far apart and nothing moved anymore.

And this world had broken it.

Not bent it—broken it outright. Anna produced fire from nothing; she reversed disorder without consuming anything Roland could identify. That was more than a perpetual motion machine. A perpetual motion machine would have merely embarrassed a century of thermodynamics. This embarrassed the universe.

He was humming when he tore up the paper and fed it to the fireplace. Barov, sitting across the office, watched the prince destroy his own writing with the resigned expression of a man who had served difficult masters and was accustomed to their idiosyncrasies.

“The execution was carried out,” Barov said. “The witch was hanged at noon.”

“Good.” Roland reached for his pen again. “Did anyone see her face?”

“The hood was in place. No one questioned it.”

The substitution had been Roland’s first administrative act of any real consequence: a woman of similar build found in the town’s small jail, facing a shorter sentence, given an early release she would never know the terms of. Everyone who had been in the dungeon received twenty gold royals and a quiet interview. The warden had wept with gratitude. The guards had been almost comically eager to agree. Carter had said nothing—Carter’s kind of loyalty was applied to the person, not the principle, and Roland was increasingly certain he could work with that.

Barov had suggested killing them. Roland had declined.

“You can’t silence this kind of thing forever,” he told the assistant minister now, when Barov raised the question again.

“Then you’re counting on it spreading.”

“Eventually. Not yet.” Roland set down the pen. “When the time comes, word that Border Town harbors witches and treats them as people—that will be useful. Other witches will hear it. But not yet.”

Barov absorbed this with the expression of a man who was rapidly revising his estimate of the prince. Roland let him revise.

“Now,” Roland said, “the reports. The financial records—tariffs, taxes, expenditures, and a full accounting of every workshop in the town. Iron, textiles, pottery. I want numbers and I want scale.”

“I can have them ready in three days.” Barov paused. “But, Your Highness—”

“Something else.”

“I don’t understand,” the minister said. He said it carefully, the way a man picks up a piece of evidence he’s not sure he wants to find. “In the past, there were… escapades. Foolish ones. But always small in their consequences. What you’ve done now is not small. You’ve defied the Church’s decree and the King’s decree both. You’ve concealed a witch in your household. And you’ve done it—why? Because you were curious about her power?”

He genuinely wanted to know. That was what made him useful—he was not performing confusion, he was experiencing it.

Roland set down his pen. He spent a moment constructing the answer he wanted to give, which was not the answer that was true, but which was substantially more effective than the truth.

“Tell me honestly,” he said. “Does this border town have any prospect of real development?”

Barov’s mouth opened and closed. He settled on: ”…No.”

“And against my brothers and sister—Gerald with his military prestige, Timothy with his networks, Garcia with her—” Roland paused, as if uncertain. In fact he was very certain. “—her particular qualities. What are my odds of the throne by conventional means?”

The assistant minister did not answer. He had the look of a man watching a trap assemble itself around him and not yet seeing the exit.

“Zero,” Roland said. “So I have to walk a different path. One that would impress even my father.” He leaned forward. “Tell me: what is the one power in this kingdom that even the King chafes against?”

Barov said nothing. But he knew. The expanding authority of the Holy Church—its claim that secular power derived from divine sanction, which the Church mediated, which meant secular power derived from the Church. Wimbledon III had fought that argument for fifteen years and not won.

“If witches are not the devil’s servants but simply people with unusual abilities,” Roland said, “and if I can demonstrate that—practically, demonstrably—then every argument the Church makes on the back of that belief collapses. Their Inquisition collapses. Their claim to be the arbiters of what is human and what is not—collapses.” He let that settle. “My father would find that very interesting. Don’t you think?”

The silence in the room was a different quality than before. Barov was calculating. Roland could almost hear it.

“And you,” Roland added, letting his tone carry the first note of warmth, “have spent twenty years as assistant minister. That word, assistant. It has always struck me as underselling the position.” He met Barov’s eyes. “If I become Wimbledon IV, there will be a Hand of the King to appoint. I will need someone who understands how kingdoms are actually run.”

He watched Barov’s back as the man left, fifteen minutes later—the slight adjustment in the set of his shoulders, the fractional slowing of his gait. Not convinced. A man like Barov would never be fully convinced until the outcome was already certain. But persuaded, which was enough for now. Persuaded to wait and see.

The real logic—the actual reason Roland had pulled the locket from Anna’s neck and wrapped his coat around her shoulders—was simpler and harder to explain. He had looked at her and understood that she was a person, and that the thing about to happen to her was wrong. Not strategically wrong. Not politically wrong. Just wrong, in the clean, uncomplicated way that some things were wrong.

He doubted Barov would find that argument persuasive.

Roland summoned Tyre and said, “Ask Miss Anna to come.”

He caught himself smiling slightly as he said it. The next conversation would be, he suspected, considerably more interesting than the last.

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