Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 530: Lotus’ Concerns

The open sea had recovered its color. Deep blue, clear to the horizon, the surface alive with small chop that caught the afternoon light and threw it back in fragments. The Charming Beauty moved well, riding the swell with the easy authority of a vessel that had been doing this for years, her hull lifting and settling in a slow rhythm that had long since stopped being remarkable to the sailors — and was still remarkable to the witches.

“Set full sail! Come on, boys, move!” One-eyed Jack bellowed from the quarterdeck. “We can reach the Shallow Beach by sundown!”

The sailors swarmed the masts — quick and at ease with height in the way that only people who have grown up aloft ever are — and released the great hemp rope in careful stages, the sail dropping out and catching. The weather at sea changed constantly; they had already run this cycle of releasing and rolling and releasing again several times today. Lotus watched them from the rail and thought that there was something almost admirable about work done so thoroughly and automatically that it ceased to be effortful.

“These things would be so much easier,” Jack said, wandering over, “if I had a boat like those in Crescent Moon Bay. The ones that move without sails. What do you call them?”

“Paddle steamers,” Lotus said. “His Highness Roland built them.”

“Maybe you could ask him to make one for you.” Honey was occupied with the seabird on her shoulder, adjusting its perch without looking. “He might not do it for most people, but he’d probably do it for you.”

“Don’t make it sound like we’re close.”

“Well, you’re close to Lady Tilly.” Honey stuck her tongue out. “And His Highness Roland is very kind to Lady Tilly.”

Jack sucked at his pipe philosophically. “Never mind. I heard from the merchants that one of those paddle steamers costs more than a thousand gold royals. I’d never see that much money even if I sold all of you.”

“That’s not certain,” Breeze said, with a dry humor that suggested she had run the numbers. “In Sleeping Spell, the bounty for Lotus alone runs into the hundreds. And that merchant Durat Kimshoe offered to retain her on a long-term contract at a thousand gold royals. The four of us together would go for considerably more.”

“Breeze.” Lotus turned and punched her in the shoulder with feeling.

“Joking.” Breeze caught her and pulled her in, tucking an arm around her. “How could I ever sell you? When Lady Tilly heard about Kimshoe’s proposal, she negotiated with the entire Crescent Moon Bay Chamber of Commerce. Nobody’s tried that again.”

“You two are very comfortable with each other,” Jack observed. He glanced toward the stern, where two other witches stood apart from the group, not speaking. “Those ones aren’t.”

A small silence.

“They came from the Kingdom of Wolfheart,” Breeze said.

“Aren’t you all the same?”

“They’re more loyal to Heidi Morgan than to Lady Tilly.”

Jack thought about this. “Noble family in Wolfheart?”

“A branch family.” Breeze waved vaguely. “Nothing serious. We haven’t been traveling together long enough to be easy with each other.”

He seemed to understand that this explanation was the one being offered, and did not press for the one underneath it. He moved off.

Lotus did not know much about the Wolfheart nobility. What she knew, she had pieced together over the months since she’d returned to Sleeping Island after the Months of Demons.

The Bloodfang Association had numbered just over twenty witches when they first arrived on the island — a small group, easy to overlook. They would have been easy to overlook anyway had their makeup not been unusual: eighteen of the twenty were combat witches. The Bloodfang Association did not recruit broadly. It recruited selectively, for power, and the witches it gathered were correspondingly capable. During Tilly’s campaign to clear the island of church influence, the Wolfheart witches had taken on the Twin Dragon Island cathedral — the most heavily defended target — and handled it themselves.

And because of that, Heidi Morgan had developed a theory about the Bloodfang Association’s importance to Sleeping Island’s future. She had not stated it directly. She had not needed to. The implications were clear enough in the way she moved through rooms, the way she spoke to Camilla Dary, the way she positioned her Association’s contribution against everyone else’s.

Lotus did not agree with any of it. Tilly’s principle — that all witches were equal regardless of the nature of their power — was the one she had believed since Border Town. Combat witches were not a superior caste. A non-combat witch who could do things no fighter could do was not less valuable because her contributions were harder to count after a battle. The Witch Cooperation Association had understood this. The Bloodfang Association did not seem to.

Camilla Dary had held the line well, in Tilly’s absence — the woman had a noble’s instinct for protocol and a cold patience that was difficult to destabilize. But the underlying tension was still there, like a crack in a wall you can cover but cannot close.

The thing that worried Lotus about this voyage was the composition of their party. Herself and Honey, yes — she understood why Tilly would want them in Neverwinter. But two of the other three witches were from the Bloodfang Association. Combat witches. Roland had powerful weapons already; his need was for witches whose abilities couldn’t be replicated by well-trained soldiers with good firearms. Why had Tilly sent combat witches?

She turned it over and could find no answer that satisfied her. Finally she let it go. Tilly saw further than most people. Whatever she had in mind was beyond what Lotus could work out from the available evidence, and there was no use worrying at a problem she couldn’t yet solve.

The sun was dropping westward when the Shallow Beach came into view, its sandbars golden in the late light.

And above it: a hot air balloon, drifting unhurried in the sky. And beside the balloon — a shape that made the sailors on deck go very still.

The bird was enormous. It came down out of the sky with folded wings, losing altitude in controlled stages, growing rapidly. Sharp claws. A beak that looked designed for the purpose of stopping arguments. The sailors had no category for it.

“Enemy attack?”

The Bloodfang witches came out of the cabin at a run, saw it, and reacted the way trained fighters react to unknown threats: they calculated. “Whatever its size, a target is a target,” one of them said quietly. “We can handle it.”

“Wait.” Lotus stepped in front of them. “It’s flying alongside the balloon.”

The Bloodfang witch looked at her with an expression that said she was making a judgment call she wasn’t qualified to make.

“His Highness uses that balloon to transport witches,” Breeze said, positioning herself at Lotus’s shoulder. “Trust her instinct.”

The bird was close now — massive, loud, its roars carrying over the water in a way that should have been threatening but somehow was not. Lotus had been around Maggie long enough to hear the difference between intimidation and enthusiasm.

The great shape vanished an arm’s length from the sail. A white pigeon dropped out of nowhere and landed on Lotus’s head with a small, satisfied weight.

“You’re finally here, coo!” Maggie shuffled her feet, rearranged her feathers, and pressed her head briefly against Lotus’s cheek. “Welcome back!”

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