Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 54: Bad News

Ambassador Petrov had not planned to make this journey.

He had particularly not planned to make it during the Months of the Demons, in weather that turned the roads into gruel and froze the river margins solid each night. But when Duke Ryan placed the letter in his hands and told him personally to deliver it, Petrov had not been in a position to offer a counterproposal. This was one of the structural realities of the ambassador’s trade: being sent somewhere inconvenient was a significant portion of the work.

He had not opened the letter. He hadn’t needed to. The news had moved through the entire aristocracy of Graycastle the way fire moved through dry grass — fast, consuming, leaving a changed landscape behind. The King was dead. Gerald Wimbledon had murdered him, been caught, been tried with suspicious haste, and been beheaded before most of the kingdom had processed that the trial had happened. Timothy Wimbledon had stepped into the resulting silence and announced that the kingdom could not survive without a king, that he was the heir, and that the battle for succession was over.

He had also issued a recall order to all siblings still holding their conferred territories. Return to Graycastle before the end of winter, it said. Their performance during the past six months would be assessed. After that, the new king would be officially crowned.

The tone of the letter, which Petrov had read three times during the journey, was precise and measured and utterly without warmth, the way sharp things tend to be.

He had watched the river on the way down, mostly to have somewhere to look. What he had not expected to see: commerce. A boat flying Willow Town’s banner had passed them moving the opposite direction, fully laden, unhurried, operating as though the Months of the Demons were a scheduling inconvenience rather than a season when demonic beasts killed anyone who moved through open country unprotected. Border Town was trading.

He had also not expected to see the wall. Last visit, there had been a half-finished earthwork and a lot of timber. Now there was stone — interrupted in one place by something dark and carapaced that had been fitted into a breach like a plug into a drain — and on the walls above it, the shapes of men moving with purpose.

The boat docked at a weathered pier that now had a shed at its end and two guards who came out of it and catalogued everything about the vessel and its passengers before letting anyone step ashore.

He understood, looking at this arrangement, exactly what the 4th Prince intended. The river was the only way out during winter that didn’t require crossing country full of demonic beasts. You controlled the river, you controlled who left.

The 4th Prince received him in the castle’s great room, and had a meal prepared.

This, Petrov reflected, was one of the more disorienting aspects of visits to Border Town. Grilled ham. Dried fish in thin slices. Some kind of salad made with wild herbs that had no business being this good in the middle of the Months of the Demons. Bread still warm from the oven. He ate with more appetite than was perhaps diplomatic, because he hadn’t had a proper meal in four days and had been on the river for two, and Roland Wimbledon watched him do it with the tolerant expression of a man who had planned for this.

After the dessert appeared — which was a small cake of some kind, which Petrov ate carefully to avoid embarrassing himself further — he took out the letter and presented it with both hands, as he’d been trained.

The 4th Prince broke the wax with his dessert knife, took the page, and read it.

Petrov watched his face.

He was looking for grief, or shock, or the particular arrangement of features that went with received bad news. What he found instead was a moment of stillness — the kind that meant processing, not feeling — and then a very small exhalation, and then Roland Wimbledon folded the letter along its original creases and looked up.

“I see,” he said.

He coughed, which seemed to be a conversational reset rather than a medical event.

Petrov said, carefully: “Your Highness, I’m sorry to be the one to bring this news. The death of your father—”

“Yes.” The prince’s voice was not unkind, and it was not grief-stricken either, which was a difficult combination to produce. “The circumstances of the trial were strange. Gerald wasn’t—” A brief pause, choosing words. “My eldest brother was not a subtle man. The account doesn’t fit him.”

Petrov said nothing. These were the kinds of observations that, if he was asked about them later, he would prefer to have no record of agreeing with.

“Even if I wanted to comply with the order and return,” the Prince said, “I can’t leave during the Months of the Demons. The town can’t be left unguarded.”

“I understand, Your Highness.” This was safe enough. It was true.

“Can you carry a reply?”

“Of course.”

Roland called for pen and paper, wrote for approximately ninety seconds, sealed the reply with wax and his signet. He held it for a moment before passing it across the table, as though the envelope had given him a thought worth considering.

Petrov took it.

He looked at the front. The address was written in a clear, economical hand: To Prince Timothy Wimbledon of Graycastle.

Not His Majesty. Not King Wimbledon IV.

Prince.

Petrov placed the letter inside his coat, thanked his host for dinner, and reflected, on the walk back to the pier, that Duke Ryan was going to be very pleased with this particular piece of information and very unhappy about all the implications of it. Both reactions were essentially Roland Wimbledon’s doing. Petrov was simply the man who had carried the news one direction and would now carry the answer back the other.

This, he supposed, was the structural reality of the ambassador’s trade.

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