Rewrite That Witch
CH669 · Rewrite
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Chapter 669: Diplomatic Turmoil

No. 76 had settled into Yorko’s household gradually, filling the space that Denise had left—not replacing her, exactly, but occupying the routine of the day in ways that made her absence easier to forget.

It was not that Yorko had forgotten Denise. He still had to manage the girl, still checked in on her, still navigated the particular social weight of a well-connected Glow family’s eldest daughter expecting appropriate attention. But No. 76 had arrived in a condition that demanded more immediate management. When Silvermask had returned her, Yorko had been genuinely shocked—whip marks and bruises covered her with the thoroughness of a punishment administered by someone who understood exactly how much the body could take before it stopped being useful. She had looked nothing like the girl he’d met half a day before.

He had been glad, in retrospect, that he’d asked for her as a maid when he had. A few more days under Silvermask’s authority and she would have been destroyed. That was the calculus—a disabled guide served no one, which was the only reason Silvermask had been willing to let her go.

No. 76 had not been fragile. He’d been surprised by that too. Her body, once the wounds had time to close, revealed itself as something genuinely unusual—the musculature of someone trained rather than simply worked, faint lines across her abdomen and back that suggested years of deliberate physical conditioning rather than labor. She had healed quickly and had thrown herself into household tasks with a competence that seemed equally trained.

Including the tasks she was performing now.

“Sir.” She had finished her cleaning round and drifted close, the slight smile already in place before she spoke. “Shall I massage your shoulders?”

The smile was one of the things Yorko had come to appreciate. It was not the simpering performance of a woman pretending to be interested; it was the professional ease of someone who had learned to make a guest feel welcome and had done it long enough that it had stopped requiring effort. There was a directness to it that Yorko found far more appealing than the elaborate indirection of most women who tried to be charming.

He set down his book. “Come and sit.”

She removed his shoes with the same efficient grace with which she did everything, settled beside the recliner, and let him rest his head against her thighs while her fingers worked through the tension in his shoulders. She used actual force—finding the resistant places and working them with technique, not theater. Every other girl who had ever called something a massage had understood the word to mean light contact administered as an excuse for proximity. No. 76 apparently understood what muscle actually was.

Yorko looked up at her face as she worked.

She would never be called a great beauty—her features were pleasant, a degree above the common, nothing that would stop conversation at a court gathering. But her lips were remarkable: full and red and carrying that faint smile even now, slightly curved at the corners in a way that managed to suggest both amusement and availability without quite committing to either. Viewed from below, with the afternoon light coming through the window behind her, there was something almost compelling about the effect.

And her body was extraordinary. He’d never encountered anything like it in a woman—not the exaggerated abundance of wealthy nobles or the angular thinness of peasant girls who’d worked through hunger, but something balanced and precise and strong, the kind of physical presence that made itself known without display. When she moved quickly, or when she reached for something that required effort, he could feel the muscles shift beneath the skin.

He was about to suggest moving to a more comfortable arrangement when the door opened.

Hill Fawkes.

Yorko let his head fall back against the headrest and exhaled. “Tell me you’re not here about another witch.”

Hill’s gaze went to No. 76 and stopped there.

She understood immediately and withdrew.

“You’re being overcautious,” Yorko said, when she was gone. “She’s a servant.”

“The situation in the Kingdom of Dawn is not favorable. Stay alert.”

“Denise comes from a distinguished family and has a public history—you could check her background through half a dozen channels. No. 76 came out of ‘Black Money’ with no documentation whatsoever. Which one would you worry about?”

“Because Denise Payton is already a known quantity,” Hill said, settling opposite him and placing an envelope on the table between them. “Whatever her family’s politics, she’s legible. A guide trained by ‘Black Money’ is not legible at all.”

Yorko felt a small, satisfied warmth. “I know where she’s from and what she is.”

Hill’s brow moved a fraction of an inch. “Do you?”

“A perfect guide takes ten years to produce. The pillow skills, the physical conditioning—these don’t appear naturally. They’re built by training, and they become so thoroughly a part of the person that they stop being performance.” He paused. “She’s at most twenty-five. That means she started when she was five or six years old. Unless she can reverse time, she came from inside ‘Black Money.’ There’s no external facility that trains girls from that age. And there’s no conflict of interest between ‘Black Money’ and us—they run operations considerably dirtier than protecting witches.” He spread his hands. “We haven’t even successfully protected one.”

Hill was quiet.

Yorko enjoyed that for a moment.

The satisfaction evaporated when he opened the envelope.

He read the letter twice. Then he set it down.

Roland had written, in the measured and courteous language that Roland apparently used for everything, a diplomatic communication to the Kingdom of Dawn. The substance of that communication was as follows: the King of Graycastle requested that the King of Dawn cease the persecution of witches and treat them as free peoples. Failure to comply would result in Graycastle employing force to settle the matter, as it had done with the church.

Yorko read it a third time, in case he had misunderstood something.

He hadn’t.

This was the capital of the Kingdom of Dawn. Not the western region. Not anywhere near Graycastle’s sphere of immediate influence. Roland was advising Appen Moya, in courteous but unmistakable terms, that he would invade if the answer was no.

“He can’t possibly believe Appen will agree to this.”

Hill neither confirmed nor denied it.

Yorko returned the letter. “Even if Appen read this charitably—which he won’t—the great nobles of the Kingdom of Dawn will not. What does Roland gain from a letter that will be laughed at in every court in the city of Glow?”

“You called it a bluff,” Hill said.

“Isn’t it?”

“Timothy Wimbledon also thought it was a bluff.” Hill looked at him. “Before the old king’s city fell.”

Yorko’s chest did something that wasn’t quite a heartbeat for a moment.

He stared at the guard. Hill’s expression gave nothing back.

“No,” Yorko said. “That can’t be what he means.”

“Based on what I know of His Majesty,” Hill said, “he does not write letters for the purpose of writing letters.”

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