Rewrite That Witch
CH070 · Rewrite
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Chapter 70: Spy (Part 1)

Kohl had been many things in his life, but he had never been afraid of a town.

He was afraid of this one.

He stood at his window in the grey morning and watched the militia run their circuits through the square — one two three four, one two three four — and experienced a now-familiar combination of admiration and dread. Admiration because whatever was happening to this town was happening systematically, which he recognized as the product of organized effort. Dread because he understood, with growing certainty, that what was organizing it was not human.

He was “Groundhog” Kohl, which was a name he had earned over fifteen years of intelligence work through an unparalleled ability to move through a situation without being noticed, and through a further ability to notice things without appearing to notice them. Prince Timothy had hired him for these qualities specifically. Go to Border Town, the Prince had said. Watch the fourth prince. Tell me what he does.

Simple enough. Kohl had done harder things.

He had not anticipated the witches.

The first one he had confirmed personally, climbing the city wall before sunrise on a reconnaissance pass. A girl in the courtyard, hands open, and then fire — not a torch’s fire or a brazier’s fire, but fire from nothing, from her hands, shaped and directed. He had retreated with more haste than he preferred to show, even alone.

Then the big attack. He had been at his window. He had seen the gap in the wall, and the fire that filled it — a curtain of flame held in place, orange-gold against the grey sky, maintained for hours. He had seen the woman afterward, unconscious, carried by the fourth prince across a wall of bowing soldiers.

He had updated his situation assessment substantially.

The second witch he had found by accident, when she had walked through a wall of his building. He had been on the other side of the wall at the time, and the experience of watching a person become available at a surface that should not have permitted this was one he intended to mention in his report, if he ever produced a report, as deeply unsettling.

The third witch flew around the castle twice last Tuesday and then landed in the backyard. She had blond hair and a jacket with what appeared to be a structural excess of pockets, and she had not looked dangerous, but Kohl had learned not to use the word appeared as a terminal qualifier.

Three witches. In one provincial castle. Around one fourth prince, who had begun the winter as an incompetent layabout and was ending it as—

Kohl’s theology was not advanced, but he had attended enough Church services to know the relevant framework. Powers of the devil. Servants of evil. The accumulation of witches did not suggest to him an ambitious noble building a useful labor force. It suggested corruption. Possession. The specific shape of demonic influence described in every sermon he had paid attention to and several he hadn’t.

He had, in short, reached a conclusion that he felt confident was correct, and the conclusion was that the fourth prince was no longer the fourth prince in any meaningful sense.

The formula for the grey powder was tucked inside his boot, copied out in his cramped notation system from an overheard conversation between two engineers that he had been professionally proud of getting. He had it. He had the mission. He also had a clear-eyed understanding that continuing to remain in a town where demonic possession was in active progress was bad for his health regardless of what his employer’s instructions said.

Today was the first of the month.

The merchant boat from Willow Town was at the pier.

He put on his fur coat, checked his pockets — two gold royals, sixteen silver, the formula — and stepped outside.

His neighbor was already up, cleaning something on his front step. An old man with the specific contentment of someone who has found the tasks he can still do and does them every morning without complaint. He had given Kohl hot broth twice when the weather was bad, which Kohl had accepted on the grounds that refusing would draw attention, and which he had genuinely enjoyed, which he had not expected.

“Good morning! Where are you off to so early?”

“Errands,” Kohl said, which was a satisfactory answer, and walked.

He kept to the streets where the militia’s morning circuit had already passed, which meant they wouldn’t be around for another fifteen minutes. He moved with the pace of a man running a normal errand — not hurrying, not looking at anything for longer than an errand-running person would look at it. This was the specific discipline of his trade, and he was good at it.

At the pier, six guards were supervising the offload of wheat from the merchant boat. The bags moved in the standard rhythm of dockwork, unhurried, the guards watching the process rather than the approaches.

Kohl assessed the situation.

Six guards was too many to bribe directly; someone would talk. The porter who was directing the offload was a better option — one man, one transaction, one decision about whether two gold royals was worth the risk. He moved around the edge of the bags as they accumulated on the dock, keeping them between himself and the guards, waiting for his angle.

The angle opened.

He took two steps toward the porter.

Shouting, from behind him. Not one voice — several, from multiple directions, the specific quality of coordinated shouting that his experience told him was not accidental.

He turned.

The militia was coming from three streets simultaneously, which meant they had been positioned before he arrived, which meant they had known he was coming, which meant—

He put his hands up.

He went to his knees, slowly and deliberately, because pointless resistance was not part of his professional code and because the men coming toward him were holding loaded flintlocks and had the organized look of people who had practiced this.

The formula was in his boot. He would negotiate. He was good at negotiating. He had a great deal of useful information about Prince Timothy’s operations in Valencia, and people who wanted intelligence about Timothy would find that useful, and people who found things useful tended to be reasonable about how those things were acquired.

He was still a professional. He would be all right.

He thought about the militia’s morning circuits, which he had been watching for weeks, the systematic regularity of them, the brown leather uniforms and the counted cadence. He thought about the grey powder and the fire that filled a gap in a wall, and the woman who had walked through his building’s wall like it was fog, and the girl who had flown around a castle.

He thought: How did they know?

Two militia men reached him and took his arms, and he went without resistance.

He was still thinking about it when they walked him toward the castle, and he was still thinking about it when they delivered him to a room with a single chair in it and locked the door, and he sat in the chair and thought about it for a long time after that.

No answer came.

He had been in this town for three months. He had told no one his real name, his real employer, or his real purpose. He had moved through Border Town the same way he moved through every assignment — carefully, without footprint, watching without being watched.

It occurred to him, for the first time in fifteen years of professional practice, that he might have been watched without knowing it.

He sat in the chair and waited, and the thought did not improve with company.

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