Chapter 729: Recasting the Broken Sword
“Welcome to the Witch Union.”
Wendy spread the contracts across the desk and looked at the four witches arranged in front of her. The formality of the occasion was not something she had orchestrated; it had arrived on its own, the way significant moments sometimes do. “Read the pledge on the back first. When you’re ready, sign.”
The signing should have happened days earlier — the hunting contest had intervened, then the artillery exercise, and Wendy had managed her impatience by telling herself that these things were also useful in their own way. She had not entirely convinced herself. When Annie had come to her door this morning, moving before any of the others had thought to, Wendy had been so relieved that she’d had to actively prevent herself from saying so.
Amy raised her hand. “Wendy, don’t you usually test our abilities first?”
“Normally, we test after signing. If you have questions about the terms—”
“Oh. Then let’s read.”
Amy was the only literate one among the four. The other three arranged themselves around her and listened as she worked through the contract, stopping occasionally to ask what a phrase meant, the group discussing it in low voices before Amy moved on.
Wendy watched them and thought of herself at the signing.
She had expected the contract to be a performance. Something a young prince used to create goodwill that would quietly be replaced later by a different set of rules — the real rules, the ones that didn’t need to be written down because they were enforced through other means. She had signed with that skepticism intact, and had then watched, over months and then years, as the terms were honored with the kind of consistency that didn’t require the contract to remind anyone.
She had been completely wrong, and being completely wrong about that particular thing had been one of the best experiences of her life.
“One gold royal per month?” Amy looked up.
“Yes.”
“And we can buy whatever we want with it?”
“Yes.”
“And paid leave—” Amy was reading now with the focus of someone verifying something they don’t entirely believe yet. “Witches may terminate the contract if His Majesty fails to provide safety, accommodation, or food?”
“Yes.”
“That’s actually in here.”
“It is.”
The four of them exchanged a look that was mostly Amy and partly the other three taking cues from her expression. Then they signed. Nightingale, somewhere in the room, provided the confirmation that the signing was genuine.
Wendy hugged everyone.
“Now you’re sisters,” she said.
The ability assessment took place in Leaf’s Yard Forest, outside the Witch House. The courtyard’s trees had been shaped over time into a testing ground that was both sheltered from wind and large enough for most ability demonstrations.
Annie went first.
Wendy had been briefed by Amy, who had described the ability with the specific precision of someone who had watched it closely for years: heat generation, concentrated in the palms, with a ceiling that increased with development. In the early years, she could warm things to torch temperature. In adulthood, with ability consolidated, she could heat ironware until it glowed red; at the upper range, lead and bronze became liquid in her hands.
Annie stood in the center of the yard and demonstrated. Her expression was the expression of someone waiting to be told a verdict they expect to be bad.
She had been turned away once by people who had decided her ability wasn’t worth keeping.
Wendy recognized this in her face because she had seen it before — in Mystery Moon, who could only magnetize objects, and in Echo, who could only replay sounds. Both of whom had eventually found the places in Neverwinter that were specifically shaped to need what they had.
“This is an excellent ability,” Wendy said.
Annie’s expression did not immediately resolve into relief. “Even if I can only heat things with my palms?”
“Especially because of that. The machining plant in the industrial zone needs exactly this — controlled, precise heat at specific locations. The furnace crews could use you. The chemistry laboratory too.” She wrote the placements in her notebook. Roland reviewed these assessments afterward; Wendy had learned early that he had a better intuition for ability applications than she did, and she’d stopped being embarrassed by the gap and started using it as a tool for improvement.
Amy was next. The assessment required her to produce a minor injury — a small cut — and then heal it, which she did with the matter-of-fact efficiency of someone for whom this sequence had long since ceased to feel dramatic. The healing was immediate and complete. The assessment was brief. Wendy marked her down for the hospital’s healing rotation.
Hero’s ability was more complicated. She could transfer diseases rather than cure them — taking a sickness from one person and moving it to another body, animal or human. Wendy considered this. The pathogen theory — that diseases were caused by organisms too small to see — had been part of Lily’s research, and Hero’s ability to interact with whatever was actually causing illness might have applications in that domain. She put a circle next to Hero’s name.
Broken Sword was last.
She had shown her ability to no one, not to Yorko, not to Phyllis. Wendy had no briefing to draw on.
“Go ahead,” she said.
Broken Sword closed her eyes and breathed. The magic gathered visibly — a brightening around her outline, then an intensification that required Wendy to step back and narrow her eyes against the light. The light was not colorless. It was the specific silver of Broken Sword’s hair, and it moved with the quality of something that was becoming, rather than just emanating.
Then it ended.
Where the silver-haired witch had stood, a sword lay in the snow.
Wendy stared at it.
“She can’t hear you,” Annie said. “Once Broken Sword takes that form, she’s cut off entirely. You have to hold the hilt before she regains her senses.”
Wendy crouched, studied the weapon, and picked it up by the hilt.
Something settled into her perception: another mind, quiet and distinct, joining hers the way a second voice joins a conversation. Her strength increased — her actual physical sensation of weight and force shifted. Her vision sharpened; the yard’s edges were clearer than they’d been a moment before.
“Co-existence,” said a voice that arrived in her skull without traveling through the air. “When you hold me, you have what I have.” A pause, and something regretful moved through the connection. “But I’ve always been weak. What I can give you isn’t much.”
Wendy examined the blade. Narrow as a finger, the length of an arm, a shape more like a needle than a conventional weapon. The stripe patterns across the surface were dense and precise, each one following a line that reminded her of something she couldn’t immediately name.
“How long can you hold this form?”
“As long as you like, if I’m not switching back and forth.”
“Let me understand something.” She looked at the blade and considered. “Annie said only witches can demonstrate your real power?”
“Yes. With a common person, I’m just a very sharp sword, and even then I’m damaged if they strike too many blows. With a witch, her magic can fill the blade and extend it.”
“Show me.”
Broken Sword guided her through it — Wendy applied her ability to the blade, feeling the magic flow outward into the metal, watching the silver surface obscure behind a thin layer of white light that moved like fog. The drain was significant. She wouldn’t be able to sustain it long.
She swung the sword toward the nearest olive branch.
A gust came from the tip of the blade, half a meter before contact, and cut the branch neatly.
“Wind,” Wendy said, in a different voice than she’d used for the others.
“The magic reflects what the holder brings.” Broken Sword sounded, herself, slightly surprised. “I didn’t know you were a combat witch.”
Wendy thought briefly of Anna holding this blade, and then decided not to pursue that image — it implied a scenario she would prefer to avoid. She marked the name, added a circle, and set the blade gently back in the snow.
In the darkness that Broken Sword described — pitch-black, soundless, without even floating — she told her: “I won’t do that to you without warning again.”
The response, after a long silence, was very quiet.
“Yes.”