Rewrite That Witch
CH800 · Rewrite
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Chapter 800: The Revived Harbor

The ship was unlike anything Simbady had seen.

It was flat and wide and made of concrete — not wood, not hide — and it displaced the water with the indifference of a thing that had never considered sinking. Two long metal cylinders rose from its back, breathing black smoke in steady rhythmic pulses. Its sides were painted the orange of late afternoon, and the gray deck above gave the whole vessel the impression, at first glance, of a rainbow trout lying belly-up in the bay.

Like most of his people, Simbady had lived his life in the desert. The ocean was something spoken of, not seen. He could not help the sound that left him when the ship glided into Clearwater Bay and berthed before them.

He was not alone. The sound moved through the assembled ranks.

“Pah!”

The whip cracked near their heads. Osha’s supervisor was already moving.

“Mouths shut! Line up — board the ship — move!”

The crowd began to stream forward. People jostled from behind, and Simbady found himself carried on the current of bodies without quite deciding to move. As he stepped toward the gangway, a soft fear opened in him.

He should not have left the Silver Stream Oasis for a foreign land. There was water here, yes — an endless supply — but the Three Gods might not be able to watch over a place this far from home. If the ship carried them into Styx’s River, there might be no one to hear them call.

“Hold on to me — watch your step!” Molly’s voice cut through the noise.

Her hand found his, small and sure, and drew him onto the gangway. Around him, at irregular intervals, someone lost their footing and hit the water with a flat splash. The people on the pier hauled them out quickly enough, but the message was plain: fall into the river in this weather and your working qualification was forfeit. Those who pleaded at the pier edge received a whip for an answer.

Simbady stayed close to Molly and followed the current aboard.

When his foot met the deck, he braced for the wobble he expected from every boat he had ever heard described. It didn’t come. The ship was as still as packed earth. He pressed his boot against the gray surface and felt nothing move beneath it.

When the gangway was withdrawn, Thuram appeared on the elevated platform at the ship’s center — honcho of the Osha clan, and the man who had organized everything that had brought them here. His voice carried easily over the assembled crowd.

“Do you remember what I said? The chief values order and discipline above all else. Look at your clansmen in the water. The plan was simple: everyone boards smoothly, and everyone earns work and food even through the Months of Demons. Instead, their stupidity has cost them that chance. They will go hungry until the next opportunity. And they did this to themselves.”

“It was nothing but a fall,” an Ironsand man said somewhere behind Simbady. “They just need dry clothes—”

Two supervisors were already moving. They pressed the man down, and then tossed him over the side.

The splash echoed across the deck.

“Discipline is everything.” Thuram’s voice didn’t rise; its steadiness was its own form of force. “There is no collective that accommodates the individual — only individuals who submit to the collective. Hear this as your first lesson. Carry it.” He paused, and something in his posture shifted from reprimand to something almost measured. “Those who lost their positions today will only go hungry for a time. But from now on — any Sand Nation person who refuses the rules of this place will be banished from the evergreen land entirely.”

The metal cylinders boomed, once. The sound rolled across Port Clearwater and out over the open water.

The great paddle wheels on either side of the hull began to turn. The ship shuddered, and then moved — slowly at first, finding its heading — and the berth began to fall away behind them.

Simbady looked at Molly.

“Thank you,” he said. “Without you, I might have—”

She waved it off, already looking at the riverbank sliding past. “I was just ahead of you in the line.”

“Still.”

He lowered his head. They had spoken sometimes, he and Molly — both Fishbone clan, occupying the same small orbit. He had always found something appealing in her: the directness of it, the hazel eyes and dark braided hair. But word had reached him that she had a sweetheart, and he had thought it wiser to keep his distance.

After a pause, he turned to look at her properly, leaning over the ship’s side with her eyes on the scenery as though everything she passed was being catalogued.

“Are you not at all worried about where we’re going?”

She glanced back. “Blackwater Valley?”

“Yes. I’ve heard the other clansmen say it’s near the Choke Swamp and Rotten Wasteland. Cursed ground. Anyone who goes in without permission doesn’t come back.”

“And did they apply for permission?” She studied him with a dry patience.

“Well — no, but—”

“They’re trying to discourage competition,” she said. “Fewer applicants means more resources for their own clansmen.” She puffed a breath of white air into the cold. “And besides — Lady Drow Silvermoon said that if we follow the chief’s instructions, our families will have what they need. The tribe will receive resource subsidies.” She looked at the water. “Beyond all that — do we have a choice?”

That shut him up.

The Fishbone clan had not left the Silver Stream Oasis by preference. The oasis itself was being lost to the desert — one season at a time, the edges retreating, the tributary of the Silver Stream shrinking to a trickle that could no longer guarantee survival. To remain was to die slowly. To join a larger clan meant surrendering independence they might never recover. The Southern Territory of Graycastle had been the only door still open.

“At least the chief kept his first promise,” Molly said, more gently. “We’re not starving. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

It did. Even those who had lost their work opportunities today would receive a basic ration, and anyone who could contribute labor to the Territory’s reconstruction wouldn’t go hungry. Simbady couldn’t refute this.

“Besides — Osha people are going to Blackwater Valley alongside us.” She pointed at something in the distance. “Look — the land allotted to our clan should be near that dark tower. I hope we can stay somewhere like that permanently.”

He followed her gesture. Port Clearwater spread itself in two halves from the waterline: one half a burnt-out wasteland, still wearing the marks of destruction — charred frames, fallen walls, courtyards thick with weed. The other half was alive with fresh urgency. Ironsand people moved through a camp of assembled tents; damaged houses were coming down one by one, and freshly cut timber was flowing in to take their place.

Looking at it, with Molly’s voice and Molly’s smile in his peripheral vision, he felt something shift — the anxiety loosening, replaced by something more tentative but warmer.

In three months, when I come back from the work assignment — perhaps near the tower will be a street of new wooden houses.

The port shrank behind them as the ship found the deeper channel. Then the riverbanks fell away entirely, and there was nothing left but the skyline and the swell and the immensity of the open sea.

They had entered the ocean.

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