Chapter 950: The Art of Persuasion
Molly nodded along with the others and felt something loosen in her chest.
A month in Neverwinter had left her unsettled in the best way — not because anything was wrong, but because nothing was. The citizens she passed on the streets held neither the cautious deference of people tolerating something they feared nor the exaggerated warmth of people performing their open-mindedness. They were simply curious. Accustomed. They looked at witches the way they looked at the new concrete bridges: with interest, not alarm.
A few days ago she’d been walking along the Harbor District when a gust off the water toppled a stack of wooden crates on the pier. Her hand moved before she thought about it — she called her magic servant forward, the transparent giant rising smoothly to catch the falling stack before it could scatter across the dock. She had braced herself without knowing she’d done it, expecting shouts, a backward surge of bodies.
The workers crowded around to look. One man crouched to peer at where the servant’s legs should have been. A woman pointed at the place where the crates rested, suspended at chest height in apparent mid-air, and said something to her companion that made both of them laugh.
That was all.
She had never had an experience like it. Even on Sleeping Island — a refuge that existed specifically to shelter witches — the migrants had kept their distance. They followed Her Highness Tilly’s edicts without question, but they did not come close. On the Fjord Islands, only the explorers and some merchants made exceptions. The rest observed the unwritten compact: we will not harm you, and you will stay where we cannot quite see you.
The continent was worse. She only knew it secondhand, from Lotus’s letters — and even those she’d read with half a believer’s skepticism, certain that Lotus, who loved to startle people, was embellishing. Arriving in the Western Region had corrected her. Lotus had been understating.
Through the conference hall’s windows she could see the scaffolding on the building opposite, and below it, a group of Sleeping Spell witches working alongside a crew of ordinary laborers without any visible boundary between them. Lotus was somewhere in that city, probably three stories up on something made of her own hands. Evelyn’s tavern had a queue that hadn’t shortened since it opened. Candle — who had spent years being told her ability was ornamental at best — was apparently indispensable to the factory workers, welcomed in the way that people welcome someone who solves a problem they’d stopped expecting to solve.
In her coat pocket, her fingers found the folded edge of the ten-yuan note she’d been carrying since the welcome meeting. The paper didn’t bend like paper. She kept touching the corner of it, the particular way the surface yielded and then held.
Molly had not actively sought employment herself. She hadn’t wanted to add to Her Highness Tilly’s preparations by inserting herself.
But she had also never been good at stillness.
“And we must not forget,” Tilly said from the podium, her voice carrying without strain across the packed hall, “that we still have the greatest enemy ahead of us: the demons. All of you already know what the Battle of Divine Will means — the Church of Hermes is nothing beside that threat. Which means your work cannot only be for your own enjoyment. Every note you earn is your contribution to Neverwinter and to the entire human world. It is proof — the kind the world can read — that witches are not a burden to be endured, but an indispensable part of what keeps humanity standing.”
She let a beat pass.
“Sisters who accept recruitment — please come forward now.”
“Sixty-nine responses out of eighty-six positions.” Tilly passed the name list to Wendy after the hall had emptied. The room was quiet now, chairs still warm from the crowd that had filled them an hour before. “A solid result. Most of the non-responses are hesitation rather than refusal — I’d expect more will come forward in time.”
“Solid.” Wendy’s laugh was a short, bright thing. “His Majesty estimated thirty.”
Something precise and slightly aggrieved entered Tilly’s expression. “He underestimates the Sleeping Spell.”
“More accurate to say,” Wendy replied, letting her smile fall and bowing with real sincerity, “that you deserve the credit. Your Highness, that last part wasn’t necessary for a recruitment address. It’s why sixty-nine people walked up instead of thirty.”
She didn’t say the rest aloud — that she’d been custodian of the Witch Cooperation Association long enough to know what her sisters lacked most, beside a stable home: recognition. Evidence that their existence mattered to someone beyond themselves. They had lived as ordinary people for the first decade of their lives, most of them. That didn’t dissolve when a witch awakened. If anything, it sharpened. They knew what it felt like to belong to the world, and they knew when they had been expelled from it.
“I meant it for myself as well.” Tilly shook her head, a small dismissal. “Roland has shown me what this city can be. If we lose the Battle of Divine Will, all of it disappears. The wisest thing to do before the doomsday winter arrives is to keep warm together.” She glanced toward the windows, where the grey sky sat low and pale above the rooftops. “It’s simply true.”
“Your Highness is right.”
“Unfortunately, not everyone agrees.” Tilly’s shoulders lifted — a small, resigned shrug. “The Eastern Region witches may hold out until the very end.”
“You mean Azima’s group?” Wendy’s brow creased. “If she doesn’t get along with you — why did she come to the Fjords at all?”
“It wasn’t always like this.” Tilly exhaled. “Before they arrived on Sleeping Island, they’d built a relationship with the Bloodfang Association. Heidi Morgan helped them more than once when the Church was pursuing them — the kind of help that builds trust you don’t easily let go of. They arrived already bound to her. For a time that was manageable, but when the tensions between Bloodfang and the Sleeping Spell broke into the open—”
“And then you fought Heidi without warning them first.”
“Yes.” The word carried the weight of an answer that is also an acknowledgment of cost. “I accepted that I made it worse. When Azima’s group asked to leave on the Sleeping Beauty, I agreed — it seemed like the cleanest resolution.” Tilly folded her hands. “If Scroll hadn’t persuaded them to stay in Neverwinter, they’d be gone already.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Wendy said. “Heidi deceived the Wolfheart witches.”
“She also helped Azima when no one else would.” Tilly said it without the energy of someone interested in continuing to discuss it. “If I’d been in that position, I would probably feel exactly as she does. They’re not bad people.”
Wendy was quiet for a moment. “I may have a way of reaching them. But it might cause them to separate from the Sleeping Spell entirely.”
“That’s not so different from the situation now.” No hesitation, no apparent misgiving. “If your approach benefits Roland and benefits them, do it.”
Cold worked its way under the door of the building as Doris and the others came in from outside, and Doris set her hands flat on the table as if bracing herself against more than the chill.
“Is this really all right?” The worry in her voice was already finding purchase in the women around her. “We’ve already offended Lady Tilly. If we refuse His Majesty’s recruitment on top of it…”
The agreement came from several corners at once.
“Roland Wimbledon is King of Graycastle. Even if we went back to the Eastern Region, we’d be under his rule.”
“And we’re not combat witches. If they decide to use force, we can’t stop them.”
“Could any of us actually fight Ashes? She’s hated us since we got here.”
“Honestly — the Witch Union has treated us well.”
“Because they’re waiting. The moment His Majesty gives the word—”
“Enough.” Azima’s voice was not raised. It didn’t need to be. The room went still. “Roland Wimbledon won’t use hard methods. He’s spent too long building this reputation — one coerced witch unravels too much. If we accept recruitment now, everything we held to means nothing. We’d be absorbed into the Sleeping Spell regardless of what we wanted. From outside, we’d look exactly like every other group that gave in.”
She said it with conviction. She also knew — somewhere quiet and honest in herself — that the past two weeks had not been what she’d prepared for. The Witch Union had not treated them as obstacles. The witch called Wendy had come multiple times, not to pressure but to talk, and had somehow managed to make those conversations feel like something other than negotiation. Azima had felt, more than once, the particular warmth of being treated as a peer by someone who wanted nothing immediate from her.
That was the problem. Once you felt that warmth — the specific warmth that meant you belong here — holding the wall required active effort.
She was still holding it.
A knock at the outer door.
“Who’s there?” The edge in her voice was reflexive.
“It’s Wendy.” The voice from outside was familiar — easy, unhurried, the same as it always was. “Miss Azima, I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”