Wil’s head was beginning to hurt. He sat back in the booth in the corner of the Grinning Fox and ran his hands through his hair, scrubbing at his scalp. Papers laid strewn across the table in front of him, copies of the reports that had been stolen from the fort a few nights prior. There were lists and maps, detailed records and accounts of the Artifacts and their locations, even a bit of the history of their creation. It all made his head swim.

Dixon crossed the table and sat across from him. His eyes widened. “Shite,” he muttered. “What’s all this?”

Wil sighed. The records that the Ghost stole, he signed. What General Heard had copies of, anyway.

“Aye. How long have ye been here?”

Too damn long, Wil signed with a shake of his head.

Dixon gave a soft hum. “Well, let’s have a look,” he muttered, and slid the papers toward him, turning them so he could see. He pored over them, giving Wil’s weary eyes a break from reading.

What the documents described was a slightly more detailed rendition of the story Natalia had told Wil when he was small:

Thousands of years ago, the king of the witches created stones infused with enormous power. Each was only the length of his thumb, a jagged shard that glowed and buzzed with energy. The witch king, Kharis, used them not only to create more like him, but also to wreak havoc on the world. The documents in Dixon’s hands listed the atrocities caused by the stones:

With the Ventus, storms churned without end over plains of tall grass.

With the Mar, tidal waves destroyed whole islands.

With the Solis, fires burned and turned lakes to desert.

With the Luna, people went mad, hearing voices commanding them to die.

With the Terra, vines and tree bark suffocated, tearing buildings apart.

With the Noctis, darkness descended and swallowed the world’s light.

With the Vitalis, whole cities were silenced by plague in a matter of minutes.

Using the stones, the witches grew in number and spread to the far reaches of the earth, wielding power unlike anything the world had ever seen.

And so for centuries, witches ruled over humans, crushing them into the dust with their unnatural power.

Until the war.

A century ago, the tiny resistance of brave, daring humans tracked down the Artifacts and stole them. One by one, they gained the power of the stones, and bit by bit, they whittled away at the witches. A force of witch hunters—the Venandi—was trained up and tasked to hunt and kill and destroy any semblance of witchcraft.

With that, the scales tipped.

The war raged until the last of the Artifacts was stolen, and the humans turned the stones’ power on the witches. The king before Lysander, his brother-in-law, had been the one to spearhead the theft of the final Artifact. His life ended with the war, when he met the king of the witches on the battlefield.

Two kings, two swords, two mortal wounds, and the hundred-year war was ended.

The reports included a painstaking account of the hundred-year war. The copies of the reports outlined the theft of the Artifacts and the way humankind turned the tide of the war.

“Ah, here we are,” Dixon said. He fished a page out from the pile and set it on top. Wil leaned over the table to peer at the page. “This mustae been what the Ghost was after, eh? This is where the Artifacts’ve been kept since the war.”

My father will want to move them right away, Wil signed.

“If he hasnae given the order already,” Dixon muttered.

Wil copied down the locations of the Artifacts into his leatherbound notebook. He frowned, looking over the list. The stones were spread across the continent, from the frozen mountains of Solana to the vast desert of Nasir and the sandy coastlines of Keel. No doubt they were expertly hidden, but there was no way of knowing how many other witches were on their way to the Artifacts’ locations. And what of the king’s plans to move them? Where would they go, and would it be too risky to have them travel on an open road?

Wil had to work quickly if he were to thwart whatever plan the witches had set in motion. The Ghost couldn’t get her hands on any of the stones.

“Well?” Dixon began. “Have ye got a plan?”

Wil shook his head a little, gnawing on his lip. No, he signed. But I’d better come up with one.