Adolfo, the Master Inquisitor, watched two of his Assistant Inquisitors tie the old witch to the chair, then dismissed them with a sharp wave of his right hand. As soon as they left the room, he locked the door, something he’d never done before while softening a witch to confess. It wasn’t that he doubted his ability to contain her, despite his dead left arm, but he didn’t want anyone walking in and disrupting his concentration at a critical moment. Besides, the trembling crone was dependent on his mercy now and wouldn’t dare try to summon her power and use it against him.

He’d already taken her eyes, her ears, her tongue. He’d taken her hands and feet.

And still he heard whispers among the Inquisitors that Master Adolfo, the Witch’s Hammer, had become soft, had become diminished since he’d begun the extermination of the witches in Sylvalan. He drank too much. He’d ordered the witches recently captured to be brought to Wolfram, soiling the home country’s land with the presence of those foul creatures.

Fools.

Even Ubel thought he’d grown soft, and that betrayal of un-questioning loyalty enraged him more than the whispers of the lesser Inquisitors. Ubel had been his finest warrior, his most trusted assistant in this war against magic and female power. He’d nurtured the hungry, beaten boy he’d found in a stinking alley one summer and had shaped him into an educated man with a great destiny.

Ubel could no longer be completely trusted, but there was no one else strong enough to lead, to do the things that must be done in order to win the coming war against Sylvalan.

Perhaps he did drink too much wine, but that hadn’t clouded his thinking or softened his determination to rid the world of witches and the power they wielded. It hadn’t softened his determination to rid the world of magic in all its forms. When the witches were finally destroyed, the Fae and the Small Folk would be destroyed with them. Then men would rule the world as was their right—and the Inquisitors would rule the men.

Hearing a soft scrabbling coming from the wooden cage in the center of the room, Adolfo walked over to it and lifted a corner of the cloth that covered the cage. The squirrel froze for a moment before dashing for another corner in an attempt to hide.

Dropping the cloth, he turned to study the old woman.

Despite what Ubel and the other Inquisitors thought, he had not grown soft and he had not been idle last winter. He had thought, he had studied, he had prepared. But he hadn’t had the one thing he’d needed to try his experiments. He hadn’t had a witch.