Gleb watched the doctor as he leaned down, took measurements of all sorts of things. Temperature, sweat output, color, heart rate, breath rate, all sorts of things. Tem sat patiently off to one side, the Runners relaying in a constant stream of information what it was the doctor was doing.

Gershwin had been paler than Gleb had ever expected to see him, and he could only imagine the amount of pain he was in to draw him down that quickly. What he couldn't imagine was the cause of it. This was no poison Gleb knew, nor any allergy, nor anything, really, that he could even guess.

Stranger still was that Gershwin, for all intents and purposes, was non-responsive, but his eyes were wide open, watching things and following the movement of objects they couldn't see. Was this hallucination, then? What was he seeing? Why was it paining him so?

Suddenly, the tribesman's eyes widened a split second in fear, then snapped shut before he spasmed, his back leaping off the bed, his head jerking side to side. Gleb helped the doctor hold him down, but even as they did, huge red welts errupted across his bare chest, bruises formed on his face, his lip split open. His lips spat words his voice didn't use, and his breathing caused his ribs to jump and heave with a quick-paced regularity that drew a look of consternation from the doctor's face.

"I don't know what this is," the doctor said quietly. He turned towards Tem, probably thinking him the leader, due to his ethnicity. "I'd cut your losses, and put him down," the doctor said. "Tribesmen are a dime a dozen. I'm sure you can find yourself another."

Gleb's hand shot out and slammed the doctor into the wall, his massive hand around the physician's neck. His lips pulled back in a vicious snarl. "Figure. It. Out," he growled.

Tem turned his head, ignoring the situation as much as a blind man could.

Gleb released the doctor, who straightened his coat and tunic with a huff. "Well, I never!" he panted.

"Fix him," Gleb growled. "And you'll find yourself alive and suitably rewarded."

Faline watched Camphor with a certain confusion as he drifted off in the middle of his sentance. Whatever he was saying was lost suddenly from his face as he listened to something she couldn't hear.

He shook his head as if to clear it, and Quetz sighed behind them. *There are far better things we could be doing right now than following Lord Crazy around the countryside,* he muttered.

"He needs our help."

*He does not. Let's leave him.*

Faline sighed at him and reached out to shake Camphor gently on the shoulder. She was met by an upraised finger before she even touched him. After a long pause, during which she felt the sun on their backs more than Camphor did evidently, he spoke, but whether it was to her or not, she couldn't tell.

"Pull harder," he said, the question being as to whom he was speaking because he was the one pulling the cart.

He shook the glazed look out of his eyes, then, and blinked around. "Over the mountains," he told Faline, looking right at her so she couldn't begin to doubt that he was talking to her. "We have to find them."

She saw a far-away look in his eye, and she knew they'd lost him again. Quetz grumbled, but she and Camphor took a hold of the cart and heaved it forever and forever upwards, starting towards the foothills they'd been avoiding for so long.

They filed onto the bench before the spectators, the five judges, the prosecution. Marley had steeled herself as the door opened, and she was forcing herself not to panic. Feivel looked as if he'd had his punishment paid for in flesh already. Janice sat serene, aloof, conniving, letting the memories of the dead women she'd felt in the cell, the dead women she'd met through the snake, the dead women she'd felt on Marley's operating table, letting them all dictate how she acted, what she said. She couldn't feel them now. Her feet were caked in filth that she had already exhausted, and she was in enough layers and the courtroom clean enough that she didn't need to worry about losing her control.

The only thing she did worry about was Kendra. What would become of her when they were dead and gone? Would she find her way? Would she be alright? She was still just a child, both in body and in heart.

Before her, the judges called the court to order, and they presented the three of them with charges of witchcraft and demanded to know how they pled. Marley led the way. "Not guilty the way you mean it," she growled.

And that was the plea for the three of them. Marley had no ounce of the supernatural in her. Janice was an oracle not a witch. And Feivel had obviously tapped into something far away and long ago, which he would not release so willingly.

Janice had felt it when she curled her fingers through his hair. Feivel was there, but so were others, and how far they dictated his actions, she couldn't begin to guess. He wasn't an oracle, but he might be something else. Something she'd never heard of.

If they got through this, she'd have to ask him about it.

The trial began with the presentation of evidence. Against Marley were the countless she'd cured and charmed and seduced, each new man coming to the stand to decry her good-hearted intentions caused her to roll her eyes anew. But Marley didn't have an ounce of real magic in her, and the testimonies were those of the young girls gone missing - Agnes, Miriam, Peyja, among others - who spoke of the horrible sorcery she employed, lying the most vicious lies to save their own skins.

She pitied them. But she wasn't about to help them when the worst came.