Marley hated the girls as they left the courtroom. She understood their motives, but that didn't stop her from hating them.

General Liam Farrows was the head of the prosecution, having seen first-hand every ounce of 'sorcery' they possessed between them. But her charges were light compared to those of Janice and Feivel. Feivel, evidently, was enough of a threat that they'd had to cane him into something vaguely resembling submission and complacence.

Perhaps they couldn't see the brewing animosity in his blackened-over eyes. Perhaps they couldn't hear the feral rasps escaping his lips. Perhaps they couldn't see his lips barely moving, but breathing out foreign words that sent shivers down her spine.

General Farrows addressed the judges. "I bring to your attention these items, confiscated from the male prisoner upon his arrest. These earrings we believe to be for hearing and understanding the words of devils which are shifted to the forms of wild horses."

Marley couldn't tell whether they sincerely believed this, or if it was propoganda in hopes of possibly bringing the community under a careful and heavy yoke.

Janice stood suddenly beside them. "Don't be stupid, Liam. You don't know what they are, but you're scared of things you don't know. That's all this charade is. That's all this playacting will reveal in the end. And--"

"Silence!" one of the judges commanded.

"I demand a right to speak and defend myself, if not to defend my fellow accused!" she snapped.

Where she was plumbing the depths to get this fierce backbone, Marley didn't know. All she knew was her own fear clenching in a frozen fist.

"Those accused of witchcraft are not given such accomodations lest their silvered tongues speak charms into the ears of the judges!" the general snapped.

"Perhaps not," Janice snapped. "But can the prosocution be led so readily by one so guilty of murder?"

The courtroom errupted in conversation and scandalized gasps. The central judge slammed his gavel time and again for silence.

"The court demands silence!" he roared.

As the words rang out, the crowd's muttering subsided, and Marley knew the self-same satisfied smirk would be plastered on Janice's lips.

"Explain yourself."

Janice slid from behind the bench and approached the judges, moving like liquid in the dress made from Marley's curtains. "My name is Janice Manssersmith," she said calmly, collectedly. Marley knew her own voice would be breaking if she tried to address the court in a trial for their lives. As it was, her heart was trying to thunder its way through her chest until it burst through her ribs.

She swallowed hard and listened. This argument might save them all, but it was more likely to condemn them all.

"I am an oracle of the earth from the city of Ender's Pass down south in the coastal country of Tyl. I work reading the earth for the cycles of the world, feeling floods and droughts as they come, but I am sometimes of the opportunity to read truths and lies in the presentation of crimes at court. What brought us here, Feivel and myself, was a simple snakebite. But as that snake brushed against me, I felt the place it called home, lodged deep in its scales. Midwife Marley tells us that it was a lenra serpent, found only in one place in the surrounding hills. And I know from that snake that this man, General Liam Farrows, romanced and murdered no less than twelve women - among them Valencia Adams, Petra DeMalo, Sadie Atchitson, and Dolores Mae Sellers."

The crowd exploded again, and the judge banged his gavel for silence again, bellowing over them. It took much longer for the silence to resume, and Marley shifted uneasily.

"General?" the judge asked. "Those are the names of the women who have gone missing over the years."

"Missing?" the general spat. "They were taken by their ties to the devil! They were accepted into his legion in hell!"

"They were loving daughters!" one of the crowd shouted, and Marley recognized Alma DeMalo being pulled back down by her husband. "They were good girls!"

The judge raised his eyebrows behind his spectacles. "It seems we have here an interesting predicament," he drawled.

"I can prove this, your honor," Janice said calmly. "And if you insist that my evidence does not properly satisfy, then burn me. And burn Feivel. But spare Marley, for she's not an ounce of craft in her save the skills she holds to keep the men and women of this town healthy and strong."

The judge raised his eyebrows again. "What do you propose?"