As a couple of tithingmen helped Purity stagger toward the courthouse, she whimpered when she came near Verily. “Don’t bring me near him,” she said. “He casts spells on me. He wants to come to me as an incubus!”

“Purity, you poor thing,” Verily said. “Hear yourself spout the lies this witcher has taught you to tell.”

“Speak no word to her!” cried the witcher. “Hear him curse her!”

To the tithingmen, Verily wryly muttered, “Did that sound like a curse to you?”

“No muttering! Keep still!” screamed the witcher.

Verily answered the witcher loudly. “All I said was, to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail!”

Some people understood at once and chuckled. But the witcher was not one for irony. “A satanic utterance! Hammers and nails! What have you cursed me with? Confess your meaning, sir!”

“I mean, sir, that to those who profit from witch trials, every word sounds like a curse!”

“Get him out of here with his filthy lies and innuendoes!”

The tithingmen dragged him and Alvin off to the courthouse, to cells far from each other, but they were near each other several times, and though they didn’t speak, they traded glances, and Verily made sure Alvin saw him grinning from ear to ear. This is working exactly as I wanted, Verily was saying.

Alone in his cell, though, Verily lost his smile. Poor Purity, he thought. How deeply had this witcher twisted her mind? Was her integrity so tied up in knots that she was no longer capable of seeing how she was being manipulated? Somewhere along the line, she had to realize that the witcher was using her.

Let it be soon, thought Verily. I don’t want Alvin to have to wait long in this jail.

Hezekiah Study had already packed his bag for an extended stay with his niece in Providence when he heard the shouting on the common and leaned out his window to listen. He watched the English lawyer embarrass Micah Quill, manipulating the master manipulator until Hezekiah wanted to cheer. His heart sank when Purity denounced the lawyer—and, indeed, she had spoken of a lawyer in Alvin Smith’s party right from the start—but the lawyer managed to plant seeds of doubt in every onlooker’s mind all the same. To Hezekiah Study, it was the first time he’d ever seen the early stages of a witch trial without dread and despair seizing his heart. For the English lawyer was grinning like a schoolboy who doesn’t mind the punishment because it was worth it to put the rock through the schoolmaster’s window.

He’s in control of this, thought Hezekiah.

His better sense—his bitter experience—answered: No one’s ever in control of a witch trial except the witchers. The man is grinning now, but he’ll not grin in the end, with either the rope around his neck or his decency stripped from him.

Oh, God, let this be the day at last when the people finally see that the only ones serving the devil at these trials are the witchers!