Trial by Fire (Worldwalker 1)

Lily wondered why Rowan would defend Lillian if he wouldn’t defend her. Her throat stung. She didn’t much feel like eating his pancakes and left them on the counter.

* * *

Juliet helped Lillian dress. The bodice hung loosely around her sister’s wasted frame.

“We’ll have to take this in. I’ve pulled the laces as tight as they’ll go,” Juliet said, with a hint of scolding in her tone.

“No. We’ll have my tailor add padding,” Lillian replied.

“Or you could eat more.” Juliet waited, but her sister didn’t comment. After a long pause, she continued. “I understand why you wouldn’t want Gideon to touch you, but have you thought about what I suggested? About claiming another mechanic to help heal you? You’ve kept whatever this sickness is at bay for nearly a year now, but obviously you can’t do it on your own anymore.”

Lillian pulled away from Juliet’s fussing and sat down at her makeup table. “I don’t want another mechanic.”

Juliet watched her sister dab blush on her bleached cheeks. She’d long suspected that the only reason Lillian allowed her and only her to touch her was because, as a latent crucible with almost no magic, Juliet was the only person close to Lillian who wouldn’t be able to tell exactly how sick she was.

“People know you’re sick now,” Juliet said.

“I know they do.”

“Then why not claim a mechanic—a good one—who can help heal you?”

As usual, Juliet got no answer. She tried for what must have been the thousandth time to reach out and share mindspeak with her sister. Again, she hit up against a wall around Lillian’s mind.

Lillian sighed. “My sickness isn’t the only thing I’m keeping to myself, Juliet. Please understand. I shut you out because I’m trying to protect you.”

It was the same answer Lillian had been giving her since she came back from her mysterious disappearance, and Juliet knew she would get no more out of her. She glossed and smoothed her sister’s curls in silence before helping her down to the main hall to hear the newest prisoner—a doctor.

There was a fever sweeping through the Outlanders. Citizens of the Thirteen Cities were entitled to free medicine from the Covens during a public health crisis such as this and they had nothing to fear from the fever, but the outbreak was killing Outlanders at an alarming rate. Children were the most vulnerable. Lillian had seized several Outlander doctors who had been feeding bread mold to the afflicted children. It was an open and shut case of child abuse as far as Juliet could see, but Lillian had insisted that the Coven and the Council hear the leader out before she sentenced them all.

Juliet still couldn’t believe that anyone would be so inhumane as to feed mold to a sick child, but the Outlanders were brutish like that. Juliet had heard that they even sewed wounds together. Just the thought made her queasy. She had never condoned her sister’s harsh punishments—she didn’t agree with capital punishment for any reason—but she did agree that the Outlanders needed to accept magic as the one and only way. Sure, it was expensive to hire a healing crucible and her mechanic, but giving mold to children and calling it a cure? That was downright barbaric.

When they arrived in the main hall, Council Leader Thomas Danforth greeted Juliet and Lillian with an oily smile. Juliet returned it, not because she liked Gideon’s rat-faced father, but because she knew her sister wouldn’t, and the last thing they needed was to slight Danforth at the moment. Not when her sister’s other self was running around stars know where, wreaking havoc everywhere she went. Juliet felt a surge of worry at the thought of Lily. She recalled Lily’s frightened eyes and how they’d melted with relief at the first sight of Juliet at the top of the stairs. Her sister needed her, and … Juliet stopped herself. Lily wasn’t her real sister, even though it felt like she was. Juliet shook her head to clear her confusion and focused on Lillian instead.

“Lady,” Danforth said. The assembled hosts stood up from their seats behind one side of a long table that spanned the length of one end of the great hall. Danforth led the dignitaries in a respectful bow.

“You may be seated,” Lillian said in a perfunctory way. She had never enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of being the Lady of Salem, and now that she was ill she barely tolerated it.

Juliet stayed close to Lillian, but she didn’t help her into her grand chair at the center of the long table. She knew better than to make Lillian look like an invalid. Once Lillian was situated, Juliet took a seat on an unobtrusive velvet-cushioned stool that had been set up for her behind her sister’s right elbow. Although seated in her imposing chair with the all-female Coven members on her right and the all-male Council members to her left, Lillian didn’t need Juliet’s cosseting to make her look like an invalid. Her giant chair seemed to swallow her frail body. It did not, however, swallow her voice or the authority it conveyed.

“Bring in the prisoner,” Lillian commanded.

A tall, thin man was brought in. He didn’t look overtly Outlander. He had brown hair and eyes, but he wasn’t quite as dark as most of them were. Outlanders were a mix of many races. Some had even been citizens once and been expelled from one of the Thirteen Cities for one reason or another—usually for something criminal. It could be hard to tell where exactly someone came from. But Juliet saw streaks of red and black on the backs of the doctor’s hands and on his cheek. He stood tall in front of the long table, facing the line of judges. Proud. He was definitely one of Alaric’s painted savages.

“Michael Snowshower. You have been charged with practicing science,” Danforth said, beginning the proceedings. “How do you plead?”

Snowshower spared Danforth one disdainful glace, and then looked at Lillian. “How do I plead?” he repeated quietly. “I plead for the lives of my people.”

Juliet heard Nina, one of the senior witches of the Coven, make an exasperated sound and saw her roll her eyes. “After feeding them something that will only make the fever worse?” Nina asked sarcastically.

“The mold is an antibiotic. It saves some,” Snowshower replied defensively. Juliet looked at him carefully and saw truth in his eyes. This was no charlatan. He truly believed the mold helped.

“But what you don’t know is that the mold only

kills most of the infection. Most. Not all,” Lillian said. “What is left is the strongest strain, and it multiplies unchecked, getting deadlier and deadlier with every misuse of your medicine.” Lillian said the word with such bitterness that Snowshower’s eyes widened with surprise.

“Yes, but we’ve learned that if the mold is taken at a higher dosage for a full two weeks, it does kill all the infection,” Snowshower argued back, if a bit uncertainly. “We’ve saved thousands—”

“And while you’ve been running your little scientific experiments about how long the mold should be taken and in what concentration, you’ve created a biological monster,” Lillian said, silencing him. “Because of you—meddling in things you don’t understand—the fever has become so deadly that half the Outlander children probably won’t survive the winter. Like all scientists, you promise a cure but you deliver greater hazards and more death. You are a murderer, Michael Snowshower.”