Shadows and Light

protest when they tortured the witches into confessing to things they never did in order to justify killing them,” Liam said.
    “If they accuse the witches,” Thurston protested, “what’s to stop them from accusing other women and killing them?”
    “Nothing,” Padrick said quietly. “Nothing at all.”
    Thurston took out a handkerchief, mopped the sweat from his face. “What do we do?”
    “Your opinion is respected, Squire Thurston,” Liam said. “If you refuse to give in to the fear that was planted, if you stand by what you believe to be right and good, we can stop this before it has a chance to take root.”
    Thurston studied Liam thoughtfully. “You stand against these... Black Coats?”
    “I do.”
    “Then I’ll stand with you.” Thurston stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket. “I’ll talk to the magistrate, if you like. And I’ll talk to my tenants, make sure they know to inform me about any strangers.” He turned away, then turned back. “Don’t you have kin in Pickworth?”
    “My mother’s cousin and her daughter lived there.”
    Thurston looked at the ground. “I am sorry, Liam.”
    “So am I.”
    “My condolences to your mother. If there’s anything my wife and I can do...”
    Liam smiled stiffly. “Thank you. If there is anything, I’ll remember to ask.”
    He watched Thurston stride across the lawn to where the boy still held his horse. He watched the squire ride through the arch.
    “What am I going to tell my mother?”
    Padrick sat on the bench beside him. “The truth. You weren’t hearing what was under the message the council sent out, Liam. The eastern barons aren’t going to want women to know about this. They’re sending out riders so the men will smother the truth of what happened. If the women in one village are willing to make that choice, what’s to stop others from making the same choice? And if the women who haven’t been caged hear about it, it will be far more difficult for any man, even an Inquisitor, to ride into a village and try to turn things to his advantage.” He paused. “They must have some kind of magic similar to the Fae’s gift of persuasion. That would explain how the ideas get planted.”
    “And some ability to draw power from an Old Place and turn it into a... wrongness,” Liam added. “But what does that wrongness become?”
    “Let’s hope that information is something the Bard passed along to the ladies here.”
    Liam felt his strength waning. Would Nuala object if he stayed here for a few hours to get some sleep?
    Would Breanna? “Let’s talk to them.”

    Sitting in the formal dining room, Breanna laid her head down on her crossed arms. She felt exhausted, numb, tangled up in too many feelings.
    A whole village of women desperate enough to gather on a night that had always been about life and feeling alive and choose Death as the lover—and angry enough and courageous enough to make that choice for their daughters.
    Not a choice she would want to make, and she couldn’t say with any honesty that she thought it was the right choice. But she didn’t know what it was like to live as those women had lived. She couldn’t say if having your life stripped away piece by piece until you were a mind and heart locked in a body someone else controlled could produce a rage that festered until it found the one thing a man couldn’t control.
    It wouldn’t have been violent. She was certain of that. She could picture them slipping away from their houses—some of them probably slipping out of beds while the men who had used them snored contentedly—and gathering in the Old Place. There would be hugs, a few silent tears. Some of them would have had second thoughts, especially those whose husbands or lovers were good men who grieved over what had been done to their wives, their daughters, their sisters and mothers. They would have had second thoughts. And those who held a baby girl to the breast for the last time... A minute of desperate hope that, perhaps, if the child were spared, by the time she grew up things would be different, someone would find a way to fix the wrongness and the girl would grow up in the same kind of world her mother had before the Inquisitors came to Sylvalan to spread their plague of hatred against women. Then the hope would fade, and the desperation would remain.
    It wouldn’t have been violent. There were plants that were deadly if picked and distilled the right way.
    Some of those women were bound