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debauchery," he whispered. "The crimes against nature."

She looked him boldly in the face, seeing his lust for her blood so strongly depicted in the fire of his face, the tension of his body that she would not have needed a knack to detect it. "You are the one who hates nature," she said. "You are the enemy of God."

"Feeble. I advise against your using that line in court. It will only make you look stupid and I answer it so easily."

"You are the enemy of goodness and decency," she said, speaking more boldly now, "and insofar as God is good, you hate God."

"Insofar as? The professors have taught you well. I think your answer, despite your attempts to deceive, has to be 'yes' to the question of whether you saw Emerson at a witches' sabbath."

"I say no such thing."

"I say that by using professorial language in the midst of a satanic denunciation of my role in God's service, your true spirit, held a helpless prisoner by Satan, was trying to send me a coded message denouncing Emerson."

"Who would believe such nonsense?"

"I'll say it in a way the court can understand," said Quill. He checked off Emerson's name. "Emerson, yes. One of Satan's spies, caught. Now look at the other names."

"Coded message," she said contemptuously.

"What you don't understand is that your very sneer shows your contempt for holiness. You hate all things good and decent, and your scornfulness proves it."

"Go away."

"For now," said Quill. "Your arraignment is this morning. The judge wants to hear you when Alvin Smith makes his plea."

But she was not fooled. Her knack was too trustworthy for her to doubt what she saw now.

"You're such a bad liar, Quill," she said. "The judge never needs to have a witness at the arraignment. I'll be there because I'm to be arraigned as well."

Quill was face-to-face with her again at once. "Satan whispered that lie to you, didn't he."

"Why would you say that?"

"I saw it," he said. "I saw him whisper to you."

"You're insane."

"I saw you looking at me, and in a sudden moment you were told something that you hadn't known before. Satan whispered."

Had he seen it? Was it his knack to see other knacks working?

No. It was his knack to find the useful lie hidden inside every useless truth. He had simply seen the transformation in her facial expression when she understood the truth about his intentions.

"Satan has never told me anything," she said.

"But you already told me about your knack," he answered with a smile. "Don't recant - it will go hard with you."

"Maybe I have a talent for seeing other people's intentions," she said defiantly. "That doesn't mean it comes from Satan!"

"Yes," he said. "Use that line in court. Confess your sin and then deny that it's a sin. See what happens to you under the law." He reached out and touched her hand, gently, caressingly. "God loves you, child. Don't reject him. Turn away from Satan. Admit all the evil you have done so you can prove you have left it behind you. Live to let your womb bear children, as God intended. It's Satan, not God, who wants you twitching at the end of a rope."

"Yes," she said. "That much is true. Satan your master wants me dead."

He winked at her, got up, and went to the door. "That's good. Keep that up. That'll get you hanged." And he was gone, the door locked behind him.

She shook with cold as if it weren't summer with the heat already oppressive this early in the morning. Everything was clear to her now. Quill came here ready to do exactly what he had done - take a simple accusation of the use of a knack, and turn it into a story about Satan and gross perversions. He knew he had to do this because honest people never told stories about Satan. He knew that she would not name others she saw at witches' sabbaths because there were never any such conclaves, and all such denunciations had to be extracted through whatever torture the law would allow. Witchers did what Quill did because if they did not do it, no one would ever be convicted of trafficking with Satan.

This was how her parents died. Not because they really did have knacks that came from Satan, but because they would not play along with the witchers and join them in persecuting others. They would not confess to falsehood. They died because the City of God tried