Magic Can Be Murder (17 page)

Galvin finally staggered to his feet.

"Go!" a voice yelled, and it was Sergeant Halig, who—a moment later—caught hold of Kirwyn and twisted his arms behind his back. "Go," he repeated to Galvin. "I can't swim."

"She deserved it," Kirwyn said.

Nola looked at him in horror, but he had lost all hope of getting away with what he had done and offered no more pretenses.

Galvin ran out into the water as Halig deftly tied Kirwyn's hands behind his back. Two of the onlookers at last were stirred to action, and they, too, headed for the water.

"She deserved it," Kirwyn repeated.

"Oh, shut up," Nola told him.

One of the two onlookers who'd jumped into the millpond caught hold of the shirt of the floundering boatman and dragged him to shore, while Galvin and the other man dived repeatedly beneath the surface. And still there was no sign of Brinna.

"Lots of water weeds," the rescuer said from between chattering teeth as someone put a blanket around his shoulders. "And the water's damn murky." The words were quickly passed through the ever-growing crowd.

"She deserved it," Kirwyn said again, this time only daring a mutter.

Halig smacked him on the back of the head.

Others joined the two men out in the water. It seemed forever, hue, eventually, all together, they came swimming back, dragging something behind them.

Nola had hoped that somehow Brinna had gotten away, that she'd succeeded in swimming underwater—never mind that her waterlogged skirts would surely have dragged her down. Nola had refused to let her mind settle on that detail. She had pictured Brinna making it to the edge of the pond and hiding in the reeds, ready to make her escape.

They brought her up on shore right near where Nola had sat when her leg had begun shaking from the strain of so much walking and standing. Even if Brinna hadn't been underwater for so long, Nola would have known she was dead by the way her beautiful blue eyes scared up unblinking at the sun. Galvin sat down cross-legged beside her, his own eyes closed, his head bowed.

One of the others extended his arm, holding out Brinna's marketing basket, from which water still streamed. He indicated by lowering and raising it several times that ic was heavy. "She was still holding on to this," he said. "It weighted her down to the bottom."

"That's mine," Kirwyn said.

Someone asked, "Was she dead already from the blow to her head before she went into the water, or wouldn't she let go, and then she drowned?"

Different people had different opinions and were open about sharing them.

"That's mine," Kirwyn repeated. "She stole it from me."

Galvin jumped to his feet, snatched the basket out of the man's hand, and flung it at Kirwyn, scattering coins all about the grass. Then, without a word, he stalked away, heading back toward the center of town.

Abashed, the people on the grass silently gathered up the fallen money and replaced it in the basket, then handed the basket to Halig. "Much pleasure may it give you in your remaining time," Halig told Kirwyn, and gave him a shove in the direction Galvin had gone.

Nola stood up, requiring much help both from her walking stick and from the woman next to her. As the townsfolk resumed their speculations, Nola started walking, too, but in the opposite direction.

I
T ENDED UP
taking Nola five days to get back to Saint Erim Turi.

By midafternoon of that first day, she was able to cake only nine steps at a time—counting them off, always starting and ending with her uninjured left foot: Only four more, only three—before she'd allow herself to rest, leaning on her good left leg and her stick, breathing raggedly, her ankle swollen to twice its size, burning and throbbing. She finally understood those stories of an animal biting off its own injured foot. And shed gotten only as far as the outlying farms of Haymarket.

She was considering whether it would be better to abandon the stick and crawl on the road when a farmer working the adjoining field called out to her. "You look like you need some help."

By chance the firmer and his family needed help, coo. The man's wife had just had a baby, to go along with what seemed to be about seventeen other small children, who ran in and out of the house, chasing one another, climbing on things, poking each other, until
somebody
ended up squealing or crying—although once all of them were put to bed, it turned out there were only five of them. Still exhausted from her labor, the farmer's wife needed someone to keep the children from inflicting permanent damage on themselves, one another, or the house.

Nola planned to start again the next morning, after a blessed night's rest. But, "If you could help around the house—," the farmer's wife said, then, gazing down at Nola's foot, she assured her, "mostly sitting-down work—my husband and I could take you almost all the way to Saint Erim Turi in four days' time, when we take the baby to show my parents."

Four days,
Nola thought. Leave her mother untended for four more days? But what could she do? Unless she was lucky enough to get someone else to offer her a ride, at the rate she was going these people would pass her by on the road four days from now. And she'd probably be permanently crippled by then. She could only hope that her mother would stay safe. She hoped that Galvin was safe also. She would picture the look on his face by the millpond, when he knew he had lost Brinna forever, and she knew her face tended to the same expression for losing
him.

So she helped with the cooking and the mending of clothes and the settling of squabbles among the children, and four days later—with grateful hugs and tears of good-bye—the farmer and his family dropped Nola off on the outskirts of Saint Erim Turi, with a full stomach, an ankle that had finally begun to heal, and a proper walking stick that the husband had fashioned for her.

But Nola also had a growing dread, now that the end was in sight, of what shed find in Saint Erim Turi in genera], and at che Witch's Stew tavern in particular.

She paused before the first cluster of houses, just a heartbeat's hesitation before stepping under che huge oak tree chat sprawled its branches like a canopy over the road.
It must have rained here,
she thought, noticing how wet the ground beneath the tree was, and in that pausing she missed being hit directly on the head by something falling from overhead. Instead, it fell ac her feet and burst open: a pig's bladder filled with water.

"You miserable wretches!" she yelled at the four laughing, squealing children who hid in the branches above her. Two of them leaped down and took off into the surrounding bushes. The other two were old enough to know better.

"Mother!" Nola cried. "What are you doing up there?"

Still laughing, her mother said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time. But I do believe Modig is stuck."

How the old man and his cane had gotten up a tree, Nola didn't even ask. Nor did he volunteer the information, though he did tell about the time he and some of the other young men of the king's army had treed a bear.

Eventually they got him down. The two playmates who had previously abandoned them came back to offer encouragement and suggestions, as did several other of the townschildren. Modig, it turned out, had become very popular with the children, with all the stories he had to offer of times gone by and traveling to different lands. He challenged Nola to a cane-dueling contest, and Nola, who was frantic to talk to her mother alone, was relieved when her mother told him, "Women's talk," and took Nola's arm and led her away.

"Is everything all right?" Nola demanded as they walked toward the tavern.

"With me?" her mother asked, as though the question was an odd one. "Fine. How about you?"

Nola ignored the matter of her twisted ankle and her broken heart. "I managed to empty the bucket before anyone saw the spell," she said.

"Yes," her mother said.

"And the authorities know it was Kirwyn who killed his father."

"Yes," her mother said.

"The sad part is that I never realized Brinna was involved, that she'd helped Kirwyn. She took some of Innis's money away to make everyone think an intruder had killed lnnis for his wealth, when it was really Kirwyn, to keep him from remarrying." Nola took a deep breath. "And then Kirwyn killed Brinna."

Her mother gave her hand a comforting pat. "Yes," she said.

Peeved that her mother didn't seem more surprised—or interested—Nola asked, "Is there anything you'd like co know about where I've been or what I've been doing?" She chumped her walking stick—though
as soon as
she did, she remembered it was something Modig had a tendency to do. But she wanted co make sure her mother noticed she'd been hurt, though she couldn't see how her mother had missed it, especially since Modig had wanted a cane duel.

Her mother didn't ask about Nola's ankle. She asked, "So why did you let that good-looking young man go?"

Nola stopped walking. "
What
good-looking young man?" she demanded, knowing that her mother couldn't mean what it sounded as chough she meant.

But she did. "Pendaran's man: Galvin. That Sergeant Halig wouldn't have been bad, either—not in a pinch—but Galvin was obviously smitten with you."

Nola had trouble getting her mouth to work. "What—How—" She had to take a steadying breath. "How do you know about this?"

The question obviously amazed her mother. "From watching you."

"What?"

"Shhh." Her mother glanced around to make sure Nola wasn't attracting people's attention. She tugged on her arm to get her walking again. "You have co be more careful, dear," she said.

"What do you mean,
watching
me?" Nola demanded.

"Well, what do you think?" her mother countered. "You left your hairbrush."

Nola yanked her arm out of her mother's grip and clapped her hands over her hair. "You've been
spying on
me? You've been watching me while I haven't known it?"

As if that wasn't bad enough, her mother acted as though Nola was dull-witted. "Well, you should have guessed."

Nola supposed she should have, given that her mother was the one who had taught her to bespell water. "Don't
ever
do that again," Nola said.

"All right." Her mother agreed so amiably that Nola knew she would always do exactly what she felt like doing.

But there was no more time for talking, for they had reached the tavern, the Witch's Stew, and Nola knew they couldn't have this conversation in public. She still didn't know what her mother had been up to in her absence—besides dropping pig bladders from tree branches to soak unsuspecting passersby—but, all in all, it would undoubtedly be best to leave Saint Erim Turi as quickly as possible. "Gather your things," Nola told her, walking around the barrel-filled wagon that was parked out front. "We're leaving."

"But I like this place," her mother protested as Nola opened the door.

"Mother...," Nola said. But then she stopped, for sitting at one of the tables were Galvin and Halig.

Still, for the moment they hadn't seen her. Better yet, they hadn't seen her mother, whom they would recognize—or
think
they recognized.

Edris the tavern keeper was just coming up from the cellar, where the barrels of beer and wine were stored, and this would have been fine but for one thing: Accompanying her were the blackberry farmer and his wife, from Low Beck.

Nola took a quick step backward, dragging her mother with her.

Her mother gave a little yelp of surprise. "Galvin and Halig!" She turned to Nola as the two men looked up. "So you
did
tell them where co find you." She told the men, "I was just saying to Nola she could do worse than either one of you."

The men exchanged a startled look. And—oh, yes—Nola could tell they definitely recognized her mother.

Meanwhile, Edris was just recognizing her, was just smiling and saying, "Welcome back, Nol—"

But by then the blackberry farmer's wife had looked to see what was happening. "You!" she said. Then she saw Nola's mother. "And you!"

Her mother threw her hands up co cover her face. "Surely you have us mistaken for someone else," she said, starting to back up. "Come, Nola."

But by then it was too late. The farmer's wife turned to Galvin and Halig. "It's them! The ones you were sent to arrest."

A
FTER ALL SHE'D
been through? She and her mother were going to get arrested for something that wasn't their fault?

Halig spoke. "We were sent to
question,
" he corrected the woman.

Nola tried to judge Galvin's expression, which seemed less friendly than the sergeant's.

He's probably weighing the likelihood of running into the same madwoman in two subsequent and supposedly unrelated matters,
Nola thought. He looked, she was relieved to see, as though he had taken no lasting hurt from Kirwyn's attack.

Of course, he didn't recognize
her
without Brinna's form. He could hardly stand to look at her in her true face. His gaze slid right off her and back to the complaining woman, who was now explaining to Edris, "We hired those two women to pick berries..." Her husband for some reason was shaking his head, but the woman only got louder. "But they broke a fine jug of ours and walked off with a bushel basket of berries."

A basket of berries?

"It
is
them," the woman insisted.

"It's not," the man mumbled.

"I recognize them." She pointed at Nola and her mother. "Thieves," she said. "I remember you because you waited in the yard while I prepared a fine lunch for your midday meal. I felt sorry for you, so we took you on even though you
looked
dishonest. But you hardly worked at all, so that halfway through the morning when my husband went to check if all was well with you, you'd broken the water jug he left you and stolen off with the lunch
and
a whole basketful of blackberries."

The false accusations stung. "That's not true," Nola said.