Magic Can Be Murder (9 page)

She paused, assuming this was the logical place to start, but Galvin asked, "
Is
there anything more to see in here?" and she realized that, of course, this room was so logical a place to start that Galvin must have already thoroughly searched it, and no doubt Brinna had either seen or been aware of him doing so.

Putting the blame on him, she answered, "
I
would have thought you were finished, but I'm just an ignorant serving maid."

He said, "You were in the kitchen when you heard Master Innis cry out..."

She nodded and led him back down the hall into the kitchen.

Galvin indicated for her to sit down.

So much for "Show me about the house,
" Nola thought.

She was worried that he would sit closely next to her, but he remained standing—which, of course, made him tower over her. Well, then, it was to be serious questioning and not flirting. All in all, that was a relief.

"So," Galvin said, "Brinna. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

"Didn't I tell you everything before?" Nola asked, hoping to delay, hoping to learn something.

"Did you?" Galvin put his foot up on the bench next to her and leaned in, giving him the advantage of nearness to go with his previous advantage of height.

"Yes," Nola said. The table was already pressing into her back, and she couldn't retreat any further. "I caught just the merest glimpse of the man, and I'm not—"

Galvin interrupted. "What are you afraid of?"

Nola shrugged to indicate she didn't know what he was talking about.

"We won't let harm come to you."

It was the way he included Sergeant Halig—or perhaps by "we" he meant Lord Pendaran—that finally satisfied her that his interest in her was to learn more about the killing. She nodded, for Brinna would acknowledge what he had said.
We won't let harm come to you.
He probably meant that they would protect her from the culprit if she incriminated someone. But in truth, he and Halig and Pendaran and people like them were the biggest threat to her and her mother.

"Start at the beginning."

Because she didn't know exactly what Brinna had seen, what she had said, Nola countered with, "I was born."

Finally he looked exasperated with her. "Had a bad morning at the market, did you?"

She smiled innocently.

"Couldn't find a thing to buy?"

Nola worked to keep her face blank.
Fool!
she called herself. Of course Halig would have noticed that she'd returned from shopping without anything, without even the basket she had left with. That would be what he had told Galvin, and now that they were here in the kitchen, Galvin could see for himself.

She said, "People kept crowding me and pushing me and wanting to know all about last night and asking me the same questions over and over, and I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't breathe." It was how she sometimes felt when she became convinced people suspected her of being a witch. "I panicked. I dropped my basket and ran home."

"All right," he said.
Did
he believe her? He had a tendency to say everything so mildly that she couldn't tell if he was thinking
The poor thing!
or
Liar! She
was more inclined to believe the first, but she told herself that was just foolish wishful thinking. And then he spoiled everything by asking, "Are you afraid of Alan?"

Alan?
He was suspicious of
Alan?

"Oh, for goodness' sake!" she blurted out in exasperation. Too many years of being afraid, of seeing justice gone awry, of having to hide because she was a witch while she saw dishonest folk get richer and richer—all this caught up with her. "That's just like someone in authority: arrogant, corrupt, a bully, and first chance you get, jumping to the wrong conclusion."

His eyes widened in surprise. A bit-too-innocent surprise, she thought, a moment before he spoke. "You
are
perceptive to see all that on such short acquaintance. I usually try to hide at least some of my worst qualities so people don't guess what I truly am till I've said at least five or six sentences."

Nola,
she told herself,
if you don't force this man into
being your enemy, you'll be luckier than you deserve.
By trying to hide her fear, she was being so surly she was forcing a confrontation. Still, she couldn't resist finishing, "And too clever for your own good."

"
Can
someone be too clever for his own good?"

Oh, yes,
she could have said. But she estimated she had already said far too much. She was fortunate that so far he seemed more amused than annoyed.
That,
she could thank Brinna's good looks for. If a plain girl acted this way, he wouldn't have taken it. She looked down at her hands in her lap.

Galvin sighed. "You were in the kitchen...," he prompted.

She nodded. "Scrubbing the floor. Cleaning up after supper." She remembered the crock of beans she had seen. "I was preparing for the next day's supper."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"And Alan was...?"

"At that point," she said, hoping not to contradict anything Alan or Brinna had said earlier, "I didn't know." Hurriedly she continued, "I heard..." Galvin had asked where she was when lnnis had cried out. Was that a trap? Had Brinna told him she heard lnnis, or was it the box crashing to the floor that had brought her running? Nola had to trust that the hints she gathered from him were true, or she would end up being so vague and evasive that he would start suspecting her. All in a rush she said, "I heard a cry, and Alan and I came running, and we got co the door, and opened it, and there was Master Innis lying on the floor, bleeding."

"Who arrived at the door first?"

"It happened so fast." She could see Galvin wasn't going to settle for that. She had half a chance of giving the same answer Brinna had this morning. "I think I did."
Alan?
she thought again. Why was he suspecting Alan? Because her answers kept shifting? She didn't want to cast suspicion on Alan, but she didn't want Galvin suspecting her, either. "I'm sorry I'm so confused. Everything happened so fast, and I was frightened. People in the market kept having me repeat everything, and then—by saying ic over and over—I remembered some things I hadn't even realized I'd noticed before." Not likely, but possible. And where was all this going to leave the real Brinna when she came back?

And it was just as Ñola thought chis that she looked up and saw Brinna through the open shutter, carrying her marketing basket, coming through the courtyard toward the kitchen door.

N
OLA JUMPED TO
her feet. "I must go back to the market," she cried, "before someone finds my basket and decides to keep it! Master Kirwyn will be so vexed with me."

Even while Galvin opened his mouth to explain, "I'm sorry, but I have a few more questions," he got his foot down from the bench and took a step back as though suspecting she was about to trample him on her way out. It was a nice thought, bur she didn't dare go any farther: If she went past him and he turned to follow or even to watch, he would be able to see out the window as clearly as she could.

So, instead, she hurriedly turned the other way, to face the table.

He said, "This doesn't have to cake long, and I can explain to Master Kirwyn—"

"Only, let me put this pot on the fire first so it can start to simmer and be ready by supper," she blurted all in a rush, talking over his objections, trusting once more that Brinna's good looks would let her get away with being a dithering fool. She hoped Galvin didn't know enough about running a household to be aware that any beans she started heating now would be a sodden mush by suppertime.

"Brinna," Galvin said, still sounding patient, "really, I must insist—"

Ignoring Galvin and his protests, she picked up the pot in which the beans had been soaking. Then she let it slip through her hands. It hit the edge of the table, flipped over, and sent beans and water flying all over the floor. And over Galvin's leg.

"Oh!" Nola cried. "How clumsy of me! I'm so sorry." She grabbed a cloth and went toward him, but he wisely stepped away before she could inflict more damage, which showed a quickness to learn on his part chat Nola had to admire. Nor did he yell at her, but she tallied that as one more benefit she owed to Brinna's appearance rather than as any credit ro Galvin.

"Stay here," he ordered her, quietly though firmly, as if recognizing that her clumsiness might be an attempt ac a diversion.

"Yes," she said, in a tone meant to indicate she'd never suggested going anywhere else. "Just getting out of your way." She stepped toward the window so that if he looked up now, she would block most of the view, Brinna was within five strides of the door. There was no way Nola could ever get out of here without transforming in plain sight of either her or Galvin.

There was only one other choice that Nola could think of: Transform Brinna.

But then, of course, Brinna would explain that she was the real Brinna, no matter how she looked.

Except, again of course, chat the story would sound mad—at least at first.

How could Nola ensure that everyone would immediately and steadfastly take Brinna's claims as a sign of lunacy, so that they wouldn't listen to her long enough to realize she made sense and knew things only the real Brinna would know?

Unless...

With a pang of guilt for being a treacherous friend and a faithless daughter, Nola whispered the words to make Brinna cease to look like herself. And she concentrated, very hard, on picturing her mother's form.

The kitchen door flew open and Brinna strode in, her face bearing the features of Nola's mother, her hair gray and wild and off in all directions, her hands blue-veined and spotted, her shoulders slightly stooped. As soon as Brinna saw Nola—as soon as she saw someone in her own home, wearing her own face—she stopped as though she'd found her feet suddenly rooted to the ground.

For Galvin's benefit, Nola tried to sound a balance between friendly and cautious. "Hello, Mary. What are you doing back here?"

"Who are you?" Brinna demanded. Her voice, bounded by the restraints of Nola's mother's appearance, came out thin and creaky. Of course she heard the difference. Her hands flew up to her mouth, but that made matters worse, for she could see her old woman's hands. She gasped. "Who are you?" she repeated, sounding truly frightened now. "What's happening?"

Nola was aware that Galvin had stopped trying to make his breeches presentable and that he was watching Brinna as she alternately touched her face and stared at her hands. He was ready, she guessed, to move quickly if this visitor gave any indication of being dangerous.

Miserably, hating what she was doing to someone who had shown her only kindness, Nola forced herself to say in a quizzical tone, "Mary?"

"I'm not Mary," Brinna said, her voice cracking so that it sounded querulous. "I'm Brinna. Who arc you, and what have you done to me?"

Galvin asked Nola, "You know this woman?"

She was going to be the death of herself, Nola was sure of it. But somehow she managed to get her voice working. "She and her daughter came here the other day, seeking employment. It didn't work out." The last thing Nola wanted co do was bring up the business about foretelling Innis's death. "She's a very sweet woman but..." Nola touched her head. It was a gesture she often had seen people do in her mother's presence. But when she saw Brinna's horrified expression, she had to soften it, to pretend that she had just been adjusting her hair. But Brinna and Galvin both knew what she was doing.

"No!" Brinna cried. "Lord Galvin, we met and spoke this morning before I left for market."

Nola couldn't afford to give Brinna time to make an appeal to reason. So she asked Brinna, "Where's your daughter? Where's Nola? She should know better than to let you wander about on your own." And she spared a thought for wondering what reckless situation her true mother might have wandered into.

"I'm not Mary," Brinna cried, frustration putting a hint of hysteria into her voice that didn't hurt Nola's cause. "I'm Brinna. And you, even though you look like me, are not."

Galvin moved to put himself between Nola and Brinna. "Madam," he said gently, "why don't you sit down and we can try to sort this matter out—"

Brinna smacked the hand with which he tried to take her by the elbow. "Don't call me
madam,
" she said, "and don't cake that let's-talk-calmly-to-the-crazy-woman-and-maybe-she'll-leave-us-alone tone with me."

Actually, Nola thought he'd done a good job of not sounding condescending, such a good job that she felt a prickle of panic.
Not now,
she warned herself. Panic would eat away at her concentration, and if her concentration slipped, so would the spells that held herself and Brinna to these false appearances. So knowing what a cruel thing she was doing, she said firmly, "I am Brinna, you are Mary. Look." And she held up a silver plate so that Brinna could see her reflection.

Brinna screamed and covered her face and began to cry.

Footsteps came running down the hall.

Halig was first into the kitchen, closely followed by Alan, with Kirwyn lagging behind. If there was to be trouble, Kirwyn was obviously willing to leave it to others.

Just as Galvin had placed himself between the two women to protect Nola, Halig now stepped between Galvin and the weeping Brinna.

"Mary," Alan said. "Has something happened to Nola?"

Brinna pulled her marketing basket off her arm and flung it, spilling peaches and carrots, and narrowly missing his head. "I'm Brinna!" she shouted.

"All right," Alan agreed soothingly. "Brinna. Has something happened to Nola?"

By then Kirwyn was in the room, and he said, "Is that crazy old woman back?"

Brinna looked around as though searching for something to throw at
him.

"Should I arrest her, sir?" Halig asked Galvin.

"No!" Nola cried. Besides the fact chat that would be extremely cruel to poor Brinna, who had been kind with them and done nothing worse than return home at the wrong time, putting her in a cell would mean that she would be surrounded by people when Nola let the transforming spell drop. Already Nola couldn't think how she'd ever be able to fix this situation without everybody involved knowing that witchcraft was at work. Her vehemence had obviously surprised Galvin, who was watching her appraisingly. She tried not to sound as though her life depended on it, and repeated, "No. Don't put her into prison. She's just a poor, confused old woman. She doesn't mean any harm. She doesn't
do
any harm."