Magic Can Be Murder

"Alan," Kirwyn interrupted, "nobody is interested in you or your various aunties, uncles, or half-wicted cousins."



Alan immediately stopped talking and looked at his feet, instead.



Galvin gazed at Kirwyn with one of his unreadable expressions. To Alan he said, "I understand." To Nola, "You were showing me around the house."



He doesn't like Kirwyn any better than I do, Nola thought gleefully, and he has to work very hard not to let it show. She had to like him, ac least a little bit, for that. A moment later, what Galvin had said sank in: Show me around the house.



Finally. This was her chance. If he'd only said it and meant it before Brinna had returned.



Though, of course, then the real Brinna would have entered the kitchen while Nola was in the cellar, witlessly solving one trouble without realizing a worse one had just come up behind her.



Could anything else go wrong now? Silly question. If life had taught her nothing else, it was that things could always get worse.



Galvin must have thought she was hesitating over worry for the spilled pot of beans, for he said, "I must insist that you set aside all else - "



"I recommend a systematic search," Nola interrupted. Move fast, every instinct warned her, BEFORE the next catastrophe hits. "From the bottom up, starting with the root cellar. From back to front."



Galvin nodded, looking amused at her sudden burst of efficiency.



Nola lit a candle from the fire in the hearth. "Careful," she warned. "The stairs are sturdy but steep."



"Perhaps I'd better - "



But she'd intentionally opened the door so that he had to step back, and by then she was on the narrow staircase and he had no choice but to follow.



Nola held her skirt up out of the way. The circle of light from the candle's flame showed the stairs, showed a crescent of the dirt of the root cellar's floor. From here she could not see the corner in which she'd placed the bucket and covered it with an old cloth. That was behind the stairs, only visible going up, not down. All she needed was to get there one step ahead of him, just enough time to kick rag and bucket over, to send shadowforms spilling into the darkness.



"Careful." Now it was Galvin warning her. "No need to go so fast - " Just as she took another step and put her foot down on the trailing edge of her skirt.



She threw her arms wide to grab the wall but felt only air. And then she pitched forward, head over heels, tumbling down the stairs, which smacked against her hands and knees, and then her back, and then there was a breathless moment of nothingness and she knew she'd rolled right off the edge of the stairs. And then she landed, flat on her back in the dark.



Clumsy fool! But at least she was in the dark, which meant the candle had gone out as she dropped it so she hadn't set herself on fire.



More important it meant nobody could see that - as well as knocking the breath out of herself - she had knocked the glamour out. She no longer looked like Brinna, but had resumed her true appearance. And wherever Brinna was, she once more looked like herself.



"Halig!" she heard Galvin cry. He didn't wait for the sergeant to fetch a fresh candle, but continued down the stairs, which was foolhardy without a light. How likely was he to make it down without tripping also and landing on top of her?



She managed to get in enough air to hastily whisper the words that made her once more take on the form of Brinna, and made Brinna - Nola fervently hoped she wasn't someplace public during all this shifting of appearances - resume the form of Nola's mother.



Galvin turned out not to be as ungainly as she, for the next moment he was beside her. "Brinna," he said, sounding simultaneously gentle and urgent. He knelt beside her, telling her, "Lie still."



"I feel a perfect fool," she mumbled. She could barely make out the rag-draped bucket, just far enough away that she couldn't reach it.



"Are you hurt anywhere?"



"I'm hurt everywhere."



"Well," Galvin said, "yes, I can imagine. But anywhere more than the rest?"



Nola could hear Halig coming down the stairs, and the cellar grew brighter from the candle he carried.



"Did any pieces of me detach on the way down?" she asked.



"If so, only very small pieces," Galvin assured her. "Did you hit your head?"



"I don't think so." But she couldn't be sure. She definitely felt light-headed. And thinking about her head was a mistake. Brain and stomach finally caught up with each other, and she realized she was going to vomit. Luckily Galvin realized it also. Somehow he got her on her side and supported her head while she heaved out the morning's meal not a handspan from his knee.



Halig, leaning over her, said, "That leg doesn't look good."



For a moment she feared he meant that her concentration had once again slipped, that the transforming spell had wavered and she had ceased to look like Brinna and had once more taken on her true form. But surely they would have reacted much more strongly if her entire appearance had changed. She tried to sit up, and Galvin pushed her back down.



He touched her ankle and she gasped at the pain. She smacked him as hard as she could, which she knew wasn't showing proper appreciation for his not letting her choke on her own vomit, but in any case it wasn't enough to make him let go.



Alan, standing at the top of the stairs with Kirwyn, called down, "Is it broken?"



"Difficult to say," Galvin answered.



"It's only sprained," Nola answered, hoping. "I'm all right. Truly. Let me up."



Galvin looked skeptical, but he helped her sit.



Her back ached, and her knees and shins and palms were sore, and her right foot definitely drooped at the end of her leg. "Just a sprain," she repeated, less sure now, but desperate to get up long enough to reach that bucket.



"Don't - ," Galvin started as she struggled to get to her feet, but she swatted his hands away and leaned instead on Halig, who if he didn't look confident in her, at least seemed willing to let her cry.



She fought a wave of dizzy nausea, telling herself that her stomach was empty anyway. "There." She stood with her weight on her left foot, clinging to Halig, knowing that she would not be able to take even one step on that right foot. But she had maneuvered herself and the sergeant a couple steps closer to the bespelled bucket of water.



Be strong, she admonished herself. While the spell for shadowforms would last as long as hair and bespelled water remained undisturbed, transforming spells lasted only while she concentrated. If she passed out, the spells that made her look like Brinna, and Brinna look like her mother, would dissolve. And yet she knew this was going to hurt like anything.



Since her right ankle would be unable to support her weight, she had to stand on her left foot. So she had only her injured right leg to work with. She took a steadying breath and a strong hold on her glamour, then - as though she fully planned to walk up those stairs - she swung her leg so that it smacked against the bucket. Colored lights exploded in the corners of her eyes, but she didn't faint.



Galvin swore, but it wasn't for seeing the shadowforms revealed. It was because she'd successfully upended the bucket and had - once again - soaked his leg in the process. But the bucket was upside down; that was the important thing. The spell that had been eavesdropping on the man with the blackberry field in Low Beck had ended.



"Sorry," she said, relief and pain and weakness conspiring to make her barely able to mumble the word. She became aware that it was only Halig's strong arm that had kept her from collapsing.



"Here...," Galvin said, and the next moment he'd picked her up and was climbing the stairs, which was so absurd it was embarrassing.



"Put me down," she protested.



"It's the only way I'll feel safe," Galvin told her. He carried her to Brinna's room and set her down gently on the bed. "Do you have anything to bind that ankle with?" he asked.



Alan went scurrying to get some cloths, while Kirwyn shook his head and complained, "If it isn't one thing, it's another."



"I'm sorry," Nola told him, told all of them for che trouble she was causing. But she'd be out of their lives soon.



"Broken or sprained," Galvin said, "you're going to have to stay off that foot for a while."



"A while?" Nola squealed. She was thinking of the farmer who had offered her a ride - if she was back at the market by noon. She was thinking of Brinna, looking like her mother. She was thinking of her mother, up to who-knew-what mischief. Nola tried to swing her legs off the bed, but Galvin pushed her back. She caught a glimpse of her ankle, which was swelling already. By concentrating on what a normal leg looked like, she could make her ankle appear neither bruised nor swollen, but that would do nothing for the pain. "I have things to do," she protested.



"What?" Calvin asked.



Since she couldn't very well say, "Go back to my mother before she gets herself into trouble," or "Leave before everyone realizes I'm a witch," she said the only thing she could think of: "Get the house ready for Sulis, who was to marry Innis and who doesn't know any of this and is on her way here."



In the voice of one who is reminding rather than informing, Galvin said, "Kirwyn sent word this morning and told her not to come. You were standing right there when he said so."



Nola licked her lips. "Maybe." For an excuse she added, "Sometimes I don't listen."



Galvin glanced back at Kirwyn still hovering in the doorway. Then he looked back at her and said, not quite straight-faced, "Yes," for which Nola liked him a little better.



But she still didn't forgive him for carrying her up the stairs.



Chapter Eleven



SERGEANT HALIG BOUND Nola's ankle in cloths soaked in cool rose water. It relieved some of the pain, but an icy stream would have felt even better, Nola remembered the stream by which she had stopped last night, the one near which the farmer had picked her up this morning and to which he had promised to return her - if she was waiting for him in the market by noon.



If it wasn't noon yet, it was certainly close. Too close for a lame witch who had miscalculated her own cleverness and luck.



It could be worse, she told herself.



But she would have to concentrate to think how, and she needed to spend her concentration on maintaining her spells.



Nobody had seen the shadowforms in the bucket, she reminded herself. Only Brinna knew she was a witch, and - for the moment - Brinna had no proof of this and no likelihood that anyone would believe whatever she had to say. Not that Nola could let herself relax. She was trapped in a house with four men, none of whom was likely to be any help to her at all: two who, should they begin to suspect she was a witch, had the authority to arrest her; one who was desperate enough co have just killed his father; and one who looked about to get blamed for that killing,  ?t could be worse, Nola mentally repeated: Halig could be binding her to a stake rather than nursing her swollen ankle, or Kirwyn could be standing in the doorway with a hatchet and a crazed look on his face rather than with the cup of water and bowl Galvin had sent him to fetch and the put-upon expression of one who was used to doing the ordering rather than the fetching. Alan was supposed to be helping Halig, but he was so agitated he seemed to be doing more fluttering than helping.



Galvin took the cup and bowl from Kirwyn and brought them to Nola, which increased the sourness on Kirwyn's face. As Galvin supported her so that she could rinse the taste of vomit from her mouth, Nola couldn't help but smile.



Galvin, of course, caught her at it. "What?" he asked.



Nola shook her head. "An old family story," she explained. "Apparently my mother would get sick every morning while she was carrying me, before I was born. She likes to tell how my father would stroke her hair and sing songs to comfort her. It's one of her sayings: Never underestimate someone who's willing to hold your head while you're being sick."



"Ah, well," Galvin said. He took the bowl she'd used to spic in but left her the cup, which still held water. "I don't sing."



"My mother never said my father sang well," Nola pointed out.



"Your mother sounds like a very sensible woman."



So much for any thought of intelligent conversation with him.



"I'd feel much better if I could ?ust rest quietly," Nola told everyone, though in truth she wanted them out of there precisely so that she could sit up and pinch herself if she started to get sleepy. With the ache in her ankle a dull throb, she might too easily drift off, and that would be the end of the transforming spell that held her in this form and Brinna in her mother's.



"Rest is the best medicine," Halig agreed.



As the sergeant ushered them out of the room, Galvin said, "So, Alan. Fetch a candle and Halig and I can take a quick look at the root cellar."



Just in time. She'd gotten to the bucket just in time.



"The root cellar?" Kirwyn had stopped moving. "You've already been down there. Surely you remember? Dark room at the foot of the stairs? Brinna tumbling down, you and the sergeant running after, her emptying her stomach practically all over you...?"



Galvin ignored the sarcasm. "We went down there," he said. "We didn't look."



Kirwyn gave a loud sigh.



"Strictly a precaution," Galvin told him. "With Brinna screaming when she discovered your father's body, and you and Alan yelling as you pursued the intruder, the neighbors were alerted very quickly. And yet with all those people opening their doors and hanging out their windows,  nobody saw anyone run our of your courtyard." Galvin gave a frosty smile. "Only you and Brinna saw any glimpse of an intruder."



"He was fast," Kirwyn protested.



Kirwyn claimed to have seen the intruder, too? No wonder Galvin was so suspicious; their descriptions probably didn't match.



"Or," Galvin said, "he may have circled around the back and reentered the house through the kitchen door."



This had gone too far for Nola to continue feigning sleepiness. "Why?" she demanded.