Magic Can Be Murder

"Not back!" Nola's mother cried, finally taking her hands down completely from over her mouch so that she could pull on her hair. "Nola, what are you thinking? And here I was, afraid that you would be wanting to go forward. Again. As if that wasn't bad enough. But of course not. 'Here's a nice, safe, friendly place in Saint Erim Turi,' my Nola says to herself. 'I know what we should do: We should leave, as soon as we get here, that's the only sensible thing to do.' Naturally." She struck herself on the side of the head. "Why didn't I think of that?"



"Mother!" Nola warned. To Edris, she said, "Mother is a bit overwrought. She's chinking of the sadness of the situation, and not taking into account that in this time of sorrow our poor friends shouldn't have to concern themselves with day-to-day household casks, in which we could help them."



Edris was watching Nola's mother. From behind Edris, and from over Modig's shoulder, Nola made frantic faces at her mother that were meant to convey that she wasn't really thinking of going back to Haymarket, and would her mother, please, just for once, play along? Going back was only a pretext. For what would Edris and Modig think of them if Nola had said, "Somebody in the last town wc visited has died, and now we must move on from here because we're only a day's journey away"? It made sense that people who knew each other would come together in times of bereavement. If her mother would only realize going back was a ruse and stop making such a fuss. It was hard enough to think.



Modig said, "You try to go back, and you try to go back." He thumped his cane and shook his head. "But you never can."



What was going on at the silversmith's house - even now as her mother craned around Edris and asked Nola, "What is it you're trying to tell me, dear? I can't make it out from the faces you're making."



"Nothing," Nola said. "I'm trying not to cry over the death of our poor friend."



Surely, she thought, Kirwyn wasn't stupid. He couldn't expect to bash his father across the head and get away with it. Was his plan to kill the servants, too, and claim an intruder had broken in? Or would he try to set the blame on Brinna or Alan?



On Brinna, Nola thought, remembering Kirwyn's face through the kitchen window, and the hate she had seen there.



But then she went even colder than she had when she'd realized she was about to witness a murder.



Or on us, she thought.



How much more likely was it for Kirwyn to blame Nola and her mother for the death? Had he, in fact, already discovered the bespelled bucket in the basement? "Obviously witchcraft," he would say to che authorities, showing them the shadowform of a living man in a bucket of water. And he could claim... what? That the figure they could see had stepped out of :he bucket and killed the silversmith? They wouldn't know that was impossible, that Nola didn't have - and would never use, even if she did have - that kind of magic. And they would know that she was the one who had set up the spell - who else was there who could have done it? Who had recently had access to the silversmith's basement, besides Brinna and Alan? And they had lived in Haymarket all their lives, and everybody knew they weren't witches. Who but the two strangers, who had been asked to leave precisely for being so strange?



And if what she had been afraid of came to pass, and the blackberry merchant from Low Beck tracked her down to Haymarket, or if somebody from Haymarket recognised his shadowform and the authorities tracked him down, that would not exonerate her. He would be able to protect himself. "I was at home with my family, with my field workers," he would tell them. "That creature that the witch created and placed in the bucket has a separate life from me, so I am not responsible for its crimes. She is. I always said she was a witch."



And even if - if - Kirwyn hadn't discovered the bucket and had a different plan to evade being found out, then someone - the town magistrate or representatives from the lord who held this land - would come to investigate the crime. And they would find the bucket. That bucket might have been - might have been - safe from discovery long enough to go dry if all that was going on in the silversmith's house was a wedding. But it would certainly be chanced upon now chat there had been murder done.



She and her mother would have to leave - now, tonight, immediately - and flee farther and faster than they ever had before.



She became aware that Edris had taken hold of her arm, and she jerked away, thinking that somehow Edris knew, Edris was crying to restrain her, Edris planned to hand her over to the Saint Erim Turi authorities. But Edris didn't try to catch hold of her again. She only said, mildly, "Sometimes it's best to weep and not hold it in." And Nola realized she was responding to the last thing Nola had said, that Nola was trying not to cry over a supposed friend's death.



Modig said, "You try to hold it in, and you try to hold it in. But you can't."



Nola sat down heavily, just barely making it onto the straw-filled mattress on the floor.



Edris - for all her bulk and despite being at least twice Nola's age - crouched down beside her. "I'm so sorry," she said, so sympathetically - over the wrong thing - that Nola found herself crying.



She and her mother would never, she knew, absolutely never, be able to outrun the storm that would break out in Haymarket if that bucket was discovered. She said, and this time she meant it, "We must go back." If the bucket hadn't been seen yet, she must make sure it never was.



Her mother said, "None of us thinks you should go."



Edris, misunderstanding, thinking that Nola's mother was including her in the sentiment, said, "I don't know." She shook her head, to indicate she didn't know the situation, and in truth she didn't know the situation, much more than she could ever guess. Still, she pointed a finger at her father to warn him not to take sides, and she repeated, unwilling to get between mother and daughter, "I don't know."



Annoyed with herself, Nola wiped her eyes. They had to go back. Yet how could they - when she knew Kirwyn had already killed once? How could they go back when everyone would blame her mother because they had all heard her say that Innis would die?



That thought made Nola's mind stop going in the same circle. How had her mother known? Of course. Some abbot had told her, some abbot who had found his way into her mother's head. Well, he hadn't exactly told her. Her mother had overheard him saying the Mass for the Dead. But since when had her mother's voices been real - never mind been able to tell the future?



It was a coincidence, Nola told herself. An awful co-incidence that could get the two of them killed. The three of them, she wryly corrected herself, if you counted the abbot.



And surely she would be as mad as her mother if she took her mother back to Haymarket. Ic would cake twice as long co get there, and people would be twice as apt to notice them, and things were twice as likely to go awry.



But Nola had to go there.



And how could she not take her mother? What other choice was there - to leave her here?



Nola looked at Edris and Modig, who had come running - well, come as fast as each of them could - when they thought there was some trouble, who had asked pointed questions to make sure Nola's mother was not being harmed, who were - contrary to all expectation - friendly.



I can't leave her here, Nola thought. What would ?he say, what would she do, what trouble would she get into without me?



But it was safer than taking her to Haymarket. Wasn't it? Where both a murderer and the authorities were?



It was a terrible plan. But there was no other choice.



To her mother, she said, "I can travel much faster alone." To Edris, she said, "Would you ... Could it be possible ... Is there any way - "



"I would very much like for your mother to stay here," Edris said, as though the idea had come to her first, "if that would be convenient for you. My father so much enjoyed talking to her this evening."



Modig thumped his cane. "Listens better than anybody. I haven't met such a good listener since the old blacksmith died."



Edris said, "You mean Deaf Harold?"



"The very one," Modig agreed.



Nola's mother got a distant expression on her face. "Harold," she said thoughtfully. "Harold..."



Nola rested her face in her hands, but in the end her mother said, "No. No Deaf Harold. Of course, there is Abbot Dinsmore, whose hearing isn't very good, on account of all those monastery bells ringing."



"I think," Nola announced to everyone, "it would be best if I start tonight."



"But it's dark out," Edris protested.



That was the whole point. Nola hoped to get to Haymarket before the new day started, before things went too far. "It will be best this way," she assured Edris.



Edris shook her head but didn't argue. "Let me pack a breakfast for you."



It was the second time in a very long day that someone had taken trouble co see that she would have a meal. She was unaccustomed to the concern. "Thank you," she said.



As she followed Edris out of the room, she heard Modig tell her mother, "I knew an abbot once who was so determined to prove he was the holiest man in Christendom that..."



And Nola hurriedly shut the door behind her.



Chapter Eight



NOLA PLANNED TO walk all night. But two days of almost steady walking and near-constant fear, separated by only one short night of rest in the silversmith's house, had left her drained, And obviously, she chided herself as she accidentally strayed off the path and stepped calf-deep into a cold stream, making one bad decision after another. Her legs wobbling under her. It would be safer, she told herself, to rest during the darkest part of che night. Arriving in Haymarket at dawn couldn't be that much better than arriving midmorning, while arriving too exhausted to think straight would be considerably worse.



As she lay down in a grassy hollow formed between the massive roots of a huge oak, she just hoped that the situation wasn't already far beyond what she and her wits could handle.



***



WHEN SHE AWOKE it was dawn, which was later than she had planned, and it was raining.



Last chance, she told herself, as her skirt flapped in the wind. This is the last sensible time to change your mind and go back to the tavern, fetch Mother, and make a run for it.



But she still couldn't convince herself that running was a sensible plan.



Crouched under the shelter of the tree - which wasn't much shelter at all - she ate the sliced mutton and bread that Edris had packed for her. As the ground under her feet melted into mud, she heard from the nearby road the rattle of a wagon coming from the direction of Saint Erim Turi, headed toward Haymarket. For the moment she and the wagon were still separated by a slight rise in the road.



Surely if it was sensible she was after, it was better to ride than to walk, even if the rain was beginning to lessen.



Nola took from her bodice the piece of wool that still contained the hairs she had collected at the silversmith's house. The gray one, Innis's, she would never use now. But there were still two of Brinna's, at least one of Alan's, and two, possibly three, of Kirwyn's - not that she was eager to look in on Kirwyn again. But she might need the hairs - who knew what the future might bring? - so she set aside the wool to keep them out of the range of the spell she was about to cast.



Then, still crouched down, she wrapped her arms about herself and said the magic words that would shift her appearance. She chose to look like a young boy, feeling that was probably safer - out in the countryside alone among strangers - than being a young woman, even a rather plain young woman. She made herself look like a skinny twelve-year-old boy, and made her cloches look like mud- and grass-stained, slightly too small, much-patched boys' clothing. There was no sense in looking like anyone who might have something worth stealing. She shoved the wet square of wool with the hairs in it into her shirt and managed co scramble back up onto che road just as the wagon crested the hill.



The driver was alone - a farmer, judging by his cartload of geese and pigs and goats, on his way to market. The cart was pulled by a horse that looked almost as old as Edris's father, but all in all they were still moving faster than Nola would have cared to walk. None of them - farmer, horse, geese, pigs, or goats - looked any happier about the day than Nola was.



"Hello," Nola called out, her voice altered by the same spell that had changed her appearance. "Are you going to Haymarket? And are you interested in company along the road?"



"I am on my way to Haymarket," the farmer said, slowing but not stopping, "and running late because of chis rain so that I'm cranky for it, and used anyway to traveling on my own, so I'm not especially looking for company." But then he relented. "You needing a ride?"



"That I am," Nola admitted, though by that time she was shouting to his back.



The man pulled on the reins and stopped the wagon. "Then climb up," he said.



The rain stopped, eventually, and they arrived at Haymarket when it was still morning. The market area, though puddled and dripping, was busy, with housewives and servants going from stall to stall. But it was late to be just setting up. The only saving grace for the farmer was that the rain had delayed everything.



"Thank you," Nola called as the man found his place and unfastened the horse from its harness. Though that was just about the full extent of their conversation - "Please take me to Haymarket" and "Thank you" - he told her as she jumped off the cart, "If you want a ride back to where I picked you up, be here again by noon."



"Thank you," Nola repeated, delighted. Noon. Surely that was time enough to find her way - although she did not know how - back into the silversmith's house. Of course, she had no idea who would be there, or how many people Kirwyn had killed over the night - but surely until noon was long enough to stop the spell that she had stupidly left going for two days now.



So. She had no plan, but at least she had a way to leave.



That was better than nothing.



She hoped.



She kept the form of a young boy as she made her way among the market stalls, her ears alert to any talk of what had happened the night before. Normally market vendors might have been suspicious of a boy looking like Nola, a boy who obviously had nothing, and many would have cold him to be off, afraid that his intention was to grab something and flee with it into the crowd-But today everybody was too busy talking, for the news was fresh and shocking: Master Innis was dead, killed - so everyone said - by an intruder, who had stolen che contents of the silversmith's strongbox, but had then been run off the property by the dead man's son.