Magic Can Be Murder (13 page)

Finally Galvin looked at her. "Sorry," he said, and she could read the sheepishness in his voice and in his expression and in the way his shoulders slumped and he seemed to get smaller—like a cat calming down after a fright. He was embarrassed for reacting too strongly, for running in here to protect her from a danger that didn't exist.

He set the blade back in its sheath, then crouched beside her. He laid his hand gingerly on her bandaged ankle, as though half expecting that her foot might come off in his hand.

"It just went out from under me," Nola assured him, "I didn't twist it."

He shook his head. "If you needed the window opened, you should have called me."

She said, "I didn't want to disturb you."

It was a ridiculous excuse, and it did nothing to explain why she had needed to put on her shoes.

He didn't mention that. He had started out concerned, then become embarrassed, and now he looked to be moving fast toward annoyance. His voice sounding considerably more patient than she would have guessed from his face, he asked, "Are you hurt?"

"No," she told him. "Well, no more than I was to begin with, after my flight off the stairs."

He shook his head again, but his pique seemed to be melting into exasperation.

Brinna,
she reminded herself. Any special consideration was because she looked like Brinna.

He stood and made a show of opening the shutters, then securing them. "Can you stand?" he asked.

Since the alternative was for him to carry her, she nodded.

He moved between her and the wall and hoisted her under her arms. She saw that the reasonable thing for her co do was to place her arm over his shoulder to support her weight, and it was only by happy coincidence that chis put her hand close to his hair.

Though she had no specific plan, she intentionally caught her finger around a single strand, then she slipped down a bit as though too weary to stand upright. He must have assumed that she tugged accidentally, and he neither flinched nor yelped. She closed her fist around the captured hair and, with Galvin's help, was able to hobble back to the bed.

He picked up her legs and swung them onto the mattress. Without a word he took her shoes off, being gentle with the wedged-on right one, and placed them back beside the bed.

Then he sat down on the edge of the bed. "Since you apparently can't sleep anyway," he said, "perhaps we might talk a little more about what happened last night."

She guessed she wouldn't get very far claiming to feel feint, so she didn't try. "What did you want to know?"

"The same that I've been asking all along." His voice was quiet, patient, but intense.

Nola sighed as though weary of telling the same story over and over. "I was in the kitchen," she said, "cleaning up after supper, preparing for the next day. Alan..." She remembered that this morning she had claimed she didn't know where Alan was. "I ... wasn't sure where Alan was...
at that time,
while I was in the kitchen." She made sure to emphasize that, for she certainly didn't want Alan to get blamed for Kirwyn's crime because of
her
statements. "He'd said he was tired, but I hadn't actually seen him go into his room—it's that cubbyhole by the stairs—though when I was running down the hallway, after Master Innis cried out ... directly after he cried out"—she didn't want Galvin thinking Alan had had time to circle back—"I heard the door to his room open, and Alan came running out practically on my heels."

Galvin was looking at her with that infuriating mild, appraising expression, and she realized she was saying too much, covering everything too well in one rush of details that was not characteristic of the way a normal person talked, certainly not characteristic of the vague and elusive way she had talked previously. Despite all its stops and reversals, her speech sounded—even to her ears—rehearsed.

"I've been chinking about our conversation this morning," she explained, "and realized—che way I left it—that you might have gotten the wrong impression."

And that explanation didn't help one bit, she saw.

She closed her eyes, not to be distracted by him, then realized chat might give the wrong impression, too, and opened them. She licked her dry lips.
Just go on.
"We ran down the hall. I opened the door. I saw Master Innis lying on the floor, his silver scattered about him. I may or may not have seen something in the far doorway. Maybe it was just a shadow. I don't know. Ic was dark and I was frightened."

"Are you frightened now?"

"No," she said, assuming he meant was she afraid of him. Then, "Yes," she amended, in case he meant was she afraid of che murderer coming back, which Brinna might be. Then, "No," she settled on, remembering he had previously asked whether she was afraid of Alan.

There was no sign of the hint of a smile he customarily wore for her.
For Brinna,
she reminded herself. "Where was Kirwyn?" he asked coldly.

Kirwyn. What should she say about Kirwyn?
In the kitchen
would exonerate him,
I don't know
would open her up to suspicion for changing Brinna's story.

In the face of her hesitation, Galvin asked testily, "Do you need me to refresh your memory? When I first spoke with you, you said he'd been in the kitchen with you. After you came back from the market, you said you were alone in the kitchen. Now is your chance to change that answer again, if you want: You were in the kitchen, surrounded by a troupe of singing monks, perhaps?"

Nola held on to a mental picture of Brinna, lest the image before Galvin start quivering like a reflection in a bowl of water that's been jostled. She hoped Brinna was alone, for she had nothing to spare for maintaining Brinna in her mother's form. Nor had she anything left for answering Galvins sarcasm.

"What happened in the market?" Galvin asked.

"Nothing," Nola said.

"Why did your story change after you came back?"

"It didn't."
Don't cry,
Nola told herself, though she was so exhausted and frightened she felt close to it. Galvin would not be moved by tears.

"Either Kirwyn was with you or he was not."

"What I meant," Nola said, "was that I was in the kitchen, scrubbing the floor. Kirwyn
was
with me, the last time I'd looked. But—" She had to stop licking her lips; she knew it made her look like the guilty liar she was, hut she couldn't help herself: Her mouth was so dry. "I had my back to the door, and he was behind me. So, you see, I didn't exactly see him, so I felt alone. Though I wasn't. Because Kirwyn was there, too."

Galvin just sat looking at her.

And she sat holding on to the edges of her glamour, which felt ready to fly off like a floppy hat on a windy day.

He has kind eyes,
Nola remembered Brinna saying in answer to someone's comment that Galvin had pretty eyes. They
were
an attractive gray, but cold. There was no kindness in them now. Everything in his expression called her a liar. She fought not to flinch, not to glance away guiltily.

"Did Kirwyn kill Innis?" Galvin asked.

The question took Nola's breath away. "Kirwyn?" she asked on half a sigh. He suspected Kirwyn after all? Despite all his questions about Alan? About an intruder? She saw he was studying her, catching the relief that must have flickered across her face. And what did he make of chat? "I wasn't there when Innis died," was all she dared say. "I was in the kitchen."

Galvin's voice became more gentle, chough his eyes were no warmer. "Did Kirwyn have reason to want his father dead?"

Yes!
she wanted to shout.
You're finally asking the right questions.
But she couldn't get her voice above a whisper. "They argued frequently. He wouldn't have liked to share an inheritance with the new wife." Surely some of the neighbors would have told him this earlier. "But if it was Kirwyn, why would he steal che money? It could only be a danger, slowing him down, proving he was che culprit if it was found on him. Why risk that when it was part of his inheritance?"

Galvin hesitated, though Nola suspected he had worked out an answer already and was simply weighing whether to share it with her. "To make the killing appear to be done by someone else," he suggested.

Nola was aware that her mouth formed a silent "Oh." She felt like a naive child. Not that she had ever been a naive child, or at least not in a very long time.

Galvin was watching her closely. "What about Alan? Did he have reason to hate his master?"

Nola closed her eyes in frustration.

There was a rattle from the gate that led into the courtyard.

Brinna!
Nola thought. In her panic about Galvin's questions, she had forgotten to concentrate on keeping her mother's form on Brinna, and now Brinna was back to accuse and offer proof—

The kitchen door opened, and the sound of many voices came into the house. The funeral party was returning.

Nola mentally pictured her mother's form overlapping Brinna's.

In the meantime, Galvin's attention never wavered. He had to have seen the dread on her face and how it was replaced by relief. He spoke slowly and calmly, though they had only a few more moments. "If you were Kirwyn, and you had killed your father and stolen his money to make it look like the work of an intruder, what would you do with the money?"

"I don't know," Nola said. Which was the truth, but Galvin had no way of knowing that after all her lies.

And then people were stopping in front of the open door, looking in at her on the bed and Galvin sitting there beside her.

Kirwyn smirked, raising his eyebrows suggestively. "My, my, did we come back too soon?"

"Yes," Galvin said. He stood, ignoring the knowing grins on most of the faces of chose crowded around Kirwyn.

Kirwyn glowered. It was the look he had worn just before killing his father. It was the same look he had turned on Brinna. And now here was Nola, trapped in the same house with Kirwyn, wearing Brinna's form—
being
Brinna, as far as anyone knew—and with a leg she couldn't walk on.

Don't worry yourself unnecessarily,
Nola told herself. Even if Kirwyn wanted Brinna dead, even if he was actively plotting her murder, he wouldn't pick tonight, not the night after he'd killed his father.

But maybe that was the best time of all, Nola thought. People would think the intruder had come back. Maybe that was exactly the best time to commit a second murder.

"Lord Galvin," she called, stopping him at the door. "What about the killer?"

She could see him try to work out what she meant, since he had just clearly indicated to her that he suspected Kirwyn was the killer. She continued, "What if the killer comes back? Surely this household isn't safe. Will you and Sergeant Halig remain here tonight?" Galvin and Halig guarding the door had to be better than being trapped with Kirwyn, with only the too-trustful Alan to protect her.

Kirwyn snorted. "Timid Brinna. Surely that isn't necessary. The intruder has had the whole day to put Haymarket behind him while Lord Pendaran's men have squandered away the hours on pointless questions and frivolous searches."

If he hoped to shame Galvin into leaving, it was a mistake.

"Yes," Galvin told Nola. "We will be staying the night."

"This is a house in mourning," Kirwyn objected. "
With
a useless maid who has a crippled ankle. We do not have the wherewithal to put you up in a suitable manner."

"Then it is fortunate my needs are simple."

The crowd at the door parted for him, so that only Nola was in the room to see the look Kirwyn gave her as he muttered after Galvin, "Such as a useless maid with a crippled ankle?"

T
HE LAST OF
the people who had crowded around the doorway wished Nola well and closed the door behind them on their way co food and drink and reminiscing about Innis. Nola hastily put aside the hair she had plucked from Galvin's head. Her shoe would be a good hiding place, at least for now. Then she searched the blanket until she found one of Brinna's hairs, which she tossed into the cup of water she'd already bespelled.

Apparently all cried out, Brinna was asleep in the barn in which Nola had previously seen her. Nola even knew which barn it was, for it was so dilapidated that through the great chinks in the wall Nola could see the millpond. It was the barn in which she and her mother had considered staying—since it looked abandoned and probably had no one to order them out—when they had first come to Haymarket, before they stopped at the silversmith's house.

Brinna—asleep and alone.
You were lucky,
Nola told herself.
If she had been awake when the glamour wavered...

Wavered?

WAVERED?

Nola had
abandoned
it for long enough that if Brinna had been aware of what was happening, she could have made her way to the house, could have been in among the funeral party before Nola had enough presence of mind to re-form the spell.

That didn't bear thinking about.

Besides, she had no time to spare on events she had already survived; she had to plan what to do next. She had arranged things so that she was—she hoped—safe from Kirwyn tonight. But those same arrangements had almost certainly assured that she would not be able to sneak out of the house once everyone was abed. Galvin and Halig would be keeping watch, to make sure no intruder came in, to make sure Kirwyn didn't leave his room to go to Brinna's. Certainly they were just as capable of noticing
her
going out.

In all likelihood, then, she was here for the duration of the night.

Once morning came she would have to convince them that she was fit enough to do the marketing. Alone. That was two obstacles to overcome; the convincing and the being able to walk at least as far as the outside door when moments ago she couldn't take one step unaided.

The room grew dimmer as late afternoon faded into evening, and finally the people who had attended Innis's funeral began to go home, and still, no better plan had suggested itself to Nola than to wait.