Never Trust a Dead Man (17 page)

Farold hit with a small but solid thump.

"No," Selwyn said again, this time little more sound than the air being knocked out of his lungs. He jerked free of Merton's hold and threw himself to his knees. But there obviously was nothing to be done. The bird lay perfectly still, its neck twisted, its legs limp, not the slightest stirring of breath. Still, Selwyn picked up the almost weightless body.

Selwyn felt hot, cold, light-headed, and made of stone all at once. After all the bickering and complaining, the disparaging remarks, the times he had thought he'd be so much better off alone than with Farold's help—he gladly would have given up more years to Elswyth in exchange for feeling a heartbeat in the tiny creature's chest.

There was none.

Linton shook his shoulder roughly, jostling his arm, so that the bird's body fell from Selwyn's hand, dropping once more to the grassy ground. "Here, that's enough of that," Linton said gruffly. "No more spells and such."

Selwyn got to his feet He wanted very much to hurt Linton, and the best way to do this was to tell him exactly what he had done.

But the knowledge was too terrible, and—after all—Linton was only a fool and a bully.

Farold was dead—again—and there was no reason his cousin had to know he had died twice, that Linton himself was responsible for this latest death.

People were murmuring, "What's going on?" and "How can this be?" Some looked dumbfounded, some frightened.

Across the stream, Bowden wore the expression Bowden wore best: furious. "I gave orders," he started, as though in the face of obvious magic, death, lies, and plots, all he could grab hold of was the thought that he had decreed Selwyn was to die, and Selwyn hadn't.

Farold had been dead long before Selwyn had started to get used to him, to begin to like him.
He wasn't that bad. He wasn't as bad as sitting down on a tack.
It wasn't fair, but there wasn't anything that could be done. Selwyn had to go on alone. "I meant nobody any harm," he said, speaking to everyone, not just Bowden or Linton. "I'm sorry I abused your kindness."
That
was meant particularly for Kendra and her family, who were among those standing on the far bank. "I only wanted time to learn who had really killed Farold."

"
That
," Bowden said, "has already been determined to everyone's satisfaction. And now, besides murder, you are evidently involved in sorcery."

"And what have you learned?" Raedan called out, ignoring Bowden. "Anything?"

Selwyn took a deep breath. The murderer wasn't likely to be Merton, who knew about the knife but had no cause to kill Farold. It couldn't be Bowden or Holt, who couldn't have gotten into the mill. Linton, Anora, Thorne, Orik, and Wilona all had reasons to want Farold dead and could have gone through—or, in Orik's case, squeezed through—Farold's window. But there was only one person he knew of who could easily have learned about the knife without Farold's knowing, who would have had access to Farold's room, and who—from what Selwyn had learned—might well have wanted Farold out of the way. He announced, "I believe it was the miller."

There was a murmur of disbelief from those gathered around.

"You lie." The quavering old voice was Derian's. He stood looking at them from the back window of the mill. Farold's window. "You lie," he repeated. "Why would I?"

Selwyn looked around until he found Anora. "For the same reason everyone thought I wanted Farold dead. To win Anora."

Anora covered her mouth with her hands, which made her expression hard to read.

Derian laughed. "I'm an old man," he said.

Selwyn told the people, "I found that when Derian thought I was Kendra..." He wasn't quite sure how to word this.

The real Kendra put her hand on her hip and tossed her hair. "Derian Miller can't keep his hands to himself," she said. "I'll tell you
that.
He makes all sorts of promises."

"To Kendra?" Anora cried to Derian. "You arranged with my father to marry
me.
"

"What?" Derian said, his hearing conveniently fading.

Kendra ignored him. "Oh no," she said to Anora, sounding—Selwyn thought—more sympathetic than condemning. "Surely you didn't believe him?"

Anora grew tight-lipped. "Don't speak to me," she snapped. "At least I know to make the man wait until we're married. I didn't try to leave a baby with the nuns of Saint Hilda's."

Kendra hugged her baby closely. She held her head high though her voice shook. "At least I loved the man, not his money."

"
Which
man?" Anora jeered. "Farold, or Derian? They
both
offered to marry me."

"Neither," Kendra said. "And for all that, I think I have fared better than you."

I offered, too,
Selwyn thought.
I wanted to marry you,
once.
Did Anora not mention him because his love was not relevant now, or because he had never counted? It made no difference, but it still hurt.

Anora glowered at Kendra. "Slut," she said.

"Enough." Bowden looked from Anora to Kendra to Derian to Selwyn. He said, "None of this is to the point I will not have my daughter's name and reputation sullied. The arrangement our family made with Derian after Farold died is not of concern to the entire village."

"
Soon
after Farold died," Wilona called out.

Bowden looked ready to knock her down: two parents, protecting their children. "The point is"—he jabbed his finger at Selwyn to emphasize his words—"it was your knife that killed Farold."

"My knife," Selwyn said, "that I lost, that Merton found, and that Merton gave to Farold." He turned on Merton, who looked as though he would deny it.

But after a moment's hesitation, Merton nodded, saying, "This is true."

"Oh, I'm sure it is," Bowden snorted. "But why tell it only now?"

"I was afraid," Merton said, "that if people knew Farold had the knife..."—he looked helplessly at Selwyn and finished all in a rush—"they would consider that one more reason for Selwyn to hate Farold and want him dead: to get the knife back."

Suddenly Merton's silence made sense. Selwyn could see people looking at him suspiciously even now.
Just when I needed you, Farold,
he thought, but it wasn't anger or annoyance he felt. He said to Merton, "Except how would I know Farold had it unless you told me, or Farold did, before he died? Obviously Farold had no call to tell me..."

"Nor did I," Merton told the people.

The villagers glanced at each other as though to see if anybody could tell what Selwyn was trying to say.

They had already seen him change form before their very eyes. He told the rest of it "I sought help from a witch," he said, "the same witch who changed my appearance. Through her, I learned the truth from Farold after he was dead."

"What nonsense—," Bowden started.

"Or rather, I learned from his spirit" And still Selwyn held some back for Linton's sake, not to say, "He was alive and well, and you rashly killed him," unwilling to force the man to live with that knowledge.
Farold, why did you have to get in the way?
Selwyn had to take another deep breath to keep from shaking.

"Lies," Derian said.

"Pathetic lies," Bowden amended.

"Farold told me he kept the knife in his room," Selwyn said, "and there Derian could easily get to it."

"Farold's room was his own," Derian said. "I didn't go in there."

"You're in there now."

Derian threw his arms up in exasperation. "Because
you
were in here," he protested. "You—disguised as Kendra—opened the shutters."

"Enough of this," Bowden told Linton. "Gag him and bring him back to my house until we decide what's to be done with him."

"You
did
go in there," Selwyn said to Derian as Linton bent to pick up the rag. He spoke in a rush. "In front of Holt Blacksmith yesterday you admitted you'd seen me the night of the murder. You described me, trying to get Anora to come to the window." He found Holt in the crowd, and Holt was nodding.

"I remember," Holt told everyone.

Linton hesitated.

Selwyn finished, "But your room is in the front of the mill, Derian, overlooking the street."

Derian licked his lips. "I couldn't sleep that night I ... thought I heard a noise in Farold's room, so I went to look. The shutters were open—that was what I heard, one of them rattling—and I looked out the window and saw you. You must have come in through there after I went back to bed."

Thorne said, "You heard the shutters rattling when you normally can't hear a customer banging on your front door? When you told us you slept soundly all night? When you told us you didn't hear a thing?"

"I meant after that," Derian said lamely. "Farold was my boy. You can't imagine I'd kill him. Don't you remember when his father was the miller, and the mill caught fire? I rushed into the flames and rescued him. I raised him as a son."

Selwyn remembered when he and Farold had been talking to Elswyth about Thorne's son, Alden, burning down the smithy, and Elswyth had said, "Just because a fire starts during a storm doesn't mean the storm caused the fire." Now, he said, "Farold was fortunate you were close by that night And you, of course, were fortunate that only the living quarters burned—only people died—and the machinery wasn't damaged. I remember everyone patting you on the back, calling you a hero. But 1 say you were there to make sure the mill itself didn't go up in flames; I say you rescued Farold only so people wouldn't wonder why you were there. No one asks what a hero is doing so close to the disaster. It's obvious: rescuing poor little orphan nephews."

"Lies," Derian repeated. But this time Bowden didn't agree with him.

Selwyn said, "You've been in the habit of killing to get what you want for a dozen years now."

"Boy, this witch of yours has affected your mind," Derian said.

Which everyone knew was no answer.

Derian disappeared from the window.

"Murderer!" Linton shouted, pushing past Selwyn, not even seeing him. "You murdered your own kins-people."

It was over. With that, Selwyn knew it was over.

Other people began shouting, running. Someone screamed to stop the miller—that he would try to set fire to the mill, to take everything with him.

Oh, Farold,
Selwyn thought, looking down at the insignificant little bird's body in the grass. From the beginning, he had known it would have to come down to this. For everyone—eventually, one way or another—everything came down to this.
But not in such a way,
Selwyn thought.

He could hear the thumping of feet in the mill building, downstairs, upstairs, and then the shutters on the side slammed open, those on the second floor that overlooked the giant waterwheel. By the sounds, Derian flung himself out. By the sounds, he must have hit the wheel. Several times. People gasped or screamed, and moved in closer, but still Selwyn couldn't look up to see what was happening, couldn't look away from what had already happened.

Eventually, he walked back to the tavern, to find his father and his mother.

According to the bargain Selwyn had made with Elswyth, he had four days left to spend with his family before his nine and a half years of servitude began.

His mother wept and urged flight, pointing out that if there were enough miles between Selwyn and the witch, the spell to summon him might not work. If they could get on a boat, she was sure that the sea separating them would diminish the strength of the tug of magic.

His father said to let the spell call Selwyn. He would go, too, and chop off the witch's head.

"Father," Selwyn said, "no. I agreed. She fulfilled her part of the bargain. I will do this."

"We'll see," his father said in that tone that meant his mind was perfectly well made up already.

And so, to avoid certain disaster, Selwyn left home after only three days.

He told his parents—which was true—that he was going into the village to say good-bye to Kendra. He just did not tell them that he would not return to say good-bye to them.

He had already walked beyond the fields, beyond even the path that led up into the hills. He had walked to where the road curved and dipped right before the start of the woods when, around the curve, came a tall young woman—a goose girl, apparently, for a large ungainly white duck waddled along beside her.

The duck lifted its wings, but they must have been clipped, for it stayed earthbound. The creature charged toward Selwyn, its wings extended and flapping, looking as awkward as a young child running soon after learning to walk.

Selwyn braced himself, though ducks are not generally so aggressive as geese.

The duck wrapped its wings around Selwyn's leg and said, "Selwyn, you dumb twit, I'm amazed but happy that you're still alive! What happened, did you get confused, you're coming a day too early, how did you escape?"

"
Farold?
" Selwyn said.

"How many talking ducks do you know?" the duck asked.

Selwyn knelt to sweep him up into his arms. "I didn't know I knew any!" he cried. "And I'm amazed and delighted to see that you're still alive." Which he was—more than he would ever have guessed. "What hap pened?" he asked. By then the young woman had reached them, and he added, "And who's this?"

The young woman smacked him on the side of the head.

"Oh," he said over the ringing in his ear. "Elswyth." He remembered she had kept saying she was gathering the ingredients for an important spell. Now he saw what the spell must have been. She was young, looking hardly older than he himself "I would have come," he told her. Turning his attention to Farold, he asked, "And why are you a duck?"

Farold said, "After that dunderhead of a cousin of mine started swatting, I suddenly found myself in the afterlife again—which, I suppose, means he hit me."

Selwyn nodded.

"So, I thought, 'Well, it's one thing for me to be dead, having been through it already and all; it's another thing for the dumb twit to be on his own.' I was certain those villagers were going to toss you into that stream or tear you apart. So I said to myself, 'Well, I can't do anything here, not having a working body anymore, so I'll go get the old witch and see what she can do.'"