Magic Can Be Murder by Vivian Vande Velde Page B

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.
    Oh, for goodness sake,
Nola thought in exasperation. How had Kirwyn pulled
that
off? Still, it was none of her business.
    She was happy to gather from what she overheard that Brinna and Alan had
not
been murdered, nor apparently was anyone blaming the two servants of the house for the murder. And she was happier still co hear nothing about a buckec, or witchcraft, or a pair of serving women who had been dismissed earlier on the same day of che killing. She was not happy to learn that word had been sent to Lord Pen da ran, whose estates included che town of Haymarket, and that the lord had sent one of his minor lordlings to seek out more details of the crime.
    So. Someone was asking questions and looking around.
    But surely he wouldn't be looking around the root cellar, she told herself. Not so soon.
    Or would he? One of the things Nola learned was