Magic Can Be Murder by Vivian Vande Velde Read Free Book Online Page A

removed a wooden chest from the cavity there and set it on the bed. He was fitting a key into the lock, obviously intent on putting his silver away securely for the night, too intent to notice that he was not alone.
    Kirwyn raised his arm.
    Perhaps his father saw the shadow fall across the box. Still crouched, he turned. "No!" he cried.
    Kirwyn brought the hammer down on top of his fathers head.
    The silversmith fell back against the bed, the heavy box crashing to the floor an instant after his body did.
    The whole washbasin seemed to take on the color of the spilled blood. Nola imagined she could smell it. Her head swam and she put her arm out to keep from falling. The basin went off the back of the shelf and crashed to the floor, shattering, taking water, and hair, and murdered silversmith with it.
    In the silence of the tavern room, Nola heard her mother murmur, "I cold her to leave it. I did tell her."

CHAPTER SEVEN
    N OLA COULD HEAR footsteps hurrying down the hall. "Don't say a word," she whispered urgently to her mother.
    Her mother threw her arms up in exasperation. "Why should I say anything?" she asked. "Nobody ever listens anyway."
    There was a rapping at their door—uncommon courtesy to people in their situation—and Edris called out, "Is anything amiss in there?"
    Nola opened the door. "I'm so sorry," she told the tavern keeper, gesturing to indicate the broken washbasin. The spilled water looked, once more, like water, rather than blood. "I was trying to get everything settled just so, and I pushed the basin too far in and it just went over the back edge."
    Edris looked only mildly annoyed. "Ah, well," she said. "Accidents do happen. I hope you're better with trays of food and drink than you are with washbasins."
    "I'll be very careful," Nola assured her.
    Edris's ancient father, Modig, was shuffling his way down the hall also, to see what the excitement was. "Crashes," he said, "Alarms in the night. We haven't had such a commotion since that time that man tried to sneak the goat into his room."
    Edris ignored her father. "It's only..." She glanced to Nola's mother, who had sat back down on the bed, hugging herself and rocking.
    She heard us arguing,
Nola thought.
She's trying to decide if we're likely the kind of people who throw things when we get angry with each other.
    Modig finally made it to the doorway. "This," he said, "reminds me of the time—"
    "Father!" Edris snapped. Looking straight at Nola's mother, she asked her, "
Is
everything all right?"
    Nola's mother covered her mouth, one hand over the other, and said through the cracks between her fingers, "I'm not allowed to say."
    "She's joking," Nola said to Edris's aghast expression. "Mother likes to tease."
    Edris raised one eyebrow skeptically.
    Nola sighed. "Actually, that isn't true."
She probably suspects I beat Mother regularly,
Nola judged. She said, "What really happened is that my mother just gave me some bad news. Something she should have told me this morning, before we ever came to Saint Erim Turi."
    "Very bad news," Nola's mother echoed agreeably. "Death." She nodded. Then she tightened her hands over her mouth as though the words weren't already out.
    "Yes," Nola said, before her mother decided to say anything worse. "Someone we know died."
    "Oh, I'm so sorry." Edris made the sign of the cross.
    Her father did, coo. He said, "I knew a man once who died—"
    Nola continued, interrupting, determined to convince Edris that she hadn't been throwing che room's furnishings about. "I was so upset, I wasn't paying actencion, and that's when I accidentally set the basin too far back and it fell. Off the back. Behind the shelves." She realized she was repeating herself. And showing a tendency to babble. But still, she moved to stand by the shelves—as though Edris couldn't find them on her own—and she indicated the basin behind the shelves and hoped Edris realized how unlikely a throw would have been needed to make the basin end up back there.