“I am not going to flee,” Brenda said. “I demand to be taken to Cen-tertown and questioned under truth spell.”
Farber smiled more broadly. “So you say. However, I am not going to take any chances. I will keep you under observation… but not in the constable’s gaol. You may return to your own room, and I will set a guard on it.”
Dame Hillyard, who had been slumping sullenly in her chair, sat up looking brighter, but Farber disappointed her again. He took Brenda to the eating room and requested a meal for them both, and to Dame Hillyard’s clear disapproval sat with Brenda asking her what the spirits of the air and the pixies and other forest dwellers looked like. Eventually, he requested that one of the teachers watch Brenda while she had a bath, and then he saw her to her room and locked her in.
She was not to have a peaceful night, however. Sometime well after dark the night erupted into a clangor of bells and shouts and the pounding of running feet. Brenda leaped from her bed, but the door was still locked. She ran to the window to scream for release and saw the red glare of fire—but it was no threat to the school. The school was quiet except for the students who were old enough running out to fight the blaze.
Still, Brenda was too anxious to go back to bed. She drew on a robe and sat watching out of the window as the red glare died. Eventually, the students began to troop back into the school, but before Brenda gave up her post to try to sleep again, there was a knock on her door and the key turned in the lock.
“Get dressed,” Inspector Farber called through the door, “and come down to the study room. I have more questions.”
He did not wait for her, however; Brenda was allowed to make her way alone. She found the room a good deal more crowded this time, and everyone but she was filthy with ashes and stained with smoke. As soon as she entered, Farber gestured to her to come closer and told Constable Willis to close the door.
“William and Marcus Lightfeather,” he said, “you have been apprehended in the act of trying to burn down the place reserved for the keeping of the victims of unnatural death.”
Those in the room shifted this way and that and made a low, unhappy noise, but they mostly looked at Brenda.
“Why do you say that?” Dame Hillyard cried. “She —” she gestured venomously at Brenda—”the witch could have set the fire from a distance. She certainly didn’t try to fight it.”
“Could you set a fire?” Farber asked Brenda.
“I can light a candle if I’m close,” she said, somehow much less frightened of Farber now, “but not streets away.”
He nodded. “Anyhow, Dame Hillyard, the whole back of the gaol stank of lamp oil, and so did the Lightfeathers, who had empty buckets nearby and torches in hand.” He looked back at William and Marcus. “Did you kill Amy Lightfeather?”
“No!” Marcus cried. “Sometimes Amy made me crazy, the way she flirted with Abel, but I’d never hurt her.”
Williams hook his head. “I had no reason to harm her.”
Farber’s lips tightened, and he turned to Brenda. “You were Amy Lightfeathers friend. I suspect you know why the Lightfeathers wanted to destroy her body.”
Brenda swallowed hard, and color rose in her face. “I suppose it was because Amy was not… was no longer a maiden. She told me she had known men, but I never understood how she would find a time and place. She hardly left the school except to visit—” Her glance flew to William; her eyes widened. Then she covered her face with her hands. “Oh God, that was how she got all those things. Master Lightfeather got them for her to keep her quiet.”
“Witch! Bitch!” William screamed, and leaped toward Brenda, but he was intercepted by his own son, who fell upon him and began to strangle him, weeping hysterically, moaning that he knew someone had meddled with Amy.
The inspector now drew two silvery ribbons from his purse and stepped toward the battling men. He separated them with surprising ease and thrust Marcus at Constable Willis, who grappled with him while Farber rolled one of the ribbons around William’s wrists. A moment later he had Marcus similarly secured.
“We are all dirty and tired,” Farber said, glancing around at the nowshocked and silent people, “but it happens that all the town notables are gathered together, and I would like to settle this matter now so that I can leave with my prisoners tomorrow morning. Abel Springwater, come forward.”
“Wait,” Constable Willis said. “Don’t you need the Reader’s evidence? You said she would be here tomorrow.”
“No Reader is coming,” Farber said. “That was a test, which the Lightfeathers failed.”
The civil guard’s mouth opened, but before he could speak, Abel Springwater had made his way to the center of the room. The gardener was a handsome man, big-boned like Willis, but fair-haired and blue-eyed. He nodded easily to the inspector, still rubbing his ash-stained hands along the sides of his leather trews, and said, “Don’t know nothing but what I said afore. Heard her”—he cocked his head at Brenda—”screaming and told Dame Hillyard.”
Farber asked, “How long did the screaming continue?”
Abel’s easy stance stiffened. He glanced at Dame Hillyard and then swiftly at Brenda. He cleared his throat. “Don’t know,” he said. “Shocked me, it did, that yelling.”
“But Brenda says she only screamed once.”
Sullenness replaced Abel’s earlier expression of easy attention. “Could be. Said it shocked me. Went to tell Dame Hillyard ‘thout waiting to see how long it would go on.”
“You mean you have never heard a student in this school cry out for stubbing a toe or dropping a book or merely in play, that you rush to tell Dame Hillyard at every shout you hear? If this is your pattern—”
“No. ‘Tain’t the way I do usual. I—I don’t know why I ran in to Dame Hillyard. Somethin’ in the voice… Yeah. Somethin’ in the voice scared me.”
“Perhaps,” Farber said, eyes and voice cold. “But I think you had been in the little guardhouse and seen Mistress Lightfeathers body already.”
“No,” Abel cried, his voice rising in panic. “No, I never went in. I only saw from the doorway…”
His voice trembled and faded as he realized that he had admitted Amy was dead before Brenda had seen her. He glanced at Dame Hillyard and then, quickly, at the closed door behind him. Constable Willis stirred as if to move to block the doorway, but he did not.
“Abel Springwater,” Farber began.
“No!” Constable Willis and Dame Hillyard cried out together.
“The witch did it!” Dame Hillyard continued alone. “She did! I saw her! I’ll give evidence. She—”
Her voice came to a gasping stop as Constable Willis drew his sword and backed toward the door. “No. Brenda didn’t do nothin’,” he said as he opened the door with one hand behind him. Farber didn’t speak or move. “Nor did Abel, poor fool. I killed Amy Lightfeather.”
“Why?” Brenda cried, tears rising to her eyes.
Willis turned to her. “You innocent!” he said scornfully. “You cared for ‘er, but if ever there were a black soul, it were ‘ers. What ‘er uncle did were wrong, but she tempted ‘im into it, and she tortured ‘er poor cousin… and my Abel. She tormented ‘im, too.”
“Killed her how?” Farber breathed, the words hardly audible.
“I knew she were waitin’ fer someone in that place—didn’ know it were Abel or I wouldn’t of…”He shuddered. “I went to tell ‘er to say no to Abel and leave ‘im be. She laughed at me. Me, the civil guard. And she knitted to the end of a row and poked the needle at me to push me back, laughing, sayin’ it were Abel’s turn to bring ‘er somethin’ pretty. So I took that damn needle out of ‘er hand and shoved it right up the back of ‘er head, just like I dreamed of doin’ every time I heard Abel sobbin’ in ‘is room. Didn’ make a sound. Didn’ shed hardly a drop of blood. All I had to do was pull the needle out, drop ‘er, and walk away.”
There were exclamations of horror from the listening and watching group, but no one moved to interce
pt Willis, who stood in the open doorway, sword in hand. Abel Springwater was staring openmouthed at Constable Willis, and Dame Hillyard cried out, “Fool!”
“Fool? Me?” Willis said, moving the sword in a tight, threatening circle. “You’re the fool, tryin’ to say it were Brenda! I been a law keeper all my life. I weren’t havin’ no murder put on an innocent in my village.”
And while the words still hung in the air, he was out of the door, which he slammed shut behind him. Everyone was frozen with shock,except… Brenda looked up at Detective Inspector Farber’s face and saw that he was smiling slightly and was not shocked at all.
A few moments later a hubbub broke out of shocked exclamations and plans for pursuit. Farber made no move to follow Willis and took no part in the discussion until the others had talked themselves out; then he said calmly that it did not matter, that he would arrange with Centertown to have the constable found.
The people muttered and mumbled, but no one dared contest the inspector’s authority, and with uneasy glances at Farber the room began to clear. Ignoring the others, Farber directed Brenda to one of the chairs around the study table and Dame Hillyard to the other.
“You are now clear of any accusation against you, Mistress Willcoming,” he said, “but this is a very backward place. Are you sure you wish to remain in this village?”
“Wish to remain?” Brenda echoed. “Do I have any choice?”
Farber explained that, being a witch, Brenda had always had the right to attend one of the schools for the Talented in Centertown. “The schooling is free,” he said, “and you need not worry about a living allowance because Dame Hillyard will be paying that—exactly the amount that had been paid to her to hire a tutor in witchcraft for you. She will pay it every single month, until the full sum she stole is cleared.”
“The money is gone. I cannot pay” Dame Hillyard cried.
Detective Inspector Farber showed his teeth in what was not a smile. “Well, then, I can arrange for you to be taken as a prisoner to Centertown. You will then work for the authorities, likely scrubbing toilets, and your stipend will be paid to Mistress Willcoming. You as well as Brenda have a choice.” He turned to Brenda with an entirely different smile. “Go back to bed now, or, if you cannot sleep, pack for the journey tomorrow.”
Brenda nodded but did not move. Instead, she said, “You’re a witch yourself, aren’t you, Inspector Farber? When you asked me about the spirits of the air and forest, you were only making sure I could see them.”
“Yes,” he said, still smiling.
“And you can hear and understand the spirits of the air and forest?”
He smiled more broadly. “Yes.”
“You knew! You knew everything right from the beginning. Why did you let the Lightfeathers almost burn down a building? Why did you make Constable Willis confess?”
“Mistress Willcoming, if I had simply said that some invisible people had told me the long-trusted constable of the village had murdered Amy, would anyone have believed me? They would have been even more sure you were guilty and that witches were evil. And the Light-feathers would have escaped punishment—one for debauching his niece, although I hardly know who was the more guilty in that. You are an innocent, Mistress Willcoming.”
“No,” Brenda said, pulling the beautiful shawl Amy had made for her tighter around her shoulders. “I was not innocent. I was desperate. I knew Amy could be vicious, but she was very kind to me… and I had no one else.”
Inspector Farber gently steered Brenda toward the door. “Get some sleep,” he urged. “You will have many friends soon,” he assured her. “You are coming home, to your own people now.”
Overrush
Laura Anne Gilman
Laura Anne Gilman was born in New Jersey, left briefly to go to college in the wilds of New York State, then returned to her old stomping grounds of Essex County. Ignoring all advice from her family and friends, she began her writing career in 1997 with a sale to Amazing Stories. Since then, she has published more than a dozen short stories, three media tie-in novels (two Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one Poltergeist: The Legacy), been reprinted in high school and middle school textbooks, written two nonfiction books for teenagers, and edited two anthologies (OtherWere and Treachery and Treason). In there somewhere she also has a full-time job as an editor for a major publishing house. She is married (Peter), with one cat (Pandora).
You didn’t say anything about a body!”
Well, that got his attention, anyway, Wren thought, seeing the startled look in her partner’s eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Body. As in dead. I thought we agreed, no more dead people?” She collapsed bonelessly in the large leather sofa opposite Sergei’s desk. But she couldn’t meld with the butter-soft material the way she normally did. Not with that much adrenaline coursing through her system. “Walk me through it.”
That was the thing about Sergei. You could flap him for maybe, oh, ten seconds. Then he was back in the groove. Which was good. She needed grooveness right now.
“Body. Dead. Propped up in front of the painting like a rag doll, only ickier. Blood, pooled and dried.” She could feel herself calming down as she recited, the act of talking it out giving her some distance. “Head wound, looked like. He was wearing slicks”—the outfit of choice for the well-kitted burglar—”but his hood was back, like he’s stopped; like he thought he was in the clear.”
She had been cruising up until then. It was a flyby, an easy job. They’d been hired by an insurance company who suspected that their well-to-do client hadn’t actually been relieved of certain heavily insured paintings in a recent robbery as he claimed. So they’d come to Sergei, who had a certain… reputation… of being able to retrieve missing objects, and offered him a hefty check to ascertain the truth of the matter. Quietly, of course. Bad business to look as though you doubted the word of a wealthy client.
So Sergei took their check, shook their hands, told them they’d have an answer by the next Monday. And then he’d called her. He was the money guy the deal guy. The face people saw.
She did the dirty work. The physical stuff. Ego aside, when it came to Talent, there were maybe fifty mages who could manipulate current the way she did, with the results she got. Skills, maybe another twenty thieves working today who could finesse the way she did. There were maybe ten other people in the world who combined the two. And only one of them was better than she was.
But she was the only one who kept it legal. Ish. And dead bodies had no place in a legal game.
Wren didn’t believe in ghosts. Dead was dead was dead. But…
She exhaled once, slowly, letting all the remaining tension flow from her neck, through her shoulder muscles, down her arms and legs until she could practically feel it oozing out of her feet and fingers like toxic sludge. And with it, the buzz of unused current-magic still running in her system, drawn back into the greater pull of the earth below her.
she opened her eyes again, the world seemed a little more drab somehow, her body heavier, less responsive. Current was worse than a drug; it was like being addicted to your own blood, impossible to avoid. All the myths and legends about magic, and that was the only thing they ever really got right: you paid the price with bits of yourself. She reached almost instinctively, touching the small pool of current generated by her own body. It sparked at her touch, like a cat wokensuddenly, then settled back down. But she felt better, until she looked up and saw Sergei staring at her, a question in his eyes. And the ghostly presence she had felt on seeing the stiff weighted on the back of her neck again.
What?she asked it silently. What?
Wren bit the inside of her lip. Scratched the side of her chin. Then she sighed.
It didn’t matter if you believed in ghosts or not, if they believed in you.
They had stored the body in one of the rooms in the basement, where Sergei kept the materials needed to stage the gallery’s ever-changing exhibits: pedestals, backdrops, folding chairs. Wren opened the door
and turned on the light, half expecting the corpse to be sitting up and looking around.
But the body lay where they had left it, on its back, on the cold cement floor. “Hi,” she said, still standing in the doorway. That sense of a presence was gone, as though in bringing it here she had managed to appease its ghost. But it seemed rude somehow, to poke and pry without at least some small talk beforehand…
“I don’t suppose you can tell me what happened to you?” She closed the door behind her and locked it. Sergei’s gallery assistants were gone for the night, but better overcautious than having to explain.
Wren swallowed, then put the book she was carrying down on the nearest clear surface. No point trying to recall anything from her high school biology courses—that, as her mentor used to say, was what we had books for. “Rigor mortis,” she said, and flicked two of her fingers its direction. The book opened, pages riffling until the section she needed lay open. Taking a small tape recorder out of her pocket, she pressed “record” and put it next to the book.
“The body is that of an older male, maybe a really rough fifties. He’s wearing jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved button-down shirt. Homeless, probably—his skin looks like he hasn’t washed in a while.” She walked around the body, trying to look at it objectively. “Hair, graying brown. Long—seriously long. This guy hadn’t been to the barber in a long time.”
She stopped, stared at the corpse, trying to decide what it was thatstruck her as being wrong. “There are no signs of trauma. In fact, there’s no sign of anything. Unless he died from an overdose of dirt.” It might have been a heart attack or something internal, she reminded herself. The only way to tell would be to cut him open… “Ew,” she said aloud. “Rigor mort. Tell me about it.”
There was a faint hum, like that of a generator somewhere starting up, and a voice rose from the book: “The stiffening and then relaxing of muscles after death, as caused by the change in the body’s chemical composition from alkaline to acid. Process typically beings in the face and spreads down the body, beginning approximately two hours after death and lasting twelve to forty-eight hours. A body in full rigor will break rather than relax its contraction.”
Murder by magic: twenty tales of crime and the supernatural Page 16