Free 2012-08-In the Event of My Untimely Demise by Unknown

Chapter One: The Dead Client
    “No,” said the wizard Iskola, pointing a polished fingernail toward her half-sister, Luma. “Not you.”
    Luma sank further into her characteristic shoulder-slump. Though older than Iskola, she looked younger. She owed her callow appearance, at least in part, to the elven blood which her five siblings, children of her father and stepmother, did not share. Together, her lithe frame, wide eyes, and boyish figure conspired to hang about her neck an unshakable air of adolescence. Her siblings, who were also her teammates, had learned—or perhaps been taught, by her unkempt red hair, her shrinking posture, her downcast gaze—to treat her not as a woman, but as the runt of the litter. It was her own damn fault, but that realization had so far not helped her one whit in altering the way they regarded her.
    Iskola, her black-clad body a thin and twisted reed, towered over Luma. Her headpiece, a complex of lacquered, intertwining loops constructed from her own raven hair, magnified the imperious effect. A stiff laced collar and dark fingerless gloves, also of lace, completed the outre look the city of Magnimar relished in its highborn magicians.
    Luma forced herself into a rigid posture. “We’re to guard a gem from thieves, and you want to leave behind the mind-reader?”
    Iskola sighed. “No one wants a mind-reader, and you’d be best to stop describing yourself as such. Go back to calling yourself a streetseer if you must. Or citywalker. Or cobblestone druid. Those are all strange enough.”
    “I wasn’t proposing to introduce myself, period.”
    Iskola’s hand flitted out, as if tempted to seize one of Luma’s stray hanks of hair and tuck it back into place. She aborted the gesture, locking hands behind her narrow waist. “When Lord Vetillus hires Magnimar’s most expensive city warriors to stand sentry at his soiree, we are as much a signal of his prestige as is the Bandu Emerald. Were any of his guests to so much as infer that one of us was busy trawling their innermost mental wanderings, we would be failing our duty.”
    “And giving cause for a refund.” Arrus, the squad’s swordsman and Iskola’s twin, squared his broad shoulders and jutted his blocky chin.
    “Honestly, Luma.” Iskola bustled in her whickering skirt toward the squad room door. “When people learn you perform the magic of the streets, they assume you were born on them. Until you learn to present yourself as a scion of a founding house, simple wisdom forces us to exclude you from certain missions.”
    Luma scanned the others for flickers of sympathy. Eibadon, the family ecclesiast, settled his jowly features into an imperturbable dullness. Ulisa, robed master of the unarmed fighting arts, held fast to her serenity, even as a yellow moth flitted around her shaved head. Only Ontor—top-knotted, leather-clad—let a glimmer of feeling hint across his long and hawkish face.
    “Mouse,” he said, “Think of it as being excused from an evening of apocalyptic boredom.”
    “Read one of your books,” Arrus said, and departed, carrying the others in his wake.
    Luma followed him into the manor hallway, hung with portraits of each Lord Derexhi, from its legendary founding warrior Aitin to her father, Randred. Next to the painting of a heroic, virile Randred stood the real man, his brow creased, his beard now gray and wild.
    “Let them go,” he said, voice feather-soft. Father and daughter watched the rest of the squad troop down the stuccoed hallway. “Ontor may have been right. About the boredom of that assignment.”
    “Listening in, I see.”
    Dimples broke across the old warrior’s face. “The successful man of arms pays close heed to his forces. Doubly so when they’re his children.” He patted her shoulder. “What say we show them up, and give you a juicy task?”
    Luma rarely gets the respect she deserves.
    Randred guided her to the library, where he poured her a goblet of Riverspire red and topped