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

where Aruhal lived when she spotted windows draped with black mourning bunting. The house that went with them hunkered like a poor relation next to its well-kept neighbors. Paint peeled from the trim. Oilskin stood in for several windowpanes. Instead of a garden or collection of stone figures, its front yard boasted only broken paving stones.
    Unlatching and swinging open the rust-kissed iron gate, Luma made her way to the door. Its knocker twigged her curiosity. A metallic ring about a foot and a half in diameter, it was formed with an unusual precision. Beveled outer edges had been dulled with a file, scratching the ring’s smooth surface, and Luma guessed that they had once been razor-sharp. Clearly, knocking on doors had not been the object’s original purpose. Luma used it anyway.
    After some shuffling from inside the house, the door opened a crack. Luma saw a fraction of a pale face peering out at her. The eye, like hers, was enlarged compared to a full-blooded human, but still showed a white sclera, as a full elf’s would not.
    Its owner spoke in a husky rasp. “What is it?”
    Luma adopted her most authoritative posture, aped from her brother Arrus. “I am Luma, of House Derexhi. May I come in?”
    The Derexhi and their retainers were not official lawkeepers, but because Magnimar employed few of these, citizens sometimes treated them as such. If Luma were lucky, this woman would take the cue, overlooking the ‘quasi’ in their quasi-official status.
    She didn’t. “What for?”
    “Your husband hired us for a job.”
    “My husband’s dead.”
    “That’s why I’m here. If you let me in, I’ll explain.”
    “I don’t know.” The woman, Luma saw, wasn’t so much looking at her as past her, into the street.
    “You appear anxious.”
    “My husband had enemies.”
    “That’s what I’m here for. To protect you.” This was not so much a lie, Luma consoled herself, as something that might turn out to be true, depending.
    The door swung open; Luma slipped inside.
    The house smelled of yeast and cinnamon. Flour spotted an apron slung around the woman’s waist. Sweat glistened on her brow, sticking loose strains of white-blond hair to her prominent forehead. Her lips joined together in a worried bow, exposing a slight overbite. Though scarcely a judge of feminine allure, Luma reckoned that these were the sorts of imperfections that would attract rather than repel male assessment. Her beauty had a wildness about it, but it was beauty all the same.
    The widow gestured Luma toward a sitting room. Luma rejected a scuffed chair in favor of a divan, tufts of batting poking through tears in its upholstery. “I know your husband’s name, but not yours,” she started.
    “Seriza.” The woman stood wavering in the middle of the room, feet planted on a worn boarskin rug. “You said Aruhal hired you?”
    Luma nodded. “Five years ago. You said he had enemies. Apparently he worried that one of them would do him in. So he paid us to investigate his death.”
    She parted the black bunting to peer out a window. “Then you’re not here to protect me at all.”
    “Why is that?”
    “He wasn’t done in. It was pleurisy.”
    Luma craned to try to see what Seriza was looking at, but the angle was wrong. “If he died of natural causes, why are you so fearful?”
    Seriza ducked down behind a cabinet.
    A loud report came from the hallway, followed by the splintering of wood and then a louder thump. Luma leapt from the divan, fingers plunging into the soft leather pouch she wore at her hip—her trickbag, containing the objects she needed to work her street magic.
    A florid-cheeked dwarf clad in heavy battle gear stood in the ruins of the shattered door. He stepped into the sitting room, brandishing a jagged war-axe.
    “Where is it?” he demanded.

Chapter Two: Treasure
    “Where is what?” Luma asked, withdrawing her hand from her trickbag. If it came to a fight, she could reach out to Magnimar’s spires and