2012-08-In the Event of My Untimely Demise Read Online Free

at all. Does that about sum it up?”
    Rieslan crinkled aged dimples at her. “Much gold is at stake. You’ll excuse me if I greet your disinterest in it with a certain skepticism.”
    Luma, affronted, tried to cover it up with a smile. “Ask around about the Derexhi family. Our reputation for honesty is worth more than your treasure.”
    Rieslan is charming—which doesn’t make him innocent.
    “A thousand pardons, my dear.”
    Don’t call me dear, Luma wanted to say. “At any rate, we have each spoiled the other’s attempt to follow Jordyar. I suggest we part, with no hard feelings.”
    The priest bowed deep, and went on his way.
    Luma signaled to her brother Ontor, who for several minutes had been standing across the way. He’d appeared in her peripheral vision, sauntering down the street, looking for her. Seeing her occupied, he’d dropped into a pose, engaging in conversation with loitering dockworkers.
    It never surprised Luma to see one of her siblings appear out of the blue like this. Her sister Iskola could see from afar, and whisper into distant ears. Wherever she was in Magnimar, one of the others could always find her.
    Ontor required no further instructions. Adopting a languid lope, he pushed off after Rieslan.
    Iskola’s spells didn’t permit them to communicate with one another, so Luma would find a rendezvous and wait. She ambled for the closest of the Derexhi haunts, a spot named after its proprietor, Chanda, who specialized in bream broth and walnut bread. Luma claimed the darkest corner, where Chanda, unbidden, brought her soup, half a loaf of the bread, and a bowl of sea snails in red garlic sauce. Luma paid Chanda the usual premium for a lengthy stay and settled in.
    An hour later, Ontor slid into the seat across from her, a sea snail bowl already in one hand and a half-filled ale flagon in the other. “You’ll be happy to hear I was also deemed too much a black sheep for the Vitellus job.”
    Family politics could wait, Luma decided. There was a mystery to solve. Even if the answer was that there was no mystery at all. “Where did he go?”
    Ontor threw his head back, dropped a sea snail in, and swallowed, pleased with his show of downmarket manners. The stevedores filling the restaurant ate the same way. “He’s staking out a hovel down in Rag’s End. Waiting for someone to show. Since I have no idea of the situation, I figured I’d come and collect you, and we’d check the place out together.”
    Luma dunked a final bread crust into the remnants of her broth.
    Ontor wiped ale-foam from his lips. “That was a hint, by the way. A request for context.”
    Luma briefed him on the case to date: the prearranged, posthumous assignment; the widow and her pleurisy story; Jordyar the dwarf and then Rieslan the river-cleric and their tangled, treacherous history with Aruhal.
    Ontor gobbled the rest of his food. “So you reckon this Rieslan knows where Jordyar is staying, and, having lost him in Dockway, has gone there to wait for him?”
    Luma hadn’t so reckoned, but would have, given one more moment’s thought. The two half-siblings set out for Rag’s End.
    ∗∗∗
    As ramshackle as its name suggested, Rag’s End stretched out before them as an expanse of hovels and shanties. Luma and Ontor strode with dispatch past a crowd gathered for an impromptu match between a mastiff and a crab spider half again its size. Sensing a form of authority approaching, the bettors hunched and turned their faces away. A jagged laneway sloped gently into a depression. As Ontor led Luma down its length, a gathering fog grew from scattered wisps to an obscuring mass.
    At the end of the cul-de-sac a two-story structure held itself with lordly remove from the surrounding shacks. To its left, a cloud of flies buzzed around a heap of rotting trash. Piles of rubble, wood and masonry mostly, formed an unintended fence around the building’s right side.
    “That’s where your old duffer was waiting,” Ontor