In the Event of My Untimely Demise by Robin D. Laws

Author:Robin D. Laws [Laws, Robin D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four: Reckoning

“Need I remind you?” Naphrax asked his prisoner.

Tears further wet Gaval’s bloodied cheeks. “Of what?”

“Of what we know.”

“You’re wrong.”

Jordyar jabbed the poker in Gaval’s face. “You’ve replaced Aruhal in his comely wife’s bed, haven’t you?”

Gaval held his chin up. “I love Seriza, and Seriza loves me. That doesn’t mean I’ve heard of this treasure.”

“She spoke nothing of it?” Naphrax snorted.

Outrage stirred Gaval from his agonized stupor. “She and Aruhal had nothing. She’ll be better off with my takings, humble as they are!”

“Liar,” Naphrax spat.

Holding the poker out of sight behind him, the dwarf sidled up to Gaval, grimacing out a rotten-toothed smile. “What Aruhal did to us is not your fault, boy. But by standing in our way, feeding us ridiculous untruths, it becomes your fault. Don’t you see that?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“If you won’t spill,” Naphrax said, “we’ll take the woman, and do the same to her.”

Jordyar pressed the glowing poker to the prisoner’s leg. Gaval screamed, the smoke of burning fabric giving way to the steam of blackening flesh.

At the window, Ontor looked to Luma, his expression asking: are we going to let this happen?

Luma waved him to silence, then reached into the citysong for the vein of venom that pulsed below the city’s skin. Magnimar’s settlers brought with them their Chelish tradition of settling affairs with arsenic, belladonna, and kingsleep. Luma took in this dark harmony and projected it outward, to the blood-spotted tunic worn by the howling Gaval. In this town, to hear that a man was an apothecary was to think not only of healing, but its opposite.

Luma’s magic-inflamed senses confirmed it: tiny speckles of poison dotted his tunic, were ground as grime into his fingerprints. She couldn’t tell what variety, with so little of it still left. But she would bet it was the kind that made an already sick man die from seeming natural causes–of pleurisy, say.

“We need him,” said Luma. With a turn of her head she indicated an opposite window, not far from the second imprisoned man, the cleric Rieslan. “It will help if you can get him free–that will make it three against two.”

Ontor nodded and was gone. Moments later she saw him appear at the other window. Jordyar once more laid the poker on Gaval, this time applying it to his chest. Naphrax watched with stoic attention. Fully occupied by Gaval’s shrieking and squirming, neither man noticed Ontor’s acrobatic contortions as he fit himself, legs first, through the tiny window. He dropped to the floor with a muffled thud that at last turned their heads, but only in time to see him draw his knife and slash open the ropes binding Rieslan. Then he bounded up to grab the holy symbol from the rafter, tossed it to the priest, and threw his knife at Naphrax. The spellcaster only barely managed to duck out of the way, yet the blade succeeded in interrupting his gesticulations and spoiling whatever spell he meant to cast.

Luma, meanwhile, shifted her awareness to another vault of the city’s memory.

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