EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (5 page)

But the more positive side of battle magic was that it allowed its bearer to see a person’s intent and divine their true self with it. It was like opening a window to a person’s soul every time she used it. Which is why she tried to use it only as much as required while in Sandrin. That and fact that she didn’t
need
to use battle magic. She was good enough to defeat the city-bred idiots on her own. Her training and honed skills allowed her to win against the most skilled opponents in duel after duel. If she had to tap into battle magic, it would only be because she needed to drain the build-up or if she was in trouble. The kind of trouble where she was surrounded on all sides by opponents and needed to make a river run red with blood to get clear.

Staring at the seated man’s aura was enough to make her wary. The tight warp of the colors and feel of the strength coming from him told her he was dangerous. Perhaps devious. But it didn’t make her cautious enough to turn around and leave. She had come here for a reason. She was going to accomplish it one way or another.

In her mind, Sara thought quietly,
besides, once I’m done signing up for fish cleaning duty, I’ll probably never see him again.
 

It didn’t bring her much comfort. She had a tendency to attract trouble of the worse kind. So far she’d been able to handle anything that came at her. But she knew, just as every warrior did, that one day she would meet her match. She just hoped today wasn’t that day. She really needed a job. Then she was forced out of her reverie by a lackey standing in the corner shouting, “Next!”

The office was too small for the desk and the man who sat behind it, let alone the addition of another man screaming in her ear while a third person tried to push past her as fast as they could. She stepped aside when the pushy man snapped, “Move, woman!” He hadn’t bothered looking at her. She turned around and gave the rude man a shove out the door. She gave a harsh glare to the lackey who had managed to make her eardrums ring. It had him gulping in his little corner.
 

The man behind the desk hadn’t moved. She turned to see him staring at her with his arms clasped in front of him and a patient look on his face. Patient like a spider enticing a fly into his web. She stepped forward unafraid. Taking out the work permit, she slapped it down on his desk as she said, “Sara Fairchild, reporting for work in the fishery.”

Curiosity sparked in his eyes. But he didn’t touch the paper.

“You don’t look like a fisherwoman,” he said quietly.

“How does a fisherwoman look?”

He sat back with a creak of his chair. “The ones I work with? Older. Compact. Hard-nosed and tired. You are the very opposite. A fresh, young lily ready to bloom.”

“You seem to have a very uniform group of workers, then.”

He ignored the quip to look down at her hands as he said, “Still there’s something different about you. My daughters are beautiful like water lilies. You remind me of the deadly beauty of a water moccasin instead.”

Sara lifted an eyebrow, “I’ve never really considered venomous snakes beautiful.”

“Ah, but you see my dear, the beauty for these creatures is in the swiftness of their bite. The silence of their movements until they strike. They flow through their environments like ghosts until least expected,” he said.

“Like those creatures you are strong. I have no doubt you are swift, cold and calculating as well,” he continued, “In addition, you have the calluses of a seasoned warrior and the weapons of a woman who knows how to use them. So, did I guess rightly?”

She said nothing.

He smiled and sat forward. “So tell me, what does a mercenary want with my fishery?”

“I’m no mercenary,” she said, bristling.

Mercenaries were one step below foot soldiers, who were leagues below the officer’s command her father had held. To call a Fairchild a mercenary was to say they were the mud beneath your feet.

“Are you certain?”

“
Quite
certain,” she said in a stone-cold voice.

His lips thinned in displeasure. “Then I don’t believe I have any use for you.”

She bristled. “I came here for a job.”

“I don’t have any openings for mercenaries-turned-fisherwomen. Get out.”

The man in the corner came forward and flapped his hand at her. Motioning for her to leave like she was a fly that had landed on his dinner plate.

Sara bared her teeth at him with an irate look. He went back to his corner.

“Wait!” she cried to the man at the desk. “I came here to work. I
promise
you I can clean and gut the fish like any other woman on your payroll. I’m good with a knife and fast with a hook. However many fish you need cleaned, I can do it.”

“As I said,” the man said coldly, “I’m not interested in another fisherwoman. What I
could
use is a woman who can handle herself in a fight. Can you handle yourself in a fight, miss? What did you say your name was?”

Sara stiffened. “Fairchild. Sara Fairchild.”

Recognition didn’t flow through his eyes. Not everyone knew who she was.

Reluctantly, she answered, “Yes, I can handle myself in a fight.”

“Now do you want the job?”

She almost walked out on him. Sara wasn’t opposed to fighting for contract, but the magistrate’s court had been clear. She couldn’t fight for money or work as a guard, brawler, or gladiator within the city of Sandrin. Legally.

She raised her chin, “What kind of job are we talking about?”

He smiled—a shark’s grin.

“Something you’ll be very good at. I promise you.”

She shifted uneasily.

Sara heard another person step into the room behind her and she gripped her knife quickly.

“No need for that,” the man behind the desk assured her. “You work for me now. We’re like family here.”

Sara almost spit in his face at that. But she held back.

“We’re not family,” she said flatly while turning to keep a wary eye on the person standing behind her. She could sense his threat was minimal even before she looked him in the face. It was in the hesitant way he walked. Like a timid man.

“This is Ezekiel Crane. He works for me,” said the man behind the desk.

Sara almost smiled at the man’s last name. It was apt from what she could see. Like an unsteady crane on stiff legs, he loitered in the doorway.

 
The pale, long-legged man startled at hearing his name from his boss’s lips. He nodded at her uncomfortably but didn’t look his boss in the eye. Instead his gaze focused on the floorboards beneath their feet while his unkempt brown hair flopped into his eyes, as if by ignoring the man sitting in front of them, he would go away.

“Ezekiel,” said the boss, “this is our new watcher. Show her the ropes.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ezekiel in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Now get out,” said the man coldly.

Ezekiel backed out of the office so quickly he almost tripped over his own feet.

Sara wasn’t going anywhere until she found out more about the job. The man didn’t intimidate her.

“A watcher?” she said, looking down at her new boss.

He seemed fairly annoyed that she still stood there.

But he spoke. “A guard of sorts for my new…collection.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he confirmed.

“And payment?”

He let out a booming laugh. “My, you have a set of brass balls on you, don’t you?”

“The only reason I’m doing this is if I’m paid. And paid well.”

He narrowed his gaze. “Twenty shillings.”

“Ten. A day.”

“That’s robbery,” he said coldly.

“It’ll be my neck in a noose if I’m caught,” she said while nodding at the paper she’d dropped on his desk. “That work permit only covers the fisheries, and I doubt your
collection
is housed there.”

He smiled. “So it isn’t. Eight a day, Ezekiel will pay you, and you’ll get out of my office now.”

“With pleasure.”

She followed Ezekiel into the morning sun.

Chapter IV

S
ARA
FOLLOWED
BEHIND
E
ZEKIEL
,
WHO
didn’t say a word as he raced down the gangway as fast as his long legs would carry him. Which was pretty fast. Sara had to run to catch up. When he hit the ground at a dead run and looked like he had no intention of stopping, she got frustrated.

“Hey, wait up!” she yelled.

He only picked up speed as he ducked around a corner so fast that she almost lost track of him.

She didn’t want to hurt him, but she had a job to do. Losing the only person who could tell her how to
do
that job wasn’t on her list of things to get done today.
 

Well, this is the perfect time to try this out, then
, Sara thought.

Sara was a proponent of
always
being prepared. No matter where she was, she knew she had a weapon on her of some kind. If she didn’t have her knives or baton at her waist, or her sword on her back, then a last resort could be the hair ties binding her long curls. It wasn’t the best weapon in the world or the most useful. But in this situation or the capture of runaway thieves, it was perfect.
 

So Sara grabbed the hair tie with weighted stones that she used on her bouncy black curls and loosened the stones that kept it from unraveling. Pulling the whole thing from her hair with the long string she’d double-wrapped to keep it from slipping, she whirled it overhead like a slingshot. Then she sent it flying at his legs. The weight stones whirled around and around until they wrapped around his legs and sent him tumbling face-first into the ground with a grunt.

She walked up to him as he rolled onto his back, and, with some wiggling, sat up.

Dazed, Ezekiel looked down at his legs and then back up at her. “You could have killed me.”

“I didn’t,” she said brusquely as she cut the ties from his legs. It would be easy enough to make a new one.

“You fighters, nothing but muscle, the lot of you,” Ezekiel said as he glared up at her from the ground.

Sara raised an eyebrow. “Did you just call me stupid?”

“Maybe?”
 

She set her teeth in a line, sorely tempted to punch the spindly little scholar in the mouth. But she eased up. Realizing that was just what he would expect.

Then Sara spoke. “What if I told you I speak three languages, know more about ballistics than you, and…”

She paused. He didn’t look impressed.

“…and can name all Sahalian rulers from first to last?” she continued defiantly. She was hoping to impress him with her knowledge, though she hadn’t the slightest clue why she cared at the moment.

He looked thoughtful. She could guess why—most Algardis citizens didn’t bother learning the name of the
current
ruler of Sahalia, let alone her ancestors.

Ezekiel rubbed his jaw. “All thirty-six of them?”

She smiled, a rarely present set of dimples appearing on her face. It was a trick question. “All thirty-
eight
of them. Including the lost emperor.”

Then a grin came across his face. The fastest way to a scholar’s heart was through knowledge—she knew that firsthand.

“Not many know about the lost emperor,” Ezekiel admitted from the ground, “or the twin rulers, for that matter.”

“Not many care,” she said flatly. “I do.”

He rubbed his shins with a pained expression. She waited to see what he would do.

I might have been a little hasty
, she thought.
Maybe it’s up to me to extend the olive branch of peace.

“Perhaps we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” she admitted.

He swallowed. “Perhaps I should have introduced myself.”

There. We both apologized
, Sara thought in relief.

He adjusted the spectacles on the bridge of his nose and tried to stand. He winced when he tried to put weight on his left leg and it failed. Grabbing his hand in her own, her dusky skin contrasted with his much paler flesh as she pulled him up until he could stand.

“Sorry if that hurt.”

“
If?
”

She glared.

“Apology accepted,” he hurriedly stated.

She nodded. “Now, where are we going?”

He sighed. “The warehouse for the artifacts is this way.”

“This way where?” Sara knew better than to follow anybody to an unknown location. The first rule of battle was to know your surroundings. The second rule was to be prepared for anything.
 

Ezekiel looked over at her, truly confused. As if he couldn’t fathom why she was being this difficult. He’d obviously never been cornered in an alley with only a rock to defend himself with. That had been in her younger days. Before she’d learned to
always
keep a blade on her. Now her opponents would be hard-pressed to get the drop on her at any time. But that didn’t mean she’d let down her guard.

“Well?” she demanded.

Ezekiel raised a finger to point at a gray building in the distance. It sat on a rocky outcropping and looked generally very dreary even in the early morning sun.

“There,” he said. “We’re going right there.”

She nodded and proceeded forward.

When she was about to pass him and he still hadn’t moved, she reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and pushed him along ahead of her. There was no way he was going to walk behind her.

“You know you’re very pushy, right?”
She glanced over to see if he was mocking her. He looked completely serious. And completely annoyed as he moved a few inches to the left to get out of her reach.

She snorted. Not answering his question and not pointing out the fact that he’d have to be at least five more feet away from her to keep her out of grabbing or stabbing distance.

“So,” she said, “what are these artifacts?”

He bit his lip and then mumbled something.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you,” she said. She wasn’t sorry, and her voice arced up in irritation to show it.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye before he clearly stated, “Objects that Cormar has procured from mages across the realm. He keeps them in a magically-sealed warehouse. I’m their curator. You’re their guard. Okay?”