EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (9 page)

“Hmm,” was Ezekiel’s answer.

They watched as the balloon floated through the man-sized hole and then the metal sheet clattered against the roof itself, unable to fit through the hole.

“And I assume this was also part of your plan?”

“Of course,” she said. “Now’s the fun part.”

“Fun part?” Ezekiel said suspiciously as she exploded the ball of battle inferno with no warning.

The sound of the explosion however was not a part of the plan. It boomed louder than anticipated and only grew louder as the building they were in acted like a resonator and the thin metal sheeting all around them echoed the blast.
 

Sara saw a glass mirror two benches over shatter before she crouched down in agony alongside Ezekiel with her hands clasped to her ears.
 

As they rose minutes later, Ezekiel said, “Was
that
part of the plan?”

She grimaced in pain. “No.”

He grumbled and then looked up. “Well, at least it worked.”

She stared up at the ceiling where the heat of the blast had fused the metal sheet to the roof itself. It was ugly, but it would do.

Chapter VII

A
S
THE
RINGING
IN
HER
ears stopped, Sara heard their captured thief’s cries. He sounded worse off than before. She sighed. “I think he needs attention.”

“Don’t we all,” muttered Ezekiel.

He adjusted his spectacles. “I’m going to take care of that mess of glass towards the back. You take care of him?”

His words were cautious, even tentative. Sara realized he didn’t know where he stood with her. Which was fine, because
she
didn’t know where he stood with her. Ezekiel was interesting but not her problem. Not right now.

She nodded. “Sounds good.”

Turning, they went in opposite directions. When she got to the fat thief she cut the rope from his mouth none too gently. She stared at the red blood running from his eardrums, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. She wasn’t a healer.

When his mouth was free, he began shouting. Louder and louder. The problem was that his words were incomprehensible.

“What’s wrong with him?” shouted Ezekiel from the back.

“I think his eardrums burst from the sound,” she yelled back. She watched as the man in front of her babbled. He was reading her lips though she could tell. And he understood. Which meant he wasn’t crazy. She cut the rope binding his arms to the chair. He didn’t move at first. After a moment he raised his shaking hands to his ears. When they came back to his face, shining with blood, he wept.

She sighed in irritation. She wasn’t heartless. He was deaf because of her. Well, her and being tied up right next to the metal wall where the acoustics had blasted into his ear.

But she wasn’t necessarily sorry about it. When you entered into someone else’s domain of your own volition and did so in direct contradiction to their wishes, you put your life in their hands. In other words, what he had done was wrong and now he suffered the consequences. But she
was
getting heartily tired of his sobbing.

She snapped her fingers directly in front of his face. She was trying to break his attention away from his morbid fascination with the glistening red blood on his fingertips. It worked.

He looked up at her with snot running down his lips and tears dripping down his cheeks.

“What have you done to me?” he shouted in a voice three times louder than necessary.

She took out a knife and held it in front of his face as a warning.

“Shout again,” she mouthed slowly, “and I’ll knife you.”

He trembled and hate sparked on his face. But he was silent.

Ezekiel said, “I’ve got an idea.”

She didn’t turn from her prisoner. Even deaf and bleeding, she didn’t trust him.

“What?”

He reached into his red satchel and brought up some parchment, a quill, and some ink. “Let him write it out.”

“Not a bad idea.”

“Here,” he said, hastily putting the materials down and grabbing a loose piece of wood that rested on the wall. Carefully he placed the makeshift table in the fat man’s lap and put the paper, quill, and ink within reach of his hands.

“Start talking,” mouthed Sara at the glaring man.

He didn’t have much of a choice. He did what she said.

He began to write out why he was there.

“
We came for the Tirsaman statue.
”

“Why?” said Sara.

“Who
are
you?” wondered Ezekiel.

The man flickered indignant eyes up at Ezekiel as he wrote, “
Who am I? The great Ezekiel Crane notices no one else.
”

Sara looked over at Ezekiel quizzically. “Sounds like you have a fan.”

Flustered, Ezekiel opened and closed his mouth like a fish while he watched the fat man scribble faster.

“
I am Ras Stold, purveyor of fine goods.
”

“Thief and charlatan,” murmured Sara.

He glared at her. “
Rare items acquirer for the wealthy.
”

“Let’s add black market racketeer to that description,” she said in amusement.

He began to scribble again. “
Your employer is no better than me.
”

“I don’t contest that, but I doubt Cormar is stupid enough to break into an opponent’s warehouse and get caught doing it.”

He had nothing to say to that.

“Let’s get back to the point,” Ezekiel said hastily before they could continue their word war. “You know me
how
?”

“
You are the premier treasure hunter on this side of the empire
,” scribbled the man. “
I have heard of your exploits.
”

“Treasure hunter?” scoffed Sara as she looked at a blushing Ezekiel.

“That was a long time ago,” said Ezekiel, pleased. “But do go on.”

Sara rolled her eyes.

“
I was here to acquire the statue and give it to a buyer
,” he wrote.

“Which buyer?” Sara demanded.

Before he could write out the details, the door opened and in walked a stranger. She didn’t recognize the man. He was big and brawny, with a shaven head and tattoos of the islands on his cheeks.

Sara turned and glared before Wainwright walked in right behind the bigger man.

“We’re here for him,” he said with a sniff.

“We were just getting somewhere with him,” complained Ezekiel.

Too late Sara elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

“Really?” said Wainwright. “I don’t believe that’s part of your job description. Your
job
is to catalog the artifacts and keep them safe. Was that not clear?”

Ezekiel paled.

“Crystal clear,” replied Sara.

Wainwright gave her a sharp look but refrained from comment. To the muscle man behind him, he snapped, “Get the thief and let’s go.”

His companion began walking forward and Ras began screeching and scribbling.

When the man reached him he gave up trying to get words on the parchment, thrust the makeshift desk off of his lap, and tried to run. “Tried” being the operative word. Sara hadn’t cut the ropes binding his legs to the chair, just the ones along his upper body. He fell to the floor with a nasty
whump
and began to crawl away like a slug, screeching all the while. It took no time before the thug Wainwright had brought with him grew tired of the sound and clubbed him sharply about the head.

Sara watched silently, unmoved, as the thug carried the unconscious man from their warehouse. Wainwright followed behind him with one last snide remark. “The new benches need to be done. Tonight. Shipment comes in less than three hours. Get to work.”

When he left the warehouse was silent for the first time in quite a while.

Sara rubbed the back of her neck. “Remind me again why I agreed to stay for two days?”

“Because you want to know why Ras, the thief, lied as much as I do,” said Ezekiel absentmindedly.

Sara turned to see he was crouched on the floor. “Excuse me? What in the demon’s breath are you talking about?”

Ezekiel stood slowly and turned around. In his hands, he held the parchment the thief had been scribbling on. It was wrinkled and had blood smears on it.
 

Ezekiel looked up from the words on the page to her. “He wasn’t after the statue of Tirsaman for himself.”

“Well, yeah. He told us that.”

He held out the parchment to her and said, “Read it.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is says?” she said coldly.

He raised an eyebrow but didn’t question her. “It says: ‘
All right, all right, I’ll tell you. We came for the statue but only to trade it for something else. Something more valuable that the mercenaries have.
’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“So he and his partner came to Cormar’s warehouse to steal a statue in order to trade it with the ‘mercenaries’ for something else?”

He nodded eagerly.

“Nope, I didn’t agree to stay for that,” she said flatly. “A wild goose chase is not worth my time.”

Ezekiel’s shoulders drooped so fast you would have thought she’d insulted his most prized possession.

“But it’s a mystery! What object is worth death, torture, and giving up a priceless artifact to get it in the first place?” he said, almost pleading for her to understand the significance of his find.

“A mystery that isn’t worth my time. You have forty hours before I’m out of here. In the meantime this warehouse needs to be spotless, the shipment needs to be received, we might have to thwart more thieves, and we have to get a replacement to agree to take this daft job. That’s more than enough, wouldn’t you agree?”

He spluttered. “Well, yes, I guess so.”

“Good. Case closed.”

Ezekiel’s mouth was stuck in a pout, but he didn’t bring it up again that night. They got to work putting together the two benches needed to house ten more objects before the dawn rose on a new day. By the time they had finished, the sky had started to darken.

Sara got up from the workbench where she had been sawing through extra planks in case Cormar got another shipment in and cracked her back. Stretching, she twisted her arms to loosen them and walked around. They had been hearing the slow shuffle of feet and excited chatter of the workers leaving the fishery nearby for the last ten minutes. She went to the door to head one off.

“Where are you going?” Ezekiel called out from where he was busy nailing the last plank onto a nearby bench.

“To catch a messenger,” she said as she walked out the door.

Spying dozens of young boys alongside their older mothers, she whistled sharply to catch the attention of one. A towheaded boy looked over at her. She stepped just a few feet away from the warehouse door. Far enough that he could be sure she didn’t plan to grab him and whisk him inside, but close enough that a thief couldn’t sneak by behind her back. She tossed a shilling in the air and the flash of bronze in the sun’s rays made up his mind.

He trotted over to her.

She flipped the coin between her fingers as the urchin watched her warily from a distance.

“Whadda’ya want?” he called out.

“A message. Nothing more,” she said. “One coin for delivery near the meat market. Two more if you return with something with you.”

He shifted while indecision warred on his face. Urchins had to be careful about whom they took jobs from. Not everyone in the city would treat them right, especially depending on the message received.

“What kind of message?” he said

“Nothing bad. Just news to my mom,” she reassured him.

He sniffed. “Yeah, all right. What do you want back?”

She smiled and tossed the coin alongside a
home marker
to him. The small trinket would lead him straight to her doorstep.
 

“My sword.”

He caught them in the air deftly, pocketed the marker, bit the coin, and spit onto the road. “Back in an hour.”

“See that you are.”

He turned to leave and she cleared her throat. “The message.”

He turned back with an irritated look on his face.
As if
he
were doing
her
a favor
.

“All right, lady, what is it?”

“Tell her I’ll be gone for one night and a day more,” she said. “And don’t mess it up.”

He left at a quick pace down the road. She wasn’t angry with him. His attitude was his protection. She hadn’t missed the fact that he’d been one of the few without a dam by his side. She doubted it was a coincidence. Sara went back into the warehouse.
 

She spotted Ezekiel straightening the benches for final placement, and she went over to help out.

“Your message in a bottle went okay?” he asked.

“Fine.”

Looking over at her curiously, he asked another question. “Why did you come here?”

She looked up at him. Waiting on the second half of that question to drop. With Ezekiel there was always more, it seemed.
 

“To the fishery, I mean,” he explained. “A fighter like you. Skilled and smart, you could get any job you want. There are numerous guilds in the city that would take you on.”

“You didn’t hear what Cormar said?” she said snidely.

“I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” he said softly with a hurt look in his eyes.

She snorted and looked away. A minute later they finished and she went to lean against the wall near the door.

As Ezekiel puttered around with his artifacts, she spoke up. “You’d be surprised.”

His shoulders stiffened, but he didn’t turn around as he said, “By what?”

“How many guilds won’t hire the daughter of a deserter. Fighters are a superstitious lot. Wherever I applied, they said desertion must run in the bloodline. Never mind the fact that a Fairchild has never, never before betrayed their ruler.”

He spoke in a measured tone. “So your father was a deserter? Why?”

She shifted unhappily, but for the first time Sara didn’t hear derision in that question. Anyone else who had asked had done so with the gleeful hint of a person only too happy to poke salt into the wound. Ezekiel was just curious. Almost in an academic way.