EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (2 page)

She tilted her head. “And if I admit it later?” Even he couldn’t miss the derision in her voice.

“We’re trying to go easy on you,” said Simon Codfield, his voice dipping into desperation. He might be a liar as well as a thief, but he was no fool. Sara knew the only reason he and his crew had followed her into this alley was because if he didn’t accuse her,
he
would have to take the fall for losing over forty shillings in a card game that had only started on a bet of five. She knew and he knew that he didn’t have forty shillings to give. That was one month’s pay for a dockworker, never mind a ne’er-do-well like Simon who hadn’t worked an honest job a day in his life.
 

“Tell you what. Why don’t you drop those trousers of yours? Then we’ll call it even,” said the thief lord in charge of the west district of Sandrin. She turned to face the man who had spoken. He rubbed a hand over his two-day-old beard with a grin.
 

Sara brought up the long knife in her left hand. “Why don’t you drop yours, Severin, so that I can cut off your balls for you?”

Anger flashed in the thief lord’s eyes. Anger and passion. Sara smiled. She wasn’t joking. If she got close enough to him, she’d make him a eunuch without batting an eye. Simon Codfield gulped and took a step back. He knew she wasn’t playing around.
 

But Severin was new. He didn’t believe the reputation she had acquired on the streets. More’s the pity for him. He thought he would be in for what a man like him considered a little rough play—disarming a pretty girl of a simple knife. Maybe getting a few scratches and bites for his troubles.

She couldn’t wait to show Severin just how wrong he was.

Sara chuckled. “I’m feeling generous today. You lot can back off and slink back into whatever hidey-hole you crawled out of. Or I can show you some manners.”

Either way they chose, this would end soon. She had less than fifteen minutes to grab some meat pies off a vendor and get home. Sara Fairchild was seventeen years old. Almost a woman grown with the talent of ten swordsmen and the fierce determination of a lioness cornered. But even she quivered at the thought of being late to her mom’s dinner table. Hell had nothing on Anna Beth Fairchild’s anger.

 
“Well? Which is it going to be?” said Sara impatiently. “I don’t have all night.”

Severin chuckled while raising his hand. The brass knuckles on his fingers were still sticky with the blood from the last poor sod he had beaten into the ground. You didn’t get to be thief lord by playing nice. She grimaced. She hated those types of weapons. They were crude. Designed to provide the most damage to a body in the least amount of time. Which meant beating a person bloody until their head split open and the bones in their face were broken. There was no finesse about the brass knuckles and nothing clean about the kill. It was quite the opposite of the grace of her favorite weapon—the sword.
 

“Is that supposed to intimidate me?” Sara said.

“It should. You’ve got too much pride,” he taunted back.

“For a woman? Or for a Fairchild?”
 

Severin looked at the man who stood next to him. Then he jerked his head to a lackey while issuing an order. “Get her, Rube.”

Rube moved forward without complaint, every step he took jangling the rusty chain of metal links intertwined between his fingers.
 

Then Severin turned back to her and answered her question of why she had too much pride. “For both,” he said.

Then there was no more talking, because Sara was facing off against a menacing Rube. A lumbering giant, Sara had a feeling he was Severin’s muscle on the docks when the thief lord was cheating sailors out of their hard-earned coins. She’d heard stories about the lumbering giant. Here, in the rapidly darkening alley, as she faced him down with just a knife and baton, she could see why he was intimidating. To most people. But not to her. Because Rube moved with a slow gait. Not the careful precision of a trained fighter, but with the bulk of a man who didn’t know how to use his weight to his advantage.

She smiled. That was too bad for Rube, because she did.

Keeping her back to the wall, Sara Fairchild danced forward on light feet with her baton at the ready. She wasn’t going to kill Rube. He was the dumb muscle—she could see it in the placid cow-like gaze of his eyes. Severin gave the orders and he followed them. She didn’t kill attack dogs like him. She killed the owners that made them kill.

Rube swung the thick metal chain out with the strength of an ox. The chain snapped forward with enough speed to crack open her head like an egg,
if
she had stood still. Instead Sara was already moving forward with the speed and dexterity of a warrior trained by the very best. With a swift grunt, she jumped up onto Rube. The force of her momentum as well as weight knocked him back flat on the ground. She was careful to keep her balance and fell with him until she landed atop his waist in a straddle. He sat up with a roar of anger. Wasting no time, she brought her baton down with a harsh
crack
, infusing it with just a hint of battle magic. It was enough to make the baton take on the weight of twelve of its kind. So when Rube fell back this time, he fell hard.

As Rube’s body crashed into the packed dirt with a loud
thump
, she jumped up and landed behind the remaining four thieves with ease. Turning so that her back was now to the opposite wall, she smiled.

“Who’s next?”

They looked down at their unconscious muscle man, then back up at her.

Severin snarled, “Kill her. I don’t care about her loot. I want her pretty throat cut from end to end.”

Simon looked ready to bolt. But even as she watched his comrades ease up on her warily, she pitied them. They were in a tough position. The thieves’ code meant if one of them ran and the others found them first, they wouldn’t be outcast; they’d be killed on the spot by their thief lord. Simon couldn’t run on the off chance that one of his group survived their encounter with her. But she could tell that he didn’t want to stay and face her, either. She could have told him to run because no one would survive this encounter if they didn’t turn tail first, but she didn’t. This was his fault anyway. Who runs up a forty-shilling wager on their thief lord’s tab and doesn’t break for the hills the moment they lose?

The woman with all the earrings said, “I’ll give her a red throat from ear to ear with
pleasure
, Severin. This one is getting on my nerves.”

Sara raised an eyebrow at the cocky broad.

She shrugged her shoulders. “If you think you can take me, then come on.”

Instead of a chain, the woman came at her with a wickedly-sharp curved blade.
A modified scimitar, really
, Sara thought as she dodged back from the first thrust.

As Sara watched the woman swing wide again she thought with a calculating eye,
But she has no form. A blade like that should have a proper mistress.

 
“Come on, you whey-faced coward!” shouted her opponent. Anger emerged in the rapid tic of her eyelids as Sara dodged another blow easily.

Sara sighed, “If you insist.”

In the blink of an eye, she changed from defensive to offensive. She moved forward with her knife at the ready. Sara had no plans to spare this woman. She had insulted Sara’s father,
and
she carried something Sara wanted.

That scimitar is mine
, Sara thought with some glee.

The idea of possessing the blade was a nice bit of sunshine in the spiral of darkness that was her life since her father’s execution.

She shifted the knife in her hand so that the blade rested almost horizontal to her palm. She wasn’t going to stab the woman. She was going to slash her throat. With a silent move, Sara came up under the woman’s broad chest as her opponent swung the scimitar wide for another attempt at a killing blow. As swiftly and silently as a cobra, Sara slit her throat only to quickly dodge to the side to avoid the red spray of blood. Sara had gotten into a lot of scuffles over the years. Many of which had ended up with her opponent dead. She’d learned early on to avoid all evidence of such fights on her clothes. It didn’t please her mother if she came home with her tunic stained red with blood.

Even when Sara explained that battle magic was in her nature, just as it had been in her father’s, her mother wouldn’t hear of it. Sara wasn’t sure if it was getting the bloodstains out of her clothes, or the practice from which the stains originated that revolted her mother so, but she did her best not to remind her mother of their family’s preferred occupations of fighter, hunter, and killer.

As the second body fell, Sara watched it with detachment. She would gather the scimitar when she was through with the others. She shifted back into readiness when she heard a shout from behind her. To her surprise, it wasn’t the remainder of the thief lord’s people coming at her, although she had the sneaking suspicion Simon was hedging his bets until the last possible moment, but rather Severin himself who came for her this time.

Teeth bared in a fierce expression, he came for her with his fist upraised. The brass knuckles on his hands were coming at such a fast pace that she knew it could be a death blow. But Sara wasn’t stupid. Her cold execution of the woman was more than desire for the scimitar; it was wary calculation. She’d angered Severin enough to startle him into action. Unfortunately for him, she was aware at all times of the area around her, including the space’s limitations and usefulness. Just before his fist connected with her face, she darted to the side. He had no time to correct his movement. He ran forward, straight into the wall, and his right hand smashed into the stone with a sickening
crunch
that made even her wince.

His screams lit up the alley. She knew the bones of his hand were probably broken in multiple places. Served him right for trying to kill her. She watched the thief lord as he sat back on his knees cradling his hand at his waist and sobbing. She had no sympathy for him. She just wondered if she should kill him now or wait. Then the only other woman of the thief lord’s crew made Sara’s decision for her. She swung an old piece of wood filled with nails and jagged metal at Sara’s head. Sara smirked, dodged the attack, and then stepped forward directly into the woman’s space. They were nose to nose, with their breath mingling in the air surrounding them. But only for a moment.

The woman dropped the makeshift weapon from trembling fingers and fell backwards. Not in a move to save herself, but because Sara had already given her a death blow. Smoothly, Sara leaned down to pull her knife out from where it rested in the woman’s heart and stepped back. Seconds later, the life passed from her opponent’s eyes. Sara turned around to see the sniveling thief lord had gained a backbone. Severin had stood up and he now held out his sword with his working left hand. A tremor of pain ran across his face, but he didn’t falter. She felt some admiration for him at that moment. Fighter to fighter. It certainly wasn’t compassion, but he wouldn’t expect that anyway.

She could see that from the look in his eyes he had determined his fate. A thief lord couldn’t rule with a useless hand. He could die by her knife or die after one of his men put a knife in his back. It made no difference to her. But she would allow him this first move. It was the honorable thing to do. With an enraged shout, he came at her with his sword upraised. With an expressionless face, she ran at him. They passed each other in the alley. One serene. The other finally at peace.

The thief lord’s body fell to the ground with a similar wound to the scimitar owner’s—a gariish red smile. Sara grabbed a fallen cloth from the ground and cleaned her knife off. After sheathing the knife where it belonged at her waist, she turned to stare at the man who had started it all. Simon Codfield stood there in the alley, trembling. She wondered what he was thinking. Sara had watched as he held back while she took on the other four, waiting in the shadows like a true coward.

It had been a cold but calculating move. Which was why he was still standing last of all.

He held up his hands as she watched him. “Now, Sara, you know I didn’t mean all those things I said, don’t cha? If I hadn’t told them what they wanted to hear, they would have killed me for being a piss-poor card player.”

She raised an eyebrow. She didn’t see how this was
her
problem.

He began edging sideways. Away from her and toward the mouth of the alley—to escape.

“Simon,” she said softly.

He halted with a wary eye toward freedom. “Yes?”

“Do you remember what you said to me three months ago?”

“Th-three months ago? That was a long time back, Sara.”

“But surely you remember,” she prodded. “After all, you lived in the building two streets over. In fact that day was special. My mom had just given your wife some cod-liver oil for your baby.”

“Oh, oh right! Yeah, she was colicky that day. Beautiful girl, my Sarah,” he said nervously. “You know she was named after
you
right?”

He was dodging the question.