EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (21 page)

“Well, I’ve always thought best by thinking aloud,” he said cheerfully. “I could imagine that you’d do better if you told me what’s on your mind.”

She glared at his rapid change of temperament. The man could go from despondent to happy at the drop of a hat. She’d never had that ability. If she was angry, she
stayed
angry until she resolved whatever the problem was she was angry about. Usually by killing someone.

“Well,” Sara drawled, “why don’t you tell me
how
you ended up here?”

“I joined the Corcoran guard.”

He said it as if he’d just gotten invited for tea at the local parlor.

“That’s it? You joined the guard? I know that,” she said. “The questions is
how
? They would barely let me join.”

“Really?” he said with a side glance. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing!” she said in a shout loud enough to startle the rider and horse cantering by. She really didn’t want to relive the abject humiliation of acting the part of the entitled brat. The mare’s rider gave her a one-fingered salute and continued on his way.

Sara bared her teeth at him and wished she could show him her knives. She was feeling restless, angry, and anxious all rolled into one.

Funny
, she thought wryly,
half those emotions didn’t show up until Ezekiel came into my life
.

Calming her tone, she reiterated, “Nothing. I swear.”

“Right.” The judgment in that one word had her bristling. Mainly because he was right.

“All I said was that I
belonged
in the first division,” she spluttered. Still playing the part, but inwardly rolling her eyes. Both at the ludicrousness of the fact that she hadn’t really been able to audition for her spot as a true first division candidate and the fact that Ezekiel might believe her lies after all they’d been through.

She waited as he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. For a moment her stomach flipped, worried that he hadn’t taken the bait.

Then he said, “I thought you didn’t do anything?”

She turned to him with a dark expression on her face. He held up a hand while forcing himself not to laugh. She could tell because even though he ducked his head to hide his face, chuckles were still escaping his mouth.

Nevertheless, Ezekiel quickly sat back up and looked at her with a straight face. Or, well, as straight as he was capable. His mouth was pressed into a thin line that trembled every so often as he tried to hold back more laughter. Her mouth was set in a thin line of its own. One of irritation.

Lips twitching, Ezekiel said between sharp gasps of air, “Okay, okay. That was wrong. But did you
really
think that the mercenaries wouldn’t think you a bit of an upstart for trying to get into the premier division of their unit on your first day?”

Sara’s back stiffened and she looked straight ahead through her tall gelding’s black ears. Her gaze wasn’t focused on anything in particular. She just didn’t want to be looking at Ezekiel at the moment.

Nevertheless, she explained, “I’ve trained my entire life. Since the age of five I’ve studied with masters of hand-to-hand combat, swordplay, and archery. I speak three languages, including the tongue of the old ones, so that I can take my place as an officer in the army. I’ve studied with mages and mystics to learn the ways of the old ones and become the mistress of my magic rather than its servant.”

“You’ve trained your entire life?” was Ezekiel’s quiet question. His voice no longer held amusement, just contemplation. He was riding side-by-side with her and she knew he was staring straight ahead just as she was. Although she might have cheated and looked out of her peripheral vision once…maybe twice.

“Yes!” she said adamantly.

“For this?” Then she turned her head.

“Yes!”

“I didn’t ask if you’d trained your entire life for
war
, Sara. I want to know if you’ve trained for this.”

“This is war,” she growled at him. “Do you think we’re going to the front lines for a tea party? Or to sign a peace treaty with the Kade mages. They’ve been fighting for eight
months
against the imperial mages, with no end in sight. Make no mistake, there will be blood and there will be death.”

He turned to her. “Yes, there will be. But before we get to war, before we get to the frontlines, we must prove ourselves. We are
strangers
here, Sara. What you don’t get is that every mercenary in this guard knows one another. If they don’t know their fellow mercenary’s weaknesses, they know their strengths. They have worked together. Trained together. Bonded and they trust one another.”

She opened her mouth to interject. “I know that…”

“I’m not finished yet,” Ezekiel said with an angry look as he pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose.

“You are an outsider. We are outsiders. And what’s more, you’re an outsider who thinks she’s
better
than them. Because you’ve trained with masters, studied with mages, and possess a magic like only a few of them have even seen glimpses of. Yes, Sara. You think you’re special.”

She glared at him as he continued. “You
are
special. You are gifted and unique. But you are also untried and untested.”

“I suppose you aren’t?”

“You’d be surprised what you don’t know about me,” he said.

Some of her anger dissipated as curiosity took its place. “You’ve been to war, Ezekiel Crane?”

He looked off into the distance. “I’ve been to many wars.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“I’ve studied the battles of Baen and Carnak. Lived the aerial dragon fights of Dannis and seen the great sea battle of Sandrin,” he said.

She listened to him list battle after battle from Algardis history.

Ezekiel finally turned back to war. “I’ve lived the wars through the memories of others, Sara. I am no more
tested
than you are in your trials to become the best fighter in Sandrin. But you want to know the difference between us?”

She raised her chin. “What?”

He said as he kicked his horse away, “I know when I am unprepared.”

Sara watched Ezekiel ride off. She didn’t go after him. She felt an odd sense of satisfaction. She’d managed to convince the only person in this blasted company that had a hint of her true self that she was an idiot who looked down upon other fighters.

She thought about getting angry. Angrier really. Angry at what she had to do. Even a small part of her was angry that he would doubt her abilities when she had proven herself time and again in the streets of Sandrin. She was a
legend
. But slowly she calmed. She merged with the rhythm of her horse’s hooves clopping on the stone thoroughfare beneath them and she thought about what Ezekiel had said. She thought about what the captain had said. They were only defending the reputation of the fighters around her, after all.

As she looked around at the uncouth faces around her, Sara flashed back to a memory with her father. They had been training on a bright sunny day. Sara still remembered the day she had turned ten as if was yesterday. She and her father had stood atop the battlements of their village home. She, he, and her mother had escaped the stuffiness of Sandrin to their estate just up the coast. It was a land of rolling green hills, dotted with heavy forestry on the west and a seafront estate on the east. That day the breeze had been lovely, not a cloud marred the sky, and she and her father had stood facing each other as they prepared to train.
 

Sara remembered standing fifteen feet away from her father. She wore a white tunic, billowing white pants, and a sash tied about her waist. In her hand was a medium-sized staff of hardwood, balanced carefully for an attack as she eased her left leg out from her body, ready to move. Her father mirrored her pose across from her, but he wore no shirt and no shoes. His hair was cropped short and spiked with the oil of the sand demons so that it stood stiff, like a parrot’s feathers. Sweat dripped down her face as he smiled at her in approval and his pale olive skin was dripping with it.

He panted slightly. But Sara hadn’t been foolish enough to think their quick parries had winded him. On the contrary, her battle with her father was just the end of a long day of training. Behind him knelt six of his best warriors. Each fearsome fighters in their own right. All of them breathing hard, some of them with blood running down their shirts or naked abs.

Her father had just single-handedly defeated all six in one fight. Now he faced her.

“Come, little one,” said the man before her. “Face your father. Learn your destiny.”

Sara dug her moccasin-covered feet into the mat beneath her. Itching to take them off, but she knew her mother was watching the fight from the doorway. Sara knew that her mother was the most beautiful woman in the entire empire just as she knew her father loved her mother more than anything else. Her parents were almost inseparable and had been ever since Sara could remember. He bore the scars of years in the gladiator’s arena on a six-foot-tall frame that was filled out with muscles and straight brown hair on his head. Or at least what was
left
of his hair after he let the barber crop it close to his scalp in a warrior’s style. Her mother, on the other hand, had browner skin, like Sara, and long, curly black hair that she kept soft and luxurious for her occasional work as a wind dancer. Mother and daughter both had small, lithe forms. Her mother had been a dancer, renowned for her performances in the empress’s court when she had met Sara’s father at a ceremony awarding his prowess in the arena. Her mother had said he’d been smitten from the moment he saw her. Her father just smiled and pulled her close every time.

Even now, nothing else could draw his eyes away from her mother when he looked to her. Sometimes Sara felt the burn of jealousy, the desire for her father to love her more than he loved her mother. But she knew that was impossible. Nevertheless, she had his love still. But even that love wouldn’t protect her if her mother caught her without her moccasins on.

Sara called them booties, because they looked like the ridiculous shoes babies were forced to wear. She didn’t want to wear them, but the last time she had come home from training with torn and bloody feet, her mother had pitched a fit. She had said if her father was going to train their daughter like one of his soldiers, she would not interfere. But no daughter of Anna Beth Fairchild would look anything less than beautiful—on or off the battlefield. That included soft and smooth feet unmarred by scars from a rough run across the training field.

Her mouth had cracked into a smile as she thought about that memorable conversation between her mother and father. Her father towered over her petite mom. Even if he had not been six feet and five inches to her mother’s four feet even, he still outweighed her by at least seventy pounds. But that didn’t matter. Because the man the empress had once called her lion had shrunk back from his vivacious wife and quickly acceded to her demands. Once her mother’s will had been put into play, there was no turning back. If Sara didn’t wear the moccasins, she faced her father’s wrath.

“Something amuses you?” her father had said chidingly from across the mat.

“Just you,” countered his daughter.

Back on her horse, Sara smiled at the memory of what had come next. She had gotten him good.

“You and your lovesick eyes,” younger Sara had sniped as she ran to the right with the speed of a battle mage. With the strength and youth of a young gazelle, she had vaulted off the side of the battlements straight at her father.

Sara had received her battle mage abilities from her father. She had gotten her cunning from her mother. Mixed together, they made her a formidable opponent, even as young as she was.

As she had launched herself from the edge of the wall, the strength of her kickoff had managed to damage the stone wall so badly that it crumbled in her wake. Sara was already airborne by then, but her mother’s scream had rent the air. Her father’s concentration had broken as he turned to Anna Beth and Sara smiled. He had known just by looking at her that she wasn’t in danger. But her mother wasn’t a battle mage
or
a fighter. She couldn’t see what Sara and her father saw. It was underhanded but it worked. His look to his wife, to calm her without a touch, had given Sara the opening she had needed to move in on her father.

She wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t commander of the imperial forces and the highest-ranking former gladiator still living for nothing. Her flip in the middle of the air had brought her straight down onto her father. She hit his shoulder with her staff in a crushing swipe that probably would have broken a non-mage’s bones.
 

He leapt back to avoid a second blow to the neck, but she didn’t pursue. She didn’t have to. Sara landed in a crouch and brought up her staff in front of her with a triumphant smile. This training between them had been for the first blow, and she had successfully landed it. Slowly she had released her battle magic as she looked to her father, who stood off the side of the mat while breathing hard.

Sara remembered that for a moment, a flicker of unease had gone through her mind.

What if I had gone too far
? She’d had thought.

Then her father’s battle-scarred face had broken into a smile and he boomed with laughter.

“You’ve learned from the best,” he said.

“From you?” said Sara with all the eagerness of a ten-year-old sopping up her father’s praise.

“No,” he’d said, shaking his head silently. “Only your mother would be that cunning.”

Her mother’s snort had come clearly from the doorway as she stepped into the sun’s light.

“Come here, Sara,” Anna Beth had called. “Let me see you.”
 

She received her running daughter in a tight hug that enveloped Sara in a wave of lavender. Her mother’s signature scent.

Anna Beth had first looked at Sara’s feet. The soles of her moccasins had been torn to shreds, but no blood marred the cloth, indicating that her skin was unbroken. Still her mother had sighed heavily.

“You’ve ruined another pair,” she said.

“Maybe you should stop making me wear them,” Sara had said defiantly.