EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (7 page)

“Who are you?” she said tightly.

“Not important,” said the man in a relaxed voice with an inflection that indicated an educated background.

She said through gritted teeth, “It is to me.”

He stared at her with cold eyes. “Edgar, it’s time to go.”

He wasn’t talking to her that time. The man in the back startled and turned around. When his cape moved, she saw a rotund belly, several chins, and thick, squinty eyes. Not a threat.

“Already?” said Edgar in a whine.

“Yes,” said the man tightly.

“But there’s so much here.” Edgar clearly didn’t understand the gravity of the situation.

“Get what you came for and let’s go,” said the man with his knife at Ezekiel’s throat as he stepped forward. He was watching Sara warily.

She mirrored his actions with a thin smile.

He raised an eyebrow and pressed the knife down on Ezekiel’s throat. A thin red line of blood appeared and dripped down. The curator of the artifacts whimpered. She halted.

“I would stay where you are.”

They faced each other resolutely. From behind them all, Edgar whined again, “Is this about her? Kill her.” Her eyes flickered to Edgar. He sounded like a child.

The man’s face hardened. He apparently didn’t like Edgar’s tone any more than she did.

“But don’t kill the curator!” Edgar hastily said. “We need him.”

“Do you, now?” Sara cooed with a smile. She had her in. The man in front of her realized Edgar’s mistake at the same time she did. He couldn’t kill Ezekiel even if he threatened him. Which made Ezekiel’s position as a human shield improbable.

She ran forward with her knife in one hand, her dagger in her other. He tossed Ezekiel to the floor with a curse in order to meet her head-on with both of his knives in hand. They came together in a clash of slashes, kicks, and whirls. She tried to slit his throat with her knife in her right hand while keeping out of reach of his longer knives. She was successful in the latter, thwarted in the former. So they circled each other warily as Ezekiel coughed on the floor. Too late she noticed they were moving toward the back of the warehouse. Closer to his partner, Edgar. When she looked around out of the corner of her eyes to locate the rotund man she noted that he was plastered against the far wall and edging to the door. Not a threat. But still he was stealing something out of
their
warehouse.

She called out, “Ezekiel, stop him! He’s getting away.”

The curator’s head popped up from between the benches and he looked around warily. He spotted the man leaving the building. “You’re joking, right?”
 

He ducked back down. Sara rolled her eyes and exchanged swift slashes with the man in front of her. Neither of them seemed to be gaining the advantage.

“Fine,” snapped Sara. “But he’s taking
your
statue.”

Ezekiel leaped up faster than she would have ever given him credit for.

By that time Edgar was swiftly walking just past the hiding spot Ezekiel occupied. When the bespectacled man spotted the golden statue in the fat man’s hands, he let out an inhuman shriek. “Not the statue of Tirsaman!”

With a yowl, he launched himself at the thief.

Sara lifted a surprised eyebrow. “Not exactly what I had in mind, Ezekiel.”

Ezekiel wasn’t paying her the least bit of attention. He was wrapped around the fat man’s body as they struggled for ownership of the golden statue.

Then her opponent grabbed a round candlestick complete with a build-up of wax from a nearby bench. He threw the heavy object at her. It nicked her on the cheek and she felt the drip of blood down her skin.
 

 
“Got your attention now?” taunted the man.

“Fully,” she said with a snarl.

Sara jumped high into the air, knife at the ready. The man dodged back to avoid her. But it had never been her intention to stab him. The leap was just to get him to move back. When she landed directly in front of him, he had nowhere to go with a bench against his back. She swiftly twisted and kicked him high in the face. His head snapped back with an audible
crack
. His body fell into the bench behind him with a crash.
 

She stood over her dead opponent and said, “Do I have yours now?”

Turning Sara saw Ezekiel still rolling around on the ground with the fat man. They moved like two snakes in the grass, each one trying to yank the statue from the other’s hands. Then Ezekiel got some strength from where she didn’t know and yanked the statue back with a triumphant sound. When the man beneath him tried to take it from him, Ezekiel banged him atop the head with it. Twice.

When the man stopped moving, Ezekiel slowly stood up and began rearranging his clothes with a yank of his hand.
 

“Did it feel good?” said Sara dryly.

Ezekiel blinked at her. “What?”

“Overpowering him.”

He looked back down at his unconscious opponent and back up at her. “Actually…yeah.”

His voice was full of surprise and wonder.

He puffed up his chest. “I did pretty well, didn’t I?”

She raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “For a man who has clearly never fought in his life? Yes.”

That backhanded comment didn’t seem to deter him.

“What have you got there?” she said as she watched him turn the statue back and forth in his hands.

“The statue of Tirsaman,” he said, walking over to a bench further away.

“What does it do?”

Ezekiel mumbled something she didn’t hear. Sara decided that checking on their living opponent was more vital at the moment. She went over to the fat man to feel for a pulse and patted him down for any weapons he might have concealed on him. When she found none, she grunted and hauled him up by the arm to drag his limp body over to a corner. It was empty except for one lone chair.

Then she walked over toward the door, passing Ezekiel along the way.
 

“Well?” she asked.

He looked up at her and back down at the statue without answering.

“Now would be a good time to speak up, Ezekiel.”

“It’s classified. Boss’s orders.”

“Classified knowledge from the watcher who’s supposed to be guarding it and just killed someone who wanted to take it from his collection?”

He grimaced and adjusted his necktie.

“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands and striding to the door.

“Where are you going? You promised you wouldn’t leave! Two days, you said.”

She didn’t turn around or stop walking. “I meant what I said. Unless
you’re
going to tie that fellow up with air, we need some rope to bind this gentleman, and I saw some right outside the door.”
“Oh.”

In short order they had the man gagged and bound to the only non-magical chair in the room. When he was trussed up in the corner, she removed his friend’s body and hauled him outside to throw in the ocean, then set about helping Ezekiel right the overturned benches near the front. Those two hadn’t known how to fight, but they had certainly left a mess in their wake rolling around like mud wrestlers.

“Thank you,” said Ezekiel as they put the final artifact back in place.

“You’re welcome,” said Sara as she dusted off her palms.

“It supposedly has the ability to make anyone or anything into a god,” said Ezekiel.

“Excuse me?” said Sara. She thought she had heard him incorrectly.

“The statue of Tirsaman,” he replied, shifting back and forth on his feet. “That’s what it does.”

She turned fully to Ezekiel then. “You want to repeat that? Slowly? You have a statue that can turn a person into a god sitting in your dank warehouse?”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted with a sniff. “Or, well, that’s one of the things it supposedly does. There have been rumors and legends for years. But not any proof.”

I guess he had to tell
someone
, rules be damned, and I’m the only one here
, she thought with irony.

“How?”

“That would be the one hundred-shilling question,” he said. “No one’s quite sure. It didn’t exactly come with instructions.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Has anyone ever tried using it?”

“Not with any noticeable effect.”

She felt some relief. She really didn’t need any working human-to-god changing statues on her watch. She looked over at the unimposing figurine. It was only a statue in the sense that it was vaguely human-shaped. It was more of a vertical blob with odd ridges and bumps, as if it had been subjected to an intense heat and parts of it had melted off.

“Well, where did it come from?”

“The boss found it in a salvaged ship off the coast.”

“And you know it is what you say it is because…?”

He stiffened in anger, like she had insulted his dead mother.

“It’s my
job
to know.”

“Right,” she said before wandering off.

I wonder just how many of these artifacts are just salvaged junk
, she thought to herself,
It’s obvious from the thievery though, that enough people believe they’re real. Regardless of whether the artifacts are the real deal or not, these idiot thieves will stab me for the remote possibility that they could claim ownership of a god-turning statue.

Then the front door banged open with a gust of wind, and she whirled and threw her knife straight at the intruder’s head.

Cormar’s
head.

Frantically Sara watched as the knife sailed forward with deadly accuracy. Fast and sure, it was unlikely to miss. She didn’t have any compunctions about killing the man. Just because he hadn’t done anything wrong yet, didn’t mean he wouldn’t in the future. She was almost never wrong about her instincts.

As she watched, Cormar didn’t duck down. He didn’t have time. Instead he stopped the knife cold. With ice. Sara watched in disbelief as icicles formed on her blade in mid-air until the hurtling knife fell to the floor with a
clunk
, weighted down by the sudden formation of frozen water around it.

The only sound in the warehouse after that was bated breath as everyone waited to see what Cormar would do.

After all, she
had
just tried to kill her boss.

Chapter VI

T
HEN
C
ORMAR
’
S
VOICE
BROKE
THE
silence. “Well done, Fairchild. I knew I did right by hiring you.”

Sara strode forward. On edge still. She’d never seen weather magic used so quickly or skillfully. Weather mages were laughed at by most of the mages skilled in any sort of magic useful for defense or tactics. Fire mages and even stone mages had better defense systems in place. After all, how was a gust of wind supposed to stop a man coming at you with his sword at the ready? It was a running joke among battle mages that weather mages were good for two things: a farm and dying in spectacular fashion. But she had just found out how they could turn their skills to the battlefield. Thoughts flowed through her mind at the implications for tactics but now wasn’t the time.

A few steps later, she stood over her knife and looked down in disapproval. It was useless as it was. Not only was the blade covered in ice, but the whole thing had frozen to the floor. She couldn’t even get to it to pick it up.

“I don’t suppose you can reverse this,” Sara said, looking up at the mage who had captured her blade.

He stood with his hands in his pockets and his corner lackey at his side. “Already done.”

She looked back down and saw that he was true to his word. Her blade lay in a damp pool, free of ice. She reached down to pluck it up and almost dropped it. Only the training drilled into her by instructors over the years that a warrior never let go of their weapons kept her from doing so. The knife hilt was like touching white fire. A cold so bitter that it felt like her fingers would be frozen to the hilt within a few seconds.

Ire flashed in her eyes. Amusement flittered in Cormar’s eyes as he said, “Cold, isn’t it?”

She didn’t bother responding. Just raised a hand with knife in place and smoothly pushed it into her sheath at her waist. It took everything in her power not to grimace at the biting cold that had overtaken her fingers, but she managed. She wouldn’t show weakness in front of this man.
 

“I’m impressed,” he said as he walked forward slowly. “But then again I’ve been impressed by you since I met you. A young woman with the skill set of the fabled warriors. From a family darkened by the deeds of her father.”

Her head snapped up.

“Oh yes, I know who you are now, Sara Fairchild,” he said, waggling a finger. “I know about your father’s desertion and subsequent execution just over half a year ago. I make it a point to know everything there is to know about my employees, you see. When you walked out of my office, I made sure to get that information as soon as possible.”

“You’ve been a busy man,” Sara said stiffly.

“Shocked, my dear?”

“Unimpressed would be a better word,” she said.

He stilled. “Someday that smart mouth will get you killed.”

“Not by you.”

There was nothing he could say to that. He may be a weather mage with a touch of ice, but she was a battle mage with the fury and fighting power of ten men.

Then he cracked a smile. “I like you. I don’t like many of my employees.”

Ezekiel shifted behind her nervously and Cormar spared him an irate glance.

“How did those men get into my building?”

Sara wondered,
how did he know about the other fellow? I already disposed of the body.
 

Then she realized he must have spies watching the building. After all, it would be too much trust to expect a man like Cormar, who she suspected was much more than he seemed, to leave his prized artifacts in the hands of two employees. Even if he’d known one of them for a while.
 

“I d-don’t know,” stammered Ezekiel.
 

I need to do some snooping on my own
, she thought as she listened to their conversation,
What kind of weather mage and evidently wealthy collector works as a fishery manager? None that I’ve ever heard of. This has black-market racketeering written all over it. That I knew already. The question is, is it the kind of racketeering that you can get away with by paying off a tax collector and city watchmen with a hefty sum to look the other way or the kind that will bring the empress’s guards down on their heads?