FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  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.

  “She was named after her grandmother—don’t change the subject. Now, do you remember what you said?”

  He stilled like a rat in a trap. He knew he’d been caught. She knew she had him right where she wanted him. Like she’d planned all along. Sara could have played a game of cards with any man or woman in the tavern that night. But she’d chosen Simon. A terrible player and lousy sport, quick to pull a knife and accuse another of trickery. At first she’d let him win to get his confidence up. When he started to think he couldn’t lose, then she took him for all he was worth. She watched now as understanding lit his eyes.

  “This was a set-up,” he blustered. “You did this on purpose.”

  “Yes,” said Sara. “Now, one last time: What did you say to me three months ago?”

  The poor man raised his chin. His fists clenched at his side as his knuckles grew white from the tension. But he knew no matter how far he ran or how fast he was afoot, she would come after him. She wouldn’t stop until he was dead. Her determination was in her eyes. Everyone knew: Sara Fairchild tolerated no one’s belittlement of her family.

  He said reluctantly, “I said ‘Your father is a disgrace to this empire. Be glad his blood soaks the land.’”

  “Yes, that was it,” Sara said softly, “As a father yourself, you should know this, Simon Codfield—there is no greater love than a daughter bears for her father.”

  B
efore he could move or protest, she threw the dagger that was attached to her thigh and it pierced his throat. He fell to the ground like all of his friends. She walked up to stare down at his body. Sara tilted her head to the side as she noticed that she’d been off by a millimeter. The dagger hadn’t pierced his jugular. As the blood seeped from the wound to pool beneath his head, she knew he’d be dead within a minute. He couldn’t speak with the wound to his throat. As his fingers twitched with the death throes of a man who could barely move, she shrugged and picked up the scimitar at her feet. After wiping it down, she wrestled the scimitar’s carrier off the dead woman’s back. Hefting it carefully, she swung the sheathed scimitar along her back.

  By that time, Simon Codfield was dead, and she retrieved her dagger from his throat, careful to wipe the blade down on his tunic before putting it back at her thigh.

  Without breaking a sweat, she had taken them all on and won.

  As she sprinted down the alley with her newly acquired scimitar in hand, her well-trained ears caught the groan of the lone thief still left alive in the alley. The muscle man would live to tell the tale of Sara Fairchild another day.

  Chapter II

  SARA HAD ONE THING ON her mind while she ran through the streets of Sandrin: getting home quickly. She desperately hoped that the telltale sign of blood wasn’t on her clothes. She’d done her best to avoid blood splatter, always killing cleanly and from a distance, if possible. But blood had the strangest ways of falling. It could splatter, it could spray, or it could shoot out. You never knew which way the blood would flow until the second before you killed a person. Sometimes not even then. She’d grown used to blood ever since her father had taken her to her first executioner’s gallows. She had been twelve. They had executed a man, convicted of raping a child, by guillotine. The fierce joy of the crowd had been unsettling for a still young Sara. But her father had spoken to her long and hard after the crowd had dispersed. He had explained the man’s crime. Had explained that the child the executed man had hurt had suffered for a long time and then died at his hands.

  “That was why the crowd gloried in his death as a rightful passage. It righted the wrong he had done,” her father had said in his grave voice.

  Sara had understood her father’s explanation. The death hadn’t bothered her as much as the crowd’s adulation. But even while she stood in her leather boots on the cobblestones stained red with the blood of past executions, it hadn’t been long before she became fascinated by the blood and the sport that went into the killing of one single man.

  As far as killings went, that one was tame. But it was the first time that she had seen a person killed alongside her father. The first time Sara had seen life’s blood flow from someone’s veins. The first time she’d seen a head separated from a body. But it wasn’t the last. Because fighting and blood was in her veins. She was a Fairchild, and, more importantly, she was the daughter of Vincent Fairchild, one of the empire’s premier commanders and the man responsible for the most wins in the imperial games for the last fifty years. Before her father had been a commander in the army, he had been a gladiator without peer. One whose tenacity in the ring, ability to defeat the fiercest foe, and calmness when faced with death had beguiled even the most jaded spectator.

  As Sara flew down the streets of Sandrin, she thought it was ironic. Ironic that her father, so feared in the arena, had gone placidly to death. Had not resisted the empress’s men as he was led to slaughter.

  Then she laughed cruelly. “But that was my father. Honorable in the gladiatorial games and honorable in his death. But there was no honor in why he died. There is no honor in desertion.”

  She nearly spit the last word out as she rushed by the meat pie vendor so fast that she didn’t see it. She smelled the pies but couldn’t stop. She ran. She ran to escape her past and to be removed from the present. She ignored the shouts of cart vendors, of a guard whose horse she startled, and of the urchins still playing in the streets. She ran with tears streaming down her face until she got to her doorstep on a quiet street. Breathing hard, Sara looked down at the pail of water that her mother had left at the door for the stray dogs. She knew she must look a fright. But she couldn’t let her mother see her tears. Every day, Sara defended her father’s memory against foes seen and unseen. She fought in duels in alleys and kept her chin high in the streets. No one could tell her why her father had deserted his empress’s cause. She had the scary feeling that even if they could, nothing they said would ease the pain of a daughter whose father had fallen in her eyes.

  But still she did her best to keep those worries from her mother’s doorstep. Never letting her know what people whispered behind their backs. Sara made sure to never let her mother get a hint that her daughter was floundering. Because under Sara’s fierce exterior hardened by battle scars and training, was a young woman facing the harsh backlash of a father’s damned legacy alone. She would never let her mother down. Not like her father had.

  Sara took a deep breath, splashed water on her face, and wiped away the wetness on her sleeve. Then she opened the door to the smell of baking bread and the sounds of a home where laughter was long gone.

  She quickly shut the door behind her and took off her new scimitar to lean it against the wall. Next she took the knife, dagger, and baton from their secure holds on her waist and legs. Those she placed on the ‘weapons table’ her mother had set up. It was the only house rule her mother had in regards to battle magic and the family tendency to fight: No weapons carried to the dinner table. She did, however, allow a long blade in the kitchen for defense and gave Sara her blessing to keep her favorite blades in her room.

  “Sara?” called her mother, “Is that you?”

  “Yeah,” Sara called as she hastily grabbed a cloth from the chair to rub her hands.

  “Dinner’s ready.”

  “Coming, Ma,” muttered Sara.

  She hastily trotted into kitchen, where her mother had set up a rickety wooden table on top of the upside-down washing tub. Seeing the set-up made Sara sad. Not for herself, but for her mother. They had come a long way from their days as the family of the preeminent gladiator and then commander of imperial forces. When her father was executed, the magistrate’s court had stripped her mother of all the land he held in his name as well as his pension from his years as a gladiator. All as further punishment for his unnamed crime.

  Like being dead wasn’t enough, Sara thought miserably.

  Whatever her father had done to be charged with desertion, then execution, had far-reaching consequences until this day. Her father had died months ago. But Sara and her mother still suffered daily for his crimes. From the torment Sara endured on the streets to the fact that her mother couldn’t retain a job as a wind dancer anymore. None of the companies would hire her. Doors were shut in her face and none had reopened with time.

  Her mother looked up from where she knelt praying on the floor. A smile lit up her beautiful face. Smiling herself, Sara walked over to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Did you get the meat pies?” whispered her mother.

  Sara froze. “I—oh no, I forgot, Mother. I got caught up in some things.”

  “Games with your friends?” her mother said happily. She desperately wanted Sara to have a normal life. A normal sense of identity. But that had long since gone.

  “Yes, with my friends, Ma,” Sara said as she leaned back against the wall. She didn’t want to lie. But she didn’t want to tell her the truth, either.

  My friends deserted me the moment my family lost prominence, Sara thought bitterly, Every last one of them at the fighters’ school wouldn’t give me a nod or speak to me anymore.

  Sara knew that wasn’t entirely fair. After all, it was she that avoided the gladiatorial halls after her father’s execution, but neither had they made an attempt to see her outside of the school walls. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any of her former friends in months. It stung.

  Her mother nodded, then moved over to sit on the benc
h. She patted the space beside her for Sara to seat herself and they ate a dinner of peas and fresh-caught fish in silence.

  As she finished her meal, Sara asked politely, “The bread is for the morning sales?”

  Her mother nodded. “The baker was kind enough to let me fill some orders for him on the wharf in the morning. It should be a good day. I can get five to ten shillings for that. If I give him two shillings for acquiring the permit, we can keep the rest.”

  Sara didn’t say anything to that. Five or ten shillings would make a difference in whether or not they kept a roof over their head. But it would only stretch so far.

  Sara nodded. “May I be excused?”

  “Yes,” said her mother, “but one moment, Sara.”

  Sara looked at her mother patiently.

  “I don’t want you out on the streets. Getting into fights. It’s not good for you.”

  “I wasn’t in a fight.”

  “Don’t you lie to me, Sara Fairchild,” her mother said. “Your father tried the same thing. I could see through him just as I can see through you now.”

  “Well, Father lied about a lot of things,” Sara snapped as she stood up abruptly and rushed away.

  Only the quiet gasp of her mother behind her halted her retreat. The greatest fighter in Sandrin was barely able to control the emotions that rushed through her. Only her family could get her this worked up with just a conversation.

  Sara laughed bitterly. Only my mother could ever make me retreat in a battle.

  Slowly she exhaled and unclenched her fists.

  Turning, Sara said, “That was wrong of me, Mother. I’m sorry.”

  Her mother shook her head. “I just want you to be safe, Sara.”

  “I am safe. I’m the best fighter in this city. I tested out of all the grade levels at the fighter’s academy and I’ve never been bested in a duel.”