Free EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy by Terah Edun, Anna Zaires, Dima Zales, Lindsay Buroker, C. Greenwood, Jeff Gunzel, Daniel Arenson, Megg Jensen, Joseph Lallo, Annie Bellet, Edward W. Robertson, Mande Matthews, K. J. Colt, Brian D. Anderson, David Adams Page B

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