EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy Read Free Page A

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