If I Pay Thee Not In Gold

• Chapter 6

In the morning, things were no better.

She stood just inside the gates of her house, and stared at the ruins. Smoke still rose in places, little wisps of it rising into the still morning air. The blackened remains of the walls, crumbling even as she watched, enclosed only ashes. The was no sign of anything that had stood inside, not even the interior walls. Just gray and black ashes. The fire had burned so hot that even metal must have melted.

The house and all she owned was gone. For the second time, the garden had been destroyed, this time by the heat of the fire. Nothing had been spared.

By the time she had recovered enough from her shock to conjure water above the fire, it was too late. The water seemed to do nothing, other than to keep the fire from spreading to the neighboring homes. She had been picked up in the garden by her rearward neighbor, Lycia, who seemed not at all worried about her onions, but only concerned that Xylina and her slave were unhurt. Her neighbor, who proved to be a retired member of the Guard, had not even bothered to ask what Xylina wanted as soon as she realized who she was and what had happened; she took charge of the situation immediately. Like an old war-horse, she responded to the emergency with the energy of a woman half her years.

Lycia Tigeran sent Faro off to her tiny slave quarters in the hands of her own personal attendant and manservant, a man who had been with her since he was a child. She told Xylina that he had been trained in field-medicine, as were many of the slaves of Guards, and he served her as a rough physician during her entire service. She swore he had plenty of experience in tending injury, and certainly, from the competent way in which he took charge of Faro, Xylina was inclined to believe her.

Lycia herself had coaxed Xylina first into a hot bath, ordered another slave to give her a soothing massage, and then she had gotten Xylina into a bed. "I remember your mother, darling," Lycia had said, plying her with tea. "She was a wonderful, brilliant woman, and this city needed her badly. If I'd known her daughter was still alive after the plague, I'd have adopted you myself. Marriage can be a nuisance, because a man can act so hurt when he gets dumped, but adoption is another matter." Lycia had continued to speak quietly about nothing, distracting and actually relaxing her. Only when Xylina found herself falling asleep despite more than enough troubles to keep anyone awake for a week, did she think she might have been drugged.

She fell asleep, fighting it to no avail, and slept until the sun was well up. But in the morning, no amount of coaxing by the mistress of the house or her manservant could make her remain in Lycia's home. The slave brought her clothes, newly cleaned, but Lycia extracted a promise to return. Not that Xylina had a choice; Faro was still there, being tended for his wounds from the day before. The older slave had assured her that he was not in any danger, but he did have a serious head injury, and his skull might even have been cracked. She left the house to make the long walk around the block to her own, determined to know the worst.

And discovered it as soon as she entered her gates. There was nothing left; even the walls had crumbled and collapsed under the intense heat. Xylina felt like collapsing, herself. There was nothing but a blackened husk where her house had been-

A house for which she still owed more than three-quarters of the price in gold, a debt for which she was still responsible. With no place to live, and no way to earn the rest of the price. Now that it had been destroyed, the original owner would surely demand the rest of the price immediately. And where would she live? She could not remain a guest in Lycia's home forever, no matter what the woman said.

She returned to Lycia's home in a daze, hardly knowing what guided her feet. The slaves met her at the door, saw her face, and immediately fetched Lycia. Lycia seemed to realize exactly how she was feeling, and the older woman wisely refrained from offering her any empty words of consolation. Instead, she took Xylina into the rear of the house, sat Xylina down in the garden, gave her a cup of watered wine, and left her alone.

She stared at the wine, trying to comprehend the magnitude of her disaster. And the cause. Surely no fire that burned that completely could have been natural or set by the hand of humans.The curse . That was all she could think. Only the curse could have so destroyed everything she had built up.Surely no human agency had created a fire like that; no human could. The fire had spread so quickly-as if it had a will and a life of its own. It had reacted as if the water she had poured down upon it were oil, feeding the flames. And yet it had not spread beyond her walls. Granted, her neighbors had soaked down their walls and roofs, but it still seemed uncanny, supernatural. And what was more supernatural than that curse?

And if the curse was, indeed, in operation, what chance had she of recovering from this? None. None. Anything she did would turn to a disaster, and anyone who was associated with her would be caught up in that disaster.

Despair came down upon her, smothering her in dark, heavy clouds. The sun lost its warmth, and the bright garden seemed as desolate as a desert. Her heart ached, her mind went numb. There was no reason to go on, no reason to try. She was doomed, anything she tried was doomed. What worse could happen to her now?

"Xylina-"

She looked up from her despairing thoughts to see her hostess standing in the doorway, a frown on her lean face, and a stranger beside her. The stranger stood very stiffly, and she did not look at all friendly. Her square face was tight, her lips pursed.

"Xylina," Lycia said, and there was a note of anger in her voice, "I didn't want to bring you more bad news, and I'm certain that there must have been a horrible mistake, but this-person-insists on seeing you. She says that she has official business that you must deal with right now."

The person was a middle-aged woman with a hard, disagreeable face, wearing the livery of the Queen. "Are you the owner of the house on the other side of that wall?" the woman demanded, arrogantly. She pointed at the back wall of the garden, where wisps of smoke still rose into the air.

"What's left of it, yes," Xylina replied dully. "A few bricks and a ruined garden. Why?'

"Then you owe sales tax of twenty percent of its value," the woman said, a smirk of indecent satisfaction on her face. "Due immediately. This is the law, and you must obey it, or suffer the consequences."

Xylina stared at her, unable to believe what she had just heard. Sales tax? But the house had not been sold, it had burned! She had not realized any profit on it! How could she be taxed for a sale that had not happened? Was the woman stupid? Did she not understand what had occurred? Finally she blinked once, and said, as if to a very simple-minded person, "I'm afraid you've made a mistake. The house wasn't sold, it burned. There was no sale. There was no profit. In fact, it is a loss-"

One she had no way of making up, much less paying a tax on! She continued to stare at the official, but the woman did not drop her eyes. In fact, she looked pleased, if such a disagreeable face could assume such an expression. Xylina could not help thinking that this official looked like a frog, with her wide, down-turned mouth and eyes that bulged ever so slightly. Her complexion was even an odd olive-green.

"Are you living in the house?" the woman asked, as if Xylina were the simple-minded one. Her bulging eyes narrowed, and her mouth quirked up, just a little, as if she were anticipating something.

Like a nice juicy fly? But perhaps the fly was Xylina....

"No," Xylina replied testily. "Obviously not. It burned to the ground. I told you that."

"Can you live in the house?" she continued, ignoring Xylina's sarcasm. Her mouth quirked again. Xylina's heart sank. There was no mistake.

But she still had to try to make this woman see sense. "Of course not," Xylina snapped, her temper and her voice both cracking. "There is no house. It's gone. It is no longer there to be lived in!"

"Then if you are not living in it and cannot live in it, and no longer have the use of it, it is sold," the tax collector said, her tone triumphant as she displayed her "logic." "There are no exceptions. You owe the Queen her sales tax. It is due immediately."

"I think not," Lycia said icily. "It is the law that no tax is due immediately."

"But in view of the situation," the woman amended smoothly, "you may have until the end of the moon to pay it."

She turned on her heel and left, with Xylina and Lycia dumbfounded in her wake. Xylina had thought nothing else could go wrong; now she knew better. Lycia was the first to recover.

Lycia's reaction was a continuance of her outrage. She was not cowed by that officious official.

Then again, she was not threatened with yet another debt she could not pay. And what would the consequences of not paying be?

"I simply cannot believe this," Lycia said angrily. "That is the most ridiculous piece of bureaucratic nonsense I have ever heard!Sales tax on a house that has been destroyed? There must be a mistake somewhere!"

Lycia’s gray hair was standing out all over her head from the way she kept running an agitated hand through it. Xylina could only sit and shake her head in despair. There was no way out. Punishment probably would be banishment-and that could be worse than death. She could be caught by enemies of the Mazonites, be tortured, be made into a slave herself. Death would be preferable.

Maybe she should just kill herself and get it over with, she thought savagely. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that was the only solution, although she did not voice her conclusion to Lycia. She should never even have tried all this. It was useless from the start. Useless, hopeless. She never had a chance. No one would ever miss her. No one would care-

But even as she thought that, she realized, with a sob that she choked back, that she no longer had the freedom to escape by killing herself. If she died, Faro died. His life was tied to hers, by the same law that had sent him to the arena in the first place. An ordinary slave would simply be taken as partial payment for the debt, but an ex-arena slave would die when his mistress died. He did not deserve death. How could she do that to him? And she knew that she could not take him to the border and free him; he would not accept his freedom. Even if he changed his mind, she would not be able to get to the border, because debtors were not allowed to leave Mazonia, and they would assume she was trying to flee.

Another sob rose in her throat, and this one escaped. Then another, and another. She tried to hold them back, but they fought past her will, and burning, painful tears followed them. As the hot, shameful tears came of their own will into her eyes and trickled slowly down her cheeks, scalding her like acid, Lycia clutched at her short hair, wearing an oddly helpless expression herself. She didn't know what to say or do-and Xylina could not help herself.

"Don't-" Lycia said, finally, awkwardly. "Please, dear-I know some people, let me go talk to them-"

And she fled, leaving Xylina alone in the garden, free to cry into the wine-cup, turning the sweet wine bitter with her tears.

As Xylina had expected, Lycia's efforts came to nothing; she returned that evening and confessed her defeat at the hands of a legion of bureaucrats who quoted rule after senseless rule until Lycia had thrown up her hands in despair. Xylina could not offer her anything other than a murmur of thanks for trying.

"I don't understand it," Lycia muttered over a supper that Xylina could not eat. "I just don't understand it. This is all so senseless-"

Xylina toyed with a bit of bread, ignoring the coaxing of Lycia's manservant. Her stomach was in knots, and her head ached; her eyes were dry and hot, and swollen after more than one bout of weeping. She understood Lycia's lack of success only too well, for when she went to talk with Faro, a talk that was more a case of her saying whatever came into her head out loud than anything else, she came to a terrible conclusion.

The curse had a human agent; it was the woman who had set the vandals on her, and the gangs of ruffians, and might have somehow engineered the burning of her house. She said to Faro that the fire had burned as if someone had poured oil on it-and it would have been simple enough for a good conjuror to create a pool of oil on the roof to begin the fire, then continue to conjure oil to feed it. Small wonder that she had not been able to douse it with water in that case-and small wonder that everything within the walls had been reduced to ash.

It had to be someone in authority-in high authority; perhaps a Mazonite answerable only to the Queen herself. For only someone that important could conceal her tracks, and engineer this final disaster. That would make sense in terms of a powerful conjuror, too, since the best magicians ended up in the Queen's service, sooner or later. The motive was not obvious to Xylina, but Faro had managed to suggest a number of possibilities. One, was that the Mazonite in question viewed Xylina as a rival; certainly someone with Xylina's ability at conjuration would soon be asked to join the Queen's staff as soon as another conflict with the lands beyond Mazonia arose. In war, every skilled conjuror would be needed, and someone like Xylina could rise in rank very rapidly.

Another was that it was an old rival of Xylina's mother; this person too could have risen high in the ranks of the Queen's service by now.

Either seemed possible. Both meant doom.

Faro was not at his best-but he was coherent enough (and knew her well enough) to have already divined what her thoughts in the garden had been. And before she left, he seized both her wrists in his hands and forced her to look into his eyes. His expression was open, for the first time in their acquaintance; she saw in it fear for her, pain for her, and a will to do anything to aid her.

"Little Mistress Xylina," he had said, as forcefully as he could manage, though his face was lined with pain, "you must not think of ending your life. I know you have thought of this; I can't blame you, for your troubles must seem endless. But you are not alone. I will help you. We will find some way around these troubles. I do not know what it is-but we will. We need only time. If you must do anything, find a way to delay them, little mistress. Give us the time to think. That is all we need, for we are more clever than they are. Believe me in this. We can and will find our way through."

She shook her head, dumbly, and he swallowed and closed his eyes. "I will even gladly suffer you to defeat me publicly, three times a day, for a year and a day or longer if need be. I will do it in an arena before thousands of them, if it will extricate you from this. And I will be glad to do this for you."

She cried then, as unashamed to do so before this man who was her friend as she had been ashamed to weep before Lycia. She knew what it cost him to offer that-and it was the greatest gift that anyone had ever offered her. He had given her back her life twice now-and had offered up his own as well. More than that, had offered his spirit, his pride, his dignity. What he had not given to any Mazonite under the most extreme punishment, he had given her out of friendship. She could not have ordered that from him- would not have asked it of him-and he had given it to her of his own will.

She wept, and so did he-and when they were both finished, she somehow knew that he was right. Somehow, they would find an answer.

But when she emerged and saw Lycia, the answer seemed very far away.

"Xylina-"

Xylina looked up; Lycia patted her hand. "Don't give up, girl," the old woman said roughly. "I'm not finished yet. I don't have the money to get you out of this, but I think I know some women who may-either others who knew and admired your mother, and there are more of them than you may think, or even someone who saw your woman-trial and is willing to give you a hand. Let me go out and do some talking tomorrow, all right?"

"Why are you doing this?" Xylina asked, bewildered.

"Partly because I admire you-and partly because I don't like what's being done to you, and I don't like what it implies for the rest of us," Lycia replied forthrightly. "What's happening to you is rather of a piece with some other disturbing things around here lately. Ah, never mind. Here-"

She held out another cup; this time it was clearly one with some kind of potion in it. Xylina raised an eyebrow at it and sniffed it delicately. It smelled of herbs.

"Are you going to drug me again?" she asked.

Lycia snorted. "Damned right I am," she said. "If I don't, you won't be getting any sleep at all. If you don't get any sleep, you won't be able to think. If you can't think, what good are you going to be to yourself or anyone else?" Xylina knew when to concede defeat. She drank the potion, and went straight to bed.

Adria leaned back into the leather cushions of her throne, and regarded Ware from beneath half-closed lids. The demon had appeared at her orders to discuss the actions of last night, and their continued actions. There were no witnesses, not even slaves, for what Adria was doing was not even remotely legal.

And Ware seemed to harbor a fair number of doubts about this. "Are you quite certain you know what you are doing, my Queen?" The demon Ware looked directly and challengingly at Adria with his many-colored eyes, all the colors of which had darkened with some kind of indefinable emotions. Certainly Adria would not try to define them; who could fathom the thoughts of a demon?

Bad enough that she was worried about someone discovering what she had done; she did not need a conscience-stricken demon to plague her about it too. "Of course I am certain!" Adria snapped, straightening in her seat to conceal her weariness. Last night's exertions had taken their toll on her; she had not dared entrust this job to one of her underlings.

It was easy enough to find a renegade with a gang of ruffian-slaves, and under the cover of a disguise, hire her to attack Xylina in the streets. Or rather, it had been easy.

After two efforts had left two piles of bodies in the street, the city underground no longer held anyone willing to attack this "easy" target. Adria had been forced to change her tactics, and had opted to go after Xylina personally.

But not directly; she decided to let the "curse" manifest itself in fire.

As a result, she was exhausted. Once Ware had set the fire in Xylina's home, it had been up to her to make certain that it kept blazing, and that the girl was unable to put it out. She had not conjured that much of anything in so short a period since the last war. By the time the flames had engulfed most of Xylina's house, Adria's powers were beginning to ebb, and she had fallen back against the cushions of her litter as wearily as if she had fought a dozen men hand-to-hand.

She toyed with the ends of her golden sash, as she watched Ware carefully, trying to divine his thoughts. He could not betray her-but if he chose to vanish from the city, she would be able to do nothing to stop him, and she would lose his services. How far dared she push him? She needed to be rid of Xylina, and to do so, she might still need Ware's abilities.

When Xylina had escaped the first ambush, she had been amazed. Even though Xylina had done well in the arena, that had been under controlled circumstances, and when she had time to prepare herself mentally for the event. Adria had no idea that the girl was such a quick thinker in an emergency-nor that the slave would fight with her, rather than standing passively on the side, or giving only a half-hearted attempt at defending her.

That had been what had made the difference, and it had made no sense whatsoever. The slave had no real reason to defend his mistress, after all; she had humiliated him in front of hundreds of women and their slaves. He should have been of limited reliability in an ambush.

But not only had he defended her, they had worked as a team, or so the woman who had lost her entire gang of ruffians had said. Adria saw no reason to disbelieve her, for the evidence was clear enough. They had dispatched all the men sent against them, even though they had been grossly outnumbered. That had been the first pile of bodies, left for the Guard to find. Xylina had reported the attack the next day, and had apparently accepted the Guards assurance that it was a gang of lawless freedmen that had attacked her.

If the slave had not defended the girl, she would have been overwhelmed.

Adria had not known what to think, at first. For a moment, she had even toyed with the notion that Xylina had some heretofore unknown power over her slave's mind. But after a moment of sober reflection, the reason for the slave's apparent loyalty was obvious enough. He was, after all, a former arena-slave, a condemned criminal. Even a dullard would be bright enough to know the law that applied in his case. His life was bound to his mistress's, and if she died, he would be executed. He had no choice but to defend her.

So the second time Adria hired an ambush to take them, she had made certain that the numbers were sufficient to get the job done. This renegade had almost double the number of slaves that the first had, and these men were bold enough to attack in broad daylight. It had taken Adria a great deal of time and effort to find this woman, and after the failure of the first gang, it had taken a great deal of gold to hire her for the task. The gang's first priority was to rid Xylina of her slave, or somehow separate the two. Kill the slave, Adria thought, and the girl would fall.

And yet, on the afternoon the attack was to occur, her first word of what had happened came from her own Guard.

It was the duty of the Guard-Captain to report all unusual occurrences directly to the Queen. On that afternoon, she had received a report from the Guard that told her that the numbers were not sufficient, that once again Xylina had won free of the attack.

Xylina had escaped the ambush unharmed, and had taken refuge with her slave in the garden of a nearby home-owner. All but two of the slaves who had attacked the girl and her slave had perished in the attempt.

Adria had sent word to the Guard to muster out all patrols, and search for the "gang of runaway slaves" that had made this attack. She had specifically ordered the Guards who had responded to the incident back to the barracks to make a fuller, more detailed report, thus denying Xylina a protective escort. She had hoped that a robber would see them as they made their way home, and find them an irresistible target. If the slave could only be killed, Xylina would be vulnerable. But nothing happened, and they reached home safely. Adria's spies reported back to her as soon as the pair entered their own gates.

That was when Adria had sent for Ware, determined to at least ruin this potential rival to the point of bankruptcy and exile, if nothing else. She conceived a plan; to wait until Xylina had been in her home for a few hours and thought herself safe, then to set a fire at the front of the house. Hopefully the fire would cut off escape; and she would make certain that it was a fire that would be fierce and hot enough to burn everything in its path.

For that, she needed a demon. She could not conjure fire; no woman could, any more than she could call a wind or a storm. A woman's magic created only inanimate things. Fire, though not alive, was a process rather than a thing. But Ware, like any demon, could call fire-and Ware could insinuate his power past locked gates and closed doors to do so, setting it on the roof to burn downward.

With Xylina and her injured slave asleep, there would be ample opportunity for the fire to take hold. Then once the fire had been set and had burned a hole in the roof, she could conjure enough oil and pitch to soak everything in the room below. That would keep the fire burning with an intensity that would destroy everything in its path, and make it spread as quickly as a thought.

So she and Ware had gone to the street outside Xylina's home, and the plan had been made reality. She had come in a plain, unornamented litter, carried by four mute slaves who could neither read nor write. He had walked beside the litter, wrapped in a cloak, looking like nothing more than a shadow.

She had hoped that Xylina had gone to bed; it would really have been best if the girl had been asleep. Then she would have gone up with house and slave, since Ware had set the fire directly over the master bed-chamber.

But somehow they escaped; Adria knew that as soon as another hand began conjuring torrents of water in an attempt to douse the flames.

That was why she had determined to feed the fire with oil. Oil floated upon water; oil would not yield to water. And Adria knew that if she stoked the fire until it burned even the paint from the walls, the flames would turn the water to harmless steam before there was any chance of the water accomplishing anything. So Adria stretched her abilities to the limit, conjuring as much or more oil than Xylina could conjure water. She had kept the flames fed and sent them higher and higher.

Finally the girl must have given up, no matter where she was; water ceased to pour into the blazing building and the fire roared on, no longer opposed. That had been enough; no matter what else happened, Xylina was financially ruined.

Adria knew she could stop at that point. She fell back upon the cushions of her litter, drew the curtains, and directed her slaves to bear her back to the palace. The demon disappeared somewhere; she never saw him go. In fact, she really didn't remember him being there once she had begun her own conjurations. Perhaps he had gone as soon as he had set the fire at her direction. It did not matter, particularly; he had done his work, and done it well.

She returned home, to the palace, coming in by a side entrance, and dismissing her litter and the slaves. The palace had been silent, for she had sent everyone to their quarters except for her own personal guards-all slaves, and as mute as the litter-bearers. This was not the first time she had undertaken something that her fellow Mazonites would not have approved of, and it probably would not be the last. Mute guards could be trusted not to reveal what they had seen.

Once she entered the palace, she returned openly to her bed-chamber, secure in the fact that no one who saw her would even think to question her whereabouts, or reveal her absence to others who might. She longed, desperately, for sleep. She had not felt this worn out in many long years. Not since the last challenge, in fact.

Yet there would be no sleep for her yet, not while there was work to be done.

Once she reached her bed-chamber, she cast a longing look at her bed, but sat down instead at a small desk in the corner of the room. She drew up instructions for the tax-collector, called another slave, and had the directive sent to the tax-collector's office in the palace. In the morning, when the woman arrived at her office, she would find them waiting for her with the Queens seal upon them. The rationale for the change in the law was a simple one, and she congratulated herself for thinking of it.

There had been too many cases of arson in the city, when a property owner could not be rid of a house but wished to be relieved of paying the tax upon it, her edict stated. Therefore, unless it could be proved that a fire was completely accidental, when a house burned the owner must pay the same sales tax upon it that she would if she had sold it.

There would be no one who would connect this edict with Xylina-for how could Adria have known that Xylina's house had burned? And since it would be impossible to prove that the fire was accidental, Xylina's financial ruin would be assured.

For the first time since she had seen Xylina win her woman-trial, Adria felt peace descend on her soul. She undressed quickly, dropping the garments she had worn into the privy, and took a quick bath to remove the last traces of smoke. She then allowed herself to seek her bed and fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Morning came all too soon, and with it, the report of fire in the city. As she had seen for herself, Xylina's house was a total loss. She allowed herself a look of a concern; ascertained that there was no other damage, and expressed her pleasure at the girl's escape, then went on to other reports, as if Xylina was no more to her than any other young Mazonite woman.

Inside, however, she gloated. The girl must be frantic by now, trying to figure a way out of her predicament. Soon she would realize that there was no way out-except bankruptcy and exile. Would she kill herself, rather than suffer such a fate? Adria could hardly wait to hear what the tax-collector had to say.

But Ware arrived at the palace just before she received the report of her tax-collector. He presented himself as if it were just another day, as if he had no particular business in mind other than to amuse her. But his eyes were dark with secrets, and when she granted him audience and permitted him to listen to the reports of her various officials-including the tax-collector-he did so with an odd expression. His impassivity was gone; there was something else there in its place. Something about this situation evidently interested him, although he had seldom shown much interest in the doings of the Mazonites before this. Finally she dismissed her officials, and faced him alone.

That was when he dared to ask her if she knew what she was doing.

"I know exactly what I'm doing," she told him forcefully. "If I cannot remove her in one way, I must remove her in another. There has never been a conjurer to match me since I took the throne, and I do not intend to let anyone know that Xylina could be that match."

In sober truth-though she would never tell him that- she feared that the girl was already more than her match. If it came to a challenge today, Adria was afraid there was a very real possibility that she, and not Xylina, would lose.

Ware shook his darkly handsome head. "I fear that you have aroused more than you guess, my lady," he said, his melodious voice making pleasant the unpleasant words.

"This girl is no tamer than her mother was. If ever she finds out who is behind all this, you will have a challenge on your hands."

She looked into his eyes, and quickly looked away. One thing she definitely read there: he knew very well that she feared Xylina's youth and strength, and the powers of magic the girl commanded.

Unspoken, the thought hung between them:That would be a challenge you might not survive .

"Let me be the judge of that," the Queen replied waspishly. "You are only an inhuman thing; what can you know of human nature? This girl is nothing: naive, ignorant, easily fooled. She will have no notion that it is not a curse that moves against her, but my hand. How could she? How could she ever discover what has been behind her misfortune?"

"I do not speak only of this girl, but of your other subjects, my lady," Ware replied evenly. She flushed, then paled with mingled anger and dismay. He was right-and she hated him for being right. "What you do to her is against your own laws. You should either challenge her openly, or let her be. If your people discover what you are doing, they will call you to account for it."

"They will not," Adria said, with a carelessness she in no way felt. And a thin thread of chill rose along her backbone, for the demon had accurately predicted the actions of her people, if they learned what she had been doing. If ever the other Mazonites discovered how she had misused her power, they could not only call her to account for her actions, they could condemn her for them. They could force her exile, sending her off the throne, and into the wilds beyond the borders of Mazonia.

But they would not find out, for there was no one to tell them. The women she had hired to ambush Xylina were not aware that it had been the Queen who had hired diem. She had gone in disguise, had never given her name, and had paid in common coin. She had found the women in the first place by roundabout means, and had met them in low taverns where no one knew what the Queen looked like. Only her litter-bearers knew what she had done last night, and they were mute slaves who could neither speak nor write. No one else, human or female, was aware of what she had done and where she had gone. Only Ware himself, who was bound to her service by the most terrible of oaths. He could not break those oaths to betray her. Only she could release him from them.

No, she should be safe enough.

"Within the week, the girl will either be dead or in such dire straits she will flee into exile on her own," Adria announced loftily. "You and l are the only ones who know the hand responsible for her misfortune. Gossip in the marketplace says that it is entirely the action of that curse which she dared to flaunt. I think we are safe enough."

"We," she said, to remind him that he was a party to this, and that if she suffered for it, so should he. There were ways to punish demons, to confine them forever. That was why they swore their oaths to the Queen for the freedom to walk the streets openly-to be free of those punishments. The Queen knew those magics, and if Ware betrayed her, she would use them on him.

"And if the girl finds a rescuer?" Ware asked, his eyes curiously bright, strange dreams dancing behind them. She kept glancing at those eyes, caught by the life and light in them. Ware had never looked this alert before in all the time he had served her. He had always seemed to be at one remove from the rest of the world-as if he walked in a waking dream. Now the dreamer seemed to be stirring....

"She will not," the Queen replied, with a laugh. That was one thing she was certain of. While there were women who had more than enough wealth to come to Xylina's rescue with a gift or a loan, why would they bother? They had not achieved that wealth by giving it or lending it to foolish young girls. "No one would be so foolish as to make a loan on such little security as she possesses-one slave, who on her death must be put to death, unless she has sold or traded him before that date. No, I think not." Her eyes hardened. "And you would do well to recall that she is our enemy, and must be disposed of."

Suddenly the demon's eyes lost all their light, and became opaque and colorless. "Very well, my lady," Ware said, his tone curiously flat and without emphasis. "I seek only to protect your reputation, as the oaths I swore require me to do. If you will not act according to my advice, then the conditions of that oath have been satisfied."

She stared at him for a moment, then turned away and ignored him. She rang for her majordomo, and signaled for the first petitioner of the day to be allowed in to see her.

It turned out to be a very wealthy merchant, an important supporter, and Adria spent some time with the woman, untangling a complicated legal problem to their mutual satisfaction. When she looked around, Ware had absented himself.

Without asking her permission to do so.

She frowned, then shrugged. After all, he was a demon; she could not expect him to act like one of her own subjects. He often forgot or ignored the rules of protocol, and he was useful enough that she permitted him to do so. He was an unnatural creature; it was not reasonable to expect him to act naturally. And she had no further use for him today, at any rate. He had been extremely tedious, and if he was not in the mood to amuse her, she would rather that he stayed away altogether until she called him.

She signaled for the next petitioner, and put all thought of Ware out of her mind.

Lycia left the house early, before Xylina awakened from her drugged slumber. Despite the drugs, Xylina's sleep had not been restful; she had endured horrible nightmares all night long, struggling up out of one only to descend into another. Several times she had awakened in a cold sweat, with her heart pounding, and her mind paralyzed with reasonless fear.

She did not remember what her dreams had been, except for one. Only the last one remained with her, and that only because she fought off sleep after she awakened from it, lying in her bed and trying to clear the fog of fear from her mind. She had shivered as she lay there, staring up at the pale blue ceiling, telling herself that it had simply been a dream and nothing more.

Yet it had felt all too real at the time-so real, she had awakened shivering with bone-deep chill, and was a little surprised not to find herself be slimed with mire.

The dream had been a hideously simple one. She had found herself in a dark, cold swamp, in sticky mud and murky water that came up to her hips. She had been completely nude in the dream, and her conjuring ability had somehow deserted her. She could not even call up a simple length of cloth to wrap herself in. The sky had been overcast, and tall, dank weeds blocked out the view on all sides of her. She had no idea where she was; no idea how she had gotten there. And she was totally alone.

Then she had heard something-several somethings-howling in the distance, a hideous baying sound that had never come from the throats of dogs. And in the dream, she had known they were on her trail, that they would devour her if they caught her.

She had tried to run, but the mud and the cold water slowed her down, keeping her progress to a bare crawl. She fell, time and time again, once going completely under the water as she fell into what seemed to be a bottomless hole, and was barely able to flounder into shallower water. Sedges cut her, and thorns scratched her. Beneath the water, rocks cut her feet until they bled. There were huge snakes under the surface of the water, which rubbed up against her legs just often enough to let her know that they were there. Horror deepened within her soul, and a terrible fear. The fear increased every time she heard the howling. Her limbs ached with cold and strain, and her long golden hair was matted with mud.

She could not even tell if she was going somewhere or traveling in circles, for everything looked the same. And yet she had to try to escape; fear drove her ever onward. The howling had grown closer with every moment, and the mud grew deeper, stickier, harder to move through. She knew that when the howling things found her, it would be over-

Then just as the howls came from just beyond the screening reeds behind her, and she had been certain the horrible creatures that made them would break through at any moment, she woke up.

When she finally rid her mind of the last clinging tendrils of the nightmare, she arose. Lycia's manservant, attentive as always, had been waiting for some sounds of life from the bed-chamber; the moment he heard them, he was at her side, to ask what she wished. She licked dry lips and rubbed her cold arms. It seemed as if the cold of her dream-swamp had followed her right into the waking world.

"A hot bath, and clean clothing," she said absently. "And something to eat, please, while I am soaking. Is Lycia still here?"

She wanted to ask the older woman if her dream meant anything, or if it was simply a night-fear, a manifestation of her daytime troubles. The older Mazonite had a wealth of wisdom that Xylina instinctively trusted.

But Lycia had already gone out for the morning, the manservant said regretfully. "But she will return by noon," he added with eager helpfulness.

He led her to the bath and left her there to soak away the last of the cold that the nightmare had left in her mind. But when he returned with her breakfast, it was with a puzzled look on his face.

"Mistress Xylina, there is a manservant here to see you, sent from Lady Hypolyta Dianthre," he said. "This is not a lady of my mistress's acquaintance; indeed, I have never heard of her before."

"Neither have I," Xylina replied, after a moment to plumb the old memories of her mother’s acquaintances, to see if this lady was among them. "Do you-"

She was about to ask him if he thought she should talk to this slave, but then she remembered that this man was not Faro. He would not feel free to advise her.

"Never mind," she told him. "I shall see this man in a moment."

She would have asked him if he knew what the slave's errand was, but if he had known, he surely would have told her. And she did not particularly want him to ask. If it was more bad news, she would rather Lycia's manservant was not privy to it just yet. He already knew more about her private affairs than she liked. Not that she didn't trust him-she had no reason to mistrust him, after all. But it was a truism that slaves gossiped, and what he knew, the marketplace would probably know before long.

There was no point in spreading the tale of her misfortunes any further than it had to go.

So she devoured the hot egg pastry that Lycia's manservant had brought her, drank down the watered wine in a single gulp, and arose dripping from the water while it still steamed. She dressed herself quickly, in the garments he had brought her: breeches and a tunic that were clearly Lycia's, since they were far too large for her and had to be belted in before they looked like anything other than sacks. She had put her long hair up in a knot for the bath; now, perversely, she let it down again, so that it fell in ripples to her waist. The manservant looked on, clearly not approving of such unseemly haste, then took himself off to inform the waiting slave that Xylina would see him.

She made her way to Lycia's reception chamber, half expecting it to be some other message from the tax collectors, and she was rather surprised to see that the slave waiting for her was not dressed in government livery.

She took a seat on a padded bench, wishing that Faro was able to take his usual place beside her. The slave remained standing, as was proper, and waited until she nodded tensely at him, granting him permission to speak.

"I am sent from Lady Hypolyta," he said, without preamble. His voice was very low, and musical. "She is not a personal acquaintance of the mistress of this house, nor of yours, nor of your mother Elibet-but she did see your performance at your woman-trials in the arena, and she wishes me to express her admiration, and the fact that she was greatly impressed by your courage and your resourcefulness."

Is that all? Xylina restrained her impatience, and nodded to the slave, indicating that she had heard and understood him, and that he was to go on. He was a most unusual looking man: very slim, and very graceful, with long dark hair that shone like black silk, and hung to below his shoulder-blades, and very curious, dark eyes. At least, she assumed they were dark, as she could see very little of them. He kept his eyes cast down as he spoke to her and she could only infer their color. But despite the fact that he kept his eyes lowered, he carried himself with a kind of unconscious pride, much like Faro. He was incredibly well-spoken, actually, and despite her current throng of worries, she found herself envying the woman who owned him. She must take great pleasure in him.

"My mistress sends me to tell you that she is a woman of substance, and she is prepared to make her admiration clear in material ways," he continued, apparently unaware of her scrutiny. "To make myself completely clear, she has heard of your current rash of troubles, and she would like to make you a loan sufficient to cover your current needs. This loan would be payable in installments, so as to keep the repayment from being too onerous."

Xylina could not keep her amazement from showing, and the slave did not-quite-smile.

"You need not fear that my mistress is either a madwoman, or a lady who is likely to change her mind from one moment to the next," he said smoothly. "She simply recalls her younger days, when she encountered tribulations, and she wishes to help those deserving of help so that they need not fear the future. Would you care to meet with her?"

"Why-of course," she replied, trying not to stammer. "When would the lady wish to see me, and where?"

"This afternoon, if it pleases you," the slave said. "And in the lady's own home. I shall come to take you there, if you find that convenient."

A thousand possibilities ran through her mind-and one of them was the notion that this might be a trap by her unknown enemy. Faro was in no condition to go with her, and who knew where this odd manservant might take her?

On the other hand, what choice did she have?

"I shall be happy to meet with your mistress at that time," she said, hoping her hesitation didn't show. "And please convey to her my heartfelt thanks."