If I Pay Thee Not In Gold

• Chapter 8

It was, as she expected, the same manservant as before. She had him brought to her office, a tiny cubicle just off the kitchen. Windowless, it held only her desk and chair, and the storage chest for important documents. All three had been built by her own hands. While the construction was inelegant, she felt it hardly mattered. When she needed to impress someone, she covered them in rich swaths of her own conjured fabric. The chest then served as a bench-seat. But she did not want to impress this slave with her prosperity; she wanted to impress him with the fact that she was doing her very best to meet the debt and the deadline.

Faro ushered the manservant into her office, then stood beside the door. "Lady Xylina," the slave said, bowing. "If you would be so kind-I should like to speak with you about the matter of the first payment upon your debt." He looked significantly at Faro with his strange, dark eyes. "Alone," he added.

She glanced over at Faro, who shrugged minutely. It would make very little difference whether she spoke to this slave alone or in Faro's company. After all, she simply did not have the money to give him. However, he might well have some influence with his mistress, and if she acceded to his request, they might be able to get a precious week or two of time. There were funds coming in and going out constantly; her normal cash flow would enable her to make up the difference, given that leeway.

She nodded, and Faro took this as a sign to depart. He carefully closed the door behind him, leaving her alone with Lady Hypolyta's graceful slave.

Whose demeanor suddenly changed.

The change was subtle, but suddenly there was nothing subservient in his posture or his expression. Instead, he stood a bit straighter, looking directly into her eyes, a hint of smile on his sensuous lips suggesting that they were not slave and slave-owner, but equals. His clothing no longer seemed to be the typical livery of a slave, but a quaint costume he had chosen to assume, and could just as readily put off.

"I know that you are in no position to make the stipulated payment upon your loan," he said without preamble. And before she could protest, he shook his head. "Do not trouble yourself to deny this. I have many sources of information, who have given me detailed accounts which very likely exactly match the ones before you now." He nodded at the closed account book beneath Xylina's hand. The rough linen covers seemed suddenly harsh, and the book felt inexplicably warm as her throat tightened.

"You have exactly thirty-five coronets deposited with the bank of Lady Eccolo," he continued boldly, as she paled. "You cannot redeem yourself. You know this, and so do I."

She did not know why a slave should speak so boldly, but she did not have the strength at that moment to challenge him. For indeed, what he said was only too true.

She felt the blood draining from her face with his every word, but bravely drew herself up and looked him straight in the eyes. "I have been levied unexpected taxes. The training school is doing well, and we expect to begin training scribes as well as bodyguards soon. Faro's other abilities have been noticed, and the slaves he has trained are being very much admired. If I had a little more time-"

He shook his head, interrupting her. "All the time in the world will not help you. You have a very powerful enemy who will make certain that you cannot redeem yourself. It is in her interest to be certain that you fail."

"Who is it?" she cried, half in fear, and half in hope. Finally someone confirmed what she and Faro had only suspected! She did have an enemy, it was not simply a paranoid fantasy. "You must tell me!"

"I cannot tell you," he replied, and for a moment, anger rose in her. How dared a mere slave refuse to answer her question? A slave had no right to withhold anything from a citizen!

Then the anger collapsed, for this was no ordinary slave; that much was clear. And he was not subject to her orders. If his mistress had told him not to reveal something, Xylina could not countermand those orders. "It would do you no good in any case to know who it is," he continued. "But-that is not why I am here."

"Yes?" she prompted, hope rising with the words. Was he about to offer a solution to her dilemma?

"I came to tell you that there is another way that you can repay this debt. Your enemy is certain that you will forfeit, and face exile or prison. This is another way. A certain service to me." His eyes glowed strangely, and she had to forcibly pull her gaze away. His burning glance was nearly hypnotic.

"A service to your mistress. Lady Hypolyta, you mean," Xylina said faintly. What on earth could the woman want of her ? What could she possibly offer? Faro's services, perhaps? Could the lady want his potential as a sire? Was she not beyond the age for that? Perhaps not-perhaps she wanted him for her daughters. Certainly, as strong and clever as he was, he would breed strong and clever daughters, ideal Mazonites-if he would agree. How would she ever get him to agree? That sort of thing required cooperation!

"No," the man said boldly, destroying her train of thought and her growing embarrassment. "Not to the so-called Lady Hypolyta. To me. There is no Lady Hypolyta. She was and is a baker, hired by me to play a part, the part of your would-be benefactress. If you look upon those contracts, you will discover that the signature is not hers, but mine."

No Lady Hypolyta? Xylina had contracted with amale ? But that was not legally binding, and surely he must know that! Or did he think she was so ignorant she would not be aware of that? What was going on here?

"That's not possible," she said flatly. If he thought she was an unlearned young fool, he was about to learn otherwise. "No mere male can contract for anything outside the Freedman's Quarters, and his contracts can't be with a woman. No man can sign a contract that is legally binding on any Mazonite; he can only contract with his fellow freedmen. Everyone knows that."

"Ah," the man said, his mouth widening in a broad smile, showing strong white teeth. Vulpine teeth, she thought distractedly. They seemed-oddly sharp. "But you see," he continued delicately, "I am not a man."

At first Xylina could not understand what he had told her. Then she understood only too well. She shrank back a little in her chair, and stared at him, only now understanding the meaning of the strange eyes, the too-handsome face, the too-graceful body. And the sharp, sharp teeth. "You-you are a demon!" she gasped. "Monster!"

He bowed a little, a mocking parody of a slave's bow to his mistress. "Ware," he replied. "It is my name, Xylina. Things will be much more agreeable if you use it, rather than 'demon' or 'monster.' And I think if you will review the laws, you will find that a contract signed with a demon is quite as legally binding as any other between Mazonites. We are protected citizens, with most of the same rights that you enjoy. Save only that we may not challenge the Queen, nor disobey her wishes." He straightened, his smile mocking her. "We may hold property, for instance-the villa is mine, the slaves were mine, and this much was true, the money that bought the villa and slaves came from the sale of trained gardeners, who are also mine. We may contract with freedmen on behalf of Mazonite clients-how did you think commerce happened between your world and the Freedmen's Quarter? We supply certain comforts to the freedmen, for a price. We may make investments, and we may contract with Mazonites on our own behalf." He raised an eyebrow gracefully at her. "Surely you did not think that we lived on light and air and magic?"

She felt as if she were falling down a chasm; she could hardly move for the shock, and she could not think at all.

"What-what do you want of me?" she asked faintly.

He leaned back against the door of her office, crossed his arms over his chest, and surveyed her from half-closed eyes. "At the moment-your potential," he said lazily. "What you may become, in time. I have peculiar tastes among my kind. Or rather, let us say that I have particular tastes. My brothers and sisters are a little less discriminating in their choice of partners than I am. I do not much care for women who are thick-headed, broad-backed and broad-shouldered-who look and act more like draft-horses than I care to contemplate. My tastes run to females who are intelligent, graceful, lithe, as attractive physically in their way as I am in mine-women who are out of the ordinary. You are more than that, Xylina. You are extraordinary. Quite lovely, in fact, and the closest thing to a match for me that I have seen in centuries. Exactly the kind of woman I would choose to be my lover."

With every word, Xylina's shock deepened, but at his final sentence, her outrage overcame her shock. She leapt to her feet, so enraged she could hardly see.

How dared he! How dared he come to her with such a perverted proposition!

If he had been something other than a demon, she would have attacked him then and there, or challenged him for his slight to her honor. But caution forced her rage to cool a little-he was a demon, after all; his powers of magic were just as strong as hers, and they were utterly unknown. Demons were incredibly dangerous; that was all she knew. He could probably defend himself against her perfectly well.

In fact, from the way he was acting, he could probably not only defend himself, but do it with ridiculous ease.

She contented herself with glaring at him instead, putting every iota of her detestation into her gaze. "Give me a moon," she said, forcing the words out between clenched teeth. "You tricked me-you owe me at least that much,incubus . If you know anything of honor, you will give me a moon to make up for that."

Ware shrugged. "A week, a moon, what does it matter?" he said with indifference. "You still will not have the coronets. The proposition will be the same."

"A moon," she insisted. "I swear it." She shifted her stance, and unconsciously raised one hand, invoking the gods to witness her oath as she spoke in the formal words of binding. "If I pay thee not in gold, I will pay thee in silver!" Unspoken was the real import: she would never pay him in sex.

He blinked a little, as if taken aback by her vehemence; the formal words which made her pledge into a solemn oath, and the force of will with which she swore the oath. Then he smiled, lazily. "Very well, then," he agreed. "One moon. It will make your surrender all the more piquant for the wait. I have waited years to find a woman like you; I can wait a moon."

Before she could order him out, he winked, slowly, and vanished before her eyes. He was a demon, without doubt; both his magic and his arrogance attested to that.

Ware returned to his villa in the tiny section of the city that housed mostly demons and those few wealthy women who found the incubi and succubi to be quiet and agreeable neighbors. He was very pleased with himself, and well satisfied with his encounter with Xylina. It had been altogether successful as far as he was concerned. He had been generous-more than generous. In recompense for his tiny deception, he had given Xylina more time to raise the gold she needed to pay her debt. That was just; that was honorable. A tiny concession to make up for a tiny deception. Now she knew what her options were and that she had an enemy-and that, too, was honorable. The Queen had forced him to swear that he would not tell Xylina the identity of her enemy, or else he would have done just that. But now that she knew that she had a powerful enemy, he could skirt around the outside of the oath to give her more information. If Xylina guessed her foe was Adria, then Ware had not violated his oath. He was fairly certain she was bright enough to do just that, if not now, then in a moon, when he brought her more such information.

In human parlance, "all the cards were upon the table." There were no deceptions, there was only his ability and hers. A challenge of sorts, though a bit one-sided. She could not win, not with the Queen against her.

She was, he thought, a most incredible creature. Every day seemed to add to her beauty-the more she grew in wisdom and maturity, the more she ripened, rather than souring. Her courage in defying him was quite amazing. No few Mazonites in Adria's service had quailed and cowered when confronted with a demon-but not Xylina! She stood up to him, her magnificent eyes flashing, and demanded that extra time of him, demanded honorable recompense, as was her right. She was a far cry from the child in the arena, a child whose bleak eyes had told him that she was ready for death. Xylina would not consider death to be an option now; she would fight to the last breath in her body before admitting defeat.

This was good; he did not want a poor, shattered creature who longed for death. He wanted a spirited woman quite prepared to meet him on his own grounds. She was, he thought with a touch of longing, a fair match for Thesius. Now if only...

He let himself into the villa with a touch upon the gate, but instead of entering the building, he followed one of the paths leading off deep into the wilderness garden, to one of the many half-hidden alcoves the garden boasted. He had not lied to her about this; one of the sources of his ordinary income came from his own training school, which supplied skilled gardener-slaves to most of Mazonia, and the ones who tended his own grounds were second to none.

Here, deep in the cool shadows beneath his trees, there was a quaint little half-cave beside a tiny, artificial waterfall. Although some suspected that his magic had a hand in creating this spot, it had been constructed entirely by his gardeners. The water fell down a graceful cascade of rocks into a pool containing three red-gold fish, who flashed among the smooth water-worn stones of their pool like shadowy living treasures hidden there by an eccentric miser. He flung himself down on the thick, deep emerald green moss carpeting the cave and the rocks surrounding the pool, staring at the waterfall without really seeing it, listening to its music without truly hearing it.

How beautiful she had been! And how graceful! With her golden hair flying like a battle-banner as she tossed her head and defied him, and her deep blue eyes flashing like precious sapphires, she had been incomparable. Indeed, she was everything he desired in a woman. Not like that black cow of a Queen, nor the dun cattle that were her subjects. No, it was no great sacrifice to give her the time she asked for; it would only increase his desire to wait a little longer.

In fact, the longer he waited, the more chance he had to work subtly upon the mind of the Queen, to try to make her see reason regarding this girl. Once he won her, he would have to keep the Queen from destroying her, and that could be difficult, given his oaths. And he could not chance the Queen discovering their relationship-for the foolish Mazonites considered demon-loving to be the height (or rather, depth) of perversion, and it would mean Xylina's exile. No, he must soften the Queen's resolve, make her realize that the girl truly had no ambitions for the throne, make her see that wasting her time in trying to destroy Xylina was only taking energy and resources that could be much more profitably spent elsewhere.

So this moon could be spent defusing the Queen's malice; that would be a good thing. On reflection, this extra time would be no hardship, and might turn out to have been a wise choice. The Queen was a woman of reason; she was a decent ruler of her people-perhaps not as good as some had been in the past, but by no means the worst. She exceeded her legal powers when she felt threatened, but then, what creature did not strike back in such circumstance? Ware and the others of his kind prospered under her tolerance, and she had not made undue demands upon them. There were some who said that the Queen had gotten above herself, that she acted as if she had forgotten her own humble origins, but there would always be those who would say that of someone who had succeeded where they had not.

No, he would just as soon not see the Queen replaced by a girl with no more idea of how to govern properly than a goat. At the least, it would mean a period of terrible chaos, and no one would prosper then. At the worst, the freedmen would take her accession to the throne as a time of weakness, and revolt. Hundreds, thousands would die, property would be destroyed, and even though Xylina and her Mazonite troops would win, the country would be years in recovering.

He should point out this option of his to the Queen. It would be a way to negate Xylina without killing or exiling her. He did not think that Adria had realized this. Of course, given the revulsion with which most Mazonites regarded a liaison with one of his kind, perhaps the option had never even occurred to her.

He rose from his impromptu couch with his plans firmly made. He would go to the Queen and begin his attempt to influence her. Xylina would, of course, attempt to raise the rest of the payment. At the end of the moon, they would see who had succeeded.

Perhaps, he thought with a smile, they both would. Then she would have another year, during which she would struggle to raise the money, and the Queen would attempt to ruin her. The game would be prolonged. That would make his quest to win her all the more of a challenge. He loved such a challenge; the longer Xylina managed to win, the more desirable she would prove herself to be. He almost hoped she would manage to prevail against the Queen and raise the money in a moon. Certainly she would not endure to the end of the full term; the Queen would see to that.

Xylina sat at her desk, and gazed at the total in her account books with a sinking heart. Despite help from Lycia's friends, many of whom sent their slaves to be trained by Faro withno prospect of ever needing slaves that were trained as bodyguards, the total was the same.

Forty-one coronets, seven circlets, and two silver sheaves. Not forty-five coronets. Not even close.

She had lost her bet. Her only choices now were bankruptcy and exile, bankruptcy and debtors prison, or-

Or the unthinkable.

She shuddered. That was no answer, for even if she swallowed her revulsion and gave in to that-creature-it would only delay the inevitable. As soon as anyone found out-if there were even mere rumors that she had taken a demon as a lover-she could face not only exile. It was possible that she would be stoned from the gates. Such things had happened in the past, although she could not recall anything of the sort in her lifetime. Still, if her enemy was that powerful, Xylina might find herself facing the full force of an antique law.

But the very notion of yielding-no. It was not possible.

She put her aching head down in her hands. Her throat was tight and her eyes burned, and yet she could not weep. She was acutely aware of everything around her: the distant voice of Faro as he shouted at his clumsy new pupils, the crack of wood on wood as he drilled them, the scent of fresh bread from the kitchen, the harsh texture of the wood under her elbows, the faint movement of air through the ventilation slits in her office.

So she knew the moment something changed; felt the presence of someone else beside her, before he even moved and closed the door.

She dropped her hands to her desk and glared, but she had known whom it was the moment he entered so silently, unheralded. Only one creature could simply appear in her office like that. Only one had any reason to.

The demon called Ware.

And it was, indeed, he.

Today he made no pretense at being anyone's slave. He wore garments of black silk, artfully draped, and richly embroidered black-on-black about the hem, clasped with a belt of chased silver in the shape of a serpent that held its tail in its mouth. Beautiful and deadly, and she wondered how it was that the Queen held such power over his kind that they obeyed her. She could not imagine anyone controlling him, even with his consent.

"Tomorrow," he said simply, once again leaning back against the door of her office with arms folded over his chest. He looked absurdly out of place, so elegant amid the crude furnishings. "And you do not have the payment."

He made it a statement, but she knew better than to try and bluff him. His sources of information had been completely accurate before, and she saw no reason why that should have changed. She simply nodded, and stared at him, mouth a thin line of tension, every muscle and nerve taut as harp-strings.

"The option is still open," he said, delicately. He did not have to say which option.

"I will pay you," she snapped, wondering if she could borrow a half-coronet from each of Lycia's circle of cronies-just enough to make this payment. They could spare that, and she could pay them back a half-coronet each week, agreeing in advance what the order would be of repayment. That might save her this time-

"There will be more payments," he said, as if he were reading her mind. "Three more, to be precise. If you borrow from others, you will only be increasing your debt, and decreasing the amount you can save toward the next payment. And you will not be able to make the next payment. This I know."

"I wouldn't be so certain of that!" she snapped. "Business is better than ever-"

"Only because it amuses your enemy to allow you to think that you succeed, just before she brings another blow down upon you," he interrupted severely, like a teacher chiding a student for not having an answer she should have known. "Have you not thought this through? Your enemy is still your enemy, and will continue to be so. You have prevented her from burning your dwelling down a second time; now she will go on to more subtle means of destroying you. You will find yourself levied with strange fines, odd taxes. At every turn you will face another regulation which you are violating, for which you will have to pay. For every coronet you bring in, you will lose half in fines alone. She will leave you enough to give you the illusion that you are prospering, but it will be as much of an illusion as conjured gold, and it will disappear as quickly when tested."

She stared at him, mouth agape. Such power-who in all of Mazonia had such power? To change the very laws themselves to work against one specific woman-

"That-that's ridiculous!" she stammered. "That's impossible! Why, to do all that, this enemy of mine would have to be the Quee-"

She paled as he nodded, smiling a little. This time he looked like the teacher whose student had finally given the correct answer.

"No-" she whispered, heart struck as still as a stone, stomach sinking, throat tight. If the Queen was against her, she was surely doomed! But why her? "No-that can't be. Not the Queen-"

"Adria was rivaled only by your mother in power," Ware told her, his strange eyes utterly still for once, and dark as a gathering storm. He recited this dispassionately, as if it were some kind of lesson from remote history. "She feared your mother, but seeming fate took Elibet out of her path for her. I promise you, if the earthquake had not killed your mother, Adria would have eventually found another way to rid herself of a dangerous rival. Adria permits no rivals, dangerous, or otherwise."

Xylina stared at him, wondering how he knew all this. The same sources of information that had so accurately reported her inability to pay her debt? Or something more than that? And his reference to her mother-

"How could the Queen summon an earthquake?" she asked disbelievingly. "No woman has magic like that!"

"No woman," he agreed.

Xylina was aghast. "The demons? They have magic like that?"

"Or the ability to make it seem so," he said. "A little selective physical violence and a lot of illusion. It was, as I understand it, a desperate measure. But the Queen truly feared Elibet. Now she fears you."

"She-she murdered my mother?" This was almost too much to believe, yet the horrible sense of it was appearing. To eliminate a rival without suspicion-Xylina herself had never questioned the reality of the earthquake. Now she realized that there had been odd aspects, things she had attributed to the vagaries of cruel nature. This explained those things. An imperfect illusion.

But he was continuing. "While you were a child, she ignored you, for you were of no consequence, and she does not waste thought or effort on inconsequentials. She permitted the story of a curse to spread throughout the city in order to keep anyone from aiding you, but she was content to leave it at that and take no active role."

So that was where the story of the curse came from! Maybe there really was a curse, but as Lycia said, no one with any sense believed in it-until the Queen began giving it credence, and then it became believable.

Ware paused for a moment, as if to gather his thoughts. He stared over her head, at a point on the wall, and continued. "As you grew older and did not succumb to poverty or illness, she worried a little. But then-then you came late to your woman-trial. Adria assumed it was because you had no strong talent for conjuration, and were afraid. She was pleased. When she heard how you had no real choice of opponents, she was elated. She came to witness the death of her rival Elibet's line for herself. This time she did not need to take direct action."

So that was why the Queen was at her woman-trial! She had wanted to see Xylina die!

Ware shook his head. "But then-oh then, Xylina, you proved that you were truly your mother's daughter. You proved that you had inherited your mother's power and more. You showed the entire city that you were powerful,and clever, and at that moment, the Queen knew you were very likely the one Mazonite who could take her throne away from her."

"But I never-" Xylina croaked, appalled. "But I haven't any such aspiration! I don't-"

"It does not matter," Ware said, pitilessly. Now he lowered his gaze to hers, as if he were endeavoring to make certain that she heard and believed him. "It does not matter what you want, what you intend. Adria is right. Your ability will ultimately lead you to challenge her. Even if you never develop the ambition on your own, there will be those who will persuade you that it must be done."

She must have made some signal that she found his notion unlikely, for he frowned. "Xylina, I have seen all this before," he said sternly. "What do you think your friend Lycia and her circle are doing, if not slowly encouraging you to think that Adria is not as good a ruler as she could be? Are they not reminding you of her abuses of power that have near-ruined you, and telling you of other such abuses?"

Shocked, she could only nod, for that was precisely what had been happening.

Ware smiled grimly. "You see. Soon it will go beyond simple complaining, and turn to suggestions of what might be done about Adria. And then all eyes will turn to you, for none of them have the power of conjuration in the strength that you have it. You would be the only logical choice for a challenger."

"But what if I left them-" she began. "If I stop going to their gatherings, and slowly sever the relationship-"

Ware laughed, softly. "If you leave them, after all they have done for you, you will feel you have been ungrateful, and will have to return," Ware replied, before she could finish the sentence. "You know that is true, as you know that they will come to you and make you feel ungrateful for spurning them. And indeed they will have reason, for they have treated you generously."

That was true. They had not only helped her in her time of despair, they had given her their time and friendship. She could not condemn them for that. Their course made sense: to promote a friend to be Queen, replacing the bad Queen. Yet this was folly for Xylina! There must be something she could do, she thought frantically, trying to come up with some plan. "Perhaps I can persuade them to another course-" she offered.

He shrugged. "I do not think you can. And if it is not Lycia and her friends, it will be someone else. Perhaps even your own good friend Faro. I am certain he harbors an ambition of his own, to be the silent advisor behind the throne. Who could blame him? It is the highest position to which any slave can aspire, better even than being freed! Do not doubt me,he will be primary among those who encourage you to challenge Adria-and the sooner he discovers that your enemy is the Queen, the sooner he will tell you to challenge her in order to defend yourself. His very hatred for Mazonites will make him urge you to it, even if he has no ambition for himself." He paused for breath, and regarded her with a solemn gaze. "You will find yourself wanting, eager, to challenge the Queen. Perhaps not this year, nor the next, but it will happen in due course."

Xylina could only shake her head a little. She felt as if someone had dropped a wall upon her, and she was too stunned even to breathe. This was all too much, too soon. She had expected an enemy, she had not expected this kind of an enemy. She felt like a mouse, looking up at a shadow, expecting to see a jay come to steal her corn, and seeing instead a hawk come to devour her.

"Adria sees all this, as she has seen the ambitions of others before you," Ware said gently. "She knows she must nullify you before you can come close to challenging her. That is how she remains Queen, and has done so for as long as she has. You are not the first child who has posed a challenge to her power, and you likely will not be the last. You are merely the most serious so far."

Xylina finally took a breath. She had assumed that her enemy was some woman in a high position; she had never once considered that it could have been the Queen! If it had been anyone else, she could have exercised her right as a citizen to petition the Queen for a hearing. She could have set her grievances before the Queen. She could have confronted her enemy and forced the issue, making it clear that she had no vendetta and wanted only to live in peace.

Wait. She could still do that. The fact that her enemy was the Queen in no way changed that.

"I must go to Queen Adria myself," she said, pushing her chair away from the desk. She shook her head, distractedly. "I must do it now-reassure her that I have no intentions or ambitions to-"

"Oh, Xylina!" To her surprise, he began laughing, softly. She settled back into her chair, staring at him. "Oh, poor, naive child! You truly have no idea how sure the Queen is that you are a threat! Adria is a realist, my dear. Yes, she will believe that you mean what you say now -I think you are innocent enough to convince even her of that. But she is well aware that you will not remain innocent forever."

"I don't understand," Xylina said, half pleading, half in protest. She had never imagined anything like this. She could not see herself becoming the woman that Ware described.

Yet if she thought Lycia and the others were in danger, and thought she had to protect myself-

Then they might persuade her.

Ware shrugged. "I have seen many of your years, and many young girls like you, Xylina. The Queen has also seen many of your kind come and go. In time, she knows that you will become hardened and ambitious. You will think about how she tried to destroy you, and how she did destroy your mother, and your anger will grow, your resentment burn in your heart, and your need for vengeance will fester. One day, you will look at her, and you will think, 'That old hag is no longer the woman she was. I can take her. I can make her feel all the misery she made me feel.' And you will do it, Xylina."

"No-" she mouthed, unable to picture herself as he painted her. Willing to act to protect herself and others, yes-but hard? Ambitious? Ruthless? Yet he was right about her mother; already the rage of that discovery was a spreading fire, tempering her will with its heat.

"Yes, Xylina. And Adria knows it." He stared at her as if to drive his words into her heart, past all doubting. "Adria was once as innocent and naive as you-now she is as she is. I saw it happen to her, saw her mature into the Adria who now rules Mazonia and shares her power with no one, disposing of all contenders." He seemed remotely saddened by it all. "The same will happen to you, for you are only human, and to be human is to change."

Xylina felt numb; she did not know what to say. Ware seemed to sense this; he finally sat down beside her on the document-chest, and sighed.

"Let me show you how deeply deception runs in her, how she can and will do anything to preserve her power.I am an agent in her little drama; I set the fire that burned your house, under her orders, which as you know I cannot disobey."

She had thought she was beyond shock, but she was not beyond surprise. No wonder they could not imagine how the fire began, she thought, staring at him. No wonder they thought it must have been by magic. It was -but not human magic.

Ware continued. "When you found friends, Lycia among them, who might have caused trouble in the Council on your behalf, I was told to deceive you into incurring a debt you could not repay. When you default, she will have the pretext she needs to exile you or confine you to prison. Your threat to her will have been eliminated. You will either be gone, or completely under her control."

He raised one eyebrow. "It was my suggestion that there was another way to eliminate you as a threat without exiling you. The laws against congress with such as I have been softened in the last several years. While taking a demon as a lover no longer is punished by exile, there still must be a price. And since your deities do not approve of such things, such intercourse does render one-hmm-sacramentally unclean. I entered that service clause into the contract, and told the Queen that I might persuade you to accept what I offered. I sought to save you from exile at least, Xylina, for you know that exile is simply a longer road to death."

Xylina finally saw the nature of the double trap she was in; she whispered, appalled, "But if I were to-what you wish-to pay the debt, then I would be unclean, and no Mazonite who is unclean can take the throne-"

Ware smiled, as if at a clever child. "Precisely. The Queen's onus against you would be forever abated."

"But my oath-" she protested. "I swore-"

"Oaths can be interpreted in many ways," he said smoothly. "I swore an oath not to tell you that the Queen was your enemy. In just those words. And I did not. I gave you the information you needed to infer Adria's name and rank;you came to the conclusion, I did not tell you. My oath was not violated, and yet I also treated you with honor."

She shook her head, and her hair fell across her eyes like a curtain to cover her shame and embarrassment. But she was learning the ways of the world only too quickly this afternoon, and she knew that there was no curtain thick enough to hide her from what already was. And yet-there was one thing that she did not understand, and that was Ware himself. He seemed to think kindly of her; he had concocted this scheme to save her from exile, which as he pointed out, would have meant death. Yet what he wished of her was impossible, and he must know that! She knew very little of demons; the few stories she had heard painted them to be lust-driven monsters.

"Why are you telling me all this?" she asked, finally. "If you know anything about me, you must know that I will die rather than yield to your lust!"

But rather than react with anger as a human would, Ware merely smiled. "I know you would do nearly anything rather than 'yield to my lust,' as you put it," he said, "and I do not intend to put you in a position where you would be forced to die to avoid something you consider utterly repugnant. I do not desire your body alone, Xylina."

As she stared at him without comprehension, he sighed.

"Must I put it into simpler terms then?" he asked, and grimaced. "Very well then, although my nature revolts at saying these things so baldly. These feelings of yours are a part of what makes you so desirable, to me, at least. I know that you will never grant your body to me unless your heart and spirit have already been given. Unless and until you come to love me, Xylina. It is that love, that so-human, so-precious gift, that I truly desire."

She felt her chin dropping, and quickly snapped her mouth shut. For a moment, she thought she had gone mad. Then she thought he surely must be joking-or trying to trick her.

But one look at his face, so human, and yet so unhuman, convinced her that he was utterly serious.

"You have only to say that you will take my option, and the debt will be canceled, Xylina," he persisted. "I will not put pressure upon you to actually fulfill your promise. I have patience-" He paused to smile and chuckle. "I have all the patience of my kind. I can wait as long as it will take. I can wait for fifty years, if need be."

That complete absurdity, in the midst of all the rest of this, made her laugh a little hysterically. "Fifty years!" she exclaimed. "I'll be an ugly old woman by then!"

He merely smiled, as if he knew some kind of secret that she did not. The smile quelled her hysteria as effectively as a dousing of cold water.

"Very well; you will not accept my offer. In that case, I am still patient, and I can wait until you come to wish it of your own will." He shrugged, and she stared at him. "Until you come to care for me," he said carefully, as if he wished to be sure that she understood him completely, "it is obviously in my interest to help you to survive-and to keep your citizenship and reputation intact. Why should I wish you to be judged unclean and suffer the scorn of your fellow citizens? No, Xylina, I shall even give you a gift of my advice, now, with no conditions attached, because I believe that I can bring you to desire me as ardently as I desire you."

She simply blinked, and licked lips gone dry and hot with tension and anxiety. Things were moving too quickly for her. She was no longer in control of her own destiny. She could only hope to ride out this storm and see the end of it.

"Since I have not pledged the Queen that I would not help you, I shall advise you how to extract yourself from this situation," he said. "The Queen will not know what I have told you, if you do not yourself tell her. This is what I advise, and remember that I have known Adria for as long as she has been Queen, and that I watched her come to power."

She nodded. What did she have to lose? At the worst, his advice would be so poor it would be obvious.

"You must go to the Queen," he said, once again surprising her. "But you must not tell her that you know the identity of your enemy. It would be well if you did not even mention that you are aware that you have an enemy." He paused to make certain that she had heard and understood him. "You must tell her your difficulties; how they began with the fire, and how you contracted a debt only to discover that it was not to the honorable Mazonite woman that you thought, but to a demon. Tell her that I proposed you give yourself to me to have the debt canceled, and explain how utterly revolted you are by the prospect. Tell her of your oath, if you wish. Then beg that she find you some honorable way out of this dilemma."

In light of everything he had told her, this seemed the rankest of folly! Why would he tell her not to go to the Queen, then tell her now that she should?

"But the Queen will not help me!" she exclaimed, protesting. "You told me this yourself! She wants me to fail!"

But he merely half-closed his eyes in that peculiar, cat-like way of his, and smiled. "She wants you to be disqualified for the office of Queen," he corrected her, gently. "She has no personal onus against you. I have reminded her of that, over the past moon. I have reminded her that if you were her daughter, she would have been proud of all you have accomplished thus far, and she has in fact agreed with that. If you come to her not with a grievance, but with a plea for help, she will find it difficult to deny."

Xylina paused and sat in thought for a long time. Put that way, she realized that he was right. The Queen had no reason to persecute her, only what she represented. Slowly, dubiously, she nodded her agreement. The matter of her mother still burned in her soul, but she knew she had no proof and no way to get redress. At the moment her only choice was to survive.

"Remember," he cautioned. "You must not make any charge that you cannot document. If she asks you if you think you have an enemy, you may say that you do, in order to avoid a lie-but do not say that you know it to be her. You must not let her think that you have found her out, or she will destroy you to save herself. You might not like the solution she finds for you, but it will not be exile, prison, or being-'forced'-to accede to my wishes."

"Very well," Xylina said, still feeling as if there was something about all this that she was missing. "When do you suggest that I approach her?"

"Now," Ware replied firmly. "Ask for immediate audience. Your debt comes due tomorrow, and if you wait, she will suspect something. Take Faro with you, if you feel you need him at your back, but you must go-and now."

And once again, with a sinking heart, she realized that he was right.

For once again, she had no choice.