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, itburned . 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. “Thereis no house. It’sgone . 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 thatno 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? Theremust 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 cursehad 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-inhigh 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 late
r. 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 mustnot 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 wewill. 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 weare 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 ofthem , 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 doneto 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 entrustthis 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, ithadbeen 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 ofanything 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 fightwith 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 h
ad 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 werenot 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.
If I Pay Thee Not in Gold Page 11
