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, thecrack 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 thepresence 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 toyou 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 devourher .
“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 saynow -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 shedid 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 mademe 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. Itwas -but not human magic.
If I Pay Thee Not in Gold Page 16
