If I Pay Thee Not in Gold

by Piers Anthony

  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 donearly 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 thatlove , 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 agift 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 youhave 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 hernot 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 wereher 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.

  Chapter 9

  Xylina had not really expected to get an immediate audience, despite Ware’s insistence that she go to the Queen right away. She presented herself to the majordomo and sat on one of the hardwood benches in the dark, polished-granite anteroom. She heard her name called, ahead of others who had been waiting there longer.

  She was certain there was some mistake, or that she was going to be told to return in the morning. The majordomo was a high-ranking slave who had the duty of relaying the Queen’s orders when it came to whom she would see and whom she would not. When new petitioners arrived, the majordomo would send a slave in with the new name to the Queen, and she would decide whether she wished to see a particular person that day. Xylina expected to be told to return later. That would be fine, since she would at least have the evidence that she had presented herself today to show that she felt her cause was urgent.

  But the majordomo beckoned, then ushered her into the audience chamber without a single word. Light spilled out as he quietly opened one of the bronze doors just enough to let her inside, then closed it behind her.

  The silence within the audience chamber was intimidating. Xylina looked around, and suddenly felt very small. She took a firm grip on herself and took a second look. The chamber had obviously been designed to achieve just that effect of intimidating the petitioner and making her feel insignificant. The great double door behind her was far larger than it needed to be. The white marble from which the chamber had been crafted made it difficult to judge exactly how large it was, as the walls and ceiling receded into a haze of light. Everything in the room seemed to be just the slightest bit oversized. The empty benches beside her, for instance, which would hold waiting groups while their spokeswoman approached the Queen, were all just a little too tall and too wide to fit the average Mazonite comfortably. The bronze oil-lamps riveted to the white marble wall were of the same shape and style that she had seen in many other homes, yet they, too, were larger than normal. She had the feeling that the walls were not exactly parallel, that they were slightly skewed. The chamber focused on the raised platform at the end, and the scarlet-draped throne placed in the middle of it, the only spot of real color in the whole room. There was a single armed Guard behind her, and the Guard’s eyes were focused on some point high above Xylina’s head. If not for the gentle movement of the Guard’s chest and the occasional blinking of her eyes, she could have been a statue. Beside the throne was a small bronze gong.

  As if to contrast with the white of the room and the scarlet of her throne, Adria wore starkly cut black silk, ornamented with gold embroidery at the shoulders and hems of her tunic and breeches, clasped with a belt made of gold and onyx plates. A simple, brushed-gold coronet adorned Adria’s short gray-threaded black hair, and she sat relaxed and erect in her throne with an air of complete self-confidence.

  She showed no sign that she recognized Xylina. As the girl approached, walking softly so that the sound of her footsteps would not echo in the enormous room, there was not even a flicker of recognition in the Queen’s eyes.

  But she reminded herself that Adria must have years of practice in maintaining control over her expression. The Queen was a consummate politician, of course, and it would be important that her enemies never be able to judge what she was thinking from her face. It would be just as important that Adria’s own people never know what she was thinking.

  She must remember this, Xylina told herself firmly. She must be as controlled as the Queen was. Adria must not know what Xylina was thinking, either. If the Queen knew, she could manipulate her; if she didn’t, Xylina might control what the Queen thought of her, at least to some extent.

  But how to accomplish this, when Xylina had no time to prepare herself, and was only a little less naive than she had been before today? She was not used to hiding her feelings-she was more accustomed to blurting out the truth than concealing it. And she still felt bewilderment and anger at Adria-both of which had to remain hidden.

  Then she realized that she need not hide anything-she need only choose what to display. She could use one set of emotions to cover another. She would remember how she felt a moon ago, when Ware revealed his secret to her. That was hardly difficult; it was in fact far easier to call up that rage and fear-which was still with her-than it was to maintain the complex welter of emotions with which today’s conversation had left her. The anger at Ware was closest to the surface and easiest to call upon. Despite what he had said to her, the way he had tried to help her, she was still full of that rage. After all, what he had said about her mother’s death might not be true; it might be a ploy to set her against the Queen. And fear-that was easy to invoke as well. Who wouldn’t be afraid, faced with exile?

  She made up her mind all in an instant. This must be simple; she was calling upon the Queen for justice. The demon tricked her because he lusted after her. She did not know that Ware served the Queen; she did not know that the Queen had been trying to destroy her.

  She approached the throne with her heart pounding loudly in her ears, her stomach quaking, but her head held high. She tried to keep those two things firmly in mind- her anger at Ware and his deception, and her fear of what might come. Adria’s expression of bored tolerance did not change in the least. Xylina realized that she would not know if her plan was succeeding until Adria reacted-possibly when it was too late.

  The majordomo had not told her what to do or given her any kind of instructions on protocol. But Xylina had always been taught that a Mazonite bowed to no one, not even the Queen. So she stopped two steps from the foot of the dais, and inclined her head, slightly. Then she stood stiffly erect, waiting.

  This brought an ironic smile to Adria’s lips. The expression did not move beyond her lips, nor did it warm her face to something less mask-like and more human. “So stiff,” she murmured. “So proud. Well, Xylina Elibetas, what brings you before us that is so urgent it impressed even our majordomo?” She used the royal plural, but Xylina had expected that. What she had not expected was the quality of Adria’s voice. Warm, dryly persuasive-Xylina found herself wanting to believe everything that voice told her. And she found herself wondering if Ware had lied to her.

  Never mind. What she was about to do did not depend on the Queen’s innocence or guilt, it depended on telling the truth. Not what she thought or guessed, not what Ware had said, but just the simple facts. In fact, if Adria was innocent of what Ware had accused her of, it would be all the better. The Queen would surely be inclined to give her aid, then.

  “The need for justice is what brings me, Queen Adria,” Xylina replied, letting her outrage creep into her voice. “Justice that only you can dispense. I have been driven to the danger of exile-or of worse-through no fault of my own, and I ask your aid.”

  Briefly, she explained her “misfortunes,” making no accusations, acting (as best she could) as if she truly believed that everything that had happened to her had been just a long series of mischances. She reported everything, from the first vandalism through the series of attacks by ruffians. She concluded with the fire. Throughout her recitation, the Queen’s expression had not changed.

  Except-except that each time she detailed how an attack or “accident” had driven her further into debt, the Queen’s eyes gleamed for a moment. Had she not seen it happen repeatedly, she might have dismissed it as a figment of her imagination.

  “One might almost think you had some unseen enemy, Xylina,” the Queen said casually. “Or perhaps that tale you told us of the curse is a true one.”

  Xylina hung her head for a moment to hide her shock, for she had not spoken of the curse, nor had she implied that she had thought of an enemy. Was the Queen baiting her?

  “I can’t imagine who would be my enemy, Queen Adria, unless it could be a device of the demon to put me into his debt,” she said quietly. “And I was al
ways told that no Mazonite could be touched by the curse of a mere male.”

  “Very proper,” the Queen murmured.

  Xylina looked up as soon as she thought she had her expression under control again. Her indignation grew, as she began to detect another subtle change in the Queen’s expression-a growing smugness.

  Adria thought Xylina a fool.

  Then came the second realization. The Queen really had done all this. She really was her enemy.

  The realization that Ware had been right, and that she must continue to play the fool, galled her. Yet there was no choice for her, when all was said and done. She must let Adria think that her head was as empty as a jug with a hole in the bottom, if she wanted to survive.

  She recited the aftermath of the fire-the knowledge that she must now pay the whole of the sum she owed, and still have nowhere to live. Then she told of the shock when the tax-collector arrived. She did not accuse anyone, she only told of her bewilderment.

  And the Queen’s eyes lit with unmistakable enjoyment.

  “We know it must seem unfair to you, but that law was instituted because there were Mazonites who could not pay their year-taxes, and chose to burn their own property so that they need not do so,” the Queen said coolly. “You know that we cannot make an exception for anyone, lest those same women come flocking to us, looking for an exception for themselves.”

  “Of course, Queen Adria,” Xylina said meekly. Xylina had never heard any such thing, and neither had Lycia or any of her friends. That was utter nonsense; no one with any intelligence would ever believe it.

  Finally she detailed the loan, how the manservant had come to her with the offer. She told the Queen that she had believed that Hypolyta had been nothing more than a generous and kind-hearted businesswoman, only to learn she had become indebted to a demon. “And he did not reveal himself to me until after the debt came due,” she said, and she did not have to feign anger. Her voice shook when she related Ware’s suggested “bargain,” and when she told the Queen of her answer, she knew that she was hot with rage and shame.