If I Pay Thee Not in Gold

by Piers Anthony

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  No, she should be safe enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Without asking her permission to do so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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