Anthony, Piers If I Pay Thee Not In Gold

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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.
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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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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