Lackey,.Mercedes.-.If.I.Pay.Thee.Not.In.Gold.-.Anthony,.Piers

451 Pages·2016·1.15 MB·English

by  Lackey Mercedes

If I Pay Thee Not In Gold
by Mercedes Lackey and Piers Anthony
Chapter 1

Xylina ignored the hum of whispered conversation that followed her as she
wound her way through the crowded bodies in the bazaar. She kept her head
high, pretending there was nothing more on her mind than the perfectly ordinary
purchase of food. But her muscles were knotted with tension and she really
would rather have been back in her home.

This task was ordinary for her, anyway, though odd or eccentric for any other
woman. She sometimes wondered if she was the only Mazonite in the city who
did not have at least one male slave to tend to the domestic chores. The bazaar
thronged with male slaves, sent on the same errand she was performing herself.
They were draped in the loose, soft, pastel tunics of household servants. The few
freedmen who had permission to be in the marketplace at this hour were in
black, and barefoot so that in theory they could not run very fast if they
committed some crime.

The women in Xylina’s immediate vicinity were leather-clad fighters in suede
body-wrappings and trews, bearing combat-scars and the marks of armor and
weaponry. Others were the heads of households, in their severe linen or samite
tunics and breeches, the uniform of the workaday world for those who had
property. For those who did not, dress was whatever the woman could conjure;
in Xylina’s case, a simple drape of soft mage-cloth. She had intended dark blue,
but it had come out a soft sapphire. Whatever the color, it marked her as
poverty-stricken; no female of substance wore mage-cloth.

Then again, there was no disgrace in being poor. That was not what the others
were whispering about. She knew what they were saying, those scarred and
hardened warriors who murmured to each other like gossiping kitchen-slaves;
she’d heard it all before.
… coward…fool…

… soft… weakling…

… cursed…

“Mama!” cried out a child; by the shrill voice, a very young one, too young to
know better than to shout in public. “Mama! Look! She has hair like a man!”

Snickers and sly, sideways looks followed that innocent exclamation-and
muffled laughter from those male slaves in the bazaar who were not in the
company of their mistresses. Xylina continued to hold her chin up, despite the
flush she felt spreading from her ears to her cheeks until her whole face burned.
There was nothing else she could do; she did have hair like some pampered male
leisure-companion, long and luxuriant and well-cared-for, cascading from her
head to her waist in a curtain of gold silk. It represented a tiny defiance, another
mark of her difference from the rest of them. Most Mazonites cut their hair short,
or even shaved their heads. A banner such as hers was an invitation to an enemy,
a weapon he could use against the wearer. Only one or two Mazonites Xylina
had ever seen wore their hair longer than to the shoulders, and they had been
warriors of such surpassing excellence that they flaunted their skill in this
manner. Let he who dared, try to touch those tresses!

One of those had been her mother, Elibet… and that was why Xylina wore her
own hair this way.

She bent over a cart full of fresh vegetables, glad of a chance to hide her blushes.
She bent over a cart full of fresh vegetables, glad of a chance to hide her blushes.
Someone nearby spoke, with an audible sniff of contempt.

“Dresses like a pretty little dancing-boy, too. You’d think she’d have the
decency to bind those breasts.” It made no difference that binding her
embarrassingly full bosom made it hurt, and that nothing could be done about
her slender waist and round hips. She was at fault for the way she looked, as if
she had deliberately conjured up her appearance. Everything was held against
her. “Girl’s a disgrace” the harsh voice continued. “Gives the freedmen ideas.”

Xylina’s blush deepened, then faded. What was the point? It wasn’t as if this
were the first time.

“Well,” drawled another, a voice Xylina recognized as Panterra. She dared a
glance aside, and saw that Panterra wore the uniform of the Queen’s army, with
the insignia of an officer. She’d bullied the younger girls of the neighborhood for
years, and now was presumably bullying them in the Queen’s army. “At least we
won’t have to put up with her little airs and graces for much longer. She goes to
the arena tomorrow. Xantippe’s scheduled it.” There was a snicker. “Should be
quite a show.”

Xylina felt her blood turning to ice, and her muscles knotted even tighter. She
was perfectly well aware of both the date and hour of her woman-trial, for she
had scheduled it herself. But to hear about it on the street only reminded her,
harshly, of what it meant.

“It’s about damned time!” the first woman said acidly. “The little bitch’s been
flouncing around the city for three years now, putting it off, while decent girls
her age did their trials and began acting like responsible citizens!”
The two of them moved off deeper into the bazaar, and if Panterra made any
reply, it was lost in the general crowd noise. Xylina made her meager choices,
ignoring the avid-and perhaps, slyly gloating-interest of the slave minding the
cart. Her stomach knotted; her depression deepened. Especially after seeing how
little her coins would buy. A tiny summer squash, a handful of insect-scarred
damson plums; that was all she could afford.

She moved on, grateful that the only other purchase she needed to make was a
small goat-cheese and a loaf of bread. No point in lingering to look at anything;
she would spend her last coin on the bread. That, and the growing threat that she
would be exiled as a coward if she didn’t undergo the rite, had prompted her to
finally schedule her woman-trial.

She had sustained herself as long as she could, but the past year-in fact, the past
several years-had not been the life of ease Panterra’s friend seemed to think it
was. Oh, her ability to conjure was a lot more formidable than anyone guessed,
and she could produce evanescent luxuries enough to sate anyone, but they were
fleeting things, vanishing within a day, and conjured food nourished no one. It
was, however, one reason why she was so slim-eking out her limited resources
with conjurations.

She wondered why she had bothered. Mostly, it was habit, she supposed; the
habits of the day overpowering the wish to end it all when the sun went down
and the gloom of night added to her own gloom. Then, one dark gray morning
several months ago, she had awakened to the realization that she had just turned
sixteen, and very soon now the Queen’s officers would be enforcing the law
against avoiding the woman-trial. Her time was running out. Within weeks she
would have to fight for her life, or be exiled for cowardice.

There was nothing left to sell but the tiny house itself, her bed, and a few
household items. Not even clothing or utensils, tools or furniture; all that she
conjured when she woke, and in the evening it was all gone, and she had to
conjure it again. The possessions her mother had left her had long since been
conjure it again. The possessions her mother had left her had long since been
worn out, used up, or sold a little at a time.

The buzz of conversation around her increased, as she bought her cheese and
bread, and the covert stares became open. Although the afternoon was hot,
Xylina’s skin felt chilled by all the hostile glances. And she was no little
bewildered, holding back tears, which would have been unwomanly.

She didn’t know more than a tenth of these people, if that, she thought. She tried
to keep her eyes fixed in some vague middle-distance, with a lump in her throat,
and her heart sinking to the soles of her sandals. Why were they all staring at
her? Why did they all hate her? She hadn’t done anything to them-

But she knew the answer. If she hadn’t done anything, her mother surely had,
simply by being obstinate enough to bear her child in defiance of the curse.

Never mind that the curse-if indeed, there really was a curse-was more a matter
of myth and hearsay than recorded fact. Xylina’s mother had gone to the
Queen’s own library of chronicles, and had been unable to find anything but a
vague hint about it. Something about a barbarian shaman who immolated
himself in the midst of his articles of power, rather than endure capture by
Xylina’s great-great-grandmother, and had hurled his curse at her from the heart
of the fire. The chronicler of the time had not thought much of this “curse”
except as a kind of joke, proving the superstitious nature of the barbarian men.
Everyone knew curses had no strength against a Mazonite. Her very ability to
wield the magics of conjuration granted the Mazonite immunity from such petty
nonsense as “curses.”

Xylina’s mother, when she first realized she was with child, had scoffed at such
superstitious drivel as a curse, and had refused to give the thing any credence.
And while she lived, she had sheltered Xylina even from the knowledge that it
And while she lived, she had sheltered Xylina even from the knowledge that it
existed.

But when Xylina’s mother had been crushed by a fall of stone during an
earthquake-and when the family fortunes had taken an abrupt turn for the worse,
as the earthquake turned what had been productive farmland into an arid desert
by turning the course of a river and stopping up a spring-and when a plague had
killed most of the slaves in the month following-that was when the whispers of
“curse” had surfaced again, and not even Marcus, her faithful steward and
protector, could keep her from hearing them.

“…curse…”

The word rang out amid the babble, as Xylina turned towards home again; as did
the reply, spoken loudly enough that she could not avoid hearing it.

“We’d better hope the curse takes only her!” said an age-harshened voice. “Or
hadn’t you heard the whole of it?”

“Only the part about ‘child of the fifth generation, ill-luck touches all who touch
her,’” replied the original speaker.

“Not just those who touch her-” the second said, grimly.

Xylina forgot about politeness, and simply shoved her way through the crowd to
escape the hateful words. But she could not erase them from her memory, where
they repeated in a pitiless refrain. She remembered the first time she had seen the
words-on a sheet of paper pinned to her door one morning, paper that proved its
words-on a sheet of paper pinned to her door one morning, paper that proved its
conjured origin by dissolving into mist by noon.

I send you doom in your own seed, twisted monster of depravity. I send you a
child of the fifth generation. Ill-luck touches all who touch her; those who dare
to love her see their doom in her eyes. Child of the tempest, child of the
whirlwind, destined for the teeth of the dragon; fate casts his dice at her feet. As
death follows the child, upheaval follows in the woman’s wake, and nothing is
the same where she has passed.

She blinked stinging eyes, determined not to show the tiniest bit of emotion. If
ever there was a reason to think she was the cause of every bit of the troubles
that had dogged her heels all her life, there was the confirmation of it. Her
mother had ignored the warning.

And she died, said the insidious little voice in her mind. So did Marcus. So will
anyone else who cares about you. You’re better off dead, you know.

She reached the sanctuary of her home-a stone building of two rooms in the
poorest quarter of town, with a tiny paved court in the rear and a high wall
around the whole. That wall, and the pump and trough in the courtyard, showed
what it had originally been: the stable attached to her mother’s larger townhouse,
where they had kept her mother’s horse and her own pony. Originally, the
“rooms” had been two large box-stalls. Her mother’s horse had been a nasty
gelding, inclined to bite; hence the partitioning of the stable into two rooms with
a wall between them. Later the doorway had been cut in the wall, when she and
Marcus had moved into the building.

Now the townhouse lay on the other side of two walls: the original wall that had
hidden the sight and smell of horses from those in the garden, and a wall that had
been put in place three years ago, when the freedmen had been given permission
to expand their quarter.
to expand their quarter.

Xylina’s mother had been dead for several years at that point, and there had been
no one left but herself, Marcus, and two other slaves she’d had to sell. She had
wanted to free them-but she had no choice. The value of property in this part of
town plummeted as soon as house-owners learned what direction the expansion
would take. Xylina had been planning to sell her mother’s house anyway, but
suddenly she found she would be getting much less for it than she had hoped.
What had been a valuable townhouse had dropped to a tenth of its original price.

She had sold it, nevertheless. She and Marcus had needed the money from the
sale of it and the other two house-slaves because Marcus had been terribly ill,
the wasting disease that would take his life when she was thirteen. A consortium
of freedmen had bought the house, and once they had bought all of the property
they could afford, the Queen ordered the new wall erected to seal off their
quarter from the rest of the town. The new wall, to confine the freedmen within
their own place after curfew, then rose a full arm’s-length above the rear section
of the old, head-high wall that had surrounded the little stable-yard.

She and Marcus had taken what was left of their belongings to the stable. Then
she had encountered unexpected kindness from a source she would have never
believed. The wall was built by the freedmen themselves-and some of them, it
seemed, knew Marcus. On the very day they were to move out of the townhouse,
a round dozen of them had appeared from the quarter, scrubbed the stable down
to the stone inside and out, contrived a little outdoor kitchen in the courtyard,
and cut the doorway between the two rooms. All that was left was for the two of
them to move in. The freedmen had worked in haste and silence, as if afraid they
might be caught in their charity, and would not stay for thanks. Xylina had been
too young to feel anything but gratitude.

For that reason, when from time to time the sound of coarse revelry drifted over
the wall, Xylina chose to ignore it. This afternoon was one of those times.
Hoarse male voices shouted at one another, slurred with drink. Utensils clattered,
Hoarse male voices shouted at one another, slurred with drink. Utensils clattered,
and the savory smell of rich foods wafted in on the breeze.

She winced at the clamor, but there was no point in getting upset about it. There
was nothing she could do. Had she been wealthy and powerful she could have
sent her own slaves into the quarter to enforce the rules of silence, or demand
that the Queen do so. She was neither wealthy, nor powerful; she had more
rights than a slave, but no way to enforce them.

And besides, some of those men might be the ones who had helped her.

Instead of wasting her energy in anger, she used it in conjuration. If this was to
be her last night-if she died in her trial-by-combat-she was determined to enjoy it
to the best of her ability.

Half the bread and cheese went into the tight wooden box that served as a pantry,
to be saved for breakfast. The rest, with what was left of her barley and the
squash she had bought, would be her supper.

But not alone…

She gathered her concentration and her power, and began to conjure. Magic
flowed from her hands, visible and glowing in the dusk like a misty rainbow. It
swirled and danced, sparkled with a joy she could not feel, until it finally
solidified into whatever her will directed. As one object materialized, she moved
it aside, and went on to the next. While she was conjuring, she would not, could
not, think or feel. She could not feel and concentrate at the same time.