If I Pay Thee Not in Gold Read online

  In this subdued state, she ate her dinner-carefully, to make each bite last-and gathered her courage for the difficult task that lay ahead of her.

  For when the sun set, she had an appointment with Xantippe, the slave-keeper of the arena, to select her opponent for the fight tomorrow.

  “I suppose you know you left it too long,” Xantippe said rudely, as she let Xylina in through a set of double-locked doors set in the yellow stone wall of the arena itself. Xylina had swathed herself in a wrapping of dark cloth, and the dusk itself had hid her from curious eyes as she slipped from shadow to shadow. She had not wanted anyone to see her. The encounter in the bazaar had been bad enough.

  Xantippe brought her down a set of torch-lit stairs, across several corridors, and finally into the slave-quarters. The arena-slaves were kept confined beneath the arena itself, in cells holding one man each. The grizzled, battle-hardened veteran of hundreds of arena-fights glanced at Xylina, who carefully controlled her expression, even though her palms were damp with nervous sweat and her stomach knotted around her illusory meal. She swallowed, hoping she wouldn’t vomit with fear. “If you’d come here earlier in the year, like the other girls did, you’d have had a better choice in opponents.”

  Easier, Xantippe meant. While the men confined here for the womens’-trials were never inferior or diseased specimens, there was a certain amount of choice insofar as size or agility went-or rather, there was at New Year’s and at Midsummer, the days when Xantippe combed the slave-markets for new stock. Now-the men left were the ones even the bravest girls feared to face, and for good reason.

  Most were battle-captives, which meant that they already knew how to fight. And even though they would be facing their opponents bare-handed, that gave them a distinct advantage. They had learned how to kill; had experience in killing. For all their training, the Mazonite girls making their trials-by-combat had never had that experience.

  The rest were simply formidable. Damnably formidable.

  Forbidden by their keeper to speak, they sat or stood in their cells, staring back at Xylina as she paced the cold, torch-lit stone hall, examining them.

  There were around a dozen of them. Fully half of them leaned against the back walls of their cells, staring sullenly at her, despising or hating her, but unwilling to chance punishment for displaying that hatred aggressively. Most of the rest sat on their bunks and stared somewhere over her head, faces blank, eyes unfocused. One or two looked away, carefully, as Xantippe glared at them.

  One, however, did not stand at the back of his cell. Instead, he posed defiantly right behind the bars confining him, massive, muscular legs braced apart, fists on his hips, chin up, glaring directly at both of them. Xylina in particular.

  She glanced at him, feeling a kind of electric spark leap between them-not of attraction, but of recognition. Here, perhaps, was someone who loathed her as much as she loathed herself.

  Hatred struck her like a palpable force, and she stopped, forced almost against her will to return his stare.

  He was huge, perhaps the largest man she had ever seen. The top of his shaggy, ill-kempt head loomed high above hers. His shoulders were broader than a prize bull’s, his chest as deep and as heavily-muscled. Eyes the color of storm-clouds glowered at her from beneath coarse black hair and heavy black brows. Sweat gleamed from the curves of sharply defined muscles in his shoulders, chest, and arms. His blocky face could have been carved from granite, and the scowl-lines seemed permanently graven there. No racing-stallion possessed more powerful legs. His hands, by contrast, were not the hard, heavily calloused implements of labor she had expected, but were manicured, clean, and scrupulously cared for.

  Xylina stared back at him, wondering what he saw. Certainly she didn’t look like much of an opponent. Small, slim, with full breasts and long, slender legs-wheat-gold hair down to her waist-surely there was nothing in her to inspire such a look of virulent, poisonous malevolence.

  And yet she could have been as hardened a warrior as Xantippe, for there was no softening in his expression. If anything, his expression grew crueler as a shadow of a smile crossed his lips.

  It was not a pleasant smile-it had no sense of good humor about it. But it did promise horrors if he ever got his hands on her. She could well imagine what he had in mind. Rape would be the easiest, simplest thing that he would do to her. She returned his vicious, rage-filled gaze, transfixed, hypnotized by what she saw there.

  He wanted to get his hands on her. He lusted not merely for her body, but for the vengeance he would have once he got her. And no one would stop him, if it happened in the arena. In fact, he would be freed and set loose on the border of Mazonia. This was the only time a man had a free hand to strike back without penalty at the women who enslaved him. In this case, at the person of a single girl, not yet officially a woman.

  For a girl of the Mazonites had to meet a man in single combat, no holds barred, in the arena. And she had to do so after she began her courses, but before her seventeenth birthday-or face exile. He was trained to fight from the moment he was selected for the arena. She must prove that not only could she conjure, she could do so under pressure. Xylina would be allowed to use her formidable ability at conjuration as her chief weapon. She would be permitted to conjure anything she pleased to use as armor or as weaponry. But she had to do whatever she intended before her opponent reached her, and she must use whatever she conjured effectively. If she was to survive.

  Her reward would be possession of the man she had conquered, if she didn’t kill him, and full citizenship.

  It was no secret that many girls were killed in these rites of passage. That was as the Mazonites preferred; there was no place in Mazonia for weaklings. Every woman must be prepared to protect herself, for there would be no one who would protect her, ever, unless and until she grew wealthy enough to buy bodyguards. A weak woman was a liability- even a danger-to the nation.

  The fewer women there were who made the passage from girlhood to womanhood, the fewer there were to share the power and the privilege of citizenship. And the fewer to challenge the Queen to trial-by-conjuration for the right to lead.

  Xylina tore her eyes away from the slave’s by force of will. Xantippe was watching her with a sardonic smile on her face. Xylina tried not to show how shaken she was, but her stomach fluttered and her knees trembled.

  “Like that brute, do you?” the slave-keeper said, with heavy irony. “Sound of wind and limb, I can tell you that much for sure. Would you believe his mistress had him trained as ascribe ?”

  Xylina blinked in surprise, thrown off-guard by the revelation, but said nothing. Xantippe took that as an invitation to continue.

  She tapped the bars of the man’s cell with the end of her whip; the man inside didn’t flinch, or even appear to notice. “Little Faro here used to belong to Euterpe until a few months ago. She had him educated; he was supposed to be her scribe and private secretary.” Xantippe grinned maliciously. “She sent him off to the training center. Then he had the poor taste to start growing, and pretty soon he was getting a little too big for his desk. The scribe-teacher got the wind up and sent for her. Euterpe got one look at him, and just about dropped a litter of cats. She called the auctioneers, and they agreed to take him.”

  She laughed. “Then he got wind of the news that she was going to sell him off, as a common laborer.”

  She tapped the bars again, sharply this time, to get Faro’s attention. He transferred his glare briefly to her.

  “Poor Faro. Didn’t like the notion of getting those pretty hands all calloused up in the fields, did you? Didn’t care for the idea that you weren’t going to that soft life after all?”

  His lips writhed in a silent snarl, but he said nothing. Xantippe crowed with laughter.

  “That was when he went crazy-broke up some furniture and a few heads. Euterpe couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I pity the wench who has to facehim . A rabbit would have about as much chan
ce against a wolverine, even an experienced arena-fighter.”

  Xylina felt a moment of pity for the man-small wonder he hated the Mazonites! As a scribe, he would have known that eventually he would probably win his freedom. It was the custom among the Mazonites to free one slave every seven years, and the ones freed were usually those of the artisan ranks. Faro would have been able to sell his services to those who could not afford their own scribe-slaves, to his fellow freed men, and to the demons who traded with the Mazonites and the freedmen impartially, and who conducted most of the trade that passed the borders of Mazonia.

  And there was no reason-other than Euterpe’s fear-to demote him from such a position purely on the basis of his size. In fact, before Marcus’ illness left him wasted and racked with coughing and pain, he had been as heavily muscled as any arena slave, and he had served Xylina’s mother well as scribe and steward. This Faro had been deprived at a single woman’s whim of a life of interest and relative ease, and assigned to a much shorter life of back-breaking labor with no prospect for eventual freedom, and all for no fault of his own.

  Poor man-she thought, fleetingly. She would hate Mazonites too.

  “Well, girl, time is wasting,” Xantippe said, interrupting her thoughts. “Which one of these beauties are you going to pick?”

  Her sardonic smile said it all-she didn’t expect to Xylina to survive against any of these slaves. In fact, she expected Xylina to beg for an extension until after Midsummer, when there might be better choices.

  Or she expected Xylina to prove herself to be the coward that everyone thought her, and choose exile over the trial. Xantippe had been no friend of Xylina’s mother; she would be equally happy to see the daughter go down to either disgrace or death.

  If the choice was no choice-

  Then Xylina would make it in style, and confound everyone who had branded her a coward. Live or die, it didn’t matter. She would show that she was her mother’s true daughter, and as brave as any Mazonite alive.

  “Him,” she said, pointing, and doing her best to keep her hand from trembling. “The one you call ‘Faro.’”

  And with that, lest she lose control over herself, she turned and left.

  She walked back to her tiny home in something of a daze, but as soon as she crossed the threshold, she collapsed across her bed, trembling. Why had she done that? she wondered. Why? The lamps burned out in the outer room, leaving her in darkness. The revelry on the other side of the wall had finally given way to exhaustion-either that, or someone with more power than she had sent someone to deal with it. That left her alone in the darkness, with her thoughts, which were as dark and heavy as the night air. As alone and forsaken as if she were the only inhabitant in the city. But then, she had been alone and forsaken for three years. Now there was no one who cared if she lived, and several who would be just as pleased to see that she died.

  First her mother-Xylina hadn’t been more than six when her mother died, but she remembered Elibet distinctly. A woman who laughed a great deal, with lovely flaxen hair, and whose ability at conjuring was second to no one’s but the Queen s. But more than that, a loving presence when darkness brought nightmares, a steadying hand at the right moment. Readier with a smile than a frown, and with a kiss of reward than with a whipping. A golden light that colored every day, and drove away the shadows at night.

  Then, all in one horrid day, when the earth itself trembled and shook, all that brightness was gone, forever. Then Marcus-

  He had promised he’d help her train, when her powers came, she remembered bleakly. He had promised he’d make sure she was the best in the arena-that her trial would be the talk of Mazonia. But he left her too. Everyone left her. She killed everything she cared for. Perhaps that was the reason why she had chosen Faro- because she was better off dead.

  What did she have to look forward to, anyway? The last of her money was gone. She’d spent it today, in the bazaar. She might persuade some woman to hire her as a companion and teacher forher daughters, but that would be a meager living at best. Other than that, she had no abilities that a well-trained slave could not duplicate.

  So why bother to go on? Wouldn’t it be better to die? At least-

  At least if she were dead, she wouldn’t be lonely any more.

  She’d thought about killing herself any number of times before this, and for the most part, it had been only accident that had stopped her. There were no bodies of water in the city that were large enough to drown herself in that were not terribly public-which meant she would likely be stopped. There was nothing tall enough to leap from except the towers of the Queen’s hall. The idea of hanging herself gave her the horrors; it must be a quick death, and not a slow one.

  Not like Marcus, strangling slowly, fighting for each breath…

  She had no money to purchase poison, and didn’t think she knew enough about poison to try conjuring it. She could have conjured a knife-and had, a dozen times-but someone always came along before she could use it. In fact, it was as if the same curse that took everyone she loved had conspired to keep her alive against her will.

  That, and pride. She couldn’t bear to be thought a coward, to disgrace her mother’s name. That would be-a betrayal.

  But Faro was not likely to be “kind” enough to kill her immediately. She shivered, thinking of his eyes, and all the pent-up venom in his gaze. No, if she simply went through the motions, he would probably do terrible things to her before he killed her….

  She had to do more than pretend to fight him, she decided bleakly. She had to humiliate him; make him so angry he forgot what he wanted to do to her, until all he wanted was to kill her. She had to shatter whatever self-control he had until he wasn’t thinking anymore.

  That wasn’t going to be easy; if Euterpe had planned on having him become her scribe, he had to be very intelligent. She would have to keep that in mind.

  Odd: for a moment there, in the cells, she had felt something more than his hate. For a moment, she had thought she felt a kind of shock of recognition.

  Maybe she did feel something. In a strange way, it was almost as if they were each others fate, as if something worked to push them at each other. Each of them betrayed, in away… both of them alone. What did he fear? she wondered. She didn’t think it was death.

  She fell asleep in the midst of those strange speculations, exhausted by the emotional turmoil of the day, and she did not wake until the Queen’s guard came to take her to the arena.

  Chapter 2

  Faro had not really believed that the slim young girl would choose him as her opponent. When Xantippe paraded the latest contender in front of the cells he had hoped it would happen, of course, but he had not believed. She would have been the ideal opponent: a lamb to his lion. The slender girl with the banner of golden hair was too fragile to even think of coming up against him.

  But he could show his hatred and contempt of her, of all her kind, and he had done that much. Xantippe had not punished him for his small defiance, which meant mostly that she didn’t care for the girl either. Otherwise she’d have used that whip of hers, for his insolence.

  No, he had been certain she wouldn’t bethat foolish. Rape and death was certain for a pampered, frail thing like her. So he simply poured all the bitter rage within his heart into his glare. Yet even as he did so, there had been something that mitigated his emotion. Of course he hated her, as he hated them all, but-

  Then the girl had picked him.

  To say he was stunned would have been an understatement. He stared after her, wondering what the fickle fates had in store for him this time. Freedom-it wasalmost his! A moment or two in the arena, and he would be free forever! Elation warred with the ever-present rage, and for a moment, won.

  But soon it evaporated. As Xantippe went off to lock up behind the girl, he frowned, suddenly wondering just what trickery was behind all this. It couldn’t be this easy. The bitches were going to raise his hopes and destroy them again for their amusement. The girl couldn�
�t be as helpless as she looked. Her winsome beauty had to be a trap. For all he knew, she could conjure better than the Queen-or else she was some kind of specially trained fighter. He had heard of those from the other arena-slaves: women (or men, in the outer lands) who looked ordinary, even weak, but could kill with a single hand. Hustlers, sent in to enhance the entertainment of the regal class by humiliating foolishly confident men. Such examples also served to warn all men of their place, in case any should be tempted to rebel. Maybe she would take a false fall, pretend to be terrified, weakened, helpless. Then, just as he thought to reap his reward with her luscious little body, zap! and he would find himself a eunuch, as the crowd laughed. Then a slow death as she did all the things to him he had hoped to do to her.

  But he knew the answer to that ruse. Steel himself against her insidious, childlike attraction, attack with caution, and pursue without mercy. Make sure she was blind and paralyzed before going between her legs, and never try to kiss her at all. Then break her neck.

  Yet when Xantippe returned, she was frowning, and there was nothing in the way she behaved to indicate that land of trickery.

  She looked at him and shook her head, as if she believed it no more than he.

  “Crazy,” the slave-keeper said, finally. “Crazier than her mother. Or else that curse has addled her brain.”

  The statement distracted him a little.Curse? What would a curse have to do with the girl’s woman-trial?

  Xantippe regarded him with brooding eyes, not speaking for a long time. He stared right back at her, doing his best to betray nothing of his own thoughts or confusion.

  “You, boy,” she said, finally. “Barring intervention by a god, you’re going to have your freedom out of this. You have to know that.”

  He nodded, once, slightly. Barely acknowledging that he had heard her, and that-if he assumed she was telling the truth-she had confirmed his first reaction.