If I Pay Thee Not In Gold

• Chapter 5

Walking quickly, they reached their home without further incident-which was just as well, since Xylina did not think she had the energy to defend herself twice in one night. Her magic was strong; stronger than she had ever guessed, but her resources were not infinite. It took strength of character and purpose and all her concentration to banish her conjurations, and she was so grateful to see her bed that she could have kissed the pillow. Right now, she did not want to think about the attack, what it meant, what it would mean for the future. All she wanted to do right now was to sleep.

But first-she had been rolling around on the street and sweating like a horse; she needed a wash of some kind. The water in the reservoir above the bathing room would still be warm from the sun, and there would be water enough for both of them if she was careful. Faro had been sleeping in the chamber just outside hers, but as she made a sketchy sort of bath to rid herself of the dirt and sweat of their fight, she heard him dragging his thick pallet out of his own chamber and into hers.

For a moment she was surprised, then as she bent to brush the street-dust out of her long hair, she chided herself. His action seemed more than sensible on second thought, and she was surprised she hadn't thought of it for herself. When she appeared at the door of her chamber, he was just arranging his pallet where anyone trying to get in would have to fall over him to get to her. Now she was rather grateful that her bed-chamber had no windows, only ventilation slits less than a thumb-breadth with metal mesh over them to keep out vermin. The only real way to get into the bedroom was via the door.

He glanced up, and she thought perhaps he looked a little guilty. Or possibly embarrassed, worried that he might have something other than protection on his mind. She wasn't concerned; he could do nothing to her that she did not want, and she truly did not think that he considered her in a sexual context-any more than Marcus had. "Little mistress," he began, "I thought-"

"We've both been rather stupid," she said, interrupting him and twisting her long hair into a braid. "When these attacks began, I should have asked you to sleep in my chamber-and even after that woman set her slaves on us, I still didn't think of it. I'm just glad that you did. There's water enough for a warm bath for you, too."

He gave her a wry smile. "I fear I need one, little mistress." He bent back to his task of arranging both pallet and an improvised club beside it. She thought she had seen a flash of relief at her quick understanding before his expression resumed its usual stoicism. She watched him for a moment, trying to think of something else she could do for their defense. Her strength really lay in her ability to conjure and her quick thinking. If she were startled out of sleep, it would take a few moments for her to gather her wits. He would bear the brunt of their defense for those moments.

But the sight of the club reminded her of something; it was illegal for a man to be armed within the city streets, but not inside a Mazonite's home and on her property. In fact, many wealthy Mazonites kept small armies to protect their property and govern the rest of their slaves. There was no reason why she could not arm him now. She turned and went back to the kitchen, and found the heavy butcher knife she used to cut up meat and tough fowl, locating it on the kitchen-counter by feeling carefully along the wall until her hand encountered metal. She no longer felt as if she had the energy to conjure a light. She found the wooden handle and brought the knife back with her, and handed it to him hilt first as she edged past his pallet to get to her own bed.

"Here," she said as he took it, "and remind me to get you a better knife tomorrow. That one doesn't keep an edge worth a conjured coin, and it doesn't really have a point. I wish I could afford to buy you a sword, but a good, big knife will be much cheaper." They really couldn't afford the knife, either, but she had a certain squeamishness about using the same tool to cut up food that Faro might use to kill someone with. And really, Faro needed a bigger knife than this one. "A sword wouldn't really be useful in close confines, would it?" she finished, hopefully.

"No, little mistress," he said, taking the knife with a smile of gratitude. "Perhaps later, but a sword would not be useful to me now. But a good knife-yes, I could use that here and now. And when we go out, conjure me another one of those staffs, only make it look like wood, if you can. I can use that as well; with a staff in my hand, I can take on as many as four men."

She well imagined that he could, although she wondered where he had gotten the training to use swords and knives and staffs. That sort of training wasn't in a scribe's usual repertoire, even one built as powerfully as Faro.

Then the answer came to her fatigue-fogged mind.The arena, of course , she chided herself, as she slid into bed and extinguished the lamp beside it. Faro had already taken his place on his pallet, and she felt comforted by his silent presence. She hated to think about it, though. They must have done awful things to him, trying to break his spirit. And when they couldn't, they must have been training him for the exhibition-fights, where they set the slaves to hack at each other until one of them died. Someone like him would have given them a lot of entertainment before he died. Faro could never do anything poorly; he would have set himself to learn to fight with the same single-mindedness that he had when he learned his skills as a scribe. She was certain of that. Faro could never be less than his best- even when it came to killing.

She wondered if it troubled him that he had helped her to kill five men tonight whose only offense was that they had obeyed the orders of a woman. She was under no illusions; he had hated all women, and now he hated all but one. She had seen that carefully veiled hate in his eyes, heard it in his caustic wit, just one short step from insolence. Was he lying on his back, on that pallet, wondering if he should have spared their lives? Or did he simply feel that as tools of the woman who had owned them, they were as corrupt as she must be?

She knew how she felt about it: no one had forced that Mazonite to attack her, and there were laws governing the behavior of slaves. Any slave attacking a woman-regardless of whether that was something he had been ordered to do, or something he had decided to do on his own-would be put to death, instantly. Only in the arena, at either a woman-trial, or the rarer fighters-challenge, could a slave do his best to kill a woman with no reprisals. They would have killed her; she had no compunction about killing them. After all, she had been trained by Marcus to know that one day, she would have to fight at least one man, and the odds were even that it would have been to the death. Every Mazonite knew that; those that entered the army spent their lives killing.

Those men had not really been men to her; they had been things. They were not like Marcus or Faro. If they had run, as their mistress had run, she would have let them live. They had not; she had not.

Why didn't she feel anything? she asked herself, as she stared at the darkness of the ceiling. Was it that she was simply too tired? There was nothing inside her, no energy, no feeling, not even anger.

Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was simply that she had nothing left to feel with tonight.

Or perhaps it was just that she was in a kind of shock. She certainly felt stunned. It was one thing to believe that someone wanted to frighten her; it was another to know that someone wanted to kill her.

She hated to think about it, and hated to remember that Faro was a trained killer. It was not how she cared to think about him, but it was a good thing for her that he had learned those things. If he hadn't-

She fell asleep before she could finish the thought. They replaced the plants; they fortified the house when they were gone. The cost of the plants and the arms she obtained for Faro ate into their money, but she could not grudge the expense. They saved every copper-bit they could, and they continued to be very wary.

It was just as well, for within six days they were attacked again.

This time it was by a band of eight, a larger group than the one that had attacked them before.

Once again they were on their way home, but this time from a more modest encounter. And this time it was in broad daylight.

The circumstances were odd, too. A woman who often booked public entertainments had thought that other Mazonites might be willing to pay to see Xylina's woman-trial restaged. Xylina was dubious, and Faro ominously silent, but she decided that the woman was too important to offend by an outright "no." They went to hear her out, but in the end, Xylina felt she could not put Faro through that kind of humiliation a second time. Bad enough that she had once ridden him like a broken horse. It would be worse for him to recreate his moment of defeat twice a day for however long audiences continued to come. And they might not come at all; that, too, was a possibility. Or they might come in such small numbers that their share would not be worth the loss of other, more "respectable" income. And what about being naked? Xylina had not liked that at all, though she understood the need in the arena. The men could be clothed, because they were under the control of the trainers and never had any weapons to conceal, but the women had to prove they brought nothing in with them. Not only did Xylina not want to parade naked again, she didn't want to press her thighs and breasts against Faro's body again. Not now that she realized how he had reacted. Not in public and not in private.

She declined, however, on the grounds that such a show might anger the Queen, being a blatant display of her own ability to conjure. That reason had taken some quick thinking on her part, for the woman could not possibly take offense at such an excuse. She pointed out that such re-creations could be viewed as a challenge.

It was a pity; the woman lived in a lovely home and had at least fifty or sixty slaves, and it was obvious from her prosperity that the spectacles she staged were generally very popular. The room they had been received in was all of the finest marble, with comfortable, suede-covered couches for Xylina and her hostess, and a leather-covered stool for Faro. The entrepreneur herself wore fine silk breeches and a tunic dyed in expensive scarlet, and Xylina was served a generous selection of expensive cheeses, savory breads, thin-sliced meat and succulent fruit, with the leavings going straight to Faro. The rest of the house was like this part of it: cool and luxurious, though not as sumptuous as the villa. This woman evidently had a high degree of success in judging what others might well pay to see. But Faro's set expression and the smoldering embers of his eyes told Xylina that this would be too much. She could not offend him this way, by ordering him to do this. Not after all he had done for her.

"Truly," she said to her hostess, trying to appear modest and thoughtful, "I wish that I could. But I have no intention of even making it appear that I was challenging the Queen's power. Now I'm sure you understand that I have no ambitions for the throne; I would not know how to govern, and I would make a very bad ruler, I fear. Yet our Queen is suspicious, and has reason to be-and even if I proclaimed my lack of ambition from the rooftops, she would still suspect a challenge."

Their hostess frowned, but nodded. "You have a point, and a good one," she replied grudgingly. "What you say is very likely. Our good Queen has challenged others on the basis of things much less suspicious."

"And only think how it would look to the Queen that you had been the sponsor of such a display!" Xylina added, as if in afterthought. She clapped her hand to her mouth as if dismayed. "Demon-spawn! She would think that you had ambitions to be the power behind the new monarch! She might well decide that you had posed a challenge through me!"

"Holy mothers, you're right!" the Mazonite exclaimed, her brown eyes going wide with alarm, jerking her head up so that her sandy curls bobbed with agitation. "Perhaps I had not thought this out completely."

Now was the time to soothe her, before she decided to turn around and report this to the Queen's agents. "I promise you, if you can think of a way for Faro to perform that will be successful without appearing to challenge the Queen, I shall be most pleased to enter into such a venture," Xylina told her calmly, rationally. "I think that would be a most successful spectacle. Perhaps something involving his strength-not a fight with another gladiator, for that would be too much like the combats that the Queen sponsors-but perhaps he could undertake to fight a wild boar, or lift heavy objects, or break a wild horse-"

"I shall think on it," their hostess said, her anxious expression betraying her mixed emotions-greed for the money she could earn from the original idea, warring with real fear of the Queen. And not without reason; the Queen had right-of-challenge too, just as any of her subjects did if they wished to try for the throne. If she felt an unspoken challenge had been issued against her, she could issue a challenge of her own, and the challenges she made were invariably to the death. Only self-exile could save the Mazonite so challenged from the inevitable end.

After a moment of struggle, the fear won, and the woman escorted them to the street, promising to keep in touch.

It was hard to walk through the cool marble hall, past the front garden with its lovely waterfall and artistically shaped trees, knowing that the wherewithal from just a few successful "re-enactments" could have made her house look like this one. But she had not had a friend for so long-no, she could not betray him in that way. Not for something as stupid as gold.

Their hostess left them at the front door, leaving a slave to see them to the gate to the street. The gate shut behind them with a click that sounded very final to Xylina. "Well, at least we got a meal out of this," Xylina said philosophically, looking back over her shoulder to talk to Faro as they made their way down the street. Walls in this part of town were all the same, with the only variations being in the gates set into them. The paved street was hemmed in on either side by stucco walls of a pale beige. It was almost sunset, but there was plenty of deep gold-tinged light. The streets were bare of traffic. The entrepreneur had specifically invited Xylina to share supper, probably hoping to get her into a more conciliatory mood with food and drink, and Xylina had made certain to eat heartily; the other inhabitants of the city were within their own doors and gates, enjoying their own evening meal right now.

Faro's expression lightened considerably, once they were out of those walls. "You should do something about my costume, if we get many more invitations like this one," he replied from behind her. "I could have filched enough fruit, bread, and cheese for all of tomorrow's meals, if I'd had somewhere to hide it. As it was, I only purloined two of those wax-covered cheeses."

Xylina turned to look at him, wondering if he was joking.

She saw no sign of anything hidden in his tunic. And certainly their hostess had given her no sign that she had seen Faro taking and concealing anything. "You didn't-" she said, her eyes wide.

"I did," he grinned, and displayed the two red balls of cheese like a conjurer, making them appear and vanish again into the breast of his tunic. And once there, although she had seen them disappear, she could not see where he had hidden them.

She smothered a fit of giggles. Faro, a sneak-thief? Who would ever have believed it? "How did you do that? Where did you learn such a thing?" she demanded.

"From one of the boys at the scribe school, when I was about nine, and was still small," he replied, "I was hungry all the time, and the boy claimed my growling stomach kept him awake at night. They never gave us enough time to eat our fill, and they never let us carry food away from the table. One of the other boys was the son of an entertainer, a dancer and conjurer; he taught us all how to filch and conceal food, and what foods were best for the purpose." His tone was light, and she caught a real smile lurking around the corners of his eyes and mouth. He obviously found her surprise quite amusing.

"Is there anything you don't know?" she asked, wondering yet again at the twist of fate that had brought them together, and led her to keep him after she had won him. For all of the horrible things that had happened to her, this-not only the ownership, but the friendship-made up for them. Next to Marcus, he was possibly the most wonderful person she had ever known. She would die if she had to do without him, she thought, suddenly. Die-or if they were right, and she had a terrible enemy, she would be killed.

"There are many, many things I can't do. I can't cook," he pointed out wryly. "As you well know, given the number of meals I have near-ruined. I can't sew. I can't clean unless someone shows me what to do. I am not particularly good at supervising others, although I believe I could learn. And as you are well aware, I know very little about gardening other than that seedlings come from farms and that they must be tended- you have had to teach me all of that. When you come to own a horse, you will have to find someone else to buy to deal with it, for you have seen for yourself how horses hate me."

"Not all horses," she said, stifling another giggle, for he was referring to a most unfortunate encounter with the dun mare that pulled the vegetable cart that serviced their neighborhood. Faro and the mare had confronted one another one morning a few days ago. For no reason that Xylina could fathom, the mare had decided that Faro looked like an enemy. She had gone for him, and had tried to bite him every time she saw him. The first time she had attacked him, Faro had not been aware of how fast she could strike nor what her range was. She had connected with his right buttock. And a horse's teeth, as Xylina had learned after treating the wound, made very large and painful bruises. The worst part was that the same mare adored Xylina and would beg for caresses whenever Xylina walked by, turning in the next instant to attack Faro.

"The only horse I have ever seen hates me," he replied. "And she loves you. I can only conclude either that all horses hate me, or that she is a Mazonite to the core, and believes men should be beneath her hooves, making the pavement soft for her to walk upon."

Xylina could no longer contain her laughter. She stifled it behind her hand, as Faro grinned ruefully, and they turned the corner with her wiping tears out of her eyes.

It was at that moment that Faro grabbed her arm and flung her into the wall; she hit the surface with both hands, softening her impact.

As she landed, she caught sight of a large stone sailing through the air where her head had been. It was an attack; it could be nothing else.

She quickly turned, using the impact with the wall to give herself extra speed, and looked for the danger. The first thing she saw was Faro, standing between her and harm, his back toward her. He was already using his staff against a pack of men, fending them off, gradually driving them away from her and the wall until they all stood in the middle of the wide street. It looked for all the world like a mastiff being worried by a pack of terriers, for he stood a head higher than any of the others.

But terriers could be effective. One of them, a man with a raw, broken branch with bark still upon it for a cudgel, succeeded in getting past the staff to smash his club against the side of Faro's head. Xylina winced at the sickening crack , but was too busy calling up her power to do anything to fend the attack off.

The blow missed the temple, but the club laid open the scalp, and Faro staggered a little, stumbling forward two steps before regaining his balance.

There was no time to waste; she had to act quickly before they took advantage of Faro's injury. She did not exactly think; she assessed the situation and acted, exactly as she had in the arena.

The worst thing that could happen to these men would be that they should get into each other's way. That would mean that Faro could use his own blows effectively, and they would not be able to get at him.

Yet anything she conjured to hamper them might also hamper him: oil on the street, or a rain of slippery stones, or flinging things at their legs or heads.

If he only had a corner to stand in-

That thought was all that she needed. She conjured him one. Power surged through her like an upwelling spring, and it did not even manifest from her hands this time, nor create a ghost-object before the full conjuration appeared. Instead, it simply flashed instantly into what she desired, creating two slabs of stone behind him that met in a "V" at his back.

The immediate effect of the conjuration was to shove the men who had been standing there out of the way, as the stones sprang into being before their eyes and partially within the space they had occupied. Those men were knocked to the ground, taking them temporarily out of action. And now the rest of the ruffians could come at him only from the front.

That evened the odds considerably. Now she was free to deal with the men between her and that newly-conjured stone. With the stone standing high between herself and Faro, she need not worry about hurting him with what she did.

There were three of them, one kneeling, one still on his behind, and one staggering to his feet, all reacting to the sudden appearance of walls of stone in front of them. They stared at the stone, and not at her. That was a mistake. Before they could recover, she acted.

The easiest thing for her to conjure was fabric-so she conjured that, yards and yards of it, dropping it over them and muffling them in its hampering folds. It dropped down right out of the air above them, again without a mist-shape presaging the actual conjuration, and without the conjuration actually touching her hands. Cries of surprise and rage came from beneath the fabric, and the folds churned and bounced as they pushed at it. Then she conjured a torrent of water that fell out of the empty air, like a sudden downpour of rain, soaking the fabric and turning it heavy and clinging, handicapping them further. She had made certain that it was icy water too, not hot-shocking them with the cold and giving her a chance to conjure up her next weapon.

This was almost fun. While they floundered, she moved in. She felt no fear during the action, merely determination to get the job done.

She conjured herself a length of metal; it came to her hands, heavy and cold and smooth beneath her hands. And very satisfying. She made the few steps to the trapped men and clubbed every lump that moved under that fabric.

Crunches and cries of pain came from beneath the cloth. The dark fabric was stained darker in places, but she ignored all of it. Anger gave her strength, and outrage guided her aim; she clubbed the forms beneath the cloth until nothing moved.

By the time she was finished, so was Faro. She came around her conjured stone wall, club at the ready, just in time to see Faro drive his staff across the temple of the last man still facing him; it hit the man's head with a distinct and uncomfortably familiar wet crack , and she saw the bone cave in before he dropped to the ground. As she looked around for more ruffians, she saw that two more men had taken to their heels, and even as that final attacker fell, they were disappearing around a corner.

Faro grounded his staff, and leaned against it heavily. Xylina banished all her conjurations but his staff, revealing the six bodies strewn across the street. None of those bodies showed any sign of life. Once again, they had defended themselves too well to leave anyone to question.

"Good thinking, little mistress-" Faro managed, around his pain. His eye was swelling, and the cut on his scalp bled down the side of his head and stained the breast of his tunic. He looked as if he might collapse into the street at any moment. She found herself with a length of conjured gauze in her hand to use as a bandage, and she hurried to bind his wound quickly before it bled any further.

"Don't talk," she urged him, adding her strength to that of his staff, helping to keep him upright. Finally, only now after all the noise of fighting had ceased, she heard a gate creak behind her and turned to see a slave peering around the edge of the gateway with round, frightened eyes. Cowards! she thought angrily.Now they came look to see who was being attacked, after it was all over!

"Get your mistress," she ordered him peremptorily, "Let us in; my faithful slave has been wounded and I do not care to stand here in the street while he bleeds! Then go fetch someone from the Guard. We have been attacked by a gang of thieves, and this must be reported to the authorities."

She pushed Faro around and towards the open gate before the slave inside could object, and interposed her body so that the slave would not dare close it. In a moment she had Faro inside the enclosure. She looked around quickly, assessing the surroundings, looking for the best place to get Faro off his feet. This front garden, like her own, was not large, but it had a tree with a bench beneath it, and a tiny fishpond. She sat Faro down on the bench beside the pond before the slave could object, and began cleaning his scalp-cut with conjured water and cloth. The slave stared at them for a moment before fleeing into the house-presumably to get his mistress, as Xylina had ordered.

And when she showed up-and the City Guard-Xylina hoped she could get something other than words out of them.

But words was all she did get, and vague promises; no kind of help at all.

When they finally reached their own gates, it was well past sunset; Xylina had been torn between assisting Faro and letting him totter behind her as was proper for a slave, even an injured one. Since it was still possible that people might see them, she elected to be the proper mistress and ignore her slave's condition, but she was not happy, and she kept apologizing to Faro for her behavior. One small bright spot: during all that fighting, the cheeses Faro had purloined had remained unharmed. As they left the garden of their reluctant hostess, he showed them to her with a pain-filled smile.

Although the three members of the Guard who had been summoned by the frightened slave had questioned her closely, there had been no suggestion that they did not believe Xylina's story of "ambush by a pack of ruffians." That was where their agreement ended, for Xylina attempted to persuade them that being attacked twice by rogues was beyond coincidence. The Guards, however, were insistent on a claim that their attackers had been "wild" men; escaped slaves, or criminals being sheltered within the Men's Quarter. They would not even entertain the notion that a fellow citizen could be responsible. After all, she was told, Xylina was hardly important enough to have anyone feuding with her-and not rich enough to attract the attention of one of the notorious female criminals with bands of slaves obeying her orders to attack and rob.

"We've had some trouble with packs like this in the past," the senior Guard had said casually, poking one of the bodies with her sheathed sword. "They're freedmen who haven't learned their place, or think because some mistress was soft enough to free them that they're as good as a woman. One of those brutes gets the idea he's going to pay back women for what they did to him-forgetting the women who fed and clothed and took care of him before he got uppity. Then he gets a gang of runaways to go along with his craziness, and the next thing you know, there's trouble. First time they've attacked to kill like this, though, that I know of. Mostly they're happy just to knock you down and make off with your goods."

"Sounds like it's about time for a purge, if you ask me," the householder had said darkly. She had not appreciated being interrupted in the middle of her meal to deal with an altercation on her doorstep. She had offered Xylina no help, and had tried her best to ignore Faro's existence altogether. She had not even asked Xylina's name. "It's about time the Queen sent the Guard through the quarter and checked every house against the roster. That'll take care of these 'wild' men. When the tame ones see a purge coming, they'll turn the bad ones over fast enough."

The Queen ordered purges of the walled Freedmen's Quarter periodically, although the last one had occurred before Xylina's mother had died. She would order all the gates sealed, and conjure the same kind of metal mesh barrier over the walls that Xylina had protecting her house from invasion from above, thus effectively sealing off all routes of escape. Then the Guard would move in, and make a house-to-house search, checking the inhabitants against the roster of those who were supposed to be living there, looking for hidden rooms and secret passages. Any house with men living there that were not on the roster had better have exception-papers for them, or every inhabitant in the house would be taken for the arena. And the owner of any house with secret rooms or passages would find himself bound for the arena as well. There was no point in trying to hide from such a purge, for the entire Guard would be involved in making certain that no one escaped.

As Xylina's unwilling hostess had indicated, the mere announcement of a purge was generally enough to make the inhabitants of the Men's Quarter turn over most, if not all, illegal dwellers. And it was enough to make thieves from the quarter confine their activities to their own kind for a while.

But despite what the senior Guard thought, Xylina was fairly certain that this was no attempt at mere theft, nor were these men acting on their own. Even though she had seen no indication of a woman directing them this time, she felt that the mind behind this attack and the previous one was the same. The attacks were much too similar, too close together, and too well coordinated.

And the hand she fancied she saw behind both of them was that of her unknown enemy-who just might be powerful enough to have some influence in the Guard itself. How else could you explain the complete absence of a patrol within shouting distance on not one but both nights they had been attacked? And how to explain the boldness of an attack when it was still daylight?

That notion was confirmed when a fourth Guard came with a message for the others, just as they were completing their questions. The four conferred for a moment in a little huddle, then the senior Guard turned back to Xylina, who still sat beside Faro on the bench beside the pond.

"We've gotten all we need from you-thank you, lady. You can go now," the Guard said briskly-no, brusquely- then turned to the homeowner. "There'll be a collector around for the bodies in a bit. Meanwhile, just stay inside. I doubt anyone is going to come back, but why take chances? You'll be safe with your slaves on guard. We've been called back to the barracks."

While the homeowner remonstrated fruitlessly, railing about "protection" and "security," and most of all, about "her rights as a citizen," the senior Guard joined the others, totally ignoring the homeowner. Before the Mazonite could do anything to prevent them from leaving, the four of them pushed open the gate, and left at a trot. Xylina exchanged a meaningful glance with Faro, and nudged him to his feet.

The homeowner, stubborn, or genuinely fearful, was following the Guards, still complaining about the lack of protection and what she was entitled to as a full, tax-paying citizen. Xylina figured now was a good time to get out of there, before the woman decided to turn her complaints against them, or find a way to make some kind of claim on them.

"No offer of escort," Faro grunted from beneath his bandage, as they made their way hastily back toward their home. It hadn't escaped Xylina's attention that the four Guards had gone in the opposite direction.

"I noticed," Xylina replied grimly; although she could not help Faro, she refused to let him walk behind her. "Aren't I entitled to escort, after something like this?"

"Technically," Faro said. He limped a good deal, but she was fairly certain that nothing was broken. She was mostly worried about that blow to the head. "Although-you're poor, and they did point that out, none-too-discreetly; the poor get short-shrift often enough. Still."

"Still," she agreed. "Let's get home before something else happens."

There were no further incidents on their way home, but it was a nervous several blocks, nevertheless. Now, if ever, would be the ideal time for another attack. Faro was incapacitated, and she was hampered by needing to protect him. Several times she thought she saw someone lurking before or behind them. But if it was anything other than shadows and her imagination, the lurker had vanished the next time she looked.

She was wearily grateful to see the gate of her home, at last; once inside, she felt as if she could let her guard down a little. And once inside, she could order him to let her help him, adding her support to that of his staff.

By then, Faro was reacting to the blow to his head with complaints of a headache and a certain amount of dizziness and sleepiness. That worried her further, for it seemed to her that she remembered that these were symptoms of something serious. She was not certain whether she should let him sleep, but she thought she recalled that Marcus had kept a similarly injured slave from falling asleep for a good several hours after the injury.

So she got him into the bathing-room and made certain he had a good, hot, soaking bath for all of his aches and bruises. Then she tended him more thoroughly, rebandaged his wounds with real and not conjured material, and took him into the kitchen at the rear of the house to keep him sitting up at the table. He looked at her blearily as she chattered at him, making a cup of headache-tea and forcing it into his hands.

Finally, he spoke. "Why are you torturing me like this?" he asked, his eyes glazing over with pain.

"Because I think I remember that people with a head injury are not supposed to sleep at first," she told him. "I'm sorry Faro, but I think you really must stay awake."

"Little mistress, if you were not my friend-" He sighed. "I hate to admit this, but I think I may recall hearing the same thing." He touched his bandaged head gingerly. "I shall be of no use in the morning."

"Nor shall I," she reminded him. "If you must remain awake, it is I who must keep you awake." Perhaps if she got his mind on something else, it might help him with his pain. "Faro, do you think that my enemy is someone important?"

"I cannot say," he admitted. "The Guard could have been called away, perhaps to deal with more such gangs as attacked us; and the senior Guard could have been completely right. In fact, if there was more than one gang active tonight, they could not have been spared to escort us. And you are of little or no importance; it will harm no one to slight you by denying you the escort that is your right. But I do not like it, that they hurried away so quickly, after the fourth woman arrived."

"I don't like it eith-" She suddenly sniffed, as the acrid odor of smoke came to her nostrils. She glanced sharply at the kitchen fireplace behind her, but she had extinguished her blaze as soon as the tea was done brewing.

"Faro, do you smell-" she began.

That was when the closed door into the next room burst into flames.

The next few moments were a blur; they flung open the door into the kitchen garden just in time, as the fire roared into the kitchen right on their heels. She looked back only once, to see that her entire house was aflame; then she somehow found the energy to conjure a pile of blocks to take them over the wall and into their neighbors garden, where they both collapsed.

There she sat, in the middle of a broken patch of pungent onions, as the neighbor's slaves and family boiled out of the house, the night rang with shouts and alarm-bells, and the sky turned as red as blood. And all she could see was the end of everything.

The end of all her hopes, all her ambitions.

The return of the curse ...