"What are you doing?" she blurted in astonishment.
He calmly pocketed the pouch of coins the man had worn about his neck, and went on to the next victim. "I am doing to them what they were going to do to us," he said with calm logic. "The pickings seem to be meager, but every copper-bit we take from them is one we didn't have before."
She stared at him for a moment with open mouth-then, as the logic behind his statement sank in, she closed her mouth with a snap, and bent again to do the same to the man at her feet.
After all, these men might have been hired by her unknown enemy. And if that was the case-
Well, it was poetic justice to have the one who had destroyed her precious garden in the first place help to pay for the new plants.
• 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.