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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 ...

• Chapter 6

In the morning, things were no better.

She stood just inside the gates of her house, and stared at the ruins. Smoke still rose in places, little wisps of it rising into the still morning air. The blackened remains of the walls, crumbling even as she watched, enclosed only ashes. The was no sign of anything that had stood inside, not even the interior walls. Just gray and black ashes. The fire had burned so hot that even metal must have melted.

The house and all she owned was gone. For the second time, the garden had been destroyed, this time by the heat of the fire. Nothing had been spared.

By the time she had recovered enough from her shock to conjure water above the fire, it was too late. The water seemed to do nothing, other than to keep the fire from spreading to the neighboring homes. She had been picked up in the garden by her rearward neighbor, Lycia, who seemed not at all worried about her onions, but only concerned that Xylina and her slave were unhurt. Her neighbor, who proved to be a retired member of the Guard, had not even bothered to ask what Xylina wanted as soon as she realized who she was and what had happened; she took charge of the situation immediately. Like an old war-horse, she responded to the emergency with the energy of a woman half her years.

Lycia Tigeran sent Faro off to her tiny slave quarters in the hands of her own personal attendant and manservant, a man who had been with her since he was a child. She told Xylina that he had been trained in field-medicine, as were many of the slaves of Guards, and he served her as a rough physician during her entire service. She swore he had plenty of experience in tending injury, and certainly, from the competent way in which he took charge of Faro, Xylina was inclined to believe her.

Lycia herself had coaxed Xylina first into a hot bath, ordered another slave to give her a soothing massage, and then she had gotten Xylina into a bed. "I remember your mother, darling," Lycia had said, plying her with tea. "She was a wonderful, brilliant woman, and this city needed her badly. If I'd known her daughter was still alive after the plague, I'd have adopted you myself. Marriage can be a nuisance, because a man can act so hurt when he gets dumped, but adoption is another matter." Lycia had continued to speak quietly about nothing, distracting and actually relaxing her. Only when Xylina found herself falling asleep despite more than enough troubles to keep anyone awake for a week, did she think she might have been drugged.

She fell asleep, fighting it to no avail, and slept until the sun was well up. But in the morning, no amount of coaxing by the mistress of the house or her manservant could make her remain in Lycia's home. The slave brought her clothes, newly cleaned, but Lycia extracted a promise to return. Not that Xylina had a choice; Faro was still there, being tended for his wounds from the day before. The older slave had assured her that he was not in any danger, but he did have a serious head injury, and his skull might even have been cracked. She left the house to make the long walk around the block to her own, determined to know the worst.