"Don't-" Lycia said, finally, awkwardly. "Please, dear-I know some people, let me go talk to them-"
And she fled, leaving Xylina alone in the garden, free to cry into the wine-cup, turning the sweet wine bitter with her tears.
As Xylina had expected, Lycia's efforts came to nothing; she returned that evening and confessed her defeat at the hands of a legion of bureaucrats who quoted rule after senseless rule until Lycia had thrown up her hands in despair. Xylina could not offer her anything other than a murmur of thanks for trying.
"I don't understand it," Lycia muttered over a supper that Xylina could not eat. "I just don't understand it. This is all so senseless-"
Xylina toyed with a bit of bread, ignoring the coaxing of Lycia's manservant. Her stomach was in knots, and her head ached; her eyes were dry and hot, and swollen after more than one bout of weeping. She understood Lycia's lack of success only too well, for when she went to talk with Faro, a talk that was more a case of her saying whatever came into her head out loud than anything else, she came to a terrible conclusion.
The curse had a human agent; it was the woman who had set the vandals on her, and the gangs of ruffians, and might have somehow engineered the burning of her house. She said to Faro that the fire had burned as if someone had poured oil on it-and it would have been simple enough for a good conjuror to create a pool of oil on the roof to begin the fire, then continue to conjure oil to feed it. Small wonder that she had not been able to douse it with water in that case-and small wonder that everything within the walls had been reduced to ash.
It had to be someone in authority-in high authority; perhaps a Mazonite answerable only to the Queen herself. For only someone that important could conceal her tracks, and engineer this final disaster. That would make sense in terms of a powerful conjuror, too, since the best magicians ended up in the Queen's service, sooner or later. The motive was not obvious to Xylina, but Faro had managed to suggest a number of possibilities. One, was that the Mazonite in question viewed Xylina as a rival; certainly someone with Xylina's ability at conjuration would soon be asked to join the Queen's staff as soon as another conflict with the lands beyond Mazonia arose. In war, every skilled conjuror would be needed, and someone like Xylina could rise in rank very rapidly.
Another was that it was an old rival of Xylina's mother; this person too could have risen high in the ranks of the Queen's service by now.
Either seemed possible. Both meant doom.
Faro was not at his best-but he was coherent enough (and knew her well enough) to have already divined what her thoughts in the garden had been. And before she left, he seized both her wrists in his hands and forced her to look into his eyes. His expression was open, for the first time in their acquaintance; she saw in it fear for her, pain for her, and a will to do anything to aid her.
"Little Mistress Xylina," he had said, as forcefully as he could manage, though his face was lined with pain, "you must not think of ending your life. I know you have thought of this; I can't blame you, for your troubles must seem endless. But you are not alone. I will help you. We will find some way around these troubles. I do not know what it is-but we will. We need only time. If you must do anything, find a way to delay them, little mistress. Give us the time to think. That is all we need, for we are more clever than they are. Believe me in this. We can and will find our way through."
She shook her head, dumbly, and he swallowed and closed his eyes. "I will even gladly suffer you to defeat me publicly, three times a day, for a year and a day or longer if need be. I will do it in an arena before thousands of them, if it will extricate you from this. And I will be glad to do this for you."
She cried then, as unashamed to do so before this man who was her friend as she had been ashamed to weep before Lycia. She knew what it cost him to offer that-and it was the greatest gift that anyone had ever offered her. He had given her back her life twice now-and had offered up his own as well. More than that, had offered his spirit, his pride, his dignity. What he had not given to any Mazonite under the most extreme punishment, he had given her out of friendship. She could not have ordered that from him- would not have asked it of him-and he had given it to her of his own will.
She wept, and so did he-and when they were both finished, she somehow knew that he was right. Somehow, they would find an answer.
But when she emerged and saw Lycia, the answer seemed very far away.
"Xylina-"
Xylina looked up; Lycia patted her hand. "Don't give up, girl," the old woman said roughly. "I'm not finished yet. I don't have the money to get you out of this, but I think I know some women who may-either others who knew and admired your mother, and there are more of them than you may think, or even someone who saw your woman-trial and is willing to give you a hand. Let me go out and do some talking tomorrow, all right?"
"Why are you doing this?" Xylina asked, bewildered.
"Partly because I admire you-and partly because I don't like what's being done to you, and I don't like what it implies for the rest of us," Lycia replied forthrightly. "What's happening to you is rather of a piece with some other disturbing things around here lately. Ah, never mind. Here-"
She held out another cup; this time it was clearly one with some kind of potion in it. Xylina raised an eyebrow at it and sniffed it delicately. It smelled of herbs.
"Are you going to drug me again?" she asked.
Lycia snorted. "Damned right I am," she said. "If I don't, you won't be getting any sleep at all. If you don't get any sleep, you won't be able to think. If you can't think, what good are you going to be to yourself or anyone else?" Xylina knew when to concede defeat. She drank the potion, and went straight to bed.
Adria leaned back into the leather cushions of her throne, and regarded Ware from beneath half-closed lids. The demon had appeared at her orders to discuss the actions of last night, and their continued actions. There were no witnesses, not even slaves, for what Adria was doing was not even remotely legal.
And Ware seemed to harbor a fair number of doubts about this. "Are you quite certain you know what you are doing, my Queen?" The demon Ware looked directly and challengingly at Adria with his many-colored eyes, all the colors of which had darkened with some kind of indefinable emotions. Certainly Adria would not try to define them; who could fathom the thoughts of a demon?
Bad enough that she was worried about someone discovering what she had done; she did not need a conscience-stricken demon to plague her about it too. "Of course I am certain!" Adria snapped, straightening in her seat to conceal her weariness. Last night's exertions had taken their toll on her; she had not dared entrust this job to one of her underlings.
It was easy enough to find a renegade with a gang of ruffian-slaves, and under the cover of a disguise, hire her to attack Xylina in the streets. Or rather, it had been easy.
After two efforts had left two piles of bodies in the street, the city underground no longer held anyone willing to attack this "easy" target. Adria had been forced to change her tactics, and had opted to go after Xylina personally.
But not directly; she decided to let the "curse" manifest itself in fire.
As a result, she was exhausted. Once Ware had set the fire in Xylina's home, it had been up to her to make certain that it kept blazing, and that the girl was unable to put it out. She had not conjured that much of anything in so short a period since the last war. By the time the flames had engulfed most of Xylina's house, Adria's powers were beginning to ebb, and she had fallen back against the cushions of her litter as wearily as if she had fought a dozen men hand-to-hand.