"Ware knows how to find the thing that we're hunting," she said, choosing her words with care. "He knows where it is, and how to get at it. The Queen trusts him, so I suppose her word must hold him even outside Mazonia."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Hazard looked dubious, as if he feared these were not good enough reasons to trust a demon. She thought quickly, trying to find a reason they would believe among all the ones she did not want to tell anyone else. "He also wishes to keep me very safe, because-because I owe him a great deal of gold."
She heard Gurt trying to stifle a chuckle at that, and turned in her saddle to grin at him. "Oh, go ahead and laugh! I don't mind! If it hadn't gotten me in such trouble, this could be very funny, and I fully expect one day to be able to laugh at my dilemma myself!" Carefully, she gave the men an edited version of her misfortunes, leaving out the fact that the crown had guaranteed her debt, and leaving out Ware's other "offer" entirely. "So you see, if he's to be repaid in gold or in silver he must keep me safe, and in order to keep me safe he will have to do his best to keep you safe. That was why the Queen ordered him to come along-but I do think that even if she had not ordered him to come, he would have done so anyway. He would not want me to escape him before his debt was paid."
All of that was entirely true. It simply was not the whole truth.
"Now that's a reason I can understand," Gurt declared roundly. "Everyone knows how the demons feel about good gold. Always after more of it. Trading and selling, training and bargaining with the freedmen-even going outside the kingdom to get it."
"Well, they can't exactly live on air, can they?" Horn demanded. "Even a demon's got to eat! And if he's got to eat, he might as well eat good. They live forever; living forever shackled would be just plain stupid! With their magic and all..." He coughed. "Well, it stands to reason they want to live good and they got the means."
Not like us. Horn didn't say it, but Xylina almost heard it. The demons, who looked so human, had all the privileges human men did not. And all because the men had no magic.
"Old Ware's all right," said Jan, who had a deeper voice than the others. "Never has high-and-mighty ways. Never puts up a fuss about not having his fancy house to live in. Puts up with the same things we do. He does-well, he never fusses about our-ah-entertainment."
Hazard again cast a sideways look at her, as if to see whether she understood that oblique reference to the paw women and their purpose-and whether she was offended by it. She simply nodded. "I'm glad to hear that," she said, striving not to blush. "I will never know whether he is doing as the Queen asked him to in that way unless you tell me. You are all doing your duty, and you deserve everything you are entitled to. But unless you say something to me about the things I cannot oversee-well, it will be like the little girl who did not speak until her nurse salted her honey-cake-I will have to assume that you do not speak because everything has been fine until now."
Horn grinned at the old joke-or possibly, at her acceptance of the situation. Hazard looked a little embarrassed. She could not see the other two without turning, but she had the feeling that they approved. "Everything is still just fine, Mistress Xylina," Horn said forthrightly. "Hazard or me will tell Faro or you if it ain't."
"Good. In fact," she continued, "if there is something you are entitled to that I have somehow missed, I would like you to tell Faro. If you have any ideas that might bear trying, tell him as well. This is new territory for all of us, and anything that might help us defend ourselves should be tried. I have no prejudice against trying something new, and I can see you are all intelligent men."
She glanced at the two she could see out of the corner of her eye. Horn was nodding with pleased satisfaction; he had worked with her during the "Pacha entertainments," and she suspected that she had just confirmed the opinion he had formed of her then. Hazard looked quite stunned.
Good. Now they saw her as a person, not just as "the mistress." It was going to be harder to desert a reasonable person than an icon, someone who did not seem quite real to them, someone who did not have their welfare at heart.
"You know, Horn, we must have fed several thousand Pacha back there, and yet I hardly know anything about you," she said, after a moment. "Where did you ever learn to cook so well? I can't imagine how you make dried peas and old leather turn into such wonderful stews."
Horn was only too happy to talk, and she was only too happy to listen. Horn's words, and those of the other three men, gave her a window on their world. Faro had given her a glimpse of that world, but only a glimpse. This was a broader, wider view, not filtered through the educated caution of a scribe. And she suspected that it was a view very few other Mazonites ever had.
She learned how the boys were segregated early in their lives, left to be educated-or not-by other slaves, some not even their fathers. How what happened to these children was largely a matter of chance. If the fates smiled upon them, they remained with their fathers and their families, growing up as part of a household, and given nearly the same education as their favored sisters. Then, when they grew to manhood, they would find themselves noticed by a young woman and bartered off to her as her chosen husband, earning their families an agreed-upon spousal-price. But if the fates were not kind, if they were not part of a small family or the offspring of a "marriage," they would find themselves sent off to a nursery until the age of five, with one slave to simply tend to the needs of thirty small boys and boy-babies. Then they would be appraised and tested, their aptitudes determined-and sent off to be trained. Once trained, at the age of fifteen or thereabouts, they went on the auction-block. There would be little chance for a family or to better their lot. They were, simply, property. No different from a horse or a mule.
And even if the fates were kind at first, that did not mean they would continue to turn a smiling face. Kyle had learned that, being discarded for the sake of a younger, handsomer man. There was another of Kyle's ilk with them, a man called Marie, who marched just behind Ware.
The other men of this expedition were of the second class, the sons of harem slaves with little or no chance at a better fate. They felt, for the most part, that they were at least fortunate that they had not been sold off as common laborers. Such a mind-numbing fate was the worst thing that could happen to a slave. Save, perhaps, being condemned to the arena as a gladiator. All of them looked up to Faro as a survivor of that experience. And she had the feeling that her act of inadvertent mercy in saving him from death had also begun the work of earning their respect.
When they halted at noon for a quick meal, she felt that she had a good start on her goal, to make herself their leader by loyalty rather than by default.
It was in the late afternoon that the first of the monsters appeared.
These were singularly peaceful "monsters," and they seemed to take no notice of the humans on the road below them.
The first of them appeared floating through the leaves, pushing them apart, and gliding between them. The entire caravan froze in place, as the creature's snout appeared above them, shoving the fronds aside. Xylina's heart was in her throat, and the men around her grew pale with fear. The thing was about the size of one of the wagons, patterned in brilliant scarlet and gold chevrons, and shaped roughly like a teardrop. It floated majestically above them, about halfway between them and the tops of the leaves, with no sign of anything supporting it.
And no sign that it noticed them.
As they watched it drifting above them, they held their breaths, hoping that it would continue to ignore them. Its round black eyes remained fixed on the fronds around it, however; it stopped once or twice to nibble off a nodule-like growth on the ribs of one of the leaves, but otherwise paid no attention to anything about it.