If I Pay Thee Not In Gold
Piers Anthony & Mercedes Lackey
• Chapter 1
Xylina ignored the hum of whispered conversation that followed her as she wound her way through the crowded bodies in the bazaar. She kept her head high, pretending there was nothing more on her mind than the perfectly ordinary purchase of food. But her muscles were knotted with tension and she really would rather have been back in her home.
This task was ordinary for her, anyway, though odd or eccentric for any other woman. She sometimes wondered if she was the only Mazonite in the city who did not have at least one male slave to tend to the domestic chores. The bazaar thronged with male slaves, sent on the same errand she was performing herself. They were draped in the loose, soft, pastel tunics of household servants. The few freedmen who had permission to be in the marketplace at this hour were in black, and barefoot so that in theory they could not run very fast if they committed some crime.
The women in Xylina's immediate vicinity were leather-clad fighters in suede body-wrappings and trews, bearing combat-scars and the marks of armor and weaponry. Others were the heads of households, in their severe linen or samite tunics and breeches, the uniform of the workaday world for those who had property. For those who did not, dress was whatever the woman could conjure; in Xylina's case, a simple drape of soft mage-cloth. She had intended dark blue, but it had come out a soft sapphire. Whatever the color, it marked her as poverty-stricken; no female of substance wore mage-cloth.
Then again, there was no disgrace in being poor. That was not what the others were whispering about. She knew what they were saying, those scarred and hardened warriors who murmured to each other like gossiping kitchen-slaves; she'd heard it all before.
... coward...fool...
... soft... weakling...
... cursed...
"Mama!" cried out a child; by the shrill voice, a very young one, too young to know better than to shout in public. "Mama! Look! She has hair like a man!"
Snickers and sly, sideways looks followed that innocent exclamation-and muffled laughter from those male slaves in the bazaar who were not in the company of their mistresses. Xylina continued to hold her chin up, despite the flush she felt spreading from her ears to her cheeks until her whole face burned. There was nothing else she could do; she did have hair like some pampered male leisure-companion, long and luxuriant and well-cared-for, cascading from her head to her waist in a curtain of gold silk. It represented a tiny defiance, another mark of her difference from the rest of them. Most Mazonites cut their hair short, or even shaved their heads. A banner such as hers was an invitation to an enemy, a weapon he could use against the wearer. Only one or two Mazonites Xylina had ever seen wore their hair longer than to the shoulders, and they had been warriors of such surpassing excellence that they flaunted their skill in this manner. Let he who dared, try to touch those tresses!
One of those had been her mother, Elibet... and that was why Xylina wore her own hair this way.
She bent over a cart full of fresh vegetables, glad of a chance to hide her blushes. Someone nearby spoke, with an audible sniff of contempt.
"Dresses like a pretty little dancing-boy, too. You'd think she'd have the decency to bind those breasts." It made no difference that binding her embarrassingly full bosom made it hurt, and that nothing could be done about her slender waist and round hips.She was at fault for the way she looked, as if she had deliberately conjured up her appearance. Everything was held against her. "Girl's a disgrace" the harsh voice continued. "Gives the freedmen ideas."
Xylina's blush deepened, then faded. What was the point? It wasn't as if this were the first time.
"Well," drawled another, a voice Xylina recognized as Panterra. She dared a glance aside, and saw that Panterra wore the uniform of the Queen's army, with the insignia of an officer. She'd bullied the younger girls of the neighborhood for years, and now was presumably bullying them in the Queen's army. "At least we won't have to put up with her little airs and graces for much longer. She goes to the arena tomorrow. Xantippe's scheduled it." There was a snicker. "Should be quite a show."
Xylina felt her blood turning to ice, and her muscles knotted even tighter. She was perfectly well aware of both the date and hour of her woman-trial, for she had scheduled it herself. But to hear about it on the street only reminded her, harshly, of what it meant.
"It's about damned time!" the first woman said acidly. "The little bitch's been flouncing around the city for three years now, putting it off, while decent girls her age did their trials and began acting like responsible citizens!"
The two of them moved off deeper into the bazaar, and if Panterra made any reply, it was lost in the general crowd noise. Xylina made her meager choices, ignoring the avid-and perhaps, slyly gloating-interest of the slave minding the cart. Her stomach knotted; her depression deepened. Especially after seeing how little her coins would buy. A tiny summer squash, a handful of insect-scarred damson plums; that was all she could afford.
She moved on, grateful that the only other purchase she needed to make was a small goat-cheese and a loaf of bread. No point in lingering to look at anything; she would spend her last coin on the bread. That, and the growing threat that she would be exiled as a coward if she didn't undergo the rite, had prompted her to finally schedule her woman-trial.
She had sustained herself as long as she could, but the past year-in fact, the past several years-had not been the life of ease Panterra's friend seemed to think it was. Oh, her ability to conjure was a lot more formidable than anyone guessed, and she could produce evanescent luxuries enough to sate anyone, but they were fleeting things, vanishing within a day, and conjured food nourished no one. It was, however, one reason why she was so slim-eking out her limited resources with conjurations.
She wondered why she had bothered. Mostly, it was habit, she supposed; the habits of the day overpowering the wish to end it all when the sun went down and the gloom of night added to her own gloom. Then, one dark gray morning several months ago, she had awakened to the realization that she had just turned sixteen, and very soon now the Queen's officers would be enforcing the law against avoiding the woman-trial. Her time was running out. Within weeks she would have to fight for her life, or be exiled for cowardice.
There was nothing left to sell but the tiny house itself, her bed, and a few household items. Not even clothing or utensils, tools or furniture; all that she conjured when she woke, and in the evening it was all gone, and she had to conjure it again. The possessions her mother had left her had long since been worn out, used up, or sold a little at a time.
The buzz of conversation around her increased, as she bought her cheese and bread, and the covert stares became open. Although the afternoon was hot, Xylina's skin felt chilled by all the hostile glances. And she was no little bewildered, holding back tears, which would have been unwomanly.
She didn't know more than a tenth of these people, if that, she thought. She tried to keep her eyes fixed in some vague middle-distance, with a lump in her throat, and her heart sinking to the soles of her sandals. Why were they all staring at her? Why did they all hate her? She hadn't done anything to them-
But she knew the answer. If she hadn't done anything, her mother surely had, simply by being obstinate enough to bear her child in defiance of the curse.
Never mind that the curse-if indeed, there really was a curse-was more a matter of myth and hearsay than recorded fact. Xylina's mother had gone to the Queen’s own library of chronicles, and had been unable to find anything but a vague hint about it. Something about a barbarian shaman who immolated himself in the midst of his articles of power, rather than endure capture by Xylina's great-great-grandmother, and had hurled his curse at her from the heart of the fire. The chronicler of the time had not thought much of this "curse" except as a kind of joke, proving the superstitious nature of the barbarian men. Everyone knew curses had no strength against a Mazonite. Her very ability to wield the magics of conjuration granted the Mazonite immunity from such petty nonsense as "curses."