"Yes, Xylina. And Adria knows it." He stared at her as if to drive his words into her heart, past all doubting. "Adria was once as innocent and naive as you-now she is as she is. I saw it happen to her, saw her mature into the Adria who now rules Mazonia and shares her power with no one, disposing of all contenders." He seemed remotely saddened by it all. "The same will happen to you, for you are only human, and to be human is to change."
Xylina felt numb; she did not know what to say. Ware seemed to sense this; he finally sat down beside her on the document-chest, and sighed.
"Let me show you how deeply deception runs in her, how she can and will do anything to preserve her power.I am an agent in her little drama; I set the fire that burned your house, under her orders, which as you know I cannot disobey."
She had thought she was beyond shock, but she was not beyond surprise. No wonder they could not imagine how the fire began, she thought, staring at him. No wonder they thought it must have been by magic. It was -but not human magic.
Ware continued. "When you found friends, Lycia among them, who might have caused trouble in the Council on your behalf, I was told to deceive you into incurring a debt you could not repay. When you default, she will have the pretext she needs to exile you or confine you to prison. Your threat to her will have been eliminated. You will either be gone, or completely under her control."
He raised one eyebrow. "It was my suggestion that there was another way to eliminate you as a threat without exiling you. The laws against congress with such as I have been softened in the last several years. While taking a demon as a lover no longer is punished by exile, there still must be a price. And since your deities do not approve of such things, such intercourse does render one-hmm-sacramentally unclean. I entered that service clause into the contract, and told the Queen that I might persuade you to accept what I offered. I sought to save you from exile at least, Xylina, for you know that exile is simply a longer road to death."
Xylina finally saw the nature of the double trap she was in; she whispered, appalled, "But if I were to-what you wish-to pay the debt, then I would be unclean, and no Mazonite who is unclean can take the throne-"
Ware smiled, as if at a clever child. "Precisely. The Queen's onus against you would be forever abated."
"But my oath-" she protested. "I swore-"
"Oaths can be interpreted in many ways," he said smoothly. "I swore an oath not to tell you that the Queen was your enemy. In just those words. And I did not. I gave you the information you needed to infer Adria's name and rank;you came to the conclusion, I did not tell you. My oath was not violated, and yet I also treated you with honor."
She shook her head, and her hair fell across her eyes like a curtain to cover her shame and embarrassment. But she was learning the ways of the world only too quickly this afternoon, and she knew that there was no curtain thick enough to hide her from what already was. And yet-there was one thing that she did not understand, and that was Ware himself. He seemed to think kindly of her; he had concocted this scheme to save her from exile, which as he pointed out, would have meant death. Yet what he wished of her was impossible, and he must know that! She knew very little of demons; the few stories she had heard painted them to be lust-driven monsters.
"Why are you telling me all this?" she asked, finally. "If you know anything about me, you must know that I will die rather than yield to your lust!"
But rather than react with anger as a human would, Ware merely smiled. "I know you would do nearly anything rather than 'yield to my lust,' as you put it," he said, "and I do not intend to put you in a position where you would be forced to die to avoid something you consider utterly repugnant. I do not desire your body alone, Xylina."
As she stared at him without comprehension, he sighed.
"Must I put it into simpler terms then?" he asked, and grimaced. "Very well then, although my nature revolts at saying these things so baldly. These feelings of yours are a part of what makes you so desirable, to me, at least. I know that you will never grant your body to me unless your heart and spirit have already been given. Unless and until you come to love me, Xylina. It is that love, that so-human, so-precious gift, that I truly desire."
She felt her chin dropping, and quickly snapped her mouth shut. For a moment, she thought she had gone mad. Then she thought he surely must be joking-or trying to trick her.
But one look at his face, so human, and yet so unhuman, convinced her that he was utterly serious.
"You have only to say that you will take my option, and the debt will be canceled, Xylina," he persisted. "I will not put pressure upon you to actually fulfill your promise. I have patience-" He paused to smile and chuckle. "I have all the patience of my kind. I can wait as long as it will take. I can wait for fifty years, if need be."
That complete absurdity, in the midst of all the rest of this, made her laugh a little hysterically. "Fifty years!" she exclaimed. "I'll be an ugly old woman by then!"
He merely smiled, as if he knew some kind of secret that she did not. The smile quelled her hysteria as effectively as a dousing of cold water.
"Very well; you will not accept my offer. In that case, I am still patient, and I can wait until you come to wish it of your own will." He shrugged, and she stared at him. "Until you come to care for me," he said carefully, as if he wished to be sure that she understood him completely, "it is obviously in my interest to help you to survive-and to keep your citizenship and reputation intact. Why should I wish you to be judged unclean and suffer the scorn of your fellow citizens? No, Xylina, I shall even give you a gift of my advice, now, with no conditions attached, because I believe that I can bring you to desire me as ardently as I desire you."
She simply blinked, and licked lips gone dry and hot with tension and anxiety. Things were moving too quickly for her. She was no longer in control of her own destiny. She could only hope to ride out this storm and see the end of it.
"Since I have not pledged the Queen that I would not help you, I shall advise you how to extract yourself from this situation," he said. "The Queen will not know what I have told you, if you do not yourself tell her. This is what I advise, and remember that I have known Adria for as long as she has been Queen, and that I watched her come to power."
She nodded. What did she have to lose? At the worst, his advice would be so poor it would be obvious.
"You must go to the Queen," he said, once again surprising her. "But you must not tell her that you know the identity of your enemy. It would be well if you did not even mention that you are aware that you have an enemy." He paused to make certain that she had heard and understood him. "You must tell her your difficulties; how they began with the fire, and how you contracted a debt only to discover that it was not to the honorable Mazonite woman that you thought, but to a demon. Tell her that I proposed you give yourself to me to have the debt canceled, and explain how utterly revolted you are by the prospect. Tell her of your oath, if you wish. Then beg that she find you some honorable way out of this dilemma."
In light of everything he had told her, this seemed the rankest of folly! Why would he tell her not to go to the Queen, then tell her now that she should?
"But the Queen will not help me!" she exclaimed, protesting. "You told me this yourself! She wants me to fail!"
But he merely half-closed his eyes in that peculiar, cat-like way of his, and smiled. "She wants you to be disqualified for the office of Queen," he corrected her, gently. "She has no personal onus against you. I have reminded her of that, over the past moon. I have reminded her that if you were her daughter, she would have been proud of all you have accomplished thus far, and she has in fact agreed with that. If you come to her not with a grievance, but with a plea for help, she will find it difficult to deny."