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"But-" Xylina began. She did not know what she was going to say, but she got no chance to interrupt.
For all that her voice was soft and shy, when Hypolyta spoke of business, she was impossible to stop.
She waved her hand and Xylina held her peace. Clearly, Hypolyta had some ideas of her own.
"If, however, I were to give you a loan of, say, one hundred coronets, you would be able to discharge
your debt, have a new house built, and hire more slaves to protect yourself and to develop a proper
estate of your own." Hypolyta smiled, a smile of maternal sweetness and pardonable pride. "I can
recommend someone who will do the work cheaply and well. You will have a plain house, but it will be
a good one. It will cost you much less to build on your own land than to buy another house, and you will
be able to tailor it to the type of business you wish to pursue."
"Business?" Xylina said faintly.
"Oh, yes. You should capitalize on that magnificent slave of yours, but not by such paltry means as
entertaining at gatherings!" She smiled, making the mild rebuke even milder. "Surely there are many
things that boy could teach others, and you should make use of that while he is still notorious for
defeating all those ruffians. And you should have your new home built to take care of that. For instance,
if you intended to train fighters for the arena, you could have the back garden cleared and the area
prepared instead as a training arena."
At Xylina's wince, which she could not quite conceal, Hypolyta added hastily, "I only offer that as a
supposition. You could just as easily train slaves to become needle-workers, bakers, or laundry-handlers.
Or-surely that slave could train others to repel attackers; with two attacks upon you in the last several
days, many older women, no longer able to defend themselves, are becoming nervous about their
security. The trade in trained slaves is a good one, and it is one in which I made my fortune."
Xylina looked askance at her. She could not imagine this gentle woman training gladiators. "What did
you train your slaves as?"
"Skilled gardeners," was the surprising reply. Or-in view of the way the grounds looked, perhaps she
should have anticipated it. "It is more of an art than most realize- until they turn their expensive
pleasure-gardens over to the hands of men who cannot tell a rare seedling from a weed. I supply all of
the most highly trained gardeners in the country to the wealthy women of Mazonia. My slaves are
experts and artists, and when they leave my hands, there is nothing they do not know about growing
things."
Xylina smiled, relieved. She did not think she would have been able to accept a loan from a woman who
had made the money supplying trained gladiators to the arena. It would have felt too much as if she were
betraying Faro by accepting gold tainted with blood. Nor could she even guess how he would have
reacted to the discovery.
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The notion of training slaves as unarmed bodyguards was a good one, though, provided Faro could be
coaxed to do something that would ultimately protect women he hated.
"What would the conditions of this loan be?" Xylina asked cautiously. "How soon would I be expected
to repay it, and what kind of payments would they be? How much would the loan cost me?"
At once, Hypolyta became a cool, calculating businesswoman. The transformation was quite
remarkable. She sat a little straighter, and while her voice was no less hypnotic, it was a little less warm.
"Payment would be in equal amounts, over a four-year period," she replied. "The first payment would be
due one year from now, and it would be in the sum of forty-five crowns."
Xylina sighed. That would mean that she would be paying an extra twenty crowns a year for the
privilege of borrowing the money-and yet, what other choice did she have? There was no one else
willing to loan it to her-certainly no one willing to give it to her. It was either this, or exile, or so it
seemed to her.
On the whole, paying eighty crowns to save herself from exile was not a bad bargain.
Was there any other way she could borrow less and save herself some of that fee?
"That seems honorable and reasonable to me," she responded, after a long moment of weighing her
options and coming up with no other plan that was even remotely as good. Hypolyta was right; without
more money to help her replace what was gone, she would be no better off. She could not remain Lycia's
guest forever.
"Very well," the older woman said, with another sweet and matronly smile. "I will call my manservant,
and we will draw up the contract."
Lycia's reaction was elation, when Xylina returned with her gold. It was carried by the slave, armed to
the teeth and with a special permit that allowed him to be so. Lycia's rugged face lit up when she saw the
gold, and she congratulated Xylina on her good fortune, with no hint of ill-feeling. She had not had any
luck at all in finding someone to loan Xylina the needed money to discharge her debt. Those of her
friends who were sympathetic did not have nearly that much to simply loan away. Those women she
knew who had that kind of capital were no more than acquaintances, and they were not at all inclined to
loan gold to a strange child, particularly one who seemed to attract bad fortune. Her generous nature
made her happy for her new young friend.
"I've never heard of Hypolyta directly, but I've heard of her slaves," she assured Xylina. "They're quite
famous actually; I just never knew where they came from. Many of them are eventually freed, but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]