She sobbed.
"Continue your work," I told her.
"Yes, Jason," she said.
I watched her.
"You are a clever man, Jason," she said. "I had thought we would have been captured. Yet you saved us."
"No," she had cried, "it is madness. No!" But I had thrown her to her side on the sand of the incubation shed and freed her wrists from before her body. I had then turned her to her belly and rebound her wrists behind her back and, pulling up her ankles and crossing them, lashed them to her wrists. I had then taken her by the arms and thrown her, in a kneeling position, onto the blackened sticks and gray ashes of the flame ditch. I had then kicked sand from the sides of the ditch about her. I jerked her head back as she cried out in misery. I kicked and scooped sand about her until only her eyes, and her nose and mouth, were exposed. I had then heard men pounding at the trap door leading into the. incubation shed. I had flung shut its bolt.
"Open this door!" I heard.
I hurried across the shed and kicked open the outer door to the shed. I scuffed away my tracks back to the flame ditch. I heard pounding at the trap door, men straining beneath it. I looked down at the Lady Florence and saw her terrified eyes. Then I hurled a tharlarion blanket over her. Then I kicked and dug into the sand near her and, as the trap door splintered up, drew the tharlarion blanket over my head.
My left hand clutched her hair, tightly. If she moved so much as a muscle I would know it, and she, too, would know that I would know it. The short sword was grasped in my right hand. The point of it, ever so slightly, was entered into her back. We heard several men come up the ramp through the trap door. We heard them talking, casting about.
"This way," had said one of them, and they had exited through the outer door.
We had remained hidden in the sand for several Ahn, and probably long after the brigands had departed. About the seventeenth Ahn I had eased myself from the sand and reconnoitered. The brigands, indeed, had taken their departure, bringing their tarns to flight, their loot sacks bulging and, tied helplessly at their saddle rings, lovely, naked slaves. I had drawn the Lady Florence from the sand.
"Release me," she had demanded but then had gasped, lying on her back, the point of my sword thrust into her belly. "Forgive me, Jason," she begged.
"Be silent now," I said, "or I will fill your mouth with sand."
"Yes, Jason," she had whispered.
I had then left her on her back, her knees drawn up, tied, in the incubation shed, while I had investigated certain buildings and sheds, gathering such supplies as I thought I might wish.
"Does it amuse you, Jason," she asked, "that I am cleaning your stall?"
"Are you finished?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. She was beautiful, on her knees, in the light of the small lantern, it hanging from an outjutting perpendicular fastened to one of the stall posts.
"Empty the water," I said. "Rinse and dry the bucket. Rinse the brush. Then put these articles back where you found them."
I watched her as she did these things. In a few moments she stood again before me. "I have done as you ordered," she said.
"Put now fresh, clean straw in the stall," I said.
I watched her.
Then she was standing in the stall, the clean, fresh straw to her knees.
"I have done as you have ordered," she said. "What do you want of me now?"
"I was successful many times in the bouts," I said.
"That is known to me, Jason," she said.
"Put it on," I told her, throw the rag against her flesh. She caught it, against her body, and took it in her hands, looking at it in disbelief. I had brought it from one of the supply sheds.
"Never!" she whispered intensely. "I am a free woman!"
I shook out the coils of the slave whip.
"No!" she said. Then, swiftly, she drew over her head and body the brief Ta-Teera. She backed away from me, toward the back of the stall. She tried to pull down the hem of the garment, frightened. It was cut at the sides. Then, frightened, she stood facing me, her back about a foot from the back of the stall.
"Why have you done this to me?" she asked.
The Lady Florence, my former mistress, wore now the rag of a stable slut.
"How do you like The garment?" I asked.
"Please give me something to wear." she begged.
"You have something to wear," I pointed out.
She moaned.
"How does the garment make you feel?" I asked.
"Please, Jason," she begged.
"Feel it on your body," I told her, "its texture, its meaning, how it touches you."
"Jason," she protested.
"Close your eyes," I told her. "Pay close attention to your sensations, to the fabric, its brevity, its snugness, to the feel of it on your body, to the feel, too, of where it is not on your body, to what, too, it proclaims about the woman who wears it."
She shuddered, her eyes closed. "Would you have whipped me?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
She shuddered, and opened her eyes.
"How does such a garment make you feel?" I asked.
"It is the first time I have ever worn such a garment," she whispered.
"How does it make you feel?" I asked.
"Vulnerable!" she said. "Helpless!"
"And?" I asked.
"Do not make me speak," she begged.
"Speak," I said.
Her voice became a whisper. "And warm, and receptive," she said.
I smiled. That is a common feature of many female slave garments, most of which are brief and open at the bottom. It has been discovered that a woman who has been placed in such a garment can usually be brought to a succession of orgasms much more quickly than one who has been more traditionally clothed. Perhaps that is why masters often put their slave girls in such garments. Two other features of such garments, of course, are that they teach the woman who wears them that she is a slave and that they expose her beauty brazenly and deliciously to the vision of masters.
"What are you doing to do with me, Jason?" she asked. "No!" she wept. "Not that! Please, no!"
"I won many bouts for which I was not adequately rewarded," I said.
"Do not put the collar on me," she begged. "Please, no!"
She was backed against the rear of the stall. I stood quite close to her. I encircled her neck with the collar, but I did not yet close it.
"I am sorry!" she wept. "Please, Jason, do not close the collar!"
"Do you remember Telitsia?" I asked.
"Do not close the collar," she begged.
"Do you remember Telitsia?" I asked.
"Yes, Jason," she said.
"She pleased me," I said. "You sold her."
"No!" she wept, as the collar snapped shut about her throat. Then I threw her to my feet. Instantly I crouched beside her and, with the chain and ring in the stall, snapping the chain lock about the ring on her collar, fastened her in place. I then stood up. She, on her knees, tears in her eyes, trembling, her small hands on the chain depending now from her collar. looked up at me. "I am the Lady Florence," she said, disbelievingly. "You have chained me at your feet as a stable slut."
"I won many bouts for which I was not adequately rewarded," I said. "Too, I was fond of Telitsia, whom you sold."
"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.
"I am going to see that you yourself serve me well the pleasures which you denied me from others."
"You are going to make me stand proxy for the services of Telitsia and others?" she asked.
"Precisely," I told her.
"I cannot do that," she said. "I am free."
I crouched then beside her and thrust her back in the straw. I thrust the scrap of a slave rag she wore up over her hips. "I would have to serve you as a slave," she said, horrified.
"You will," I told her, "and many times."
She lay in my arms.
"You have treated me these many times as a slave," she chided.