I stood straighter.
"Why did you make me drink unsweetened slave wine?" I asked.
He looked me over, casually, not hurrying, from my head to my toes, and then, slowly, back.
"It was fitting," he said.
I gasped. The arrogance of himl
"What do you have therel" I said.
He had removed a pair of light bracelets, joined by about five inches of light chain, from his pouch.
"Slave bracelets," be said. "Turn around, facing the door, your hands behind your back."
Almost numbly I did so. I heard him approach me. Then he stood behind me, quietly, not moving. Perhaps be was looking at me. Then, suddenly, I felt the two bracelets flung about my wrists, striking them, encircling them and snapping shut.
I was suddenly very frightened.
I tried, tentatively, behind my back, to separate my bands.
They could move only to the ends of their short chain.
"You are braceleted," he said.
I leaned against the door, terrified, almost fainting, using it for support. I was breathing deeply. My heart was pounding.
I was braceletedl He was busying himself elsewhere in the room. I do not think he noted my condition.
How helpless I felt, braceleted.
In a moment he had returned to my vicinity, by the door. I now straightened my body. I was struggling to regain my composure.
"You braceleted me easily," I observed, lightly.
It, is not hard to bracelet a woman," he said.
It had been done so casually, so expertly, with apparently so little thought. Too, it had seemed to me to happen very suddenly, very decisively. In one instant I was free, and in the next I was held helplessly, the prisoner of bands and a chain. I was still shaken, perhaps even visibly so, with the enormity, of what had been done to me. I had been made helpless.
"You have braceleted other women, haven't you?" I askedL He had done it so easily, so nonchalantly.
"Yes," he said. I hated those other women. I tried again to separate my wrists. I could not do so, of course. How short, how strong, seemed the chain that held them in proximity to one another. Suddenly I felt very weak. I, like the other women before me, perhaps women who were mere slaveas, wore the steel of Drusus Rencius.
"We shall leave now," he said.
"Yes, Master," I said. "Oh!" I said. "I did not mean that Forgive me! It slipped out. I did not mean it."
"Do not worry about it," he said. "It is difficult for a woman clad as you are, and braceleted, not to think of a man as her master."
"Thank you, Drusus," I said. "You are very kind. Such a mistake, as you might imagine, is very embarrassing."
"Doubtless," he granted me, indulgently.
I wondered what it would be like to be owned, and to have to call a man "Master." But, of course, owned, it would be quite suitable and proper for one to do so, for he would be, in fact, in such a situation, one's Master. My mind was racing. How could it be that I had called Drusus Rencius "Master"? How inadvertently, how naturally, it had slipped out. I wondered if I were actually a proud, free woman, as I thought, or was something else, perhaps only a slave. "If Lady Sheila is ready," he said, "perhaps we should leave now." I put up my head.
I reminded myself that I was not really, in a sense, braceleted. Oh, I wore the steel. It was locked on me, and well, but I was the Tatrix of Corcyrus. I could order Drusus Rencius to remove it from me at any moment I wished, and he would. Thus, in that sense, it was not truly on me. I did shudder, for a moment, at the thought of what it would be to be truly in such bonds, but then I hastily dismissed such fearful and unsettling thoughts from my mind.
"Lady Sheila?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Let us go."
He then opened the door and, holding me by the left arm, conducted me from the room.
8 I Have Been in the House of Kliomenes; The Room in the Inn of Lysias; War
"Perhaps now," said Drusus Rencius, "you have a better idea of the nature of the pens."
I could not even answer him, accompanying him back through the alleys to the inn of Lysias. I feared that my bead might begin to swirl, that I might lose consciousness. I was scarcely aware of my surroundings, of where I was or what I was doing, or even of my feet touching the ground. I felt ligbt-headed. I was trembling. I was filled with wild, turbulent emotions I would never have believed that women could be subjected to such domination. I hoped that Drusus Rencius could not smell my arousal.
"Leading position," said Drusus Rencius.
I put my head down to his waist and he fastened his left hand in my hair. "Tal, Citizen," said Drusus Rencius to the fellow passing us in the Hall. He soon released my hair and I again straightened up. I was following him, generally, a little behind and on his left. It seemed appropriate that I, in my disguise, might seem to heel him, as though I might be a mere slave. It seemed to me that he had held my hair more tightly than be had needed to, when we had passed the stranger. I still wore the slave bracelets. He had declined to remove them when we had left the house of Kliomenes. In his steel, heeling him, occasionally being put into leading position by him, I felt much in his power. "Did you enjoy the pens?" asked Drusus.
"Please do not make me speak," I whimpered. I was terribly conscious of the heat in my body, and the absence of a nether closure in my garment. Had Drusus Rencius so much as snapped his fingers I think I might have thrown myself to my back in the alley, begging for his touch.
"This is the house of Kliomenes," had said Drusus Rencius, climbing the stairs to the narrow, heavy iron portal, recessed some feet back, at the end of a narrow tunnel, in the wall. It was on the street of Milo. Above the entrance to the tunnel, and on its right, in the wall, hanging from an iron projection, was a narrow, blue-and-yellow banner. I followed Drusus Rencius carefully, that I might not fall. "This is one of the better, and more respectable of the slave houses in Corcyrus," he said. "That is one of the reasons that I have selected it for your visit, that your sensibilities, those of a free woman, not be excessively offended."
"I see," I said.
"On the other hand, do not expect it to compromise overly much with its women. Such would be a violation of the ethics of the slavers. Its women, you will find, all things considered, are held rather close to the standards of slave perfection."
"I see," I said.
He beckoned and I joined him in the narrow tunnel leading to the door. I regarded the iron door, apprehensively.
"There are truly slaves in there?" I asked.
"Of course," he said. "If you enter, you will be, probably, the only free woman in the house, unless there is a new girl in there, in chains, awaiting, say, the iron and the collar."
"Oh," I said.
"Do you wish to enter?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"You are a woman, and it is the house of a slaver," he said.
"I will enter," I said.
He then struck on the iron door. He then thrust me in front of him, so that I, in the tunnel, was between him and the door.
There was a small, rectangular, "iron observation panel, now shut, in the door. I felt the stone of the tunnel beneath my feet, the steel holding my wrists helplessly behind me.
The observation panel slid back. I saw eyes looking at me, and then, beyond me, at Drusus Rencius.
The panel slid shut with a click.
I wanted to turn and run. I could not do so, of course, because of the walls of the tunnel, and Drusus Rencius behind me.
"They are expecting us," said Drusus Rencius, sensing my sudden terror. I heard chains and bars behind the door, bolts being freed.
Then the door swung open. "Enter," said a pleasant enough looking young man in the threshold. I entered, followed by Drusus. Beside the young man there was a guard, too, within. I heard the door, with its various devices, being refastened behind me. We were in a tiny torchlit room. Only a few feet before us was another door, also iron, similar to the outside door.