"While," said Tolnar, "another woman, suitably coached, and veiled, would take your place in the Central Cylinder. From the point of view of the public, things would be much the same."
"Bring Appanius here!" she cried. "I know him. I can speak with him. I can make him see, I assure you, that is to his advantage! This is, all some preposterous mistake. Free me! This is all some terrible misunderstanding! Bring Appanius here! I demand it!"
"But what has Appanius to do with this?" asked Tolnar.
"I do not understand," said the woman.
Tolnar regarded her.
"He has everything to do with it," she said. "He is Milo's master!"
"No," said Tolnar.
The prisoner turned her head about, not easily, in the net. "Appanius is your master!" she said to Milo.
"No," he said.
"Yes!" she cried. "He is your master. He is also the master of that short-haired slut!"
"No!" said Lavinia.
"You did not call me "Mistress'," Said the prisoner.
"Why should I" asked Lavinia.
"It is true that you belong to the master of Milo," said Tolnar, "But it is false that the master of Milo is Appanius."
"To whom, then, do I belong?" she asked, aghast.
"Let the papers be prepared, and the measurements, and prints, taken," said Tolnar.
"Yes, Tolnar," said Venlisius.
"Papers! Measurements! Prints!" she protested.
"I think you can understand," said Tolnar, "that in a case such as this, such documentation, guarantees and precautions are not out of order."
"No! No!" she cried.
Tolnar and Venlisius put their wands of office to the side and went to the back room, to obtain the necessary papers and materials.
"You!" cried the prisoner, looking at Marcus. "It is then you to whom I belong!" He merely regarded her.
"Who are you?" she cried.
"It does not matter," he said.
"I will buy my freedom!" she said. "I will give you a thousand pieces of gold! Two thousand! Ten thousand! Name your price!"
"But you have nothing," he said. "No more than a kaiila, or sleen."
"Contact Seremides!" she said. "Contact Myron, polemarkos of Temos! They will arrange my ransom."
"Ransom or price?" asked Marcus.
"Price!" she said, angrily.
"But you are not, as of this moment, for sale," he said.
"Sleen!" she wept. She struggled but I, behind her, kept her well in place. At this point Tolnar and Venlisius reentered the room and, in a few moments, were in the process of filling out the papers. These included an extremely complete description of the woman, exact even to details such as the structure of her ear lobes. Tolnar then, with a graduated tape, reaching in and about the net, and moving the woman as necessary, took a large number of measurements, these being recorded by Venlisius. Additional measurements were taken with other instruments, such as a caliper. With these were recorded such data as the width and length of fingers and toes, the width of her heels, the lovely tiny distance between her nostrils, and so on. The result of this examination, of course, was to produce a network of date which, to a statistical certainty, far beyond the requirements of law, would be unique to a given female. Then, one hand at a time, pulled a bit from the net, then reinserted in it, her fingerprints were taken. Following this, her toeprints were taken. Then, the woman shaken, tears on the furs, was again fully within the net, on her belly. Her fingers and toes were dark with ink, from the taking of the prints. I had taken care, behind her, holding her, and such, to see that she had not seen me.
"You will never get me out of the city!" she said, suddenly, to Marcus.
"Do you really think it would be difficult," he asked her, "gagged, hooded, perhaps in a slave sack?"
"Already the alarm may be out for me!" she said to him.
"I have not heard the alarm bars," he said.
"Do not be naA?ve," she said. "Even now, a secret alarm, a silent alarm, may be out. Even now guardsmen may be turning Ar upside down, looking for me."
"If you have planned your putative dalliance as well as you would have led us to believe," he said, "I doubt that you have even been missed. Indeed, perhaps you will not be missed until morning!"
She moaned.
"Thus, we would have plenty of time to get you out of the city, as merely another slave. If we have a tarn waiting, you could be a hundred pasangs from here by nightfall, in any direction, and by morning, with a new tarn, five hundred pasangs from there, in any direction, and in another day, who knows?" She lifted her head with difficulty in the net, to look at him. His face was stern. She put down her head, frightened, lying on her left cheek.
"But perhaps," said he, "we have no intention of taking you from the city."
"What?" she said, frightened, lifting her head again, with difficulty regarding him. Her eyes went to the dagger at his belt. His fingers were upon it. "No!" she said. "Surely you are not assassins!"
He merely looked at her, his hands on the hilt of the dagger.
"Surely you do not intend to kill me!" she cried.
He regarded her, not speaking.
"Do not kill me!" she wept. It was not irrational on her part, of course, to fear an assassination plot. Even if she believed herself generally popular within the city, perhaps even much loved within it, she would realize that these sentiments might not be universal. For example, the increasing resistance to Cosian rule in the city, the growing insurgency, the actions of the Delta Brigade, would surely have given her cause for apprehension, if not genuine alarm. "Surely," she said, "I have not become a slave, simply to be slain?" He did not speak.
"Do not kill me!" she begged. It must have been painful for her to hold her head up, as she was, on her belly, in the furs, in the net, to look at Marcus. He did not speak.
"Please do not kill me," she wept, "a€”Master!"
"I am not your master," he said.
She looked at him, wildly. "Who, then," she said, "is my master?"
"I am," I said.
I seized her by the upper arms, from behind, and half lifting her, pulled her up, and back, to her knees, tangled in the net. She turned wildly in the net, to see me over her right shoulder, and our eyes met, and she recognized me, and she gasped, and half cried out, and then I had to hold her on her knees, as she had fainted. I lowered her to the furs. I then threw the bracelets with the linked shackles on the furs to her left. I then removed her, carefully, from the net. Then, in a moment, she was in the bracelets, back-braceleted, with her ankles, shackled, pulled up, and back, attached by a short chain to the linkage of the bracelets.
"I shall sign the papers," I said to Tolnar.
"And I shall stamp, and certify them," he said.
27 We Take Our Leave
"Extend your left wrist," I said to Milo.
He did so, and I unlocked the silver slave bracelet there, and handed it to him, with the key.
The new slave, the dark-haired, olive-skinned beauty who had but recently been the Ubara of Ar, was still unconscious. I had removed her from the couch and put her on the floor, on the heavy, flat stones, on her side, some feet to the left of the couch, as one faced it, from the foot, her wrists behind her, braceleted, chained to her ankles, her neck fastened by a short chain to a recessed slave ring. Near her, but not yet fixed upon her, were the makings of a gag.
"I do not understand," said Milo.
"It is silver," I said. "Perhaps you can sell it."
"I do not understand," he said.
"And these papers," I said, "are pertinent to you. They are all in order. I had Tolnar and Venlisius prepare them, before they left."
"Papers, Master?" he asked.
"You can read?" I asked.
"Yes, Master," he said.
"Do not call me "Master'," I said.
"Master?" he asked.