She looked at me. "Very good," I said, nodding.
"Permit me to confess my love for you," she called. "Permit me, too, the dignity, as I am a free woman, of using your name in my doing so, before perhaps, if it pleases you, you impose upon me the discipline of a slave."
I nodded.
"I love you, Bosk of Port Kar," she cried. "I love you!
There was silence.
"What is wrong?" she whispered to me.
I shrugged. "Perhaps he intends to make you wait a moment or two," I said.
She make a small movement of impatience.
I frowned.
She then again composed herself, seductively. Again she extended her hand. "I lie here panting with passion," she called, "as submitted as a slave."
Many of the things which she had said, incidentally, were not different from the genuine, heartfelt declarations of women in love, particularly those so much in love that they find themselves, in effect, the slaves of masters. One the other hand, of course, the Lady Yanina was acting. It is not difficult for a skilled master, incidentally, to discriminate between such declarations which are genuine and those which are not, usually in virtue of incontrovertible body clues. The lying female is then punished. Soon she learns that her passion must be genuine. She then sees to it, with all the consequences, physical, psychological and emotional, attendant upon it, consequences which, at first, are sometimes found horrifying or disturbing but which, ultimately, because of their relation to her depth nature, when she surrenders to this, are found joyfully and gloriously fulfilling. She is then herself, fully.
"Hurry to me, Bosk of Port Kar!" she cried. "I desire your touch! I desire to serve you! I beg to please you! I plead to please you! Take pity on me! Do not torture me so! Do not make me wait longer! Hurry to me, Bosk of Port Kar, my lover, my master!"
"Good," I said.
"Enter my alcove!" she cried. "I am yours!"
I entered the alcove. I did not have a great deal of time.
"Brinlar," she cried, drawing her legs under her, "what are you doing!"
"What do you mean, 'what am I doing!?" I asked.
"Where is Bosk of Port Kar?" she asked.
"He is here," I said.
"Where?" she asked.
"Here," I said, jerking my thumb toward my chest. "I am he."
"Do not be absurd!" she said.
"Kneel," I said.
"Is this some form of mad joke, Brinlar?" she asked. "Have you taken leave of your senses?"
"I believe you received a command," I said.
"Men!" she cried, leaping to her feet. "Men! Men!"
I let her run to the threshold of the alcove, where the shackle on her left ankle held her up short. She looked wildly out into the main hall. From where she stood, at the curtains, in the light, and shadows, of the small lamp on the table, she could see the slumped, fallen, senseless figures of her guards.
"Tassa powder," I explained. "It was your own. I believe you are familiar with its effects."
I then took her by the upper arms and hurled her back into the alcove, with a rattle of chain, onto the furs.
She scrambled about, and looked at me, wildly. "You are not Bosk of Port Kar!" she cried. "You cannot be Bosk of Port Kar!"
"I am Bosk of Port Kar," I assured her.
"You have gone mad, Brinlar!" she cried. "This is an outrage! Release me!"
I smiled.
"Sleen! Sleen!" she wept.
"You are a female," I said, "and you are in slave silk, and chained. I suggest you keep a respectful tongue in your head, unless you wish to have it removed."
She looked at me, frightened.
"Do you recall having received a command earlier?" I asked.
She knelt.
"How does it feel to be kneeling before a man?" I asked.
She clenched her fists.
"You are wearing slave silk," I said.
"Yes," she said.
"Remove it," I said.
"No," she said.
I reached to the wall and took a slave whip from its hook. Such things are common in the alcoves of inns and taverns on Gor. They help a girl be mindful of her duties.
"Now," I said.
` She jerked the silk angrily from her body.
"You are quite beautiful," I said, "for a free woman."
She tossed her head, angrily. "Thank you," she said.
"Kiss the whip," I said.
"Never!" she said.
"You will kiss it now, or after you have felt it," I said. "It does not matter to me."
"I will kiss it," she said angrily.
"More lingeringly," I said, "and lick it, as well."
She complied.
"Now, kiss it again," I said.
She complied.
"Now say, 'I have licked and kissed the whip of a man, " I said.
"I have licked and kiss the whip of a man!" she said. "Now what are you going to do with me?"
I do not have much time," I said.
"I do not understand," she said.
"Turn about," I said, "and lean forward, resting on the sides of your forearms."
"No!" she cried.
"Assume the position, as instructed," I said.
"No!" she protested.
I lifted the whip.
She complied.
A few moments later, having freed her ankle from the shackle, I dragged her by her right arm out of the alcove, to the side of the table about which her men lay sprawled. Her lovely dark hair was down about her face. I forced her down on her knees, under the table. I put her over the ring, in the midst of the chains.I clasped the ankle rings about her ankles, locking them. I thrust the short, attached chain, attached to the ankle-ring chain at one end, and the wrist-ring chain at the other, and the wrist rings, on their short chain, between her legs and through the sturdy floor ring. I then, close to the floor, locked her wrists snugly into the wrist rings. She was now held helplessly in place beneath the table. "In such a fashion," I told her, "the men of Torvaldsland sometimes secure their bond-maids. Thus they have them at hand and may use them, to some extent, to please them under the table. In this fashion, similarly, it is easy to feed them by hand and throw them scraps of meat. It is a useful arrangement in their training and, too, even a skilled, experienced girl, even one who is highly esteemed, is sometimes confined so, when it pleases the master to do so."
Her eyes were glazed. Her hair was down before her face. She pulled at the chains, weakly.
"But perhaps you are not interested in the lore of Torvaldsland," I said.
"What you did to me," she said.
"Perhaps you are hungry," I said.
She looked at me, angrily. She moved her head to the side, trying to free her face of hair. I took her hair and, arranging it, put it back over her shoulders. "You are quite beautiful in chins," I said. Perhaps you should be a slave."
She did not respond.
"You look well chained under a table," I said.
"Thank you," she said, angrily.
I took a piece of meat from the table, one of the viands I had brought from the camp, a small tidbit of roast tarsk.
I held it out to her.
"No," she said.
"Eat," I said.
Her wrists pulled upward, against the wrist rings, but her hands, chained as they were, could lift but a few inches from the floor. "I cannot reach it," she said.
"I am not a patient man," I said.
"I am a free woman!" she said.
"I am well aware of that," I said. "If you were a slave, you would probably have received at least two beatings by now."
She extended her head.
"Excellent, Lady Yanina," I said. "You take food well on your knees, from a man's hand."
Then next few pieces of meat I scattered on the tiles. She must take them without touching them with her hands. While she was doing this I disarmed the guards, slinging their weapons about my shoulder.