"As you can see," she said, bitterly, "I continue to be held, perfectly."
Her ankles looked beautiful, confined in the steel. Too, she had spoken the truth.
I then checked her collar, and the attachment points of the chain, both at the collar and at the double loop where it was fastened about eh axle.
"I am perfectly secured," she said, angrily.
"I am sorry if chain check distresses you," I said. "You comprehend its rationale, of course."
"Yes," she sasid, angrily.
"It is procedurally recommended by the caste of slavers," I said.
"I am not a slave," she said.
"Chains, I suspect, do not much care whether it is a noble free woman whom they confine or a mere slave."
"Are you satisfied?" she asked, insolently. "Do I pass chain check?"
"Yes," I said. "You are perfectly secured."
She looked frightened for a moment, and her tow hands closed on the chain dangling from her collar. She drew on it a moent, almost inadvertently, and felt the tug at the collar ring. Then she removed her hands from the chain and regarded me, again the free woman, again insolent.
"See what you have given me to wear," she said, angrily lifting the hem of the garment I had fashioned for her last night.
"I gathered you did not apporve of the htin white gown the bringands had put you in," I said. "Surely it had little purpose other than to display you well for sale to a slaver and, in its piteousness, to invite its casual removal."
"I am a rich woman," she said, angrily. "I have status and position. In Brundisuim I hold high station, being a member of the household of Belnar, her Ubar. I am highly intelligent. I am educated and refined. I have exquisite taste. I am accumstomed to the finest silks, the most expensive materials. I have my gowns, my robes, even my veils, especially made for me by high cloth workers!"
"I am not a high cloth worker," I said, "but I did make it especially for you."
"Your skills leave something to be desired," she said.
"You are probably right," I said.
"I wear only the latest fashions!" she said.
"Perhaps you could start a new fashion," I said.
"How dare you dress me as you have!" she said.
"At least it is opaque," I said.
"That is true," she said, ironically.
"And it is long," I said, "and thus protective of your modesty."
"I am certain that I am grateful," she said.
"And so what is your complaint?" I inquired. As she was a free woman, it seemed I should be concerned, at least to some extent, with any complaints which she might have. A slave, of course, in distinction from a free woman, is not permitted complaints. She must try to obtain things in other ways, for example, by humble requests while kneeling or lying on her belly before her master.
She cried out angrily and jerked in frustration at the chain on her neck.
"It conceals your figure, at least to some degree," I said.
"You could at least have given me a belt," she said.
"It will conceal your figure bettter, unbelted," I said.
"Please," she asid.
"No," I said.
She cried out in anger, in frustration.
"It is difficult to stand in close chains," she said.
"There," I said, not pleasantly, indicating a place beside the wheel, beside the wagon.
"Very well," she said, rising, and clutching the wagon wheel, and pulling herself up, and around it. "One woman has been beaten in this camp this morning. I have no desire to be the second." These words interested me. A woman behaves very differetnly toward a man whom she knows is capable of disciplining her and may, if it pleases him, do so, then toward one whom she knows she may treat with contempt and scorn with impunity.
"Turn," I said. "Now, turn back."
She clutched the wagon wheel to keep her balance, now again facing me.
"How can I be attractive in this?" she asked.
Last night, after bringing her to the camp, I had removed the offensive, light white gown from her body, that to which she, a free woman, so objected, that in which the brigands to her dismay had insolently clothed her, and, from something I found in the camp, prepared her new garment. I had cut a hole in the material for her head, and two more holes for her arms. I had then had her put her arms over her head and had pulled the garment down over her body. She was then in it. She was then stnading there, regarding me with rage. "Excellent," I had said. I had then chained her by the neck under the wagon and had gone to bed.
"I do not know," I said, "but you are managing."
"It is a sack!" she cried. "Only a sack!"
That was true. It was a long, yellow, closely woven Sa-Tarna sack. If there could have been any doubt about it such doubt would have been dispelled by the thick, black, stenciled lettering on the bag, giving a bold and unmistakable account of its earlier contents, together with their grind and grade, and the signs of the processing mill and its associated wholesaler.
"Am I to gather that you are dissatisfied?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, acidly.
"The yellow sets off your hair nicely," I said. Perhaps if I enslaved her, I would put her in yellow slave silk. She was a beautiful woman.
"This makes me look ridiculous," she said.
"It is not unknown for free teen-age girls of poor families, in rural areas, to wear such garment," I said. Also, of course, it was not unknown for such girls to put themselves in the way of salvers, that they might be caught, and carried to cities, to be sold. Too often, however, it seemed they were merely sold to peasants in distant villages as sex and work slaves.
"I am not the simple, dirty, barefoot, unkempt, scrawny teen-age daughter of some destitute peasaant in ssome out-of-the-way place," she said. "I am the Lady Yanina of Brundisium!"
"You are barefoot," I said. Prisoners, as well as slaves, are often kept that way on Gor.
"This garment makes me look ridiculous," she said.
"You might look a bit silly," I siad, "but you do not look all the ridiculous. Indeed, I have never seen anyone wear a Sa-Tarna sack better."
"Thank you," she said, in fury.
"You're welcome," I said.
"Give me back the white gown," she said, "that in which the brigands put me!" she said. "I prefer that!"
"That garment," I remeinded her, "is strikingly attrative. It excitingly sets off your beauty. No free owman would consider wearing such a garment unless she was implicitly begging, pleading, for a collar. The brigands doubtless put you in it because it seemed an appropriate garment for a woman they were preparing for a full enslavement."
"I prefer it," she said, angrily.
"Are you a slave?" I asked.
"No!" she said.
"Why, then, would you wish to wear it?" I asked.
"It is pretty," she said, defensively.
I smiled. It was actually tauntingly, brazenly sensuous. "why would you wish to wear womething pretty?" I asked.
"To look nice," she said.
"Why do you wish to look nice?" I asked.
"I think better of myself then," she said.
"How do you know when something is pretty?" I asked.
"I just see that it is pretty," she said, puzzled.
"Think more deeply," I said.
"when it makes me attracitive," she said. "Then it is pretty."
"It seems then that the test for prettiness is the enhancement of your appearance, and this is understood in terms of increasing your attractiveness."