"To be perfectly honest with you, Master," she said, "for I am your slave and no longer dare lie to you, I could not see it before either."
"No!" cried Boots.
"Yes," she said, putting down her head, "it is true."
"It is perfectly fitting then," he said, "Slave, that you are now in your collar."
"Yes, Master," she said.
"Even though you are a slave, yet still do you desire the wondrous veil?" he asked.
"Yes, Master!" she said. "Now," she said to the audience, "I am at last to have my way. You see, in the end, it is I who win. What does it matter that I am a slave? I am to obtain the wondrous veil."
Boots seemed to be folding up the veil, neatly.
"How clever I am," said the Brigella to the audience. "My patience is now to be rewarded. How simple are men! How easy it is to obtain my way with the wiles of a slave! I did not know that before. The wondrous veil is now to be mine! Thus it is that I, with my beauty, can conquer men!"
"Here," said Boots.
She, still on her knees, rising from her heels, reached eagerly for the veil. "Oh!" she cried, in disappointment, for Boots, at the last moment, had jerked it back.
"I forgot," said Boots.
"What is wrong?" she asked.
"I cannot give you the veil," he said.
"Why not?" she wailed.
"You are a slave," said Boots. "You can own nothing. It is you who are owned."
"Oh!" she cried, in misery.
"Back on your heels," he snapped. "Spread your knees! Hands on thighs! Back straight! Chin up!"
"Oh, oh," she moaned, but swiftly complied. "He reminds me well that I am a slave," she said to the audience. "I had thought to conquer men but instead I find that it is I who am h elpless, that it is I who am conquered, and totally."
At this moment Chino and Lecchio reappeared, now with their peddler's packs.
"Beware, Master," cried the girl. "The feed hunters have returned!"
"Greetings, Boys," said Boots.
"Greetings," said Chino and Lecchio to Boots.
"Do you know these men, Master?" asked the girl, not daring to rise from her knees.
"I mistook you for feed hunters earlier," said Boots to the new arrivals. "I see now that you are my old buddies, with whom I have been traveling these roads for weeks."
"The collar is locked on my neck!" said the girl to the audience, struggling with the collar. "It is truly on me. I cannot remove it!"
"A pretty vulo," said Chino, scrutinizing the girl.
"A juicy pudding," said Lecchio.
"I am now only a slave!" cried the girl to the audience.
"I am now going to toss the wondrous veil up into the air," said Boots. "Let it blow away on the winds, traveling to I know not where." He then tossed it up, lightly, into the air.
"Master!" protested the girl.
"There it goes!" said Boots.
"Master!" said the girl.
"It was in such a fashion that I received it," said Boots. "Surely it is only right that I should let it fly away, back into the clouds and winds, perhaps even back to Anango."
"But why would you let it go?" asked the girl, in misery.
"It has served its purpose," said Boots.
"Its purpose?" asked the girl.
"yes," said Boots. "It has served to catch me a pretty, greedy little slave, on who by tomorrow morning will be in no doubt as to the nature of her many utilization."
"Surely you have not tricked me!" she cried.
"Shoulder my pack," said Boots.
"And mine," said Chino.
"And mine," said Lecchio.
The girl then, with great difficulty, struggling, bending under the weight, staggering, shouldered the three packs.
"Hurry, lazy girl!" called Boots, leaving the stage with Chino and Lecchio. "I did not know we had any sleen," Lecchio was saying to Chino. "Where could they be?"
"I wonder if I have been tricked," said the girl to the audience. There was much laughter. "In any event," she said, "I am now in the collar and that is all there is for it!"
"Hurry, hurry, lazy girl!" called Boots from off-stage.
"I must go now," said the girl. "Oh, these packs are heavy. But I must bear them as best I can. I am a slave now, and if I am not pleasing, I will be beaten!"
She then turned about and, staggering under the weight of the packs, left the stage.
In a moment Boots, smiling, reappeared on the stage, with Chino and Lecchio, and the Brigella, too, now freed of her preposterous burden. "Noble free woman, and noble gentlemen, of the audience," said Boots, "the Magic Veil of Anango, presented by the players of Boots Tarsk-Bit, actor, promoter and entrepreneur extraordinary! We thank you for you consideration!" There was much applause. Boots, and the Chino and Lecchio, smiling, bowed, again and again. The Brigella, at a sign from Boots, knelt on the stage. She would take her bows on her knees, of course, for she was a slave.
"Bina!" called Boots, gesturing to the side of the stage. The Bina, then, in her garments of a free woman, she who had played the brief role of Lady Tipa, the fellow villager of the Lady Phoebe, emerged onto the stage. "Off with those absurd impediments to our vision," said Boots, jollily, to her. She removed her veil and threw back her hood, shaking loose her dark hair. She was an exquisite little slave, but not a match for the Brigella in beauty. She would not, at least, I supposed, have brought as much as the Brigella on a slave block. I remembered her, too, from Port Kar.
"Come, come," said Boots, her master. She then pulled down her robes, about her shoulders, and then stripped herself to the waist. She had small, well-formed, exquisite breasts. On her neck was a collar of steel. "Off with them, mow, completely," said Boots, gesturing to the robes she had clutched about her hips. "Kneel." She thrust the robes down about her ankles and knelt then on the boards, beside the Brigella, before the audience. Boots gave her an almost unnoticeable kick with the side of his foot and she spread her knees before the audience. I could see that she was reluctant to do this. Perhaps she had been a slave less long than the Brigella. But now both of them knelt identically before the audience, backs straight, back on their heels, chins up, stark naked in their collars, their knees spread, slaves.
"Our little Bina!" said Boots, showing her off. "thank you, noble free woman and noble gentlemen! Remember poor Boots and his company! Be generous!" Some coins, mostly copper, rattled to the stage. I myself gave a couple of copper tarn disks. I had much more money, my own, and some more I had helped myself to at the camp of the Lady Yanina, before I had freed her prisoners and burned the camp, but I had no wish to advertise the current weight of my purse at the fair. It is one thing to do this in a city where one, and one's financial status, is reasonably well known, and quite another, as you may well imagine, to do it in a strange place before strangers.
"Thank you, noble people, splendid patrons of the arts," called Boots. "Thank you!" The Chino and Lecchio gathered up the coins, handing them to Boots, who took them and deposited them somewhere inside his robes, perhaps into the lining or a hidden pocket. The girls, here at the fair, were not passing through the crowd with copper bowls, perhaps because they had both been in the play. At any rate, even when they had done this in Port Kar, they had not, of course, been handling or touching the coins, only the bowls in which the coins were collected. The only female performers who customarily gather up the coins thrown to them for their masters are dancers, who usually perform alone, except for their musicians. They tuck the coins in a bit of their silk, if they have been permitted any. Given the nature of their silk, which is usually diaphanous, and the general scantiness of their garb, and the publicness of their picking up the coins, there is little danger that they could conceal a coin, even if they dared to do so. A slave girl, you see, is generally forbidden to so much as touch a coin without permission. This does not mean, of course, that they may not be sent to the market, and given coins for errands, and such. For an unaccounted for coin to be found in a slave girl's possession, or among her belongings, can be cause for severe punishment. She might even be fed to sleen.