I looked to the table where reposed Belnar, Ubar of Brundisium. On his left hand sat Flaminius, who, it seemed, had not joined in the applause. Flaminius, as I had earlier noted, did not seem too pleased with the nature and progress of the evening. It was at this table, too, where sat Temenides, a member of the caste of players, one who stood among the high boards of Cos. At the right side of Belnar there was a vacant place. Since this evening was to be a great triumph for the Lady Yanina, celebrating her capture of me and her restoration to favor in Brundisium, I supposed that that place had been reserved for her.
"Present yourselves," said Boots to Rowena and Lady Telitsia, thrusting them forward on the stage.
Rowena stood at the front of the low stage. She put her head back, her hands clasped behind the back of her head and arched her back, her legs bent. Then she put her arms down and back to the sides, her shoulders back, her breasts thrust forward. "Who wants me?" she called. There was then much shouting and clashing of silverware on goblets. Men rushed forward and seized her bodily and carried her, lifted high among them, back to the tables. Then Lady Telitsia stepped to the front of the stage. She thrust her hip out to the left and put her hands high over her head and to the right. She looked down and to the right. "I am not such a beauty," she said to the crowd, plaintively. "I am sure no one will want me."
"Ask! Ask!" demanded dozens of men, laughing, pounding on the goblets and tables with utensils.
"Who wants me?" called out Lady Telitsia, laughing, vibrant and alive in her collar, a slave, the property of Boots Tarsk-Bit, her master.
"I do! I do!" cried more than a dozen men. There was a rush to the stage. Then Lady Telitsia, too, was seized from the stage and carried helplessly, held high above the heads of several men, others crowding about them, back to the tables. Rowena, gasping and writhing, crying out, the scarf torn from her, flung down among the tables, pressed back helplessly to the tiles, held down by the arms, kept in place, by two men, was already serving.
Bina, smiling, hung back, standing between Petrucchio and Chino. ON her left wrist she wore a slave bracelet. It had been put on her by the player. It signified that her use was his. I saw the player from Cos, Temenides, lean toward Belnar, and speak to him. He nodded. Temenides, then, rose behind the table. It was the table of the Ubar.
"Actor!" called Temenides to Boots, contemptuously, loftily.
"Yes, Master?" inquired Boots, pleasantly.
"What of her?" inquired Temenides, pointing to Bina.
"That is our Bina," said Boots. Bina, finding herself the subject of the conversation of free men, instantly knelt. Her time with the player had clearly honed her slave responses. He had not had her use more than a day or two before she had learned, incontrovertibly, what she was.
"Are you her owner?" asked Temenides.
"Yes, Master," said Boots.
"Send her to my table," said Temenides.
"That is not so easy," said Boots.
"Now," said Temenides.
"Though she is my slave," said Boots, in explanation, "yet her use has been given to our player, he who travels with my small and humble troupe."
At this point Bina, alarmed, suddenly put her head down and lifted and extended her left arm, the wrist hanging down. In this fashion she prominently displayed the salve bracelet on her left wrist.
"I want her," said Temenides.
"Please, Master," suggested Boots. "Take our Rowena or Telitsia. Both have learned passion in the collar, and the total of pleasing men."
"It is she whom I want," said Temenides, pointing at Bina. She kept her head down, trembling.
"I have given her use to another," said Boots, desperately.
"It is now time to revoke your misguided and meaningless courtesy," said Temenides. "I instruct you to do so."
"Please, Master," said Boots. "Consider my honor."
"Consider something yourself," said Temenides, player of Cos, "your life."
"Sir?" asked Boots, turning pale.
It interested me that the player should be so bold. He was not in Cos. Indeed, it was somewhat strange that he was here, and certainly strange that he was seated at the table of Belnar. Brundisium was not even an ally of Cos. She was an ally of Ar.
"Reclaim her use rights, now," said Temenides. "You are her master. The ultimate say in this matter is yours. Be quick about it."
Belnar, I noted, rather than suggesting civility in his hall, quaffed paga, noncommittally.
"I am waiting," said Temenides.
Suddenly the player, the hooded player, he called the "monster," he who now had Bina's use, rose form his place at a table and climbed the stairs to the stage. He looked about himself scornfully, regally, an attitude that seemed sorely at odds with his station in a lowly, intinerate troupe. HE placed a coin, a golden tarn disk, in the palm of Boots Tarsk-Bit. Boots looked at it, disbelievingly. He had probably not seen too many coins of that sort in his life. He had particularly, doubtless, never expected to receive one from the player.
"I do not own her!" cried Boots suddenly to Temenides, in relief. He pointed at the player. "He owns her," he said. "He just bought her!"
The girl cried out in astonishment, looking up at the player from her knees.
The hall was now muchly silent. That something of interest might be transpiring on the stage seemed somehow, suddenly, almost as if by secret communication, to be understood by all in that hall. Rowena and Lady Telitsia, breathing heavily, their nipples erected, their bodies red with usage, bruises on their arms where they had been held down and roughly handled, turned to their sides and, palms on the tiles, looked up to the stage. Even the numerous naked slaves who were serving the tables and, as men wished them, the banqueters, stopped serving, and, carrying their vessels and trays, stood still, looking, too, to the stage.
Slowly, beautifully, kneeling before him, looking up at him, Bina opened her thighs before the player.
"You own me," she said to the player.
"Yes," he said.
"You are the first man before whom," she said, "I have ever willingly opened my thighs."
He looked down at her, not speaking.
"I love you," she said.
He did not respond to the slave.
"I love your strength, and your manhood," she said. "And that you have taught me my slavery."
"Kiss my feet," he said.
"Yes, Master," she said.
"So, player," said Temenides, "you know own her. You are a fool to have paid a golden tarn disk for such a woman. But it changes nothing. Send her to my table."
Bina lifted her head from the player's feet. She knelt before him, tears in her eyes, looking up at him. "I love you," she said.
"How can you love a monster," he asked.
"I have secretly loved you for months," she said. "I loved you even when I despised you and hated you, and thought you weak. Now I love you a thousand times more, that you are strong."
"But I am a 'monster'," he said.
"I do not care what you are, or think you are," she said.
"But what of my hideousness?" he asked.
"Your appearance does not matter to me," she said. "I do not care what you look like. It is you, the man, the master, I love."
"I have never been loved," he said.
"I can give you only a slave's love," she said, "but there is no greater, deeper love."
He looked down upon her.
"Do not be weak with me," she begged.
"I will not," he said. "You will when necessary, or when it pleases me, know the whip."
"Yes, Master," she said, happily.
"Perhaps you did not hear me," said Temenides, angrily. "I told you to send her to my table!"
"Send me to his table, Master," she begged. "I will try to serve him well."
"Oh!" she cried, in pain, cuffed to her side on the stage. She looked up at the player, startled, blood at the side of her mouth.