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Various individuals were now emerging from the buildings. Shortly it would be generally known that the Lion Ships had departed.

She wondered if the abduction of the princesses, Viviana and Alacida, would be made public. She guessed not. Not immediately. But it would surely be difficult to conceal their absence.

The intruders had behaved with purpose and dispatch. They had not burned the city. They had done little, if any, looting. Speculation would be rampant as to their motivation, torrential with respect to what they had done, what they had taken, if anything.

Yes, it would be difficult to conceal, overlong, the absence of the princesses.

Cornhair now kept to the side of the street, hurrying along, not meeting the eyes of free persons. She kept her head down. Her hair, she hoped, would conceal to some extent her lack of a collar. The fact that she was bound did not excite much attention. Some Masters will keep a slave bound in the streets, sometimes as a punishment or a discipline, or merely to help her keep in mind that she is a slave. Naturally, being bound muchly increases a slave’s sense of vulnerability. A slave is the most vulnerable of all women, and a bound slave, roped, thonged, chained or such, is the most vulnerable of slaves. Interesting, as well, is the fact that vulnerability in a slave muchly increases her sexual sensitivity, her readiness for the attentions of a Master. Many a bound slave writhes at the Master’s feet, begging for the assuagement of her needs. Too, of course, many errands on which a slave may be dispatched do not require the use of her hands, for example, the communication of a message on behalf of her Master. It has also been suggested that a slave whose hands are tied behind her back is less likely to help herself to, say, a fruit from a vender’s cart, the vender’s attention being elsewhere directed. A small fruit, of course, might be seized in the teeth. A girl caught in such a peccadillo, of course, bound or unbound, is likely to be well switched. Even worse, her indiscretion might be recorded in an ink or grease marking on her body to be read by her Master on her return, quite possibly with unpleasant consequences.

More men and women were now about in the streets. Sometimes they picked their way amongst bodies.

As suggested earlier, in many districts of Telnar, there had been unrest, arson, looting, and such. The individuals, sometimes crowds, engaged in such activities had been largely, and deliberately, ignored by guardsmen, under orders from the palace. The consequences of the destruction of businesses and the burning of buildings, of general looting and widespread violence, were thought to be less politically grievous than would be firing on citizens. It also seems clear that such unruly activities may have been encouraged in certain quarters, in order to further some agenda. Certainly some of the looters, arsonists, and such, left graffiti about which suggested their actions were in accord with a variety of moral and religious principles, justice, restitution, and such. Somewhat paradoxically, an act which in one instance is accounted a crime and its perpetrator heinous is, in another instance, accounted a noble deed and its agent praiseworthy. We leave these mysterious matters to the ponderings of the reader. In any event, the intruders, in their approach to the palace, doubtless unfortunately, did not suffer from the same compunction, or orders, as the Telnar guardsmen, and did not hesitate to clear the streets, which put an instant end to a variety of miscellaneous civil disturbances.

Cornhair saw a body, most of a body, being dragged away.

Perhaps things would soon return to normal.

A shopkeeper was unchaining his guard planks, removing them from their grooves in the ceiling and floor of his shop.

Some of the planks had been struck by axes.

The shopkeeper glanced at Cornhair, and she hurried on.

She passed a two-wheeled hay cart being drawn by a single horse. Four bodies were heaped in the cart.

A small boy was casting a ball against a wall, and catching it as it rebounded. “Twenty-seven!” he said to a sandaled, robed fellow passing by.

Cornhair put down her head, being scrutinized by a free woman, leaning on the sill of a second story window, the shutters flung back.

There had been no mistaking the hostility in that glance.

Cornhair saw two guardsmen approaching, with bows.

Would they see that she was uncollared?

She moved to the other side of the street, keeping her head down.

They were making their way toward the palace, which was now well behind Cornhair. Had she turned, she could have seen it, small in the distance.

“Hold, slave!” said a sharp female voice, clearly that of one who knew she was Mistress.

Cornhair immediately knelt, her head down.

Cornhair knew that tone of voice. Often she had used it herself, when free, doubtless to the terror of frightened, instantly kneeling, small, exquisite, red-headed Nika, the single slave to which she had been reduced in her time of nigh destitution, abandoned by the Larial Calasalii, save for a pittance. That tone of voice was normally a prelude to a switching or whipping.

The hatred of the free woman for the female slave is well known. The cruelty of the Mistress to the female slave is legendary. All women are, in a sense, competitors for the attentions of men. Even women who claim, however hysterically, to hate men wish, it seems, to be found attractive by them. Surely that is of interest. And does not each woman hope to be found more beautiful, and more desirable, than the other? Take then this natural rivalry of woman and woman, and see it as it is manifested in the relationship of Mistress to slave. Here, the Mistress has all power and the slave none. Her rival is subordinate to her; her rival is at her mercy; she owns her rival. Exacerbate this relationship then with the understanding that the most desirable men, powerful, virile, intelligent, ambitious, possessive, aggressive men, are not immune to the charms of slaves. They want them, and can have them. They can buy them, and work them, and do what they want with them, exacting inordinate pleasures from their lovely bodies. Indeed, not every woman is collared; the collar is usually a badge, a certification, of female desirability. Indeed, many a free woman must face the annoying fact that men may find her slave not only her superior in beauty and desirability, doubtless much to the fear of the slave, whose skin may suffer for this, but may also find her more desirable simply in being a slave, the men understanding all that is involved in that lowly status.

One courts the free woman, commonly for gain; one buys the slave, invariably for pleasure.

Too, of course, if one should entertain an interest in female responsiveness, attention to the slave may be commended. In the slave, orgasms are easily elicited, often irrepressible, successive, and profound. Indeed, being a slave is to be in a state of incipient, global, sexual readiness; she is a needful, sexual creature. One supposes all this has something to do with the collar, with being subject to the whip, with the condition of being a slave in itself, with being owned, with having a Master.

“Hold, slave!” had said the woman.

How often had Cornhair used that tone of voice to Nika!

That had been a bitter, frustrating time for Cornhair, before her recruitment by Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol, her credit blasted, her jewelries and possessions muchly sold, little more than a handful of pennies in her purse at any one time, forced to wear the same gown over and over, unable to buy new slippers, ignored by former acquaintances, tended by only one slave. Cornhair would have been a demanding, difficult Mistress even in her days of plenty, of station and affluence, but, in the miseries of her ostracization and penury, her normally arrogant, acerbic temper had considerably worsened.