Across the street, some fifty feet or so away, and to the left of Cornhair, as she was chained, there was a small restaurant, catering mostly to workmen, little more than a room, a kitchen, and a counter. Within there were four tables, and outside, two tables on the street. In such a place one might get some bread, olives, and cheese, which one might wash down with beer or a cheap, pale kana. Soup, if one wished it, could be ladled out from a lidded receptacle within the counter itself. Many took their orders with them, wrapped in folds of brown, waxed paper.
Cornhair felt the tip of the slaver’s man’s switch at the side of her neck. Frightened, she straightened her body more.
“I have seldom seen a slave so switched,” said the slaver’s man, examining Cornhair’s tortured skin.
“My Mistress found me displeasing,” said Cornhair.
“Women do not know how to handle women,” said the man.
“They handle them as they wish,” said Cornhair.
“Pray to Dira,” he said, “that a man buys you.”
Dira, the goddess of love and beauty in the Telnarian pantheon, herself a slave girl, the slave girl of the gods, was the goddess of slave girls.
“I shall surely hope that a man buys me, Master,” she said.
This hope was common amongst female slaves. The natural subordination of the female is to the male. There you have the perfect complementarity of owner and owned, of Master and slave. Men may own, dominate, and master their slaves without compromise, but they are also quite likely, having what they want, to be satisfied with them, and happy with them. Indeed, many men, at least to other men, boast of the quality of their rope sluts and chain bitches. Too, as every slave girl knows, men are easy to please. When a man has what he wants, he is content. Why should he not be? Most men are kind to their slaves and treat them well, as they would any other beast they own. Indeed, it is rumored some men, unwisely perhaps, actually grow fond of their meaningless, luscious chattels. Indeed, the female slave is very special amongst the beasts a man might own. In his slave the man has all the intelligence, beauty, needs, depth, emotions, and feelings of the human female, all her excitement, desirability, sensitivity, helplessness, and vulnerability, and it is all his, all safe in his collar.
Too, the intervention of the free male is often the only thing the slave girl can hope for, to protect her from the hatred, jealousy, and cruelty of the free woman. The free male is often the only thing standing between the slave and the free woman, resolute and unconstrained, driven by vindictiveness and malice.
“Tenrik will soon be about, himself,” said the slaver’s man, “to hang your placard about your neck.”
“What will it say, Master?” asked Cornhair.
“I do not know,” said the slaver’s man.
“Should we not be permitted clothing, Master?” asked Cornhair.
“Not on Tenrik’s shelf,” said the man. “Do you think you are a free woman?”
“No, Master,” she said.
“Men like to see what they are buying,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” said Cornhair.
The fellow then seized one of Cornhair’s wrists, behind her, it manacled, chained to the other, by three links. He shook the wrist, with a rustle of linkage.
“You are well held,” he said, releasing her wrist.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Tenrik will be along presently,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
It had now been six days since the raid of Abrogastes on the capital, leading to the encounters in the palace, and the abduction of the two royal princesses, Viviana and Alacida. As nearly as Cornhair could gather, the abduction was not generally known.
The last few days had surely been amongst the worst in Cornhair’s life. In the lofty behaviors of her days of freedom, long ago, she had given little attention to the men and women she had routinely dismissed and slighted. They were not even enemies. They were too far beneath her. They were little more, from her point of view, than humiliori, save for their pretensions. Sometimes she mocked them, more often she ignored them, patently. Whereas she had frequently received the gratifications attendant on the superior person’s license to despise and humiliate inferiors, she had failed to realize, in her naïveté, that these others, however mistakenly, might take themselves as seriously as she took herself, and that slights, and such, unavenged, not replied to, might rankle, and fester, for years. How pleased then would so many have been, had they discovered the downfall of that haughty, thoughtless patrician, even of the senatorial class, the Lady Publennia, of the Larial Calasalii, who had been the source of so many of their most keenly felt humiliations. Cornhair, in the matter of the Lady Gia Alexia of the Telnar Darsai, had fallen into the clutches of an enemy whom she had wholly forgotten, and even earlier, when aware of her, would never have accorded the dignity of being regarded as a rival, let alone an enemy.
“There!” had cried the Lady Gia Alexia, as she had snapped the collar on Cornhair’s neck. And then had come the first of Cornhair’s many switchings. The Lady Gia Alexia, almost beside herself with fury, had laid the switch liberally on the body of her slave, until scarcely an inch of Cornhair had not felt its stroke. She was even struck across the face, and she feared she might be blinded. She put her head down. She was struck even on the back and sides of the neck, and on the calves and ankles, as well as on her back and belly, sides, and arms and legs. “Please stop, Mistress! Please, stop, Mistress!” had begged Cornhair.
“There you are,” laughed the Lady Gia Alexia, lowering the switch, her arm weary, “once the rich, arrogant Publennia, scion of the Larial Calasalii, now a blubbering, beaten slave! Is it not true?”
“Yes, yes, Mistress,” wept Cornhair. “Please do not beat me more!”
“Can you cook, slave?” asked the Lady Gia Alexia. “Can you sew?”
“No, Mistress,” wept Cornhair, her body a shuddering terrain of stinging fire.
“Can you do hair? Can you draw baths? Can you mix cosmetics, perfumes, use the pencils and brushes?”
“No, Mistress,” wept Cornhair. “Such things were done for me.”
“Useless slave!” said the Lady Gia Alexia.
“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair.
“Perhaps you can launder, scrub floors, and carry a market basket behind your Mistress?”
“Yes, Mistress,” wept Cornhair.
“And carry notes for me, to my male friends?” she said.
“Yes, Mistress,” wept Cornhair.
“I have chains in my domicile, left over from a former tenant,” she said. “I am sure they will fit you nicely.”
“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair. “Thank you, Mistress.”
“You are familiar with slave gruel, are you not?”
“Yes, Mistress,” said Cornhair.
“We will find a pan for you,” she said. “In the domicile, as you are a beast, you will, of course, not use your hands to feed yourself. Too, as you are a beast, you are not to stand upright. You may, of course, sit on the floor, kneel, lie down, be on your belly, be on all fours, or such. Too, you are not to use human speech unless permitted. If you wish to speak, you must approach me on all fours and whimper, for permission.”