Cornhair had been assured that Tenrik, owner of Tenrik’s Woman Market, where she was exhibited, would soon be about, to hang her placard about her neck.
It was warm on the shelf.
The intruders, the raiders, had not taken her with them. So easily she might have been the slave of barbarians! So easy it is to carry a woman away in ropes or chains! That still might occur, of course. Many girls had changed hands a number of times, and had worn their collars on several worlds, barbarian, imperial, primitive, and so on. The slave rose was known on agricultural worlds, industrial worlds, jungle worlds, desert worlds, sophisticated worlds, provincial worlds.
Cornhair was aware of being approached.
She straightened her body, and lifted her head.
She felt a placard, on its cords, being hung about her neck.
“May I speak, Master?” she asked.
“Yes,” she was told.
“I thank Master for the soothing balm,” she said. It had been applied by a slaver’s man before she was brought to the shelf and added to the chain. She knew it need not have been applied.
“The welting will subside in time,” he said.
“Master,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“May I inquire what I was sold for?”
“Vain bitch,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Twenty-five darins,” he said.
“That seems very little,” said Cornhair, puzzled. Had she not recently sold for forty darins?
“Your Mistress let you go cheaply,” he said.
“That I might know myself worth so little,” she said.
“Doubtless,” he said. “But she specified certain conditions.”
“Master?”
“That certain entries be included on your placard.”
“What, Master?” asked Cornhair, frightened.
“You were a poor slave, I gather,” he said.
“I tried to be a good slave,” she said.
He adjusted the placard.
“The first entry,” he said, “is ‘See that this slave is treated as she deserves’. That should encourage your new Master or Mistress to be ready with the whip, to punish you richly for the least flaw or dalliance, the least imperfection, in your service.”
“Yes,” said Cornhair, in misery.
“The second entry,” said Tenrik, “is that you were once the Lady Publennia Calasalia, of the Larial Calasalii.”
“No, no, Master!” begged Cornhair. “Scrape it away. Rub it out! Do not let that be known! The Larial Calasalii were hated. They were ruined! That is behind me! That is far away! Please, Master! I am now only a poor slave! Remove it from the placard. Men would hate me! I would be treated badly! I would live under the lash! I might be tortured, and slain!”
“It was a condition of your sale,” said Tenrik.
“Please, no, Master!” begged Cornhair.
Tenrik turned away, and left the shelf.
Cornhair pulled futilely at her wrists, manacled behind her. She struggled, shaking the chain looped about her neck. She sobbed.
Then she stood still, head down, the placard dangling about her neck.
She recalled the words of her former Mistress, that she would make sure of something in her sale, which would make a difference, something which some might find of interest.
“Perhaps I will not be sold,” she thought. “Perhaps no one will want me. Perhaps I will be auctioned somewhere, in a different market, as before. Perhaps he who buys me will have no interest in the placard. Perhaps he will be unable to read, or unable to read Telnarian. Perhaps he will know nothing of the Larial Calasalii. Perhaps he will have no interest in such things. This is a small market. Telnar is a large city. I have little to fear.”
It was now late in the afternoon.
The street was more crowded.
“Make way!” she heard. “Make way!”
Cornhair first saw two soldiers, or two whom she took to be soldiers, from the uniforms and accouterments, but the uniforms were none she recognized. Certainly they were not those of familiar contingents in the imperial forces, or those of guardsmen. These two soldiers, for they were soldiers of a sort, each carried a staff, some four feet in length, some two inches in width, with which they pressed aside men and women, cleaving a passage through the crowd. These two men were followed by another man, a large, proud-walking, darkly bearded man of fierce aspect. He, too, was uniformed, but differently. Cornhair understood him to be an officer, or official, of sorts, in any event, a person of some importance and authority. Behind him, armed with swords and bows, were four men, following in twos. This small entourage, then, consisted of an officer, or official, and six men, two to clear the way, and four in support.
The officer, as we shall speak of him, stopped, and viewed the shelf. Presumably there would be little of interest here to one of such apparent degree. The slaves were lovely, but, then, that is common with slaves. Presumably not one of the commodities which Tenrik hoped to vend were high slaves, exquisitely and lengthily trained slaves, unusually gifted slaves, familiar, say, with the songs of Tenabar IV and Sybaris, mistresses of the lyre, lute, and giron, knowledgeable in the literary classics of antique Telnaria, skilled in the dances of the desert world, Beyira II.
Cornhair did not know what such men might be doing in Telnar, or, particularly, in this rather shabby district. Surely they should be about some business in the vicinity of the palace, in, say, the administrative halls or courts.
The officer then turned away from regarding the goods on the shelf, and spoke to one of his subordinates, who then turned and, to the amazement of Cornhair, entered the restaurant across the way, and ascended the narrow stairway within it, on its right side, as one would look inward, which would lead up, doubtless, to various rooms or apartments. Some such rooms may be rented for the hour, or the night. In this way, they may serve the purposes of the less affluent in much the same way as more elegant and more discreet surroundings may serve the purposes of the better fixed and more discerning.
A short while later the subordinate descended the stairs followed by, to Cornhair’s dismay, the Lady Gia Alexia.
The Lady Gia Alexia then, with great deference, and servile awe, approached the officer. They conferred briefly. The Lady Gia Alexia then pointed to Cornhair, and the officer said something to his subordinate, the man who had fetched the Lady Gia Alexia, and he approached the shelf, and ascended to its surface.
Cornhair shrank back against the wall.
The subordinate lifted the placard on its cords away from Cornhair’s neck, descended from the shelf, and, in a moment, presented it to the officer, who perused it briefly, and returned it to him. The subordinate then returned to the shelf, ascended again to its surface, and hung the placard again about Cornhair’s neck. These proceedings had not escaped the notice of Tenrik, who now appeared beside Cornhair.
“Perhaps Master, or his principal,” he said, glancing toward the officer below, “is interested in a slave?”
“This slave,” said the subordinate, indicating Cornhair.
“Fifty darins,” said Tenrik, to begin the bargaining.
“One darin,” said the subordinate.
“Surely Master jests,” said Tenrik. “Consider the eyes, blue as the velvet of the skies of Corydon, the hair as golden as the shimmering crops of the Corn World, in the third planting, the exquisiteness of her features, so exquisitely, so helplessly, so vulnerably feminine, the delights of her bosom, the narrowness of her waist, the sweet width of her hips, the softness of the shoulders, the sweetness of her thighs and calves, the slimness of her ankles. Cheap at fifty darins.”
“One darin,” said the subordinate, “but you will receive this gold darin, should you sell her for a single darin.”
Tenrik grasped the gold piece. “She is yours, for a single darin!” he said.