He looked down at me.
I knelt before him.
I picked up one of the sandals, and kissed it, and then, humbly, head down, placed it on his foot. I did the same with the second sandal.
I then looked up at him.
“You fetch, kiss, and tie sandals well, Earth woman,” he said.
“Please do not call me an Earth woman, Master,” I begged. “Surely, by now, it is clear what I have become, that I am only a Gorean salve girl!”
“But we will keep an Earth-girl name on you,” he said.
“As Master pleases,” I said.
“It may serve, from time to time, to remind you of your origins.”
“Yes, Master,” I said.
In a short time he was prepared to leave his compartments.
“Guards will come for you shortly,” he said.
He carried some things, and motioned that I should lie upon my stomach in the vicinity of the double door. He crouched beside me and crossed my wrists. He jerked tight knots on them. He then crossed my ankles, and pulled them up, close to my wrists. In a moment, with a few quick movements, my ankles had been tied tightly together and fastened to my wrists. He then put me to my side. I looked up at him.
“Slave,” said he.
“Yes, Master?” I said.
“You did not dance badly,” he said, “and it is clear that you are familiar with slave movement,” I supposed that slave movement, its subtlety, its grace, its sensuousness, was now a part of me, in part trained into me, in part naturally manifesting itself, in my current condition. I was no longer even aware of it, really. Slaves are not permitted to move with the rigidity, the awkwardness, of free woman. Indeed, it is said that a skilled slaver can tell the difference between a free woman in the robes of concealment and a slave in them merely by having them walk about. Even so subtle a thing, you see, militates against a slave’s possibility of escape. To be sure, a slave might escape one master, to fall into the hands of another. She might change her collar, so to speak. But then the new master, knowing her for an escaped slave, is likely to keep her in close chains, and treat her with great harshness and cruelty. Indeed, after he has pleasured himself with her for some weeks he may simply return her in chains to her former master, for her punishment.
“Master?” I asked.
“It was not merely for your ignorance that you were purchased,” he said. “We also wanted one who was beautiful and desirable, and such things.”
I was silent.
“You are a natural slave,” he said, “and you have come along well. We are pleased.”
“Then I, too, am pleased,” I said, “Master.”
“The peasant,” he said.
“Yes, Master?” I said.
“He is in your keeping,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said. He was actually in the keeping of the pit master, the depth warden, of course, but it was I, it seemed, who would be attending to the servile trivialities of his keeping, his feeding, the emptying of his wastes bucket, and such.
“Do you recall how you are to appear before him?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” I said. “In a string and slave strip, if that.”
“And how are you to move before him?” he asked.
“Master?” I asked.
“You are to move well before him,” he said.
“I do not understand,” I said.
“Surely I need not explain such things to a female slave,” he said.
“Master?” I asked.
“He is to be tortured,” he said.
I was silent.
“Let him, helpless in his chains, be mocked and taunted,” he said, fiercely, “as might be a helpless male slave by an insolent slave girl.”
I did not look up. My left cheek was upon the tiles. I saw only his feet.
“He is to suffer,” he said. “He is to well understand the contempt in which we hold him, the insult we do him.”
“Master?” I asked.
“He is my enemy,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
And so it seemed that I, a lowly slave, figured somehow, in no way I clearly understood, in some obscure affair of state. I now better understood, as well, my having been obtained. My beauty, of beauty it was, was intended to have its purpose in certain plans. It was, it seemed, to be as food exhibited to a starving man. And it seemed, too, that, from the point of view of those on this world, that some grievous insult was intended as well, first, doubtless, the general insult that he, a free man, would be attended by a mere slave, an insult common to those in the pits, and, second, that he, a free man, would be attended by such a slave, a mere pierced-ear girl, and one who would be clad in such a way before him, and behave in such a way before him, one whom he, to his misery, would be unable either to enjoy or punish. He must endure, even, it seemed, if they had their way, the provocations, the mockery, of a slave. How rich the joke! How delicious the insult! But I wondered, really, if the peasant, so simple, so huge, so remote, would even understand this sort of thing. Might it not all be lost upon him? I was not certain he understood he was in chains, in the depths. Perhaps in his mind, he was in some simple hut, far off, perhaps in some small, fertile valley, tending his fields.
“You understand what is required?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
He turned away.
“Master!” I called to him.
He turned back to face me.
“What you did to me last night!” I cried. “What you made me do! What you made me feel!”
“It is nothing,” he said.
“I do not even know Master’s name,” I said.
“Your name is ‘Janice’,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” I said.
He then left.
A few minutes later one of the slave girls entered the room. The other was a little behind her.
They busied themselves, picking up, tiding.
One of them came over and looked down at me. “You are a well-tied little vulo,” she said.
I did not respond.
“It stinks in here,” said the other, lightly. “There must be a pit slave somewhere.”
The two girls wee not twins, but they were clearly a matched set. They were similar in height, figure, hair and eye color. They also wore matching tunics, brief, of yellow silk. I wondered if they had been sold as a matched set, or if the officer had matched them himself. I wondered if they served his pleasure together. Many men, of course, won more than one woman. How they apply them, or mix them, is up to them.
“She is a pierced-ear girl,” said the girl standing near me.
“I wish he wouldn’t bring them here,” said the other. “It lowers the quality of the compartments.”
“You are an Earth slut, aren’t you?” asked the girl near me.
I did not respond.
“Oh!” I cried, in pain, kicked.
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes!” I said.
“Yes, what?” she asked.
“Yes, Mistress!” I said.
“Speak when you are spoken to, slut,” said the girl.
“Yes, Mistress,” I said. “Forgive me Mistress.”
“Let us give her a switching,” said the other girl.
“No, Mistress!” I begged. ‘Please, no, Mistress!”
“You will be a good little slave, won’t you, Earth slut?’ asked the first girl.
“Yes, Mistress!” I assured her.
“What do the masters see in such curvaceous little sluts?” asked the second girl.
“They are pretty little bundles of slave curves.” Said the first.
“That is doubtless it,” said the second.
“But we are pretty too!” insisted the first.
“Yes,” agreed the second.
I did not think we were really so much different, either. Indeed, we are all rather similarly figures. Their yellow silk certainly did not do much to conceal their own “slave curves.” What difference did it make, really, if I was from Earth and they were not? In the end were we not all the same, all women, all slaves?
There was a knock on the door.