“You might be spared,” he said. “You might be enclosed in a cage, suspended in the piazza. Others might then learn from your fate a lesson. You might be put in a dozen chains and flung into the deepest dungeon in the city. Perhaps then, eventually, you would be forgotten, save perhaps by a warden and some urts. You might even be kept chained in the public tarsk pens, in the mud, for years, there to compete naked, mocked by all, for your swill.”
She put her head down, trembling.
“To be sure,” said he, “as you are only a slave, it might be amusing for them to keep you chained to a ring in the lowest brothel in the city, your use free to any and all.”
“Lift your head,” he said sharply.
She looked up. Tears streamed down her face.
“Your face is bared,” he said.
She sobbed.
“The faces of slaves should be bared,” he said, “that their tiniest expressions may be read.”
Again she wept.
“No longer,” said he, “can you hide behind a mask of silver, or gold.”
“No, Master,” she wept.
“Your face is bared,” he said, “as is fitting for the face of a slave.”
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“But there is another possibility,” he mused, “an interesting one, one other than merely returning you in chains to Tharna.”
“Master?” she asked, frightened.
“You could be returned to he from whom you were stolen,” he said.
“No!” she screamed, in terror. “No! No!” she suddenly, wildly, crawled up the steps of the dais, and flung herself to her belly before the man in the chair. She pressed her lips again and again to his feet, fervently, in terror, covering them with frantic kisses. “NO,” she begged. “Please, no, Master!”
“Do you not know how to kiss a man’s feet?” he inquired.
She sobbed, and then delicately, humbly, softly, submissively, devotedly, with much care, with great attentiveness, with exquisite sensuousness, with her tongue as well as lips, addressed her ministrations to his feet and sandals.
“Better,” said he.
I was frightened at the terror exhibited by the slave. The mere thought of being returned to some former master, from whom, I gathered, she had been stolen, was apparently more dreadful to her, more fearful to her, than the assemblage of fates which had just been outlined before her, those possibly consequent upon her being returned to Tharna, some city into the power of which, it seemed, she would be ill-advised to fall.
“I would think you might enjoy being returned to your former master,” said the man in the chair, “he who first captured you, and put the collar on you.”
“No! No!” she said.
“He is rumored to be one of the finest swordsmen in the world,” said the man.
She sobbed, and continued to kiss his feet.
“Did he not slay a retinue of one hundred men before he reached the curtains of your palanquin, to tear them aside?”
She did not raise her head, but trembled.
“It was he who first removed the mask from you,” he said.
“Yes,” she whispered, shuddering.
“And did you not, even as a free woman, kneel in the dust beside the palanquin, your mask taken from you, and kiss and lick the blood from his sword?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I wonder that he was interested in you,” said the man.
“Master?” she asked, lifting her head a little.
“His sword could have won him many women, women whose attractions he would presumably have had little difficulty in detecting,” he said.
I assumed he meant women such as I — slaves, suitably clad, lightly and revealingly, women of whose charms there could be little doubt.
“Could he have known that you were as beautiful as you are?” he asked.
“Thank you, Master,” she said.
“It would not seem so,” he said.
“But doubtless he was pleased to see that you were beautiful,” he said.
“Perhaps, Master,” she said.
“But he must originally have had you in mind for some other purpose,” he said. “He must have had some use in mind for you.”
“Master?” she asked.
“But the first use was doubtless merely that you would follow him naked, and collared, bearing his shield.”
“That was the second use,” she said.
“Of course,” he said.
“I would think,” he said, “ that you would have enjoyed belonging to him.”
“No!” she said, in terror.
I was frightened to think of such a master, one who inspired such terror. I shuddered. What manner of man might he be? As slaves, of course, it is appropriate, and not at all unusual, for us to retain a healthy fear of our masters, particularly if we suspect we may have been in some detail remiss or may have been in some respect less than perfectly pleasing, for we are, after all, their slaves. We are totally dependent on them in all things, and they have absolute power over us. More simply put, they are master.
“For you two would seem to have much in common,” he said.
“Do not return me to him,” she wept.
“But you would seem much the same as he.”
“No, no!” she said.
“No?” he said.
“No,” she said. “I am a female.”
“You now understand that?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“It seems he knows how to keep a slave,” said the man.
She shuddered.
“What did he want you for, other than the usual purposes of a slave?” he asked.
“I do not know,” she said.
“Perhaps we are too lenient with you here,” he mused.
“No, no,” she whispered.
To be sure, it did not seem likely to me that this was a place in which men might be criticized for being too lenient with their slaves.
“I wonder what we should do with you,” he said.
“Do not return me to him, I beg it!” she wept.
I saw she was terrified. I thought of the master she feared. From her reactions even I, who did not even know him, began to tremble. From her fear I was afraid. I was afraid even to think of such a man. Then I thought that perhaps I now better understood men in this place, that they might steal from such a man. To be sure, I did not know the whole story. Perhaps her former owner, he under discussion, was ignorant of the identity of her thief. Or perhaps the men here had merely purchased her, or captured her later, from another. Between the man she feared and this place she might have changed hands a dozen times, as any property.
“I wonder what I should do with you,” he said.
“Keep me!” she begged.
She did not request her freedom, of course. How insulting and absurd would have beensuch a request of men such as these. We wore our collars and would continue to wear them. They liked us in our collars, and found us precious in them. It would be as absurd and meaningless for us to be freed on this world as it would be for a dog or horse to be freed on my former world. It is said that only a fool frees a slave girl. It is true.
“Keep me, Master,” she begged. “Keep me, Master.”
she then, lowering her head again, began again, beggingly, pleadingly, submissively, with tears, desperately zealous to placate and please him, to lick and kiss his feet. She did this quite well, I thought. My fear did not prevent me from observing her carefully. I was only a collared Earth-girl kajira. One might even have said, as one had, as the saying has it, that my brand was still smoking. Surely it was fresh. I had much to learn. Knowing suitable placatory behaviors, sometimes necessary to pacify and appease these impatient men, these demanding and powerful masters, is something very much in a girl’s best interest. Indeed, being able to please and placate a male can sometimes mean the difference between life and death, between being ordered to the furs, there to be incontestably ravished and subjugated, there, gratefully, to be totally conquered — and being hurled to ravening sleen.
She lifted her head to him, timidly, after a time, doubtless anxious to examine his visage for some clue, however faint, as to his mood, seeking there some trace, however tiny, which might hint at what was to be done with her.
I myself could not determine what he might be thinking.
“Have my ears pierced, Master!” suddenly said Dorna.
“What?” he asked.
She rose to her knees, begging, before him. “I beg to have my ears pierced, Master!” she said. “I beg it!” She turned her head before him, to one side and then to the other. She displayed herself, desperately, pleadingly. She indicated her ear lobes. “Let my beauty, if beauty it be,” said she, “be enhanced with earrings!”