"It is true, then," I asked, "that Mistress has had misfortunes in her financial affairs?"
"I have had difficulties, Jason," she said. "It is common knowledge."
I did not speak.
"I was in Ar negotiating the sale of this house," she said. "The very palanquin in which you first saw me, that in which I rode in Ar, was rented."
"My Mistress," I said, "had suggested to me that it might be."
"But now you lie chained at my mercy," she said.
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"I was successful in selling the house," she said. "I am leaving it tomorrow."
"Mistress has mow recouped her fortunes?" I asked.
"Only a small portion of them," she smiled. "I remain still much in debt."
"Mistress has," I said, "a house in Vonda. Perhaps she might sell that, too."
"I could sell ten houses," she smiled. "and not recoup my fortunes. I owe the merchants of a dozen cities."
"What will you do?" 1 asked.
"Tomorrow," she said. "with the moneys I will have from the sale of this house I will recoup all, in a single afternoon. I will become again one of the richest women in Vonda."
"In what way can Mistress possibly accomplish this?" I asked.
"I am assured of certain winners in the tharlarion races," she said.
"You have information?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Is it wise to venture your capital in such a way?" I asked.
"I shall do with it as I please," she said.
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"There are many notes against me," she said. "I must do something."
"Yes, Mistress," I said.
"But have no fear, pretty slave," she said. "Lady Melpomene of Vonda will win, and then will be again one of the richest women in Vonda. Perhaps, even, in time, she may ruin your Mistress, and force your sale." She smiled at me, and idly fingered my arm. "She might then, if she wished," she said, "buy you for her very own." She then, idly, touched my belly. "Would you like that, Jason?" she asked.
"No, Mistress," I said.
"Why?" she asked. "Am I not beautiful?"
"You are beautiful, Mistress," I said.
"Then, why not?" she asked.
"I am a man," I said.
"No," she said, "you are only a silk slave." She looked down at me. "Indeed," she said, "you are a male of the world called Earth. You are fit, thus, only to be a woman's property."
I did not speak. I was bitter. I knew that many of the men of Earth were, in effect, the property of their women. It was not particularly their fault. They had been raised to be such. Rhetoric, conditioning and social controls kept them in their place. Only occasionally did they dream of the subverted biological hegemonies which were theirs by nature. One must own, in effect, or be owned. The women of Earth, in effect, owned their men. But the women of Earth were unhappy. Perhaps they wished, in some deep part of themselves, that it was they who were owned by the men.
"Is it your intention to return me to my Mistress?" I asked.
"Perhaps," she said.
I suddenly reared up, struggling, my shoulders some two or three inches above the surface of the couch.
"Do not be afraid, Jason," she said. "I am only caressing you."
I struggled, futilely.
"You are helpless, Jason," she told rime. "The room may be in disrepair, but I assure you that the chains are new, and adequate. I have checked them."
I cried out with rage.
Again, I struggled, but was held helplessly and perfectly in the sturdy steel.
"What a chained larl you are!" she laughed. "How fortunate for me that your hands are not free. If they were free, I, though a free woman, could scarcely dare conjecture my fate!"
Again I struggled, and was again held helplessly and perfectly in the steel.
"Cease your struggles," she said, suddenly, angrily. "Or I will geld you."
I ceased my struggles.
"That is better," she said.
"What are you going to do with me?" I asked.
"Are you not slave enough to know?" she asked.
I looked at her, in fury.
"Do you think you can resist me?" she asked.
"No," I said. "I do not." No man, chained as I was, could resist any woman. And she was exciting, and beautiful.
She mounted me.
"Unchain me," I said. "Let me take you in my arms."
"I am not a fool," she said. "I will not be made a slave by any man."
"Aiii!" I cried.
"Thus," she laughed. "I, the Lady Melpomene of Vonda, take the silk slave of my enemy, the despicable Lady Florence of Vonda!"
I looked up at her, shuddering.
"It is only the beginning," she said to me.
She used me several times that night. It was only later that I realized that she, in spite of the fullness of her use of me, had never once kissed me. She did not wish to soil her lips by touching them to my body, that of a slave.
18 THE INSPECTION OF THE STABLE SLAVES
"The stable slaves are ready for inspection, Lady Florence," said Kenneth, head keeper of the Mistress' slaves. Barus, who assisted him, stood near him.
We knelt in the sunlit, central stable yard of the Mistress' stables, which were extensive. There were barns about, and equipment and feed sheds. These structures were generally painted yellow and trimmed with shades of blue. These colors tend to be cultural for Goreans with respect to housings for domestic animals. Blue and yellow, too, of course, are the colors of the slavers. There may tie a connection here, for the slave is, of course, regarded as a domestic animal. To be sure, in barns and such the color yellow usually predominates, whereas in the colors of slavers, exhibited in such places as in the blue and yellow of the canvas covering slave wagons or is the blue and yellow of the tenting of slave pavilions, the blue and yellow is, or tends to be, more equally distributed, almost invariably occurring in stripes.
I knelt near the end of the line. The Mistress, with a long, tharlarion quirt, had begun her inspection.
When the Lady Melpomene had finished with me, after that long night of her use of me, she had held for me another draft of water, discolored by the reddish Tassa powder. I had not wished to drink this. Then she had held her dagger to my body. I drank. Soon I was unconscious.
"Kneel more straightly, Slave," said the Lady Florence to another stable slave, down the line from me.
Apparently the two men in the hire of the Lady Melpomene, those two who had originally captured me, and carried me to her house in Venna, returned for me. I did not regain consciousness until, painfully, I was aware of being thrown upon a hard surface. I heard two men hurrying away. I was, knees drawn up, and head down, fastened in a slave sack. Within the sack itself my ankles were crossed and tied, and my hands, too, were similarly fastened, behind my back.
"What is going on here?" I heard cry. "Stop!" It had been the voice of Kenneth, the head keeper of my Mistress' slaves, the Lady Florence of Vonda. I had heard a wagon rattling away, swiftly.
"What is going on?" I had heard, a woman's voice, that of my Mistress. Over my head I had felt the sack being untied.
"It is Jason," had said Kenneth. He had drawn me from the sack by a bound arm. I felt my head slapped to the side. "You are in the presence of the Mistress," had said Kenneth.
I had then knelt before her. I was on the porch of her house in Venna. I was naked.
"There is a note tied to his collar," said Kenneth. Men and women of the household, including male and female slaves, domestic slaves, house slaves, such as short-legged, luscious Taphris, had gathered about. The note on my collar was taken and handed to the Mistress. She read the note in fury, and then crumpled it, and cast it to the side. She looked down at me, in fury.