“Were I to do so,” I said, “I would doubtless be killed, and others would fight over you, and there would be much bloodshed.”
“We are far from Ar,” she said.
“That, too,” I said.
“As long as I am only Adraste,” she said, “we are both more safe.”
“How came you into the keeping of the Pani?” I asked.
“You, of Cos, well know of the insurrection,” she said, “and its success.”
“Indeed,” I said, ruefully.
“I was betrayed in Ar,” she said, “by the traitor, Seremides, by the hateful Flavia of Ar, traitress whom I had befriended, and others, who would turn me over to the forces of revolt, to bargain for their own amnesty or escape.”
I knew something of this from Alcinoe.
“But on the roof of the Central Cylinder,” she said, “there was sudden confusion, and darkness, and I was seized, and rendered unconscious. When I regained consciousness I found myself stripped and chained, with others, in a wooden stockade, somewhere in the northern forests, in the power of these strange, inexplicable men, Pani. I was collared, and enslaved, no different from the others, as though I might be no more than they.”
“There is much in this that I do not understand,” I said.
“Nor I,” she said.
“I gather from keepers,” I said, “that you bear in your left thigh, high, under the hip, not the common kef, but the mark of Treve.”
She reddened.
“This is not the first time you have been a slave,” I said.
“I was captured by Rask of Treve,” she said, “a warrior amongst warriors, a man amongst men. I must wear a Trevan collar. I was tented with his women. Well did he humble me, and teach me how spasmodically helpless might be a slave in the arms of her master. I bathed him. He made me dance for him. I wore his silk, what he would give me of it.”
“It is my understanding that women do not escape the chains of Rask of Treve,” I said.
“He thought little of me,” she said, “as I suppose is appropriate for a slave. And his interest in me, I gather, was primarily that I was the daughter of Marlenus of Ar, his mortal enemy, and the mortal enemy of Treve. It was doubtless primarily for that reason that he captured me, bound me naked before him, supine, over the saddle of his tarn, caressed me into need, and took me to his camp. It amused him, doubtless, to have the daughter of his worst enemy in his collar, an obedient, silked slave in his tent.”
“You escaped?” I said.
“No, Master,” she said. “As you noted, women do not escape the chains of Rask of Treve. I was given away, and, to show his scorn, to a woman, Verna, a Panther Girl of the northern forests.”
“You would seem to be a prize,” I said. “How is it that he would let you go so cheaply?”
“To humiliate me, of course,” she said. “I, the daughter of a Ubar, given away like a pot girl!”
“Still,” I said, “it seems surprising.”
“There was another woman,” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
“It was a young, blond barbarian,” she said, “blue-eyed, and shapely, who could not even speak Gorean properly, a meaningless slut, one named El-in-or.”
“That is, I think,” I said, “a barbarian name.”
“I think so,” she said. “Certainly she was a barbarian.”
“She must have been very beautiful,” I said.
“You can buy ten of them off any chain in a market,” she said.
“You were then, it seems, deemed inferior to a girl, ten of whom might be bought off any chain in a market.”
Her hands turned white on the bars.
How furious she was.
“She is now doubtless his companion,” she said.
“Rask of Treve,” I said, “does not free women. She is probably being kept as the most perfect of slaves.”
Men desire slaves, women desire masters.
“I was taken to the northern forests,” she said, “the slave of Panther Girls. Later I was sold, and eventually returned to Ar.”
“It is my understanding,” I said, “that you begged to be purchased.”
“Of course,” she said, angrily.
“You had compromised the honor of Marlenus,” I said. “Accordingly you were disowned, made no longer his daughter. An embarrassment to the city, you were sequestered in the Central Cylinder. It is easy to understand your outrage, your bitterness, at such a reduction. Then something happened to Marlenus. He was long from the city. In his absence, with which you or others may have had something to do, you plotted with dissident factions and the island ubarates; you laid your plans carefully, and put them into patient and subtle execution; and then, eventually, by means of enemies without and treachery within, your schemes bore their ugly, dark fruit. You received the medallion. You were declared Ubara. The rest is well-known.”
She was silent.
“So,” I said, “you were adjudged inferior to a barbarian named El-in-or.”
“By Rask of Treve!” she said.
“To be sure,” I said.
“What does he know?” she said.
“What, indeed?” I said.
“He is only one man!”
“True,” I said.
“I am the most beautiful woman on all Gor!” she said.
“Perhaps your slaves, and courtiers, told you that,” I said.
“Certainly,” she said.
“And you believed it?”
“Am I not the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?” she said.
“No,” I said, “but you are quite beautiful. In a normal market, you might bring three, perhaps four, silver tarsks.”
“Others might bring more?” she said.
“Of course,” I said. “What I think you should understand, is that a woman might be the most beautiful woman in the world to one fellow, and not to another. A woman who is incomparably beautiful to one fellow might not be taken as a free pot girl by another. Perhaps the first fellow senses in her something the others have missed. There are mysteries in these matters. And often a fellow wants not the most beautiful woman, anyway, but the most desirable, the one he wants most, which is not necessarily the same thing. Who knows why one fellow wants one woman in his collar and not another?”
“You will keep my secret,” she said.
“For the time being, certainly,” I said.
“Do others know I am here?” she said.
“Doubtless some of the high Pani,” I said, “or you would not be here, at all.”
“Of what value am I to them,” she said, “that I would be here?”
“I do not know,” I said.
“Are there others?” she asked.
“I know of one woman,” I said.
“What woman?” she said, frightened.
“You might be surprised,” I said. “Perhaps I shall introduce you later.”
“And others?” she said.
“Possibly,” I said. “I do not know.”
“I am afraid,” she said.
“Seremides is here,” I said.
“No!” she wept. “He had me bound at his feet, in the rag of a slave, to bargain with me in Ar!”
“He does not know you are here,” I said, “though he may suspect it.”
“Keep him from me!” she begged. “Do not let him know I am here!”
“He need only look into your kennel,” I said.
“‘Kennel’?” she said.
“Surely you know you occupy a slave kennel,” I said.
“I am helpless,” she moaned.
“At least,” I said, “the Pani have given you a rather ample tunic.”
“It is clearly the garment of a slave,” she said.
“Perhaps it will protect you from the Pani free women,” I said.
“They look upon me as though I were a beast,” she said.
“That is all you are,” I said.
She shook the bars.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Very!” she said.
“Master?” I said.
“Very, Master,” she said.
I took a small cake from my pouch, and she eagerly reached for it, but I drew it back. I gathered she was indeed hungry.
“Hands on the bars,” I said, “face forward, open your mouth.”
She complied, and I fed her by hand. Slaves may be fed that way. Sometimes they are knelt and their hands bound behind them. Sometimes they must take food and water from pans on the floor, without the use of their hands. Such homely practices are useful in reminding them that they are slaves.