“The camp has a visitor,” said the brunette.
“The sought barbarian, he has been found?” exclaimed the blonde. “He, Ottonius!”
“The Master, Ottonius,” said the brunette.
“Yes,” said the blonde, “the Master, Ottonius!”
Slaves do not address free persons by their name. They address free men as “Master” and free women as “Mistress.”
“It seems he recalls you from the Narcona,” said the brunette.
The blonde felt giddy.
“You served him on the ship,” said the brunette.
“He did but interrogate me and use me for a servile task,” said the blonde.
“What task?” inquired the brunette.
“Polishing his boots,” said the blonde.
“That is all?” said the brunette, skeptically.
Putting the slave to a servile task, particularly if she has recently been free, before putting her to one’s pleasure, is often thought to be instructive. It helps them better understand what it is to be a slave. Interestingly, the performance of such small, homely tasks, caring for a Master’s quarters, cleaning his garments, preparing his food, expectantly awaiting his return, and the opportunity to welcome him, kneeling before him, and such, can be sexually stimulating to the slave. Many a free woman fails to understand the joys of submission, and the yielding totality and warmth of a woman’s bondage, for slavery, for the slave, is a wholeness, a mode of being, a way of life, a life of surrender, of serving, of love, and devotion. In helpless bondage, choiceless, mastered, and owned, she is contented, grateful, and fulfilled; she is as she would have herself.
“Yes, Mistress,” said the blonde.
As first girl, the brunette was as Mistress to the blonde.
The blonde recalled how the barbarian had taped her mouth shut and bound her, kneeling, at the foot of his bed, and then slept. How her feelings had wavered, and disturbed her, how she had wanted to hate him, and had, at the same time, helpless at the foot of his bed, longed for his hands upon her body, holding and caressing her, with thoughtless, severe, possessive authority, as a slave may be held and caressed. How well the slave knows herself, nothing, and owned, and trembles with a responsiveness no free woman can understand, save in her dreams, thrashing in bonds, or grasped in the implacable might of her Master’s arms.
“Why then would he wish you at the supper?” asked the brunette.
“I do not know,” said the blonde.
“Your lineaments are acceptable,” said the brunette. “That is probably enough.”
“Four will serve,” said the brunette, “you amongst them. Perhaps, if you beg prettily enough, he may, after the men are done with their business, as the conclusion of an evening’s collation of wine and tarts, bed you for his pleasure.”
“What is wrong?” asked the brunette.
“Nothing, Mistress,” said the blonde.
The heart and body of the blonde churned with tumult. It was with difficulty that she restrained herself from reaching to the floor, to steady herself. It would be unwise, of course, to break position before a superior.
It was as though she suddenly found herself on a plank, unsteady, frightened, precariously located, a yawning abyss disappearing, leagues below.
The time was at hand, for which she had waited, for so long, enduring such hardships, and humiliations, as though she might be naught but another meaningless slave.
Surely no more than one or two in the camp, those who would supply the tool of assassination, whose identity or identities were unknown to her, knew her true identity, that she was not a slave, at all, but, rather, was a free woman, the Lady Publennia Calasalia, and a free woman not merely of the honestori, but of patrician stock, indeed, one once of the Larial Calasalii, before being disavowed, because of waywardness and debts, even to the obliteration of her name from the relevant rolls of lineage. Long ago, in a private audience, late at night, with sober, cunning Iaachus, the Arbiter of Protocol in the court of the Emperor Aesilesius, he aware of the miseries and nigh destitution of her lot, she had been recruited to perform a tiny task, in which no more than a single drop of blood need be shed, but a drop on which might ride, so delicately, breaking not even the surface, the fate of worlds, and the winds of power, reaching to the ten thousand sectors of an empire, for small things in a single palace, or court, or audience room, or hallway, an order given, a glance exchanged, a nod, might be eventually felt, borne on the wings of light, and piercing the charted thresholds and passes of space, to the farthest outposts of the limitanei, verging on the remote, threatened perimeters of the empire itself.
“Perhaps he will find you of interest,” said the brunette.
“‘Of interest’!” exclaimed the blonde, angrily.
The brunette looked at her, puzzled. What an odd cry, she thought, from a slave. “You had best hope so,” she said, “lest you be whipped, discarded, sold, or slain.”
“Of course, Mistress,” said the blonde, lowering her head, humbly.
Soon, she told herself, this dreadful matter, with its humiliations and degradations, would be done. The chain then, with haste and abject apologies, might be removed from her neck.
She could not remove it herself, of course. It was on her, as much as on the neck of any slave. How fearful it would be, she thought, to truly be a slave! How she might then pull at that chain, helplessly, wildly, fearfully, and know it truly on her, signifying to all who might look upon her what then she would be, a property, as much as a pig or dog!
Happily it would soon be removed, when her task was done.
Again she touched the necklace.
How fearful to think of being truly a slave, a helpless, lovely, purchasable object, one no stranger to thongs and chains, to gags and blindfolds, to hoods and harnesses, to cells, kennels, and cages, a creature which must kneel, submit, obey, and strive to please, something to be ranked as loot, something to be listed as cargo, something which might be routinely vended from a thousand, indifferent platforms on a thousand, indifferent worlds.
But she would soon be rich, and once more highly placed, with position, and power.
How she would enjoy a hundred vengeances. How she might then buy the brunette, and others, who had slighted or abused her, and teach them then what it might be to be the slaves of a free woman!
But who would supply the delicate knife, light and slender, needlelike, so finely ground, with its transparently coated blade?
Might it be blond Corelius, so handsome, and ironically polite, who had so often treated her as though she might be free, perhaps knowing she was truly free? Or had he been merely mocking one he deemed a helpless slave? Might it be severe Ronisius, who treated her no differently than he did others, assumed slaves, or was this part of a subterfuge on his part, that little attention be brought to her? Or it might be a higher officer, say, Lysis, supply officer of the Narcona. The knife would not be entrusted to a lesser figure, surely. It must be he, then, a higher officer! Certainly it could not be short, ugly Qualius, with his shuffling gait, his porcine countenance and porcine manners, a tender of livestock on the Narcona, that being brought to Venitzia, who had occasionally brought her her gruel, and feasted his eyes upon her as she crouched hungry, wishing to be fed, in her cage. But Phidias, himself, the captain of the Narcona, was in the camp! How anomalous that was! Why should one such as he brave the long trek to the forest, a dangerous journey through frozen terrain, perhaps under the eyes of furtive, lurking Heruls? His post was surely on the ship.
It must be he, then, she thought.
How could wise, cunning Iaachus, Arbiter of Protocol, who, it was said, was depended upon by the empress mother herself, and was perhaps the mind and will behind the throne, have chosen a better agent to transport a small, black, flat leather case between worlds, thence to bring it from a rude provincial capital to a mysterious rendezvous at the edge of a dark forest?