I took her wrists, and forced them, slowly, from my body. I held them. She struggled to reach me, to press her lips to my body. I did not permit this. She threw her head, in frustration, from side to side. Her face was stained with tears. She wept. “Let me touch you,” she cried. “Let me hold you! I love you! I love you!”
I held her, by the upper arms, from me. She looked up into my eyes. “Oh, Tarl,” she wept. “Can you ever forgive me? Can you ever forgive me?”
“Kneel,” I told her.
Slowly, numbly, the beauty slipped to her knees before me. “Tarl?” she said.
I drew from my garment a rag. It was thin, brief, tattered, much torn; it was cheap rep-cloth, brown and coarse; it was stained with dirt, with grease. I had found it in the kitchens of Ibn Saran.
I threw it against her body. “Put it on,” I told her.
“I am a high slave,” she said.
“Put it on,” I told her.
She parted the bit of yellow silk she wore, dropping it to one side. She reached for the bit of rep-cloth.
“Remove first the bangles,” I told her. She sat on the tiles and, one by one, slipped the bangles from her left ankle. Then she stood up, and pulled the rag over her head. Her body involuntarily shuddered as the grease-thick rag slipped over her beauty and clung snug, revealingly, about it; I examined her, walking about her; I tore the neckline down, to better expose the beauty of her breasts; I ripped away a strip from the garment’s hem, shortening it; she must now walk with exquisite care; I ripped the left side of the garment a bit more, to better reveal the delicious line from her left breast to her left hip.
I backed away a few feet from her.
She faced me. “The gown much reveals me,” she said, “Tarl.”
“Cross and extend your wrists,” I told her. She did so. With a strip of leather binding fiber, I fastened them together. The strip was long and enough was left to lead her, serving as tether.
“We do not have a great deal of time,” I told her. “There will soon be fighting in the kasbah.”
“I love you,” she said.
I looked at her with fury.
She was startled at my anger. “I am sorry I have so offended you,” she whispered. “I have suffered much for it. You cannot know how I have suffered, weeping in the nights. I am so sorry, Tarl!”
I did not speak.
“I was cruel, and terrible,” she said, “and petty.” She looked down, miserably.
“I can never forgive myself,” she whispered. She looked up. “Can you forgive me, Tarl, ever?” she asked.
I looked about. I could use one of the tharlarion-oil lamps by the large mirror.
“I testified against you at Nine Wells,” she said. “I lied. I spoke falsehood.”
“You did as you were told, Slave Girl,” I told her.
“Oh, Tarl!” she wept. She looked at me, fearlessly. “For Lydius,” she said, “I wanted to send you to Klima!”
“Your wishes are not of interest to me,” I told her.
She looked at me with horror. She wept then, and put down her head. “I identified you for Ibn Saran,” she said.
I shrugged.
“Are you not angry!” she cried.
“A slave girl,” I said to her, “owes her master absolute obedience.”
She looked aside, angrily. “I dare not even speak to you what else I did,” she said.
“You betrayed Priest-Kings,” I told her, “fully, and to the best of your ability.”
She turned white. “Will it make a difference?” she said.
“I do not know,” I told her. “It could mean the loss of Earth and Gor, the ultimate victory of the Kurii.”
She shuddered. “I was weak,” she said. “There was a dungeon. I was stripped, chained. It was dark. There were urts. I was terrified. I could not help myself.
They told me I would be freed.”
By the leather strap I yanked her wrists, indicating to her that they were well tied. “You will not be freed,” I told her.
“Oh, Tarl,” she wept. Then she asked, “Will what I did make a difference?”
“I do not know,” I told her. “Perhaps those on the steel worlds will not believe your protestations. They may believe you only spoke sincerely what you believed to be true, not what, necessarily, was true.”
She shuddered miserably.
“There are many who know of your treachery,” I said. “Doubtless some will he captured, or fall into the bands of agents of Priest-Kings. Soon your life will be worth little among the agents of Priest-Kings.” I thought of Samos. He was not a patient man.
She lifted her eyes to me. “I could be tortured and impaled,” she said.
“You are a slave girl,” I told her. “No such honorable death would be yours. You would be given one of the deaths of a slave girl, who has not been pleasing. In Port Kar, doubtless, you would be given the Garbage Death-bound naked and hurled to the urts in the canals.”
She sank to her knees in horror. I looked at her. In time she again lifted her head.
“Can you forgive me,’’ she asked, “for what I have done?”
“What seems to concern you,” I said, “does not to me seem to require forgiveness. You are a slave girl. You were simply obedient to your master. No man objects to a girl obeying her master.”
“Then,” she said, softly, “you will not even have the kindness to be cruel to me?”
“I am not lenient,” said I, “Girl, with certain other gratifications you permitted yourself, which were not commanded of you.”
She looked at me. “What?” she asked.
“At Nine Wells,” I said, “following your testimony, falsely accusing me, when removed from the rack, you looked upon me, and smiled.”
“So tiny a thing?” she said. “I’m sorry, Tarl.”
“And when I was chained, and bound for Klima’ “ I said, “again you smiled upon me. You cast me a token, a bit of silk. You blew me a kiss.”
“I hated you!” she cried, from her knees.
I smiled.
“I acted like a slave girl,” she said, her head down.
“Do you know why you acted like a slave girl?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
I looked upon her, in the brief garment, bound kneeling before me, looking up at me. “Because you are a slave girl,” I told her.
“Tarl!” she cried.
There was a sudden pounding on the door. I slipped instantly behind the girl, my hand over her mouth, my dagger across her throat. She could feel its edge.
“You will not cry out or give the alarm,” I told her.
She nodded, miserably. I removed my hand from her mouth.
“Vella! Vella!” called a voice. There was more pounding.
“Do you not trust me, Tarl?” she asked, softly. “
“You are a slave girl,” I whispered. “Answer. The knife was still at her throat.
“Yes, Master!” called the girl.
“You know that at the twentieth hour you are to give pleasure to the guards in the north tower!” called the man.
“I am applying my cosmetics,” she called, “I shall hurry!”
“If you are late by so much as five, Ehn, “ be called, “you will be caressed by the five fingers of leather.” This was an allusion to the Gorean five-strap slave whip, commonly used on girls because of the softness and width of its lashes. It punishes severely but, because of its construction, does not permanently mark the girl.
“I hurry, Master! I hurry!” cried Vella.
The man left.
“You are in great danger,” said Vella. “You must flee.” I sheathed the dagger I had held her in obedience with.
“Those in the kasbah are in greater danger than I,” I smiled.
“How did you get in?” she said. “Is there a secret entrance?”
I shrugged. “I entered unobserved,” I said. “I looked at her. “Curiosity is not becoming in a Kajira,” I said.
She stiffened.
I had waited near one of the gates of the kasbah, in the shelter of the ring’s invisibility. When a reconnoitering party left the kasbah I had simply slipped unseen within. I had stopped in the kitchens of the kasbah to find a suitable garment for Vella. Then I had examined various areas, until I found her, in a room in which girls, who are to be summoned to the pleasure of men, may prepare themselves.