“No,” I said. “One can do little more than kneel or sit in them.”
“I see,” he said.
“Perhaps Master would like to see me in my cage,” I said.
“You are naked in the cage?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” he said. “I like to see naked, caged women.”
“Have I permission to withdraw?” I asked.
“Somehow,” he said, “we must gather information, somehow we must make contact with the Lady Bina.”
“I see no way in which these things can be done,” I said.
“Nor I,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-One
In the early afternoon Nora entered the slave quarters, humming an Earth tune. Her switch dangled jauntily on her wrist.
“Tal!” she said.
“Tal, Mistress,” Jane and I said to her. We were sewing some garments of the men, earlier washed, which had been torn in man sport, in this case hunting wild verr on the passes about the Crag of Kleinias, rents mostly from thorn brush, some, it seemed, from climbing, a loss of footing on rocky slopes, or such. Men are rash and careless beasts. If they had to sew their own garments I supposed they would be more careful. I had never sewn on my former world, but I had learned to do so in the house of Tenalion, for some skill in such matters is expected of a slave. Certainly she is expected to be good for more than bucking and squirming, and crying out, at the end of a chain. I had come to be rather proud of my skill in this humble matter. And it seemed a task appropriate for a slave. Certainly one would not expect a free man, or many free women, at least of upper caste, to do such things. Too, it gave me pleasure to do such things for the masters, to wash and iron their tunics, to sort their clothes, to polish their boots, and such. Interestingly, as a slave, the pleasure I found in these tasks was undeniably sexual. I found such tasks subtly arousing, and sometimes more than subtly so. Sometimes I squirmed doing them, and moaned, for I knew I was doing them as a slave. Eve was elsewhere, in one of the kitchens.
“Behold,” smiled Nora, indicating her left thigh, below the brand.
None of us, including Nora, of course, could read. Of the Kur girls housed in the quarters only Chloe could read. She had been a free woman of Cos, captured at sea by a corsair from Port Kar, as had been the girl from Tabor with whom I had been sold in the Metellan district, though much farther from shore, had been sold to rencers in the delta of the Vosk, who had sold her at a profit to a camp of slavers at the delta’s edge, with its wooden cages, a camp transient, seasonal, in nature, by means of which slaves from Thassa might be brought eastward into the Vosk basin, and slaves from the Vosk basin might be brought westward, through the delta, to Thassa. The rencers often sell and trade in both directions. Sometimes the slaves, stripped, a rope on their neck, in the keeping of a master, are made to pole the light reed boats through the rence. Sometimes they are merely kept, lying naked, bound hand and foot, in the craft, while the men propel the craft. A common practice is to keep them bound at the eastern and western edges of the delta where, new slaves, in their naivety, they might be tempted to think of escape. Poling in the trackless delta, the rope on their neck, they are well aware of the wilderness, the vastness, the treacherous byways, the quicksand, the heat, the insects, leeches, delta sharks, winged, predatory uls, and, in particular, marsh tharlarion, which often scout the boats, and accompany them, little but the eyes visible, for pasangs. Chloe had changed hands several times in her eastward journey on the Vosk, town to town, but, in the end, she had been sold in the great clearing station of Victoria, from which point she had been sold southeast to Torcadino, and then, eventually, in Ar, where some agent of the Kurii had apparently purchased her for the Cave.
Jane and I regarded Nora’s left thigh, as she had prompted us, just below her brand, the common Kef, as ours.
“What does it say?” asked Jane.
“I am told,” said Nora, happily, “it says ‘Tonight I am the property of Kleomenes’.”
“Marvelous,” said Jane.
“You are highly favored, indeed,” I said.
“How beautiful and desirable you are,” said Jane, “to be called to the slave ring of such a man.”
“I sold for two silver tarsks,” said Nora, “and in my first sale.”
“That is more than I was sold for,” I said. I saw no point in telling her how much more it was.
“And more than I and Eve,” said Jane.
I had little doubt that all three had brought more off the block than I, and certainly Nora, but then they had not been put up in the Metellan district.
“Do you think he will buy me?” asked Nora.
“He is a fool if he does not,” said Jane.
“You are very beautiful,” I said.
“How could he hope for anything better on his chain?” said Jane.
“On Earth,” she said, “I never told you, but I was frigid, and did not care for men, and despised them, and had no feelings for them, but here I find myself weak, and warm, and confused in their presence. Here I kneel, and hope that they will find me pleasing, not because I am afraid, though I am afraid, but because I want to be found pleasing-as a female.”
“It is so!” said Jane.
“Yes!” I said.
“When they look upon me,” said Nora, “I want to yield. I want to be owned. I am ready to be mastered, and I long for my mastering. I think, ‘Master this slave! Take her! She is yours!’ When Master Kleomenes touches me, I am a lost slave, hoping that I will not be shown mercy. I did not know on Earth that feelings such as these could exist. When he touches me, I am his, whether I will it or not, though I will it, a thousand times so!”
“Do you cry out, and beg?” asked Jane.
“Yes, yes,” she said.
“Let us hope,” said Jane, “he does not tire of you.”
“No, no!” said Nora.
“If so,” I said, “you could always be sold to another.”
“No!” she wept.
“You are a slave,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” she wept, turning away. “I am a slave! A slave.” Then she fell to her knees, facing away from us, weeping.
Jane and I then returned to our sewing.
“Allison,” said Nora, rising, wiping her eyes with her forearm, and facing us.
“Mistress?” I said.
“A Kur,” she said, “one called Grendel, wishes to see you.”
I put down the sewing. “I hasten,” I said. “He is in the place of cells. Am I to go to the kitchen first? Am I to carry him food or drink?”
“He is not in the place of cells,” she said. “He is in the Golden Corridor, in the fourth compartment.”
This startled me. The first compartment in the Golden Corridor was that of Lucius, putatively first in the Cave, the second and third were occupied, respectively, by Timarchos and Lysymachos. All three were what we might call “golden-chain Kurii,” namely high Kurii, their station witnessed by the golden chains from which depended their translators.
“Master?” I said.
“You will accompany me,” said Lord Grendel, “as a grooming slave, heeling me.”
“Yes, Master,” I said.
