'Shameless!' cried the free girl.
'You probably have ugly legs,' said Elizabeth.
'I do not!' retorted the girl.
'Don't choke on your veil,' advised Elizabeth.
'I am really beautiful!' cried the free girl.
'I doubt it,' said Elizabeth.
'I am!' she cried.
'Well then,' said Elizabeth, 'what are you ashamed of?' Then Elizabeth strode to her, and, to the girl's horror, on the of the public high bridges, face-stripped her. The girl screamed but no one came to her aid, and Elizabeth spun her about, peeling off layers of Robes of Concealment until, in a heavy pile of silk, brocade, satin and starched muslin the girl stood in a sleeveless, rather brief orange tunic, attractive, of a sort sometimes worn by free women in the privacy of their own quarters.
The girl stood there, wringing her hands and wailing. The slave girl had backed off, looking as though she might topple off the bridge in sheer terror.
Elizabeth regarded the free woman. 'Well,' she said, 'you are rather beautiful, aren't you?'
The free woman stopped wailing. 'Do you think so?' she asked.
'Twenty gold pieces, I'd say,' appraised Elizabeth.
'I'd give twenty-three,' said one of the men watching, the same fellow whom Elizabeth had slapped.
In fury the free woman turned about and slapped him again, it not being his day in Ko-ro-ba.
'What do you think?' asked Elizabeth of the cringing slave girl.
'Oh, I would not know,' she said, 'I am only a poor girl of Tyros.'
'That is your misfortune,' said Elizabeth. 'What is your name?'
'Rena,' said she, 'if it pleases Mistress.'
'It will do,' said Elizabeth. 'Now what do you think?'
'Rena?' asked the girl.
'Yes,' snapped Elizabeth. 'Perhaps you are a dull-witted slave?'
The girl smiled. 'I would say twenty-five gold pieces,' she said.
Elizabeth, with the others, inspected the free girl. 'Yes,' said Elizabeth, 'Rena, I think you're right.' Then she looked at the free girl. 'What is your name, Wench?' she demanded.
The girl blushed. 'Relia,' she said. Then she looked at the slave girl. 'Do you really think I would bring so high a price-Rena?'
'Yes, Mistress,' said the girl.
'Yes, Relia,' corrected Elizabeth.
The girl looked frightened for a moment. 'Yes-Relia,' she said.
Relia laughed with pleasure.
'I don't suppose an exalted free woman like yourself,' said Elizabeth, 'drinks Ka-la-na?'
'Of course I do,' said Relia.
'Well,' said Elizabeth, turning to me, who had been standing there, as flabbergasted as any on the bridge, 'we shall have some.' She looked at me. 'You there,' she said, 'a coin for Ka-la-na.'
Dumbfounded I reached in my pouch and handed her a coin, a silver Tarsk.
Elizabeth then took Relia by one arm and Rena by the other. 'We are off,' she announced, 'to buy a bottle of wine.'
'Wait,' I said, 'I'll come along.'
'No, you will not,' she said, with one foot kicking Relia's discarded Robes of Concealment from the bridge. 'You,' she announced, 'are not welcome.'
Then, arm in arm, the three girls started off down the bridge.
'What are you going to talk about?' I asked, plaintively.
'Men,' said Elizabeth, and went her way, the two girls, much pleased, laughing beside her.
I do not know whether or not Elizabeth's continued presence in Ko-ro-ba would have initiated a revolution among the city's free women or not. Surely there had been scandalized mention of her in circles even as august as that of the High Council of the City. My own father, Administrator of the City, seemed unnerved by her.
But, long before such a revolution might have been successfully achieved, Al-Ka, from the Nest, arrived in the city. For this mission, he had permitted his hair to grow. I almost did not recognize him, for the humans in the Nest commonly, both men and women, though not now always, shave themselves completely, in accord with traditional practices of sanitation in the Nest. The hair caused him no little agitation, and he must have washed it several times in the day he was with us. Elizabeth was much amused by the forged slave papers prepared for her, giving in detail an account of her capture and exchanges, complete with endorsements and copies of bills of sale. Some of the information such as Physicians' certifications and measurements and marks of identification had been compiled in the Nest and later transferred to the documents. In my compartment, Al-Ka fingerprinted her, adding her prints to the papers. Under a section on attributes I was interested to note that she was listed as literate. Without that, of course, it would be improbable that Caprus could have justified adding her to his staff. I kissed Elizabeth long one morning, and then, with Al-Ka, she, hidden in a wagon disguised to resemble a peddler's wagon, left the city.
'Be careful,' I had said to her.
'I will see you in Ar,' she had said to me, kissing me. Then she had lain down on a flat piece of rain canvas which Al-Ka and I had rolled about her, and, concealed in this fashion, we had carried her to the wagon.
Beyond the city, the wagon would stop, drawing up in a secluded grove. There Al-Ka would release Elizabeth from the rain canvas and busy himself with the wagon. He would set a central bar, running lengthwise in the wagon, in place, locking it in. Then he would change the white and gold rain canvas to a covering of blue and yellow silk. Meanwhile Elizabeth would have built a fire and in it burned her clothing. Al-Ka would then give her a collar to snap about her throat and she would do so. She would then climb into the wagon where, with two ankle rings, joined by a foot of chain looped about the central bar, she would be fastened in the wagon. Then, whistling, Al-Ka would pull the wagon out of the grove and Elizabeth would be on her way to Thentis, for delivery to the House of Clark, only another slave girl, naked and chained, perhaps lovelier than most but yet scarcely to be noticed among the many others, each day, delivered to so large and important a house, the largest in Thentis, among the best known of Gor.
It was one day to Thentis by tarn, but in the wagon we knew the trip would take perhaps the better part of one of the twenty-five day Gorean months.
There are twelve twenty-five day Gorean months, incidentally, in most of the calendars of the various cities. Each month, containing five five-day weeks, is separated by a five-day period, called the Passage Hand, and every other month, there being one exception to this, which is that of the last month of the year is separated from the first month of the year, which begins with the Vernal Equinox, not only by a Passage Hand, but by another five-day period called the Waiting Hand, during which doorways are painted white, little food is eaten, little is drunk and there is to be no singing or public rejoicing in the city; during this time Goreans go out as little as possible; the Initiates, interestingly enough, do not make much out of the Waiting Hand in their ceremonies and preachments, which leads one to believe it is not intended to be of any sort of religious significance; it is perhaps, in its way, a period of mourning for the old year; Goreans, living much of their lives in the open, on the bridges and in the streets, are much closer to nature's year than most humans of Earth; but on the Vernal Equinox, which marks the first day of the New Year in most Gorean cities, there is great rejoicing; the doorways are painted green, and there is song on the bridges, games, contests, visiting of friends and much feasting, which lasts for the first ten days of the first month, thereby doubling the period taken in the Waiting Hand.
Month names differ, unfortunately, from city to city, but, among the civilized cities, there are four months, associated with the equinoxes and solstices, and the great fairs at the Sardar, which do have common names, the months of En-'Kara, or En-'Kara-Lar-Torvis; En-'Var, or En-'var-Lar-Torvis; Se-'Kara, or Se-'Kara-Lar-Torvis; and Se-'Var, or Se-'Var-Lar-Torvis. Elizabeth and I had arrived in Ko-ro-ba in the second month, and she departed on the second day of the Second Passage Hand, that following the second month. We estimated that she would surely be in the House of Clark by the Third Passage Hand, which precedes the month of En-'Var. If all went well, we expected she would be in Ar, and perhaps in the House of Cernus, by the end of En-'Var. It is true that if she, with other girls, were shipped by wagon to Ar, this schedule would not be met; but we knew that the House of Clark, in the case of select merchandise, under which category Elizabeth surely fell, transported slaves by tarn caravan to the markets of Ar, usually binding them in groups of six in slave baskets, sometimes as many as a hundred tarns, with escort, flying at once.
I had decided to wait until the Fourth Passage Hand, that following En-'Var, and then take tarn for Ar, where I would pose as a mercenary tarnsman seeking employment in the House of Cernus, but when the Warrior from Thentis, who resembled me, was slain early in En-'Var, I decided to go to Ar in the guise of an Assassin, by High Tharlarion, for Assassins are not commonly tarnsmen. Besides, it seemed desirable to let those in Ar think that Tarl Cabot had been killed. Further, I did have the business of vengeance to attend to, for there was a Warrior from Thentis who had died on a Koroban bridge, whose blood surely required the justice of the sword. It was not simply that Thentis was an ally of Ko-ro-ba, but also that this Warrior had been, it seemed, slain in my stead, and that thus his life had been given for mine, and was this mine to avenge.
'I've got it now,' said Elizabeth, who, kneeling before the slave ring, had been practicing my signature knot, using the ring as a post.
'Good,' I said.
I myself had been spending some time mastering the knot she had invented, which, I was forced to admit, was suitably ingenious. I examined her knot, which I had tied about the handle of one of the chests near the wall.
It is perhaps surprising, but I think there would have been little difficulty telling which knot had been tied by a man and which by a woman; moreover, though this was much subtler, Elizabeth's knot did, in its way, remind me of her. It was intelligent, intricate, rather aesthetically done and, here and there, in little bendings and loopings, playful. In such a small thing as these knots I was again reminded of the central differences in sex and personality that divide human beings, differences expressed in thousands of subtleties, many of which are often overlooked, as in the way a piece of cloth might be folded, a letter formed, a color remembered, a phrase turned. In all things, it seemed to me, we manifest ourselves, each differently.
'You might check this knot,' said Elizabeth.
I went over to her knot and she went over to mine, and each began, carefully, movement by movement, to check the other's knot.
Elizabeth's knot was a fifty-five turn knot. Mine was fifty-seven.
She had threatened to invent a knot with more than fifty-five turns but when I had threatened to beat her she had yielded to reason.
