'I do not know,' I said.
'Yes, Master?' asked the auctioneer. ''Is there another bid?'
'Yes,' said the man.
'Yes, Master?' asked the auctioneer.
'I take him to be a merchant captain,' said a man near me.
I nodded. The conjecture was intelligent. The fellow wore the white and gold of the merchant, beneath a seaman's aba. It was not likely that a merchant would wear that garment unless he were entitled to it. Goreans are particular about such matters. Doubtless he owned and' captained his own vessel.
'What is his name and ship?' I asked.
'I do not know,' said the man.
'What is Master's bid?' asked the auctioneer.
There was silence.
We looked at the man. The girl, too, in the sales collar and position chain, her hands behind her neck, looked at him.
'What is Master's bid?' asked the auctioneer.
'One tarsk,' said the man.
We looked at one another. There was some uneasy laughter. Then there was again silence.
'Forgive me, Master,' then said the auctioneer. 'Master came late to the bidding. We have already on the floor a bid of forty tarsks.'
Procopius turned about, smiling.
'One silver tarsk,' said the man.
'Aiii!' cried a man.
'A silver tarsk?' asked the auctioneer.
Procopius turned about again, suddenly, to regard the fellow in the back, incredulously.
'Yes,' he said, 'a silver tarsk.'
I smiled to myself. The slave on sale was not a silver-tarsk girl. There would be no more bidding.
'I have a bid for a silver tarsk,' said Vart. 'Is there a higher bid?' There was silence. He looked to Procopius. Procopius shrugged. 'No,' he said.
'I shall close my hand,' said the auctioneer. He held his right hand open, and then he closed it.
The girl had been sold.
The girl looked at the closed fist of the auctioneer with horror. It was not hard to understand its import.
The auctioneer went to her and pulled the hair from her mouth, then threw it back over her right shoulder. He smoothed her hair then, on both sides and in the back. He might have been a clerk adjusting merchandise on a counter. She seemed scarcely conscious of what he was doing. She looked out, fearfully, on the man who had bought her.
The auctioneer turned to the buyer. 'With whom has the house the honor of doing business?' he asked.
'I am Ulafi,' said the man, 'captain of the Palms of Schendi.'
'We are truly honored,' said the auctioneer.
I knew Ulafi of Schendi only by reputation, as a shrewd merchant and captain. I had never seen him before. He was said to have a good ship.
'Deliver the girl to my ship,' said Ulafi, 'at the Pier of the Red Urt, by dawn. We will depart with the tide.'
He threw a silver tarsk to the auctioneer, who caught it expertly, and slipped it into his pouch.
'It will be done, Master,' promised the auctioneer.
The tall black then turned and left the warehouse, which was the market of Vart.
Suddenly the girl, her hands still behind the back of her neck, threw back her head and screamed in misery. I think it was only then that her consciousness had become fully cognizant of the import of what had been done to her.
She had been sold.
Vart gestured to the slaves at the windlass and they turned its large, two-man crank, and the girl 'who had been sold was drawn from the sales area. The next girl was a comely wench from Tyros, dark-haired and shapely. At a word from Vart she stood with her hands behind her neck, arching her body proudly for the buyers. I could see she had been sold before.
3
What Occurred On The Way To The Pier Of The Red Urt; I Hear The Ringing Of An Alarm Bar
It was near the fifth hour.
It was still dark along the canals. Port Kar seems a lonely place at such an hour. I trod a walkway beside a canal, my sea bag over my shoulder. The air was damp. Here and there small lamps, set in niches, high in stone walls, or lanterns, hung on iron projections, shed small pools of light on the sides of buildings and illuminated, too, in their secondary ambience, the stones of the sloping walkway on which I trod, one of many leading down to the wharves. I could smell Thassa, the sea.
Two guardsmen, passing me, lifted their lanterns.
'Tal,' I said to them, and continued on my way.
I wore, as I had the night before, the garb of a metal worker.
I heard an urt splash softly into the water, ahead of me and to my left.
I passed iron doors, narrow, in the walls. These doors usually had a tiny observation panel in them, which could be slid back. The walls were sheer. They were generally windowless until some fifteen feet above the ground. Yards, and gardens and courts, if they exist, are generally within the house, not outside it. This is very general in Gorean architecture. But there were few gardens or courts in Port Kar. It was a crowded city, built up from the marshes themselves, in the Vosk's delta, and space was scarce and precious.
There were pilings along the walkway, to which, here and there, small boats were moored. The walkway itself varied from some five feet to a yard in width.
I had stayed at the sales in the warehouse of Vart for a time after the sale of the blond barbarian. I had not wished to leave immediately after her sale, for that might have indicated, had there been a curious observer present, that that sale had been the one in which I had been interested.
The dark-haired, shapely girl from Tyros had gone for twenty-nine tarsks. She had proved, under Vart's touch, a hot, helpless slave and the bidding then had been quick and meaningful. She had been purchased by Procopius Minor for the Four Chains. He seemed well pleased with the buy. She was hot and she had cost him not forty but only twenty-nine tarsks. He had then, I conjectured, forgotten the blond barbarian. Tyros is a city enemy to Port Kar. Many men in Port Kar would enjoy having a girl of Tyros weep herself slave in their arms. She would make good money for Procopius Minor. She had been an excellent buy, a superb bargain. He might even enjoy using her himself. Who was the girl who had been previously sold? Ah, yes, the blond barbarian, purchased by Ulafi of Schendi.
The next two women sold had been a mother and daughter from Cos. they were sold to separate buyers, as pot girls. The mother brought sixteen tarsks and the daughter fourteen. They were among the eleven women, including the blond barbarian, who had been sold by Bejar to Vart. They had been taken in the capture of the Blossoms of Telnus. The crew and male passengers of the Blossoms of Telnus had also been sold by Bejar to Vart, but these had been auctioned by Vart in the morning, on the wharf blocks, as work slaves.
I had then stayed for only two more sales, and had then left, those of a peasant girl, blond, from southwest of Ar, and a merchant's daughter from Asperiche. The peasant girl brought eight tarsks; the merchant's daughter, to her indignation, brought only six. She had not yet learned slave heat. A strong master would teach it to her. She would learn it, or die. Frigidity is accepted by Goreans only in free women. Slave fires, of course, lurk in every woman. It is only a question of arousing them. Once the slave discovers her sexuality, a venture in which the
