'It is fitting that a slave well serves her masters,' said Msaliti.
'I am your colleague!' she said.
'Never were you anything but our slave, you little white fool,' said Msaliti.
'What if our superiors find out!' she cried.
Msaliti laughed. 'I act in accord with their instructions,' he said. 'Surely you do not think women such as yourself were brought to Gor with any object in mind other than to ultimately wear the collar.'
'No,' she cried. 'No!'
He then stepped behind and to one side of her, with the whip.
'Shaba!' she cried. 'Shaba!'
'Your services are no longer required, my dear,' said he.
'No!' she cried.
'Hear me, Slave,' said Msaliti. 'I have long been patient with you. But the time of masters being patient with you is now at an end. We shall ignore thousands of infractions and insubordinations in the past, presumptions, and speakings and actions, and consider only the past few moments. But a few Elm earlier you dared to touch a cup on the table of masters, as though it were your own, and would have, if not stopped, drunk from it. Also, you have spoken without permission. Also, once you did not respond to the first issuance of a command, but required its repetition. Also, but a moment ago, you addressed a free man not as Master, but by his name.'
'Msaliti!' she begged.
'Ah,' said he, 'what a dull slave. You have repeated the offense.»
'You would not dare to strike me!' she said.
'Earlier I told you,' said he, 'that the whip would be later used. You said, as I recall, that you would look forward to it.'
'Do not strike me,' she begged.
'Prepare to be beaten as what you are, a slave,' he said.
'I do not fear the whip,' she said.
'Have you ever felt it?' he asked.
'No,' she said.
'You will find the experience instructive,' he said.
'I am not one of those girls,' she said, 'who at a touch of the leather will crawl to you and kiss your feet.'
'Speak bravely,' said he, 'after you have felt the whip.'
She tensed at the ring, preparing for the stroke. Her eyes were open. She held the ring with her small. braceleted hands.
Then it fell upon her, once, the slash of the five-bladed Gorean slave whip.
I saw disbelief, startled, wild, enter her eyes. Then she shut her eyes, tightly, tears squeezed from between their lids, wetting the lashes and her cheeks. Her knuckles were now white on the ring they clutched. 'No,' she whispered, 'it cannot be.'
Msaliti did not immediately again strike her. He knew the whip. He gave her several Ihn, that she might begin to feel the pain of the first stroke.
'I will obey you,' she whispered. 'Do not strike me again.
Then the second stroke fell upon her and she screamed with misery, her grip lost on the ring, half thrown against the wall, scratching at it with her braceleted hands, the side of her face against the heavy boards. There were now two layers of pain in her body, overlapping, each reinforcing and intensifying the other. Her body, sensitized by the first stroke, helpless, raw, aware, expectant, exposed, felt the second, as was intended, mingling with the burning echoes, the searing, throbbing wounds of the first, a thousand times more cruelly. 'It is enough!' she wept, gasping, sobbing. 'It is enough! I will do whatever you want!'
Msaliti then began her beating.
'No, Master!' she screamed at the ring, twisting and writhing. But Msaliti administered to her an efficient, though brief, discipline. As beatings go it was not particularly severe. On the other hand, it was genuine. Evelyn had been truly beaten. She had felt the whip.
'Have mercy, Master, on your slave!' she wept.
Msaliti then, after some ten or twelve strokes, lowered the whip. He spoke to the askaris. They unlocked the left slave bracelet of the girl, freeing her from the ring. She fell to her stomach, weeping.
'To my feet,' said he.
She crawled to his feet and kissed them. 'Yes, Master,' she said.
Msaliti again spoke to the askaris and they pulled the girl's wrists behind her back and, refastening her left wrist in the left slave bracelet, the right still locked on her right wrist, secured them there.
Msaliti looked down at her, on her stomach at his feet.
'What a miserable, worthless thing you are,' he said.
I recalled that these had been the words the dark-haired girl had used to the blond-haired barbarian, still kneeling blindfolded, but now terribly frightened, to one side. She knew little of what was going on. She did understand, of course, that some sister in bondage, near to her, had just been disciplined.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'Behold,' said Msaliti, smiling, to Shaba and myself. Then, to the dark-haired girl, he said, sharply, 'Nadu!'
She struggled to her knees and, as she could, her wrists braceleted behind her, assumed before him the lovely, elegant position of the pleasure slave.
'Despicable slave,' smiled Msaliti to the girl.
'Yes, Master,' she said, sobbing.
These words, too, I recalled, had been used by the dark-haired girl earlier to the blond-haired barbarian.
The dark-haired girl now knelt, collared, before Msaliti, herself, too, now only a girl, and slave, at the mercy of men.
Msaliti spoke again to the askaris. He gave one of them the key to the girl's collar.
'Several days ago,' said he to the kneeling girl before him, 'your sale to Pembe was arranged. Tonight you will be delivered to him.'
'Yes, Master,' she said.
'It seems he has taken a fancy to you,' said Msaliti. 'He thinks that you may have in you the makings of a paga girl. I do not know if it is true or not. I would, however, if I were you, attempt to do my best to justify Pembe's confidence in you. Pembe is not a patient man. He has taken the hands and feet from more than one girl.'
She turned white. 'Yes, Master,' she said.
The askaris lifted her to her feet, one holding each arm. 'Master,' she asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'May I have permission to speak?' she asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'Do I have even a name?' she asked.
'No,' he said, 'unless Pembe should choose to give you one.'
'Master,' she said. 'Yes,' he said.
'What did you get for me?' she asked.
'You have a slave girl's vanity,' he said. 'Do you not?'
She put down her head. 'Yes, Master,' she said.
'That is an excellent sign,' he said. 'Perhaps you will even survive.
She looked at him, piteously.
'Four copper tarsks,' he said.
'So little?' she said.
'In my opinion it is more than you are worth,' said Msaliti. Then he waved his hand to the askaris, and they turned the slave about and thrust her, ahead of them, from our presence, out into the anteroom. There, in the anteroom, one of them retrieved the tiny scrap of yellow pleasure silk the girl had brought with her, wadded in her
