Marcus glowered at me.
'Surely the matter would be at least controversial,' I said.
'I should never have laid eyes on her,' he moaned.
'Nonsense,' I said. 'Surely you are pleased that you did.'
'My life is ruined,' he said.
'Your prospects were not all that promising anyway,' I said.
'I did not know that such a female could exist in reality,' he said.
'She is very nice,' I granted him.
'She is utterly, exquisitely beautiful!' he said.
'She is pretty,' I admitted.
'Beautiful!' he said.
'You would like to own her,' I said.
'Yes!' he wept.
'I wonder what she would look like, branded, and in your collar,' I said.
'Do not torture me,' he said.
'I suppose, sooner or later, she will make someone a lovely property,' I said.
'Please, Tarl,' said he.
'Sorry,' I said.
'It is not just that she is a beauty,' he said. 'It is something else about her. I do not know what it is. She is unique. She is special.'
'I must go to the slave camp,' I said, 'to get Ina. Why don't you go back to our new camp, and I shall meet you there.'
'Very well,' he said, despondently.
I watched him withdraw.
I was rather pleased with the proceedings of the morning, though it must now be noon, or after. I had expected that Marcus would be strongly attracted to Phoebe, for she was an extraordinarily lovely example of a type that he found almost maddeningly irresistible. I recalled, for example, his intense attraction toward the slave, Yakube, in Port Cos, on the wharf there. To be sure, suspecting her to be of Cos, I had feared he might attempt to kill her. Fortunately, as I have mentioned, she had only been from White Water, on the Vosk. But even though I had expected Marcus would find Phoebe of extreme interest, I had not anticipated that his interest would have been as arresting and profound as it apparently was. Also, I had not anticipated that Phoebe, on her part, would have had the profound reaction to him that she had apparently had. Kneeling before us, she had hardly taken her eyes off him. She had trembled in his presence. It had seemed that she, in a way, had recognized him, as it had seemed that he, too, in his way, had recognized her. Perhaps it was before one such as he that she, in her most secret, exciting and beautiful dreams, knelt in her chains, as in his dreams, too, perhaps it was one such as she who, in appropriate chains, knelt before him, looking up at him, to read her fate in his eyes. Yet their recognition of one another, I sensed, had been one which had far exceeded dreams. It had been a recognition in reality, the sudden sensing of a rightness, an appropriateness, an exact fittingness. This unspoken recognition of one another, startling to both, had been exact and real, unquestionable. There had been a recognition of a fitting together, of an indubitable congruence, of a perfection of coordinate realities. This was as real and perfect as the relationship of a lock and its key.
I then, whistling a soft tune to myself, left for the slave camp, to fetch Ina.
44 Hunters
'Hold,' said a fellow, surlily, stepping forth from between low tents, in the camp outside the slave camp.
I stopped, the leash to the hooded woman in my grasp. She wore a brown, calflength garment. Her hands were braceleted behind her back.
'You are Tan, of Port Kar?' asked the fellow.
'Yes,' I said.
'We are not fond of those of Port Kar here,' he said.
'We are not on Cos,' I said.
'You have a wench there,' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'A comely wench?' he asked.
'I think so,' I said.
I looked about. There were some five other fellows with this one. The others held crossbows, leveled at me.
'Doubtless a slave?' he said.
'No,' I said. 'A free woman.'
'It would seem so,' he said. 'She does not even know enough to kneel at the sound of a man's voice.'
Swiftly the woman behind me knelt. I dropped the leash.
'Do not draw,' warned the fellow.
I did not draw. 'What do you want?' I asked.
'Check her thigh,' said the leader of the men. 'It is not marked,' said a fellow, elatedly. 'Examine her,' said the leader.
The woman's dress was pulled up about her breasts and she was thrown forward, on her belly.
'No,' said the fellow, in a moment.
'Check the sides of her neck,' said the leader.
The fellow then thrust the slave hood up about her chin, as high as it would move, without being unbuckled. He then looked under the leather leash collar at the sides of her neck. That is a rare brand site, like the inside of the left arm, or the lower left abdomen, but it is not unknown.
'No!' said the fellow.
'Do you smell gold, lads?' asked the leader of the others.
'Yes,' said one, grinning.
'Yes,' said another.
'What do you want?' I asked.
'This would not be the free woman, the Lady Ina, of Ar, would it?' asked the leader.
'No,' I said. 'It would not be. This is the free woman, Philomela, of Tabor.'
'You make a serious mistake in attempting to deceive us, my friend,' said the leader.
'How is that?' I asked.
'I was a member of the crew of the Lady Ina in the delta. I have seen her face. I can recognize it.'
'I see,' I said.
'Unhood her,' he said.
The fellow who had examined the woman for brands then rudely unbuckled the slave hood, pulled it away, put his hand in the woman's hair and turned her face up, as she lay, facing the leader.
He seemed stunned.
'Well?' said one of his men.
'That is not the Lady Ina,' said the leader, hesitantly.
'Who are you?' demanded the fellow who had unhooded her.
'Philomela,' she whispered, 'Lady of Tabor.'
She cried out in pain, jerking in the bracelets. She had been kicked, as might have been a mere slave.
'He does not have her,' said one of the men.
'Come away,' said the leader.
In a moment they had faded away, among the tents.
When I had gone to the slave camp earlier I had opened the lid of Ina's slave box, Number 73, and, having
