"Before such things are considered," said one of the men, "we must make certain that she is the correct slave."

I turned my head to the right, in misery, looking wildly through the tiny perforations at Aynur.

"She answers the description," said Aynur. "She had a private sale. She came to the house at the time in question."

"One not of the house was within the house today," said one of the men to the other. "He may have spoken with her."

"He was alone with her in the garden," said Aynur, angrily. "He undoubtedly spoke with her!"

"Not necessarily," said one of the men.

Aynur looked down, angrily.

Sometimes the masters use us in silence, neither permitting us to speak, nor, for their part, deigning to speak to us. This is a very humiliating way in which to be handled, but in it we are left in no doubt as to the fact that we are mastered. Human speech does not pa.s.s between us.

We are put in one position or att.i.tude, or another. We must obey the slightest signs and indications. It helps to remind us that we are animals.

"I think we should a.s.sume words pa.s.sed between them," said the other man.

"Not necessarily," said the first. "It is sometimes amusing to treat a pleasure-garden girl, or a high slave, as though she might be a low slave, or even the most worthless of common slaves."

I supposed this was true. The difference between a high slave and a low slave, of course, is only the whim of the master. It is they who decide on which step of the dais, so to speak, we may kneel, or even if we may approach the dais at all.

"Surely we are not prepared to take the risk," said the other.

"No," said the first. "It has been resolved that we shall not wait."

"I have delivered her into your hands," said Aynur. "Pay me."

"Are you standing?" asked one of the men.

Aynur fell to her knees, angrily. Then she put out her hand, palm up.

"Pay me!" she said.

I sensed that one of the men removed some coins from his wallet. I heard the clink of metal.

Aynur seemed quite pleased. Her hand was out.

I saw a hand poised over hers, as though to drop coins into her opened palm.

"You are certain," asked the man, "that you wish these coins to touch your hand?"

"Master?" asked Aynur, pulling back her hand suddenly, as though it might have been burned.

"It is nothing to me," said the man. "But I thought it might be something to you."

Aynur, suddenly, angrily, fearfully, held her hands behind her back.

They might have been braceleted there.

Aynur, though she was first amongst us, was nonetheless a pleasuregarden girl. Pleasuregarden girls are commonly forbidden to touch coins. Reasons for this are obvious, for example, that they might receive gratuities from guests and hide them; that they might take money from guards, or others, to further intrigues or to attempt to influence masters; that they be denied the power which coins might bring, in bribing guards or tradesmen, and so on. Indeed, slaves are commonly forbidden to touch money except under certain conditions, as when being sent to the market, and so on. In this house, as in many others, slaves, at least those of the pleasure garden, were not permitted to touch money. It can be a capital offense to do so, hands may be cut off, and such. Legally, of course, the slave can own nothing, not even as little as a tarskbit.

It is, rather, she who is owned.

"No!" said Aynur, suddenly. "I do not want the money!"

"As you wish," said the fellow. I saw the hand, presumably holding coins, withdrawn. I heard them clinking again, presumably being returned to a wallet, falling in with others. Aynur was furious.

But she was a slave. She was slave helpless. Even so little as a word, or a veiled hint, to the house master, by someone, might call attention to her. Would it be worth her life, say, to retain the coins? Could she successfully hide them, if they were sought for? Could she dispose of them, without being found out?

Would her denials be credited, if it were stated by some authority that she had taken them? Who were these men? Did they, perhaps, have the confidence of the master? Might they not even be his agents? "I shall, with Masters' permission," she said, angrily, "return to the rest area."

"You may find that difficult," said one of the men.

"Masters?" she asked, frightened.

"I think you will find that the guard has closed the door, after you,"

said the man.

"No!" cried Aynur, in horror.

The door, of course, locked automatically.

Certainly a guard had left the door open, and certainly he might have closed it later, following our exit. It would presumably be the same guard who had contacted her earlier, and who had left the door open for our exit, he who had apparently been suborned, he who might even, by now, have left the house, to depart the city.

"Masters!" protested Aynur.

Her terror was fully justified. She could not return to the rest area.

She was locked out, and within the house. In the morning she would be found in the hall. She would then be punished, perhaps by being thrown to leech plants, perhaps by being fed to sleen.

"Yes?" said one of the men.

"What am I to do?" she begged.

"You may do whatever you wish," he said, "but if I were you, I would accompany us."

"You have arranged things thusly," she said.

"Yes," he said. "If you remain here you will surely die, and thus you would be wise to come with us. In this fashion, of course, you place yourself in our power.

And if this is not the slave we seek, if you have delivered the wrong girl to us, if it turns out that you have been mistaken, or have sought to trick or betray us, you will be in our power, answerable, and fully, to our displeasure."

She moaned.

"Stand," said the other man. "Bracelets!"

Instantly Aynur stood and turned toward the door, placing her hands behind her back. I saw her wrists locked in slave bracelets.

"We have brought a cloak for you," said the first man. Aynur moaned.

He put a cloak about her shoulders, gently, as though she might have been a free woman.

Then he turned her about, rudely, and, considering her, hooked it shut.

He then pulled the cloak's hood up and over her head, and down about her features. I saw her eyes within the shadows of the hood. She was looking down at the slave box. I did not know if she could detect my features within the perforations, or knew that I was looking out, or not. Her eyes were filled with fear. One of the men opened the door and looked out in the hall.

He then returned to the room. He and his fellow then lifted up the slave box. I whimpered, helplessly. I felt myself carried through the door. Aynur, I was sure, hurried closely behind. An outer door had been left unlocked. In a few moments I was being carried through dark streets.

FORTY THREE

I lay in the iron box, my knees drawn up. I was no longer bound or gagged. I was in some bas.e.m.e.nt beneath a bas.e.m.e.nt, I thought. We were still within the city, I was sure. I had no idea where in the city, in what district or quarter, we might be.

Indeed, had I known, the names would have meant nothing to me. There had been very little light in the streets after we had left the vicinity of my master's house. The streets had soon become very narrow and crooked.

The footing, too, must have been uneven, judging from the movements of the box. We had evaded the watch once, but only soon after leaving my master's house, by withdrawing into a deserted courtyard. As we had not later encountered the watch, or guardsmen, I conjectured that our present district or quarter must be a poor one, one far from affluent areas, perhaps even a dangerous one, one on which the city might not care to waste its forces. We had entered a building. I had been carried down a long, winding flight of stairs.

Then, in some subterranean area, a trapdoor had been lifted, and I had been carried down, further.

I had been told, and it was doubtless true, that cries from such a place could not be heard outside, that they would be unavailing, even the most piercing screams. Indeed, the place had doubtless been chosen, at least in part, because of this property.

I moved a little in the box, to ease my body. Its iron sides were so strong. I was so cramped within!

Such boxes are sometimes used for slave discipline.

I had been taken out of the box at various times, to be fed and watered, and permitted to relieve myself, on a leash, only to be returned to it later. Too, once, while I was out of the box, the golden collar had been cut from my neck. Even the filings from the saw had been gathered in a silken napkin, laid under my head and neck, my hair tied up, over my head. The collar, even the filings, were of value. The two men continued to wear masks.

Their accents were like those of most of the guards in the house, but I did not recognize them as from among those guards. They were, I think, local hirelings, indeed, ruffians of some sort, brigands. It was only too clear that they were interested in the collar, for its gold. But then, too, of course, it would make sense that it be removed, as it bore on itself, engraved upon it, the name and house of my master. After the golden collar had been cut away, and the napkin, with its filings, carefully gathered up and folded, I had been led, held by the hair, my head held at the hip of one of the men, to an anvil. My head and neck were laid upon it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a st.u.r.dy, rounded bar of iron. This bar was bent into a curve, but the curve was not closed on one side. It was shaped rather like the letter C. This was put about my neck. I saw a heavy hammer rise. Then, as I closed my eyes, this bar, with powerful, expert strokes, was shaped about my neck. The C had now become a closed circle. The curie was regular; the two ends were flush. It had been well put upon me. I suspected that my captor, he who had wielded the hammer, might be, or might once have been, of the Metal Workers. I could no more remove the collar, of course, than I could have opened a link in a heavy chain, one which might have held a ship, with my fingers. No longer, then, did I wear a collar of gold. I now wore a simpler collar, indeed, a collar that was no more, in fact, physically, than a ring of iron. To be sure, legally, socially, and psychologically, a collar is a collar, and it marked me as a slave.

Indeed, it marked me as a very lowly slave, or, more likely, one who had now been put, for one reason or another, in a temporary collar, perhaps for purposes of transit, or prior to her sale, or such. There are also strap collars which are similar, in which a flattened strap of metal is beaten around the neck, usually also for similar purposes. "Do not fear," had said one of the men to me. "Even this will be removed, if your ankles are to be tied together and weighted, and you are to be cast into a carnarium."

It was three days ago, I think, that I had been brought to this place.

From where the box had been put on the floor I could look Out through the perforations and, in the light of the lamp in the room, it set on a small table, see Aynur.

Shortly after we had first come to this place the box had been put on the floor and one of the men had ascended the stairs again, to pull down the trapdoor, and lock it shut, from the inside.

When he came downstairs, putting the key away in his wallet, he went to Aynur, who was standing, and brushed back her hood. He then unhooked the cloak and opened it, holding it open for a time, regarding her. She was in her silks, again, the sleeveless, silken scarlet vest, tied shut with a mere string, and the belly silk, scarlet, too, in the Harfaxian drape, fastened at the left hip with a golden clasp. Her earrings, her bangles and bracelets, her armlet, her talmit, had been removed before the mat check. My ornaments, including even the tiny golden earrings, had been removed earlier, before I had been switched in the garden. It is common to account for, and lock up, such valuables at night. One would not want, for example, a girl trying to barter such things, bracelets and such, for, say, the caress of a guard. Before coming to arouse me, on the pretext of taking me to the master, I supposed that she must have donned her silk. That would have been safer than wearing it under her silken sheets. For mat check, Aynur, under the lamp of the house master, under her sheets, was to be as bared as any other girl. She was, when all was said and done, only another flower. Let her beware then lest the house master should in his check lift back the sheets and not find her naked.

The fellow then slipped the cloak from Aynur's shoulders. It fell back, behind her, on the floor.

"Turn about," he said.

She obeyed, and, in a moment, he had unlocked her slave bracelets, those which he had put on her in the small room, those lovely, linked, twin confinements by means of which her wrists had been pinioned behind her. He returned the bracelets to his wallet.

"Go to the straw by the wall," he said. "Stand there, in the light of the lamp."

She did so.

I realized that Aynur was a quite beautiful woman, and, without her talmit, and her switch, and, now, in the presence of the men, did not seem, really, different from the rest of us.

"May I speak?" asked Aynur.

"No," said the man.

Yes, she seemed rather like the rest of us now.

"She is a high slave," said one of the men to the other.

"That was before," said the first man.

"She was first girl in the house of Appanius," said the other.

"Do you think you are a first girl, and that you are now in the house of Appanius?" inquired the first man of Aynur.

"No, Master," she said.

"Do you think you still wear the talmit?" he asked.

"No, Master," she said.

"Are you a high slave?" asked the first man.

"Yes, Master," she said, hesitantly.

"No, you are not," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"Are you a proud woman?" asked the first man.

"I do not know, Master," she said, uncertainly.

"If you are," he said, "you will soon be cured of that."

"Yes, Master," she said, frightened.

"We do not coddle slaves here," he said.

"No, Master," she said.