"Please, no, Masters!" said Aynur. "My perfidy would be clear to all! I would be nailed to the gate!"

"It might be dangerous to return her to the house," said the second man.

"That is true," said the first.

"It would be better," said the second, "to bind and gag her, and put her in the slave box, and then cast the slave box into one of the more remote carnariums."

"We could save the slave box," said the first, "and, at night, simply weight her and cast her into the carnarium. She would disappear without a trace."

"Yes," said the second, thoughtfully. "That is much better."

"No, no, Masters!" wept Aynur.

"We could then sell the slave box," said the first.

"Yes," agreed the second.

"Have mercy, Masters!" cried Aynur.

"You are a treacherous slave," said the first man.

"No, Master, no!" she cried.

"You are disloyal," said the second man.

"No, Masters, no, no!" she cried.

"Do you deny the words of free men?" inquired the second man.

"I beg humbly only to correct the misapprehensions of Masters," she wept. "I was treacherous. I was disloyal. But I am no longer treacherous! I am no longer disloyal! I have learned my lesson. Forgive me, Masters! Give a foolish, disobedient slave the opportunity to redeem herself! I will never again betray a master!"

"What are you?" asked the first man.

"A slave, Master!" said Aynur.

"And what else?" he asked.

"Nothing else, Master," she said. "Only that, Master!"

"Are you determined now to be a good slave?" inquired the first man.

"Yes, Master! Yes, Master!" wept Aynur.

"Perhaps we should then cut her throat before we cast her into the carnarium," said the first man.

"No, Master! Have mercy, Master!"

"What are you good for?" asked the second man.

"All the things that a slave is good for!" she wept.

"You are cold," said the second man.

"No," she said, "I have a thousand heats and a thousand flames!"

"Do you think you could please a man?" asked the first man.

"Desperately and fervently," she said, "in all the ways that a woman can please a man! I beg only the opportunity to show you!"

"Let us leave her fate in the hands of the other slave," suggested the second man.

"No, no, no!" cried Aynur, turning white. "No, Master! Please, no, Master!"

"But she was first girl over the other slave," said the first man.

"So much the better," said the second man.

"You were, as I understand it," said the first man to Aynur, who seemed now unable to rise even to her knees, "a poor first girl, one not only unpopular in the garden, but even one richly hated therein, one who ruled it strictly and cruelly, personally, arbitrarily, using your modic.u.m of power as an opportunity to satisfy your vanity, bestowing favors on your sycophants, indulging in petty vendettas, stealing from, and abusing, those whom you disliked. Too, you tried to seek power from guards, and even, through them, to contact, and influence, others, others, even, outside the house. Your pettinesses, and administered punishments, often founded on nothing more than your whims and tastes, were notorious in the house."

Aynur moaned.

"And, in an abuse of your power, you tricked this other slave, and illicitly, treacherously delivered her, for putative gain, into our hands, in this act betraying both your office and your master."

Aynur' s wrists seemed small, behind her back, pinioned there by the bracelets.

How helpless we are, bound!

"So it seems fitting then," said the first man, "that your fate be now put in the hands of she whom you tricked, she whom you betrayed into our grasp."

"Do not entrust my fate to her, Masters!" wept Aynur. "She hates me.

Please, no, Masters! I am, when all is said and done, only a slave, and I am naked, and braceleted, at your feet. Have mercy on a slave, Masters!"

"What is to be done with her?" asked the first man of me.

I was startled by what had occurred. I knew that Aynur despised me. I knew that she hated me. I knew that she had willingly delivered me into the hands of these men, neither knowing nor caring what they sought of me. I knew she wanted me out of the house. I was sure she welcomed this opportunity to rid herself of me. She would not have cared, I was sure, if they had simply, once outside the house, cut my throat, or, for some reason, cast me into some pit, one of the great carnariums outside the city. She did not wish me well.

She was my enemy.

"Shall we weight her ankles and hurl her into a carnarium?" asked the second man. "Shall we throw her to leech plants? Shall we stake her out to be eaten alive by insects?"

I was silent, disconcerted.

Suddenly Aynur, on her belly, oriented herself toward me. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes, lying before me on the stones, a prostrate, naked, braceleted slave. I might have been a queen, kneeling over her, concealed even in the heavy, dark cloak.

But there were rings of metal on both our necks.

"We can expose her in the mountains," said the second man. "We can leave her bound, at the mouth of a larl's cave."

"My life is in your hands," wept Aynur. "Please, sweet, beloved Gail, my favorite, beloved sister in bondage, be kind, be merciful!"

Aynur did not now have her talmit, that symbol of authority. She did not now have her switch.

"I am sorry I was cruel to you!" said Aynur. "I am sorry! am sorry!"

No longer was she first girl. She was now naught but another slave. And a rather pretty one.

There was no special reason, I now saw, why she should have been first girl, any more than several of the others.

"Please, beloved Gail," she wept.

"She is beautiful, Masters," I said, suddenly. "You do not wish to hurt her."

He who was first among the captors looked at me, startled. The newcomer, too, who had paid little attention to these matters, turned, now, to regard me.

"She is your enemy," said the second man. "How shall we kill her?"

"She is only a slave," I whispered. "She wants to love and serve."

"Yes, yes," whimpered Aynur, her head turned to her left, her cheek on the stones.

"Do you not understand?" asked the second man. "We are granting you a rare privilege. We are permitting you to dictate the manner of an enemy's death. You may never again receive such an opportunity. Relish your revenge! Let it be sweet!"

I put my head down. I wanted none of this.

"Beg!" said the second man to Aynur. She cried out, kicked. "My life is in your hands," wept Aynur to me. "Permit me to be spared! I beg my life!"

"How do you address her?" inquired the second man of Aynur. She wept, again, again kicked.

"Mistress! Mistress!" she said. "I beg my life, Mistress!" I was in consternation.

I was now as Mistress to the proud Aynur!

"If I am to die, please let it be done quickly, mercifully, Mistress,"

said Aynur.

"Speak!" the second man ordered me.

"I am a slave, Master," I said. "It is neither mine to prescribe, nor dictate, the manner of another's death.

It is rather mine to obey, to serve."

Aynur lay helplessly before me. All that had seemed cruel and hard about her before was now gone. She was now no more than the slave she was. The cruelties, the artificialities, had been broken away from her. She was now utterly vulnerable, and soft, and tender, and beautiful. Now she was no more than a helpless slave girl.

"What is to be done with her?" inquired the second man.

I looked down at Aynur, and she looked up at me, piteously. No longer was she the Aynur of old.

"We are both slaves, Masters," I said. "That is all we are. That is our destiny and nature. We beg to love and serve. That is what we wish, to be pleasing, and to be loved. Please be kind to us. Please show us mercy. We beg it."

"What of her?" said the second man. He indicated Aynur, roughly, brutally, prodding her with his bootlike sandal.

"If you do not want her," I said, "do not hurt her. If you do not wish to keep her for yourselves, do not kill her. Sell her. Surely she will bring you a good price in a market."

I sensed the men looking at me.

"I am sure that she will do her best to be a good slave," I said.

"Is it true?" asked the second man, of Aynur.

"Yes, my masters," whispered Aynur.

"For the time, then, at least, we will spare her," said the first man.

Aynur shuddered. I feared that she might faint.

I was acutely aware of my own helplessness, and bondage, how my ankles were crossed, one lying over the other, the two looped with cord and bound together, how my wrists were crossed, and bound. I pulled a little and, in an instant, had come to the last of the slack, an inch or so, in the cord which fastened my wrists to my ankles. I was conscious of the cloak, so precariously about my shoulders, and my nudity beneath it. It was total power the men held over Aynur and myself. This was not merely a matter of their much greater size and strength, enabling them to handle us as though we might be children, enabling them to do with us as they wished, nor was it a matter merely of the implacability of our bonds, denying us even the most meaningless opportunity to try to defend ourselves or to flee; it had rather to do with the marks on our thighs, the collars on our necks, that we were slaves. It was that which, more than anything else, more than their incomparably greater physical strength, more than the sternness of bonds, made us wholly, helplessly, theirs.

The second man bent to Aynur's ankles and bound them together.

"Thank you, Mistress," breathed Aynur.

I winced, seeing how tightly her ankles were bound together.

The man then knelt across her body and thrust the slave bracelets higher on her wrists. He then, with cord, tied her wrists together. He jerked the cords tight.

He then removed the bracelets from her, putting them in his pouch. He then drew her to her knees and gagged her.

I dared not cast a glance at my master. He was standing to one side.

I feared to be overly bold. I did not wish to be lashed.

The slave box, by the first man, with his foot, was thrust before me and to my right, rather toward the foot of the stairs. It sc.r.a.ped on the stone flooring. It was not far, then, from where my master was. It was to his left. He paid it no attention.

The second man then lifted Aynur up in his arms. I saw her eyes, over the gag. He carried her to the slave box. He sat her in the box. He put one hand in her hair and the other on her ankles. I again saw her eyes. In them there was terror. Neither of us knew, truly, what her fate was to be. It was my hope that they would spare her, if only for the whip and collar of another, one who would see, even casually, to her perfect mastering. He put her down in the box, on her back, her knees up. He shut the lid of the box, and locked it. Through the perforations in the box, in the form of the kef, I could see her face.

In what perfect custody we are kept!

The newcomer, my master, and the two captors then exchanged further words, sotto voce.

I saw then the slave box lifted by the two men. It had stout, leather handles at each end. It was carried up the stairs, and then, the first man opening the trap, thrusting it up, through the opening. The trap was then closed. I heard the steps of the men, heavy with the weight they were bearing, cross the floor above, and then, in a moment, as they set themselves to a new flight of stairs, diminish.

I was then left alone, in the subbas.e.m.e.nt, with my new master.