“May I strip your slave?” inquired Ibn Saran.

“Of course,” I said.

He nodded to the girl. To the music she unhooked her slave halter of yellow silk and, as though contemptuously, discarded it. I saw she was excited to see his interest in her. Only too obviously was she interested in him making a purchase of her. The churning of milk and the pounding of grain were not for lovely Alyena. That was for ugly girls and free women. She was too desirable, too, beautiful, to be set to such labors.

I decided I might care to taste the steaming, black wine. I lifted my finger.

The girl in whose charge was the silver vessel, filled with black wine, knelt beside a tiny brazier, on which it sat, retaining its warmth. Seeing my signal, she stiffened; she hesitated. She was white, dark-haired. She wore a high, tight vest of red silk, with four hooks; her midriff was bare; she wore the sashed chalwar, a sashed, diaphanous trousered garment, full but gathered in, closely, at the ankles; she was barefoot; her wrists and ankles were bangled; she was veiled; she was collared. She rose swiftly to her feet. She knelt, head down, before me. She poured, carefully, the hot, black beverage into the tiny red cup.

I dismissed her. Beneath her veil I had not been able to read the lettering on her collar, which would tell who owned her. I supposed it was Suleiman, since she was serving in the palace. The other girl, the white-skinned, red-haired girl, also in vest, chalwar and veil, and bangles and collar, lifted her tray of spoons and sugars. But I turned away. She was not summoned. The girls, white-skinned, were a matched set of slaves, one for the black wine, one for its sugars.

Alyena, now, slowly, disengaged the dancing silk from her hips, yet held it, moving it on and about her body, by her hands, taunting the reclining, languid, heavy-lidded Ibn Saran, to whom she knew, at his slightest gesture, she must bare herself.

He regarded her veil work; she was skillful; he was a connoisseur of slave girls.

I, too, in my way, though doubtless less skillful than the noble Ibn Saran, was a connoisseur of slave girls. For example, the dark-haired slave, she who was one of the matched set, she who was charged with the careful pouring of black wine, was a piece of delicious woman meat, a luscious, if inadequately disciplined piece of female flesh. To see her was to want her.

I had once had a chance to buy her, but, like a fool, I had not done so, carrying her in chains to my ship, to be taken to my house.

I had later sent Tab, one of my captains, a trusted man, to Lydius to buy her, but already had she been sold.

Her whereabouts had been unknown.

She had once disobeyed me, a male. For this she must be punished. I had not bought her in Lydius. Then I had been seeking Talena, to free her in the northern forests, and return her safe to Port Kar, where we might, as I had then thought, renew the companionship. Surely would it have seemed inappropriate to have returned in triumph with Talena, with that dark-haired wench, such a fantastic beauty, nude, wearing my chains, in the hold of my ship. Would Talena not have cut her throat, under the metal collar? And had I freed her would she not, soon, have fallen again to a man’s collar? Her flight from the Sardar had not won her freedom. She, a girl of Earth, had been swiftly caught by Panther Girls, and displayed, tied, roped, to a pole, on the banks of the Laurius, hands over head, ankles, throat and belly bound to it, a beautiful, taken slave.

Sarpedon, a tavern keeper from Lydius, had bought her from Panther Girls. It was in his chains that I had found her, a lowly paga slave in his establishment. She had, in fleeing the Sardar, taken my tarn. Yet, when 1 found her in Lydius, I had not slain her for this act. I had only used her, and left her slave. The tarn had later returned; in fury I had driven it away. She had cost me the tarn; it was worth ten times the cost of her body on a public block. None but its master should it have permitted its saddle! Of what value is a tarn of war who permits a stranger, even a girl, a mere wench, to ascend to its saddle? I had driven it away. When I thought of the tarn I sometimes wanted to lash her beauty to the bone. Yet I recalled that once had she labored, as I, before her flight, her disobedience, for Priest-Kings. I, in my courtly simplicities, my romantic delusions of those times, had wished to return her safe to Earth. She had declined, fleeing the Sardar. It had been a brave act. But it had been not without its consequences. She had gambled. She had lost. I left her slave.

At a signal from Ibn Saran, Alyena drew the veil about her body, and around it, and, with one small hand, threw it aside. She stood boldly before him, arms lifted, head to the side, right leg flexed. The veil, floating, wafted away, a dozen feet from her, and gently, ever so gently, settled to the tiles. Then, to the new melodic line, she danced.

Did the girl, in Lydius, truly think I would have freed her, yielding to her pleadings, I, in whose veins flowed Gorean blood, whose tarn she had cost him? I had not slain her. What a pretty little fool she was! I recalled her pleading that I buy her. Only a slave would so plead. I had not realized until then that she was truly a slave. I recalled, to my chagrin, that once, long ago, we had thought we had cared for one another. I recalled that once, in delirium, in weakness, when poison had burned in my body, I had cried out for her to love me.

But when, long later, after I had learned the lessons of Torvaldsland, I ridded myself of the poison in the cleansing delirium of the antidote, I had not cried out, in weakness, for her love, begging it, but rather, in strength, laughing, had collared her, putting her to my feet and making her my slave. Proud women, their pride stripped from them, belong at the feet of prouder men. She had begged to be freed. She was a slave. And I, once, had been fool enough to care for her.

Once, it was true, she had served Priest-Kings, but then, so, too, had I, and that was long ago. And then we did not know, and she did not know, that she was a true slave, as was revealed in a tavern in Lydius. We had thought her a free woman, pretending to be slave. Then, in a tavern in Lydius, we had learned her slave. It was now out of the question that she, a slave, might serve Priest-Kings. The collar, by Gorean law, cancelled the past. When Sarpedon had locked his collar on her throat her past as a free woman had vanished, her current history as a slave had begun. “She fled the Sardar,” had said Samos to me. “She disobeyed. She is untrustworthy. And she knows too much.” He had wished to send men to Lydius to purchase her, and return her to Port Kar that she might be, under his direction, thrown to urts in the canals. “She cannot be depended on,” said Samos. “And she knows too much.”

“There are better things to do with a beautiful slave,” I told him, “than throw her into the canals, to feed the urts.”

Samos had grinned at me. “Perhaps,” he had said. “Perhaps.”

What a fool I had been to be willing to return such a luscious piece of female to Earth. Had I had my wits about me I would have put a collar on her then and fastened her to the slave ring at the foot of my couch. I could not deny that I was now pleased she was not, in innocuous triviality, ensconced on Earth. I was pleased rather that her beauty was on Gor, where I, and other males, might have access to it. She might have been safe on Earth; she had chosen to be unsafe, as any beautiful woman without a Home Stone must be, on Gor. She would now pay the penalties, and well, exacted of her beauty by the powerful men of a primitive culture. She had gambled. She had lost. I was pleased she had lost. My only regret was that I had not bought her in Lydius, and returned her to Port Kar, to keep her as one of my own slaves. I had thought, at that time, however, that I would find Talena. Talena, unless she, too, were collared, and had no choice, would not be likely to accept such a beauty beneath the same roof with her. If she did not kill her, she would have soon sold her, probably to a woman, or, for a pittance, to the most despicable master she could find. I had not known until Lydius that Vella, the former Miss Elizabeth Cardwell, of Earth, was a true slave.