“Hamid.” said Shakar, not pleased, standing near, “is a trusted man.” And he added, “And he is Aretai.”

“Should you persist in accusing Hamid,” said the judge, “your penalties will be the more severe.”

“He it was,” said I, “who struck Suleiman.”

“Kneel,” said the judge.

I knelt.

The judge signaled again to the slave who controlled the handle of the red-haired girl’s rack. “No, please!” she screamed.

Once more the handle moved and the pawl slipped into a new notch on the ratchet.

Her body, now, was lifted from the network of knotted ropes and hung, suspended, between the two axles of the rack.

“Masters!” she cried. “Masters! I have told the truth! The truth!”

The pawl was moved yet another notch. The girl, now hurt, screamed.

“Have you told the truth, pretty Zaya?” inquired Ibn Saran.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” she wept.

At a signal from the judge the handle was released. The axle of the windlass at the girl’s head spun back and her body fell into the network of knotted ropes.

One of the slaves removed the ropes from her wrists and ankles. She could not move, so terrified she was. He then threw her to the side of a wall, where another slave, pushing against the side of her neck, fastened a snap catch on her collar, securing her by a chain to a ring in the floor. She lay there, trembling.

“Let the testimony of the second slave be taken,” said the judge.

Her wrists were already over her head. She was stripped. She looked at me. She wore a collar.

“Think now, my pretty,” said Ibn Saran. “Think carefully, my pretty.”

She was the other girl of the matched set, the other white-skinned wench, who had had in her charge the silvered, long-spouted vessel of black wine.

“Think carefully now, pretty Vella,” said Ibn Saran.

“I will, Master,” she said.

“If you tell the truth,” he said, “you will not be hurt.”

“I will tell the truth, Master,” she said.

Ibn Saran nodded to the judge.

The judge lifted his hand and the handle on the girl’s rack moved once. She closed her eyes. Her body was now tight on the rack; her toes were pointed; her hands were high over her head, the rope tight, taut, on her wrists.

“What is the truth, pretty Vella?” asked Ibn Saran.

She opened her eyes. She did not look at him. “The truth,” she said, “is as Ibn Saran says.”

“Who struck noble Suleiman Pasha?” asked Ibn Saran, quietly.

The girl turned her head to look at me. “He,” she said. “He it was who struck Suleiman Pasha.”

My face betrayed no emotion.

At a signal from the judge the slave at the handle of the girl’s rack, pushing it with his two hands, moved the handle. When the pawl slipped into its notch her body was held, tight, suspended, between the two axles of the rack.

“In the confusion,” said Ibn Saran, “it was he, the accused, who struck Suleiman Pasha, and then went, with others, to the window.”

“Yes,” said the girl.

“I saw it,” said Ibn Saran. “But not I alone saw it.”

“No, Master,” she said.

“Who else saw?” he asked.

“Vella and Zaya, slaves,” she said.

“Pretty Zaya,” said he, “has given witness that it was the accused who struck Suleiman Pasha.”

“It is true,” said the girl.

“Why do you, slaves, tell the truth?” he asked.

“We are slaves,” she said. “We fear to lie.”

“Excellent,” he said. She hung in the ropes, taut. She did not speak.

“Look now again, carefully, upon the accused.”

She looked at me. “Yes, Master,” she said.

“Was it he who struck Suleiman Pasha?” asked Ibn Saran “Yes, Master,” she said.

“It was he.”

The judge gave a signal and the long handle of the rack, fitting through a rectangular hole in the axle, moved again. The girl winced, but she did not cry out.

“Look again carefully upon the accused,” said Ibn Saran. I saw her eyes upon me.

“Was it he who struck Suleiman Pasha?”

“It was he,” she said.

“Are you absolutely certain?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“It is enough,” said the judge. He gave a signal. The handle spun back. The girl’s body fell into the network of knotted ropes. She turned her face to me.

She smiled, slightly.

The ropes were removed from her wrists and ankles. One of the male slaves lifted her from the rack and threw her to the foot of the wall, beside the other girl.

The slave there took her by the hair, holding her head down, and, between the back of her neck and the collar, thrust a snap catch, closing it. He then, roughly, burning the side of her neck, slid the catch about her collar, to the front; there he jerked it against her collar, the chain then, which fastened her, like the other girl, to a ring in the floor, ran to her collar, under her chin. She kept her head down, a slave.

7 I am Informed of the Pits of Klima; An Escape is Arranged

I lifted my head.

I smelled it, somewhere near. But I saw nothing. I tensed. I sat against the stone wall, formed of heavy blocks. I pulled my head out from the wall, but it would not move far. To the heavy collar of iron, to each of its two, heavy welded rings, one on each side, there was fastened a short chain, fixed to a ring and plate, bolted through the drilled stone. My hands, each, were manacled to the wall, too, on short chains, to my left and right. I was naked. My ankles, in close chains, were fastened to another ring, in the floor, before me, it, too, on a plate, bolted through the floor block.

I sat forward, as far as I could, listening. I sat on the stone, on straw, soiled, which was scattered on the floor to absorb wastes. I looked to the door, some twenty feet across the stone floor; it was of beams, sheathed with iron.

There was a small window, high in the door, about six inches in height, eighteen inches in width. It bore five bars. There was a musty smell, but the room was not particularly damp. Light reached it from a small window, barred, some twelve feet above the floor, in the wall to my right. It was just under the ceiling. In the placid, diagonal beam of light, seeming to lean against the wall, ascending to the window, I saw dust.

I distended my nostrils, screening the scents of the room. I rejected the smell of moldy straw, of wastes. From outside I could smell date palms, pomegranates.

I heard a kaiila pass, its paws thudding in the sand. I heard kaiila bells, from afar, a man shouting. Nothing seemed amiss. I detected the odor of kort rinds, matted, drying, on the stones, where they had been scattered from my supper the evening before. Vints, insects, tiny, sand-colored, covered them: On the same rinds, taking and eating vints, were two small cell spiders. Outside the door I could smell cheese. The smell, too, of Bazi tea was clear. I heard the guard move, drowsy, on his chair outside the door. I could smell his sweat, and the veminium water he had rubbed about his neck.

Then I sat back against the stones. It seemed I had been mistaken.

I closed my eyes. “Surrender Gor,” had come the message, presumed from the steel worlds. “Surrender Gor.” And, earlier, months ago, a caravan boy, Achmed, the son of the merchant, Farouk of Kasra, had found the inscription on a rock, “Beware the steel tower.” There had been, too, the message girl, Veema, whose very body had borne the warning, “Beware Abdul.” I thought little of that now, however, for Abdul had been the water carrier in Tor, surely a minor agent of Others, the Kurii, little to be feared, no more than a gnat in the desert. I had not chosen to press the juices from the body of that insect. I had let him flee in terror. I still did not know, however, who had sent the warning, “Beware Abdul.” I smiled. There seemed little reason to beware of such a nonentity.

On the tip to Nine Wells, in the company of Achmed; his father, Farouk; Shakar, captain of the Aretai; Hamid, his lieutenant, and a guard of fifteen riders, I had seen the stone, led to it by Achmed.