When he returned to his place at the feast she crawled to his feet, his slave, and lay there, daring sometimes to touch him delicately on the thigh or knee with her fingers.

The feast continued late.

The clouds gathered further in the sky, and I smelled moisture. The moons were darkened by the skudding billows of vapor.

I think that I may have fallen asleep by the rack, from my exhaustion and the pain of the beatings and rapings that I had endured.

But it was still dark when I awakened. I awakened to the clear snap of slave bracelets on my wrists. I looked up. I looked into the eyes of Tup Ladletender. I regarded my wrists. They were confined in inflexible steel. "Get up," said he, "little vulo." I struggled to my feet. I stood there, my wrists closely cuffed before me, not more than an inch apart. "You are mine now, little vulo," he said.

"Master?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "You are mine now."

"Yes, Master," I said.

I felt very strange. So simply had I changed hands.

I looked about. The feast had finished, and most of the villagers had returned to their homes. Some lay about, near the embers of the fires.

We stood near the rack on which the new slave, she who had been the free woman, Melina, lay captive. Thurnus was nearby, and Sandal Thong, and Radish, Verr Tail and Turnip.

"I name you Melina," said Thurnus to the confined slave.

"Yes, Master," she said. He had much shamed her by giving her in slavery the name she had borne as a free woman. She wore it now as the cognomen of a slave.

"May a slave speak?" she asked.

"Yes," said Thurnus.

"Why have you had my head shaved?" she asked.

"To return you as a shamed slave to the village of your father," said he.

"Please keep me, Master," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"That I may please you," she whispered.

"Strange words from one such as you," he scoffed.

"I beg to be kept to please my master," she said.

"Have you been bereft of your wits by the brand," inquired Thurnus.

"I only wanted to be the companion of a district leader," she said.

"You are now anyone's slave to whom I give or sell you," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

"I did not move to become district leader," said Thurnus, "for it was your urging and intent that I do so. Had I sought the position it would have seemed to all that I did so for your ambition and to avoid the lashing of your tongue."

She squirmed on the rape-rack, confined by the beams, in misery.

"In a man's own hut," said he, "he must be master, even though he has selected out for himself a companion. It is the part of his companion to befriend and aid him, not to insult and drive him."

"I was a poor companion," she whispered. "I will try to be a better slave."

"If I choose to seek the leadership of the district," said Thurnus, "I will do so. If I do not wish to do so, I will not."

"As Master wishes," said Melina, the slave.

"You knew little of the matters of being a companion," said Thurnus.

"I will study more diligently the matters of being a slave," said Melina.

"You will begin in the morning, when you are publicly whipped," he said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

He put his hand on her body.

"At one time you cared for me," she said.

"Yes," he said, "that is true."

"Do you find my body of interest, Master?" she asked.

"Yes," said Thurnus.

"And I am strong," she said. "I can pull a plow by myself."

Thurnus smiled.

"Keep me, Master," she begged.

"Why?" he asked.

"I love you," she said.

"You know the penalties for lying?" he asked.

"I do not lie, Master," she said. "I do love you." One of the penalties which may in a peasant village be inflicted upon a lying slave girl is to throw her alive to hungry sleen. I had little doubt but what Thurnus might do this if he caught one of his girls in a lie.

"How can that be?" asked Thurnus.

"I do not know," she whispered. "It is a strange, helpless feeling. I have lain here in the stocks. I have thought much."

"Tomorrow," said Thurnus, "you will have less time to think, and more time to work."

"Long ago I loved you," she said, "but as a free woman. Then, for years I did not love you, but despised you. Now again, after long years, I feel love for you, only now it is the shameful, helpless love of a bond girl for her master."

"In the morning you will be whipped," said Thurnus.

"Yes, Master," she said. She looked up at him. "You are strong," she said, "and masterful. You are a great man, whether you are a district leader or not. My freedom blinded me to your manhood and your worth. I saw you not for the things you were but for the things you might, enhancing my own person, become. I saw you not as a man but as an instrument of my own perceptions and ambitions. I regret that I did not, in my companionship, relish and celebrate what you were, rather than an image of what you might become. I never truly knew you. I knew only the image of my own invention. I never truly looked at you. Had I done so, I might have seen you."

"You were always a shrewd, clever woman," said Thurnus.

There were tears in her eyes. "I love you," she said.

"I am putting you out into the village as village slave," he said.

"Yes. Master," she said.

"At night you will be confined in a sleen cage. During the 'clay you will feed on what men will throw you. Each day you will serve a different hut in the village."

"Yes, Master," she said.

He looked down at her.

"May I speak?" she asked. "Yes," he said.

"May I not, too, sometimes serve my master?" she asked.

"Perhaps," said Thurnus. He made as though to turn away.

"Please, Master," said Melina.

He turned to face her.

"Please touch your slave," she said.

"It is long since you have asked my touch," said Thurnus, regarding her.

"I beg it, Master," she whispered. She lifted her body in the stock. "I beg it!"

We turned away as Thurnus, swiftly and brutally, raped the slave girl in the stock.

When he had finished with her she lay gasping, half shattered in the stock. "Oh, Master!" she cried. "Master," she whispered.

"Be silent, Slave," said Thurnus.

"Yes, Master," she said, and the girl in the sleen collar was silent.

I looked upon her. I suspected that never had Thurnus wed her with such authority and force. Years ago, doubtless, she had been loved with the gentle tenderness accorded to free women. This was the first time in her life, I suspected, that she had felt the uncompromising, unbridled lust that may be vented on the helpless body of a female slave. Never before had she had an experience like this. Never before had she been so had. She looked after Thurnus, startled, confused, awe-struck, bewildered, enraptured. I saw she wanted to cry out to him, to beg him to return to her, but she dared not, for she was under discipline. Morning would be time enough for her to be whipped.

Thurnus drew his tunic about him. He looked at me. Under the eyes of a free man, I knelt.

"I have given you to Tup Ladletender," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"He was promised you, in payment for the powder he gave to one in the village," said Thurnus. "The powder was used, though it did not have the effect that one in the village had intended. Accordingly, on behalf of one who was of the village, who can no longer transact the affairs of business, having fallen into the unfortunate state of slavery, I, on behalf of that person, tender you to him in payment for the powder."

"Yes, Master," I said. My fists clenched in the slave bracelets. I was tendered in payment for a small, worthless powder. I grew angry. Surely I was at least a few copper tarsks' worth of slave girl. "But the powder was worthless," I pouted.