12

The Silver Leaf

"Master?" I asked.

I knelt before him, lifting the platter of meats to him.

With a Turian eating prong he forked meat from the platter onto his plate. The girl kneeling beside him lifted wine to him.

I arose and went to kneel before the next man, to offer him viands from the platter I bore.

The sensuous music of Turia filled the room. The girl in yellow silk, belled, danced her beauty among the tables.

I had been more than a month now in the keep of Stones of Turmus.

Often was I kept late to serve the men. I had learned much from Sucha. I was a different girl now from the one who had been sold for six copper tarsks to Borchoff, Captain of the keep of Stones of Turmus. Well could he congratulate himself on his buy.

"What did she cost you?" a lieutenant had asked him.

"Six tarsks of copper," he had said.

"You have an excellent eye for slave flesh," had, said the lieutenant.

Borchoff had grinned.

I had hurried away.

"She is paga hot," a soldier had once said. Then he had thrown me to his fellow. I could not help myself. Sometimes I lay awake in my barred alcove, weeping, not wanting to be a slave. "You are a natural slave," Sucha had once said to me. "You were born to the collar." "Yes, Mistress," I had said. I lay sometimes in my small cell, shamed, weeping. Strangely I thought often of Elicia Nevins. I had been her chief competitor in beauty at the exclusive college I had attended on Earth. How, I thought, she would have laughed at me, and scorned me, to see me now, her former beauty rival, as a slave.

"Meat, Dina!" cried a man.

I swiftly went to him, knelt, and lifted the platter to him. I did not wish to be whipped.

There were twenty-nine girls now in the keep of Stones of Turmus. The population in the slave quarters had changed somewhat; five girls had been sold to passing Turian merchants, affiliated with the keep, but, similarly, here and there, over the weeks, some six others had been acquired. Thus the stock was kept freshened for the men.

"You will not be sold, Dina," Sucha had said to me. "You are a prize."

"Yes, Mistress," I said.

We girls in the keep were pleasure slaves, but it must be clearly understood that we were the only girls in the keep. Thus, we served, too, as work slaves. Scrubbing must be done, and the sewing, and the washing and ironing of clothes, and the cleaning; too, we aided in the kitchen, usually in the preparing of vegetables and in the scouring of pots and pans; too, water must be carried to the men on the parapets; there was much work of a lowly and servile nature which it fell naturally to us, the girls of the keep, to perform. Yet generally I think we did not, have too much to complain of. We were permitted to sleep late in the slave quarters, and manual labors, for most of us, tended to be curtailed in the early afternoon, that we might rest and prepare ourselves for the evening. I think few of us did on the average more than two or three Ahn of light labors on a normal day. We were never under any delusion that our main task was not the delight and pleasure of our masters.

I was no longer low girl in the slave quarters. It was not that I had fought, for there were few girls there whom I suspected could not beat me, but that the matter had been determined by Sucha. She carried the whip. Each new girl, as she was introduced among us, became automatically low girl, the other girls being correspondingly advanced. We obeyed Sucha. She never hesitated to use the whip. We were kept in perfect order. I was not displeased. Had Borchoff not placed the whip in the hands of Sucha, I, for one, would have fared much more poorly in the slave quarters. Slave quarters, as I have mentioned, can become a jungle. This was prevented at Stones of Turmus by the whip of Sucha. I was not the only girl who was not displeased to be protected from intimidation and violence. Sometimes masters, in their cruelty, do not appoint a first girl. Then the slave girls, as best then can, by teeth and nails, must adjudicate their differences and establish a mode of governance for themselves. Sometimes masters do not appoint a first girl in order that the lower ranking girls will strive ever more desperately to please them, to become favorites, and thus to be to some extent more protected. "If you beat me, the master will not be pleased," is not a threat to be taken lightly in the slave quarters, particularly if it is thought to be true. The distant menace of the master's displeasure has its influence and effect, naturally, on the social arrangements of the kennels. Sometimes a girl will pretend to be more favored by the master than she is, for her own prestige, and to win position in the kennels. But it is not hard to know the truth in these matters. Who is most often summoned to his couch?

"Meat, Dina!" cried another man, and I hastened to him, to kneel and serve him. I wore red silk, a golden necklace about my throat, intertwined with my collar, and bells.

I saw Sucha lying soft in the arms of a lieutenant, kissing him. How marvelously she melted in his arms, his.

She was seldom permitted to carry her whip outside the slave quarters, except in conducting a new slave through the corridors and bringing her through the small iron door, as she had me. When she left the slave quarters she normally knelt before a guard and handed him the whip, her authority ended. He would then take the whip and thrust it against her lips, and she would kiss it, after which he would order her to her feet and discard the whip, which she would retrieve on her way back to the slave quarters. Outside the slave quarters we were normally under the governance not of Sucha, but men. We stood under her governance outside the quarters only when she was permitted to retain the whip. I watched her yielding in the arms of the lieutenant, moaning under his touch. She did not now have the whip. She was now, in the hall of Turian pleasures, as it is called, only another slave girl.

"Dina!" called a man.

I was struck by a soldier past whom I hurried. I gathered the man had called before, and I had not heard him. The soldier had struck me for I had been tardy in responding to the first man. I brushed the silk of the girl who danced between the tables. The music swirled about me.

I knelt before the man who had called.

"Are you deaf?" he asked.

"Forgive a miserable girl, Master," I begged. "I did not hear you."

"Give me meat," he said.

I lifted the platter to him and he thrust the eating prong into a slab of meat, hot with Turian spices. It was the last piece on the platter. He looked at me.

"I will fetch more meat immediately, Master," I said.

"You are the meat I want, Dina," he said.

"It is not yet time to serve the wine," I whispered. This is a common Gorean idiom. I was reminding him, timidly, that the time of general pleasure had not yet arrived. I, and several of the other girls, had not yet been released from our serving duties. There were still courses of the banquet to be served to our masters. In the time of desserts and wines we would crawl to their tables, slave girls.

"Fetch in the prisoner," called Borchoff, captain of the keep of Stones of Turmus.

This afternoon I had been upon the heights of the keep, carrying water to the men on the parapets. I had stood there, looking out over the wall, at the vast fields about. It was more than eighty feet to the ground.

"Is it your intention, Dina," had asked a soldier, coming up behind me, "to dash yourself to the ground?"

"No, Master," I said to him. "I am not a free woman. I am a slave girl." I backed gently against him, and lifted my head, turning it to him. I felt his hands on my arms.

"Attend to your duties, Slave Girl," he said.