might wish? But my captor, I was sure, would need a slave. He was such a man. I wondered if many of the males of my world could even understand such a thing, that there are men so powerful, so masculine, so virile, so lustful, so passionate, so dominant, so uncompromising, so demanding, that they will make women slaves, for they will choose to have them as such, as properties, as the goods and animals they will then be. They will choose to own their women, categorically and absolutely. We are their rightless belongings. I supposed few males of my former world, that tepid, gray world, could even understand such a thing. And few women of my former world, I supposed, had ever found themselves the object of a passion so intense, so fierce, and demanding, that it could be satisfied with nothing less than their absolute possession, their ownership, with nothing less than their being the belonging of their master. Presumably they could not even understand such passion, such desire, until, perhaps, they found themselves collared, and the object of it. Let them then understand that they are owned, as any object may be owned, wholly and without qualification; let them then strive to be a suitable belonging, an acceptable belonging; let them then strive to be pleasing, fully pleasing, and in all the ways of the slave, for the whip is not pleasant.
“Master Axel,” I said, “reports my capture to my Pani masters.”
“Yes,” said my captor.
“And you are to see to my keeping?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“As is appropriate for my captor?” I said.
“It is to be expected,” he said.
“So I am to be returned to my kennel?” I said. This was the long, low, log-built building, which I shared with several others, in which we would be chained at night.
He looked at me. I could not read his expression.
“I trust I will be permitted a tunic,” I said.
“It is not likely,” he said.
“Then I would be humiliated before my sister slaves,” I said.
“They did not run away,” he said.
We noted a female slave passing, carrying, on her head, a basket, filled with damp male tunics. She was presumably returning either from the river or from one of the laundry troughs, filled with rain water.
“She is shackled!” I said.
“Some are,” he said. “She is probably from one of the port cities. There they know something of Thassa. There is a rumor abroad, hopefully false, that mad Tersites and the Pani intend to take the great ship past the farther islands, seeking the World’s End. It is little wonder then that the slim, lovely ankles of some kajirae, most likely those who would be most aware of the dangers of such a voyage, are now graced by ankle rings, linked by less than a foot of slave chain.”
“I see,” I said.
“Do not be concerned,” he said. “The ankle rings are lovely, and the chain is not heavy. It is girl chain. The whole arrangement is quite attractive.”
“You enjoy seeing us in chains, do you not?” I said.
“Certainly,” he said. “A woman is lovely in chains.”
“I see,” I said.
“Whereas the chaining is effective, as it would be in the case of any animal,” he said, “one must not overlook the aesthetics of this, and the psychology. The obdurate, unyielding metal affords a lovely contrast with the soft, vulnerable, helpless flesh it impounds; how it lies against it, and such. Consider the colors, the textures, the differences in the substances involved. Consider its weight on her limbs. Even the sounds of the links moving against one another can be an informative, illuminating music. Is a woman not beautiful in chains? Indeed, most chainings are designed to enhance a woman’s beauty, such as the sirik. And much, too, is psychological. After all, chained or not, there is no escape for the slave. But seeing her so helplessly confined, and so vulnerable, pleases the male, who naturally relishes having so beautiful and desirable a beast before him, at his mercy. And, too, of course, it has its psychological effect on the female, making it absolutely clear to her that she is a slave, wholly and helplessly at the mercy of masters, as she wishes to be.”
I did not respond to my captor. He need not know how sexually stimulatory to me was the leash in which I found myself, proclaiming me a leashed animal, the slave bracelets which confined my hands behind my back, the weight of chains that I had occasionally worn,