What storms of hate and denial I invoked to banish you from my heart! Was not the thought of you, or your image, in the corners of darkened rooms, in clouds, everywhere, in rain, in shimmering leaves, in high, green, bending grass? What had you done to me, you, merely another meaningless Earth female, branded and collared, brought to our markets? Yet I would own you! I was driven to own you, and be your master! What tides and currents bore me to seek you out! Do you think I can forgive you what you have done to me, you only a slave and I a free man! So I have followed you, and I have pursued you, from a far world, from Brundisium, even into the dark, green, trackless terrors of the northern forests, to get a chain on you, to get you to my feet, as mine! Can you wonder why I hate you so, hate you for what you have done to me, for what you have made me?”
“On the great ship,” I said, “I have heard there are two major holds for housing the public slaves, the Venna hold and the Kasra hold.”
“So?” he said.
“In which hold would I have been housed?” I asked.
“The Kasra hold is on a lower deck,” he said. “The better slaves are housed on the next deck, the Venna deck, in the Venna hold. Asperiche, were she a public slave, would have been housed in the Venna hold, and you in the Kasra hold.”
“I see,” I said.
“Does it make no difference to you,” he asked, “what you have made me, what you have done to me?”
“Naturally I am concerned,” I said. “You hold the whip.”
“What power,” he said, angrily, “lies in that small, soft, curved body of yours, in an ankle, a shoulder, the movement of a hand, a lifting of the head, a glance, the soft, brightness of eyes, the tremor of a lip.”
“A slave cannot help what she is,” I said.
“Is it nothing to you,” he asked, “that you have wrenched my heart, that you have tormented my nights and distressed my days, that you have half torn me out of myself with desire?”
“A slave does not object to being wanted,” I said.
“What power you have!” he cried, angrily.
“I have no power,” I said. “I am before you, on my knees.”
He howled with rage, and seized up his pack, and from it, to my alarm, drew forth a whip. He hurled it from him, perhaps fifty or more feet. “Fetch it,” he said, “as a whip is fetched!”
I crawled to the whip on all fours, and put down my head, and took the long handle, it is made to be held in two hands, just behind the blades, in my teeth, turned about, and returned to him, on all fours, and lifted my head to him, the whip between my teeth.
When he had taken the whip from me, I knelt, in position, back on heels, back straight, belly in, shoulders back, head up, hands down, palms down, on my thighs, my knees spread, as befitted the sort of slave I had learned I was.
“I think,” I said, lifting my head to him, “Master cares for a slave.”
He lifted the whip, and I feared he would strike me. His hand wavered, with anger, and then he lowered it. His scowl was fierce. I had not meant to anger him. I had not meant to insult, or demean, him. Was it so unthinkable that a free man might care for a slave? Was he to be ridiculed by his peers, and scorned by free women? If a man might care for a sleen or kaiila, why not for a female slave? But no, I thought, the female slave is different. She is to be despised, scorned, and held in contempt, for she is a female slave.
He thrust the whip roughly to my lips.
I was frightened.
Surely that was not the action of one who might care for a slave. How foolish had been my remark. Did I not know I was a female slave?
“Have you not been trained?” he asked.
I began to attend to the whip, kissing and licking it. I did this softly, slowly, tenderly, carefully, humbly, deferentially, and, I fear, seductively.
When he drew back the whip, I leaned back, and waited, in position.
If a girl does not do this well, she must expect to be whipped.
To my relief, he replaced the tool of discipline, unopened and unapplied, back in his