pertinent to render them unconscious, which I did by taking each by the hair, when they were down, stunned, and yanking their heads together. Two clubs were somewhere on the pavement, but I did not know where they were.
“What are you doing?” asked the proprietor’s man.
It was dark.
“Making this worth our while,” I said. “You played your part very well.”
“My part?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
I pressed one of the wallets into his hands, and retained the other.
“Is there a garbage trough nearby?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “several, the nearest down the street, toward the water.”
“My cloak,” I said. “It will be chilly by the water.”
After a bit, we had deposited the two ruffians in a trough.
“How will this be explained?” asked the proprietor’s man.
“They were set upon in the darkness, and robbed,” I said.
“I do not think their principal will be pleased,” said the proprietor’s man.
“I suspect he will be more pleased than you realize,” I said.
“You have exceeded his expectations?” asked the proprietor’s man.
“I expect so,” I said.
“You are then a two-stater hire?” he asked.
“I would think so,” I said.
“I must return to the tavern,” said the proprietor’s man.
“We will go together,” I said. “I trust my weapons will be available.”
“Certainly,” he said.
On what ship, I wondered, would I take passage? Certainly I had lingered about the docks frequently enough, in the early morning, watching, not really knowing why. Observing, waiting, for what?
I recalled her lot number had been 119, not that it mattered.
She was a slave.
Chapter Seven
I, and certain others, had been kept in that basement, or dungeon, at the foot of the stairs, with the damp, soiled straw, and the dim light, filtering in from above, in its narrow, dust-sprinkled shaft of illumination, for days. After four days I had been removed from the sirik. I could then freely move my hands and feet, and the linkage was not on my neck. How helpless we are in the sirik, and perhaps beautiful. But I was then, two days later, as some others had been, fastened to the wall. They do with us what they please. This was done by means of a collar and chain, which ran to a heavy ring, dangling from a plate, anchored in the wall. I felt even more helpless than when in the sirik, for in the sirik one may move about, with its small steps, and lift one hands to one’s mouth, to feed oneself, when permitted to use one’s hands. Now, with a rustle of chain, I could move no more than a two or three feet from the wall. And the collar was heavy on my neck. Doubtless the room, or dungeon, with its heavy, thick walls, was quite enough to keep us in place. Within it we were helpless enough, were we not, considering the walls, the barred gate at the top of the narrow stone stairs, our nudity, the men about, and such, but, one supposes, our chaining, of one sort or another, must have had its purpose, or purposes; perhaps it was intended to be mnemonic or advisory, or perhaps instructive, to leave us in no doubt that we were slaves, and only that, or, perhaps, it was merely because men enjoyed seeing us that way, so vulnerable and helpless in such impediments, impediments of their choice. I suppose I should have resented my nudity, and such constraints, and being exposed to frequent, open, public, appraisive scrutiny, as the men might wish, as the animals we now knew ourselves to be, and, sometimes, being forced to take food and water on all fours, from pans, not permitted to use one’s hands and such, but I found it, somehow, this helplessness, this subjection to complete, uncompromised masculine domination appropriate for me, fitting, reassuring, and thrilling. Here, as I had not on Earth, I felt myself a woman, and, for the first time, radically and basically female, far beyond anything I had experienced on Earth. Here, in a way, I had learned what I was, basically, and naturally. No longer needed I pretend to be something else, some sort of imitation man, a pseudoman, or a facsimile man, or something advised to be manlike, or a creature to which sex should be unimportant or irrelevant, or a neuter of some sort, or, worse, a nothing, something meaningless, no more than a societally contrived artifact. I was now what I was, myself, and wholly so, though I was ankle-deep in straw, nude, on another world. Doubtless this had