I wanted to live for him, to love him and serve him, wholly, and selflessly. But I was unworthy even to fetch his sandals in my teeth.
I do not think I even stood well before him, slender, soft, head down, submitted.
I closed my eyes, and tears pressed between the lids, and I opened my eyes, and he was gone.
He had not even remembered me.
I was to be sold. Shortly, I would belong to another.
I had fallen to my knees beside the bars, and had put my head in my hands, and wept.
***
The gate at the head of the stairs had been opened.
I looked up, the heavy collar on my neck. The chain, too, is heavy, dependent from its ring. I had little doubt that the collar and chain, as the others, was originally intended for men, perhaps criminals, perhaps prisoners of war, bound for the quarries or galleys. This basement, or dungeon, I supposed, had been rented, or commandeered, for female slaves, perhaps because of our numbers, unusual in this place, or season. I understood little or nothing of what was going on. We are not informed. We are kajirae. Curiosity, supposedly, is not becoming to us. Would herders inform verr or kaiila of their plans? I preferred the chains, the bracelets, and restraints of the slave house, where I had been trained. They are light, lovely, tasteful, attractive, and feminine. They, like the brand and collar, are intended to enhance our beauty, for a woman’s bonds, like her garmenture, if she is permitted garmenture, are intended to set her off nicely. In them she is to be framed, presented, and displayed, excitingly and attractively, purchasable goods. I suppose it only needs be added that in them, as well, as lovely and feminine as they are, we are helpless; they confine us with perfection.
It must be early in the morning.
Three fellows were descending the stairs; one held some short lengths of cord, and some strips of dark cloth, and another several loops of rope. The last, who wore blue, carried a marking board, and pencil.
Slaves shrank away from them.
If I had not lost count, this was my eleventh day in the basement, or dungeon. I had seen these fellows before, perhaps four or five times. They were the guards, or attendants, who brought girls down the steps, or escorted them upward, and beyond the gate.
Without a command, or the accompaniment of guards, we were not permitted on the stairs, those high, narrow, rail-less stairs, a wall at one side, at the height of which, giving access to the lower holding area, was the barred gate.
We knew the purpose of the cords, the strips of cloth, the long rope.
In the house, and here, as the girls spoke, I had heard of lovely Ko-ro-ba, busy Harfax, mighty Ar, and even vast, remote, Turia.
Why could we not be purchased for such places?
But we recognized the cords, the strips of cloth, the long rope.
“Be silent,” said the fellow in blue.
We all knelt, for we were in the presence of free men.
On this world a chasm separates the slave and the free. I suspect that few on my former world could even begin to comprehend the nature of this chasm. Certainly I had not. Then I found myself a slave. The free individual is a person; the slave is not; she is an animal, and is usually marked and collared as such. As any other animal, she may be bought and sold, and dealt with as her masters might please. The free individual has caste, clan, and Home Stone. The slave has nothing, and is herself owned. The free person knows himself free, and conceives of himself as such. The slave knows herself slave, and conceives of herself as such. She exists for the master, and hopes to please him.
The men surveyed us.
We knelt in the straw, naked, waiting, viewed.
We were frightened. It would be done with us as men pleased. We were slaves.
“Recall your lot numbers,” said the fellow in blue, with the marking board and pencil.
We had no names. We had not yet been named. When we were named, if we were named, they would be slave names, put on us, and taken away, at a master’s pleasure. Do verr and tarsk have names?
“You will form a line, standing, facing me, head down, wrists crossed behind your back,” said the fellow in blue, with the marking board, and pencil.
In the times before, the line had consisted of as few as ten