its rent? It is a strange physician whose livelihood depends on placing poultices on wounds which, were it not for him, would not have existed. Many are the ways in which a living may be made. Some are difficult to understand, if one seeks reasons, and not causes.
Many crimes have no names.
And what of women on such a world?
Not knowing men, how can they know themselves? How should we understand day without night, summer without winter, here without there, this without that? How shall we understand women without men? There can be bodies without men, but can there be women?
Clearly she feared to excite the buyers.
Doubtless she knew how small, how weak, how defenseless, how helpless, she was. Too, by now, she had some sense of the nature of Gorean men. Little on her world had prepared her for this, for such men, their health and hardiness, their naturalness, their openness, innocence, and honesty, their unity, power, strength, possessiveness, and aggression, how they would look upon her and, without a second thought or reservation, see her as a female, and treat her as a female.
How different from her world!
Was she not as a vulnerable tabuk doe amongst larls?
“Excellent,” said a fellow beside me.
The item had been placed in the slave bow, bent backwards, the auctioneer’s hand in her hair.
I agreed with the fellow beside me. Her line was excellent.
I thought the auctioneer was doing a good job, particularly with a new girl. Some auctioneers work in different markets, even in different cities. Most, on the other hand, will contract to a particular house, or market. A skilled auctioneer is expensive. Some receive a percentage of the sale.
The bids were desultory. It was late. Many buyers had left. I feared the strings of many purses were now knotted tight. The goods had been exhibited in exposition cages this afternoon, prior to the sale. Her lot was 119. I had seen her in one of the cages, with several others. Some were kneeling, some sitting, some standing, some moving about. There were pans of food, slave gruel, and water in the cage, and a wastes bucket. It was easy to see the slaves who had been sold before, perhaps more than once. They wanted masters. They needed masters. There was no mistaking their glances, the positioning of their bodies. Their needs were obvious, from their faces, glimpsed behind the bars. Their eyes would plead. Some clutched the bars, pressing their face between them, as they could. Others pretended indifference, even insolence. That sometimes provokes a fellow to bid, if only to have the pleasure of having such a bold, pretentious animal cowering at his feet, lifting her lips to his whip. When a girl is called to the bars she must approach her summoner, posing and displaying herself as he might suggest. Her lot number is prominent, drawn on her left breast in grease pencil. I had called one to me, a brunette, who seemed lost, and timid, naked, locked in the cage, but did not ask her to perform. I merely wished to ascertain the lot number. Amidst all the others, near the cages and in the vicinity, I do not think she recognized me. I was not in the barbarous garments with which I had disguised myself on her crowded, polluted, misguided, hapless world, nor in the work tunic I had worn in the warehouse. I was in robes suitable for my caste, dark, with the small blue and yellow chevrons low on the left sleeve. Within them was concealed the gladius. I dismissed her with a gesture, as a slave is dismissed. She hurried back into the cage, to conceal herself, amongst the others.
There are many strategies for organizing a sale. In this market, the Jewels of Brundisium, not to be confused with the paga tavern of the same name near the wharves, one usually, as tonight, divides the evening into five segments; the first and second segments, save for a special item or two, to encourage early attendance, are intended to set the stage for the third and fourth segments. By then late comers are seated and the crowd is warmed, has found its mood, and is ready for, and eager for, the more competitive bidding. Normally that merchandise adjudged the most likely to bring high prices will then be offered. We were now in the early portion of the fifth phase. Interestingly, some unusual buyers, of a garb and sort with which I was unfamiliar, had made