“What am I offered for this girl?” called the auctioneer. “What am I offered for this girl?”
It was a blond-haired peasant girl, thick-ankled and sturdy, from south of the Vosk. She was being sold from a rough platform on the wharves of Victoria. She wore a chain collar.
“Two tarsk bits,” came a call from the crowd.
I pressed through the throngs on the wharves. The wharves were crowded with goods and men. The masts of river galleys bristled at the quays. There was the smell of the river, and fish.
“I have heard the topaz is being brought east,” said a merchant, speaking to another merchant.
“It bodes not well for security on the river,” said his fellow.
I thrust past them. Then I drew back, quickly. A brown sleen threw itself to the end of a short, heavy chain. It snarled. It bared its fangs. Such a beast could take a leg from a man at the thigh, with a single motion of those great jaws.
“Down, Taba,” said one of the merchants.
Hissing, the beast crouched down, its shoulder blades so prominent under its excited, half-lifted fur, its four hind legs still tensed beneath it. It seemed to me not unlikely that it might, if it had such a will, tear loose the very ring in the boards to which it was chained. I backed away. The merchants, paying me no more attention, continued their conversation. “Victoria has refused the tribute,” one of them was saying.
“They think they can find no other markets,” said the second man.
“That is foolish,” said the first.
“They could take their business to Tafa,” said the second.
“Or return it to Victoria, once she is properly chastened,” said the first.
“That is true,” said the second.
“Indeed,” said the first, “they cannot permit Victoria this insolence. Her example might be followed by every small town on the river.”
“They will feel Victoria must be punished,” said the second.
“Perhaps that is why the topaz is being brought east,” said the first.
“It would be the first time in ten years,” said the second.
“Yet, it is interesting,” said the first, “for I would not think they would truly need the topaz to subdue Victoria.”
“They are strong enough without it,” agreed the second.
“Perhaps then it is only a rumor that the topaz is being brought east,” said the first.
“Let us hope so,” said the second.
“If it is being brought east,” said the first, “I think it betokens more than the disciplining of Victoria.”
“I would fear so,” agreed the second.
I then turned away and left the vicinity of the merchants. I had not understood their conversation.
This morning, before dawn, I had been put ashore some pasangs upriver. I had gone a pasang inland to avoid river tharlarion and proceeded, paralleling the river, toward Victoria. I had come to the town an Ahn ago.
“Candies! Candies!” called a veiled free woman. She carried candies on a tray, held about her neck by a broad strap.
“Hot meat!” called another vendor. “Hot meat!”
“Fresh vegetables here!” called a woman.
“The milk of verr, the eggs of vulos!” I heard call.
Another merchant brushed past me. He was followed by a stately brunette in a brief tunic, collared, carrying a bundle on her head.
I stepped aside as a string of eight peasants, with bundles of Sa-Tarna grain on their shoulders, made their way down toward the wharves.
“Now that is what I call really hot meat,” a man was saying.
I heard a woman gasping. I looked down. To one side, on her back on the boards, her knees drawn up, her left ankle roped to her left wrist, her right ankle roped to her right wrist, there lay a slave girl. “Please, Masters,” whimpered the girl, looking up. “Touch me, Masters.” A fat fellow sat on a small stool. He held a light chain, which was attached to her collar. She had been cruelly aroused, but not satisfied. “Please, Masters,” she begged. “A tarsk bit for her use,” said the fat fellow. I looked down upon her. Then I heard a tarsk bit thrown into the copper bowl beside her. A leather worker pushed past me, crouching beside the slave. Piteously she lifted her body to him.
“Jewelry!” I heard. “Jewelry!”
Nearby there were four girls in a plank collar. This is formed from two boards into which matching semicircles have been cut. The two boards are connected and supported by five flat, sliding U-irons; when the U-irons are slid back, the collar is opened. When they are slid into place, and the two leaves are bolted together, the collar is closed. Two hasps with staples, secured with padlocks, occur, too, at opposite ends of the planks. These lock the collar. The four girls in the plank collar were kneeling, waiting for their master to conduct some business. He was of the peasants. They were nude. Their hands were tied behind their backs.
“When, fleeing from the brigands, I advised seeking refuge in the peasant village,” said one, “I did not realize they would take us.”
“Peasants are not too fond, generally, of free persons from the high cities,” said one of them.
“We were not of their village,” said another.
“Doubtless they will use the proceeds from our sale to supplement their income,” said one of them.
“If they do not drink it up in the paga taverns first,” said the second girl, bitterly.
“We are free women,” said the first girl, struggling in the thongs. “They cannot do this to us!”
“Think such thoughts while you may,” said the fourth girl. “We are soon to be branded slaves.”
“Look at that disgusting girl,” said the second girl, indicating with her head the moaning, writhing slave with the leather worker.
“Yes,” said the fourth girl.
“Can they make me do that?” asked the second girl, frightened.
“They can make you do anything, my dear,” said the fourth girl.
“Jewelry!” I heard. “Jewelry!”
I stepped away to one side and stopped before a blanket spread out on the boards. On the blanket, spread out, were dozens of pins and brooches, clasps and buckles, rings and necklaces, and bracelets and earrings, and bangles and armlets, and body chains. A pleasant-looking fellow in a woolen tunic sat cross-legged behind the blanket.
“Buy jewelry here,” said he. “It is cheap and attractive. Bedeck your slaves.”
“See, Master?” asked a girl kneeling at his side, collared, nude, lifting her arms. She was almost covered with jewelry. About her throat alone there must have been twenty necklaces. She lifted the necklaces, causing them to rustle and shimmer, holding them forth to me in her small hands. Then she extended her right arm that I might see the armlets, bracelets and rings which scarcely permitted her flesh to be seen.
“Buy some for your slave,” said the man. “Here,” said he, lifting a necklace from the blanket. “This was taken from a free woman, now scrubbing stones in the plaza of Iphicrates.”
“I do not have a slave,” I said.
“I will sell you this one,” said he, indicating the display slave at his side, “for a silver tarsk.”
“Buy me, Master,” she laughed. “I am pretty. I work hard. I can well please a man in the furs.”
“It is true,” smiled the fellow.
“Surely women can be purchased more cheaply in Victoria than a silver tarsk,” I smiled.
“True,” grinned the fellow. I saw that he had not wished, truly, to sell her.
“You mentioned,” I said, “that this necklace had been taken from a free woman.”
“By a pirate,” he said.
“You speak of this openly,” I observed.
“This is Victoria,” said he.
“May I inquire as to what crew, it was of which that pirate was a member?” I asked.
“Of that of Polyclitus,” said he. “Their stronghold is near Turmus.”
“Doubtless they also harry the trade routes circumventing the delta of the Vosk?” I asked.
“Occasionally,” he said. “Indeed, it was there that they picked up this pretty little plum.” He indicated the girl at his side. “Would you believe that she was once the daughter of a rich merchant?” he asked.
“It seems incredible,” I said.
“He has trained me well to the collar,” she purred, kissing at his arm.
“It can be done with any woman,” he said.
“Are you familiar with a pirate named Kliomenes?” I asked. I hoped my voice did not betray undue interest.
“He is bad fellow,” said the man. “He is a lieutenant to Policrates.”
“Do you know if he is now in Victoria?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the man. “He has come to Victoria to sell goods and slaves.”
“Where are these to be sold?” I asked.
“The goods have already been sold,” said the man, “at the merchant wharves.”
“And the slaves?” I asked.
“They are to be sold tonight,” said he, “at the sales barn of Lysander.”
“I shall take this body chain,” I said to the man, indicating one of the body chains on the blanket.
“But I thought you had no slave?” he asked.
“I would still like to thank you, somehow,” I said. “You have been very helpful.”
“It is a tarsk bit,” he said.
The loop of the body chain was some five feet in length. It was made to loop the throat of a woman several times, or, by alternative windings, to bedeck her body in a variety of fashions. The chain was not heavy, but, too, it was not light. It had a solid heft in one’s hand. It was closely meshed and strong. It could be used, if a man wished, and perfectly, for purposes of slave security. It was decorated sensuously with colorful wooden beads, semiprecious stones and bits of leather. Detachable, but now attached to the chain at one point were two sets of clips, one of snap clips and one of lock clips. It is by means of these clips that the chain can be transformed from a simple piece of slave jewelry into a sturdy and effective device of slave restraint.
I put down the tarsk bit, and the man took it, and slipped it into his pouch.
“Do not give that to a free woman,” he grinned.
“It is pretty,” I said. I looped it several times, and put it in my pouch.
“It is a body chain,” he said.
“It is still pretty,” I said. I wondered why I had bought it. It was pretty, surely. Perhaps that was why I had bought it.
“When I was free,” said the girl, “I could not wear such things.”
“They are not for free women,” said the man.
“No, Master,” she said, quickly. “But now,” she said; “I may, with my master’s permission, make myself as beautiful and exciting as I can.”
“It is I who can decide what it is which you can wear,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she smiled, “and even if I am permitted to wear anything at all.”
“And do not forget it,” he said.
“No, Master,” she said.
“Tonight,” I said, “Kliomenes puts his wares upon the block at the sales barn of Lysander.”
“Yes,” said the man.
“I thank you,” I said, “and I wish you well.”
“I, too, wish you well,” said he.
I then took my way up a narrow street leading into Victoria.
“Good hunting in the slave market!” called the man after me.
“Thank you,” I said. I smiled to myself. Then I continued on my way, wondering why I had purchased so strange an item as a body chain, a form of jewelry obviously designed for the body of a female slave.