"You are too good for him?" asked the merchant.

"Yes," I said. I then realized this was not the proper thing to say. But I had said it.

"You are both animals," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"But you are a female," he said.

"Yes, Master," I said.

"And he," he said, "though slave is yet male."

"Yes, Master," I whispered.

"And is not the male animal the master of the female animal?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I said. I knew that male dominance was pervasive among mammals, and that it was universal among primates. It can be frustrated only by an extensive and complex conditioning program, one adequate, over a period of years, to distort the order of nature.

"Do you find this slave of interest?" asked the master of the male slave.

He shrugged. "She is small," he said.

I looked at him, frightened.

"But she is not without interest," he conceded.

"Do you think you can catch her?" asked the master.

"Of course," said the male slave.

I rose to my feet, frightened. I began to back away.

"She is yours," said the master.

I turned to run. He caught me before a large box, and flung me, face forward, against it. When I recoiled back from the hot wood the chain on his wrists had looped about me, and I was his, held to him by the chain about his wrists.

"It is long since I have had a wench," he said.

He dragged me along beside him, the chain looped about my body, cutting into my waist over the left hip.

"Be merciful to a slave, Master," I begged.

Behind some boxes, on the boards of the wharf, he threw me down, under him.

"Please be kind to a slave, Master," I begged.

He laughed.

The master did not hurry him, but, I think, attended to other matters.

The wharf cart had been empty.

When the slave left me I had yielded to him, as though he might have been a free man. I was much shamed.

I lay behind the boxes and looked up at the blue sky. I was miserable. I had been used by a slave. But, too, I was frightened. It was surely past the time when I should have returned to the Chatka and Curla. I did not want to be whipped!

Slowly, painfully, my legs stiff, I climbed to my feet. I rearranged the bit of silk I wore.

I stepped out from behind the boxes. I must hurry back to the Chatka and Curla.

I stopped, startled. Then I shrank back beside the large boxes. He was far off, but I was certain. I began to breathe rapidly. My heart began to pound.

It could not be, but it was.

I did not know what to do. At first I felt, unrestrainable, overwhelming me, an incredible flood of love and elation. I felt the incredible love and joy, the elation, possible only to a slave girl.

He was approaching from down the wharf, carrying a sea bag, in the guise of a sailor.

I wanted to run toward him, crying out, the length of the wharf, and throw myself to his feet, weeping, covering them with kisses.

Then I was frightened that I had made a mistake. It could not be true.

But I watched. I grew more and more sure, and then I was certain. He stopped to buy a cake from a vendor on the wharf. It was he!

It was my master, Clitus Vitellius of Ar!

"Oh, Master," I wanted to cry out, "I love you! I love you, Master!"

Then I saw him glance at a paga girl who posed, turning before him, and spoke to him.

Suddenly I hated her and him!

He dismissed the girl, but I had seen him look upon her, as a warrior, a master.

I hated them both!

It had been Clitus Vitellius of Ar who had first enslaved me. He had marked me with the hot iron, marking my very flesh, branding me a slave girl. He had made me serve him! He had made me love him, and had then; when it pleased him, his sport done, thrown me aside, giving me to peasants!

A bold plan, relentless and terrible, formed in my mind. I breathed deeply, in cold fury, resolved.

He would find that a slave girl's vengeance is not a light thing.

I straightened myself. I parted the silk, lasciviously. I lifted my head, with the small sounds of the bells on the collar.

He was coming toward me now, eating on the bit of cake he had purchased.

I saw he carried no weapons. This pleased me.

I ran toward him, with short steps, and knelt before him. I kissed his feet. At his feet I felt suddenly a wave of love for him, the helpless weakness of a slave girl overcome at her master's feet, but then I caught myself, and every bit of me became cold, and calculating and sensuous. I held the calves of his legs in my hands, and looked up at him.

"Dina," he said.

"My master calls me Yata," I said, "Master."

"Then you are Yata," he smiled.

"Yes, I am Yata," I said. I looked up at him, smiling.

"Are you as innocent and as clumsy as before?" he asked.

"No, Master," I said, putting my head down, beginning to kiss him on the side of the leg, deeply, puffing, sucking, at the hair a tiny bit.

"I see not," he said, laughing.

I looked up. "I have been taught how to please men," I said.

"Of course," he said, "you are a slave girl."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Are you good?" he asked.

"Some masters have not been fully displeased," I said.

"Do you think you could please me?" he asked.

My heart leaped. I applied myself as subtly and marvelously as I could, touching his leg variously, bringing my mouth slowly, biting and loving, to the side of his knee. "No, Master," I whispered. "Yata could never please a great warrior like you."

He looked about. "Say only 'sailor, " he said. "Here I am not a Captain of Ar, he Clitus Vitellius, but only a seafarer, a simple oarsman from Tyros, one called Tij Rejar."

I looked up at him. "As master wishes," I said. Then I again applied myself to his legs.

"Master will not cuff me from him, will he?" I begged.

"Clever slut," he said.

He lifted my head and brushed back the kerchief on my head. I reddened.

"I was some weeks ago slave cargo," I said, my head down.

"And pretty slave cargo indeed," he said.

"I am pleased, if Master is pleased," I said. I held his legs, my cheek against his thigh. I wanted to cry out that I loved him, but then I checked myself, remembering my project. I knelt at his feet only to bring him low. I did not think it would be difficult if I could get him to the Chatka and Curla.

He would pay! He would pay!

I looked up at him, smiling. "I was once yours," I said, "Master."

He looked down at me, almost tenderly. "Perhaps it was a mistake to have given you away," he smiled.

I caught my breath, but remained firm. I must not relent. I would be remorseless.

How vulnerable in a way I was, in silk and collar at his feet. But I held great power.

"It is strange," I said. "Once you owned me. Now, in faraway Cos, on the wharves, I kneel at your feet in the collar of a paga slave."

"It is a pretty collar," he said.

"Thank you, Master," I said.

"I see by your silk," he said, "that you work in the Chatka and Curla."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"What is your duty there?" he asked.

"To please the customers of my master," I said.

"It is long since I have held your hot little body," he said.

I blushed, though I was a slave girl.

"You are a hot, lovely slave, you know," he said.

"In your arms," I said, "any girl, even the daughter of a Ubar, would find herself only a responding slave." I did not doubt but what this was true. I remembered myself miserable in his arms, writhing with unwanted ecstasy, then, unable to help myself, unable to hold out longer, suddenly surrendering to my enslavement in his arms. Though I had been of Earth he had reduced me to a spasmodic, yielding slave.

"I am thirsty for paga," he said.

"I know a place," I said.

"The Chatka and Curla?" he asked.