But the sleen did not speak to me.

I had looked into the blood, cupped in my hands, but had seen nothing, only the blood of a beast. It did not choose to speak to me, or could not.

I rose to my feet.

I did not think I would again look into the blood of a sleen. I would look rather into the eyes of men.

I wiped the blood from my hands on my thighs.

I turned and looked at the naked girl on the furs, half tangled in her chain, it running about her ankle and leg, looped, and lifting to the ring on the heavy collar. She shrank back, her hand before her mouth.

"Bertram of Lydius approached a guardsman," said Publius, "who suspected nothing, Bertram of Lydius being guest in the house. He struck him unconscious. With a rope and hook he descended the delta wall."

"The tharlarion will have him," said a man.

"No," I said. "There would be a boat waiting."

"Ho cannot have gotten far," said Thurnock.

"There will be a tarn in the city," I said. "Do not pursue him."

I regarded the circle of men about. "Return to your rest," I said.

They moved from the room.

"The beast?" asked Clitus.

"Leave it," I said. "And leave me now."

Then I and the slave were alone. I closed the door. I slid shut the bolts, and turned to face her.

She looked very small and frightened, chained on my couch.

"So, my dear," I said, "you labor still in the service of Kurii."

"No, Master," she cried, "no!"

"Who tended my chamber afore this morning? I asked.

"It was I, Master," she said. It is common to let the girl who is to spend the night at your feet tend your chamber the preceding day. She scrubs and cleans it, and tidies it. It is not a full day's work and she has hours in it in which she has little to do but wait for the master. She readies herself. She plans. She anticipates. When the master arrives, and she kneels before him, she is eager and anxious, vulnerable and stimulated, well ready both physically and psychologically for the mastery to which she will have no choice but to be joyfully subjected. Even the performance of small servile tasks, such as the polishing of his tarn boats, which she must perform, plays its role in her preparation for the night. The performance of such small tasks teaches her, incontrovertibly, in the depths of her beauty, that she truly belongs to him, and that he is truly her master. She is then well ready when he gestures her to the furs to perform for him exquisitely the most delicious and intimate of her assigned tasks, her most important tasks, those of the helpless love slave.

"Kneel on the tiles," I told her.

She slipped from the couch and knelt on the tiles before me. She knelt in the blood of the sleen.

"Position," I said.

Swiftly she assumed the position of the pleasure slave. She knelt back on her heels, her knees wide, her hands on her thighs, her back straight, her head up. She was terrified. I looked down at her.

I crouched before her, and took her by the arms. I was covered with the blood of the sleen. "Master?" she asked. I put her to her back on the tiles in the sleen's blood. I held her so she could not move, and entered her. "Master?" she asked, frightened. I began to caress her from within, deeply, with my manhood. The warm closeness of her body, so beautiful, so helpless, that of an owned slave, clasped me. She began to respond to me, frightened.

"You labor still for Kurii," I said.

"No, Master," she wept, "no!"

I felt her spasmodically squirm beneath me. "Nor she wept. Her haunches shuddered.

"Yes," I said.

"No," she said, "no, Master!"

"The beast must have been put upon my scent," I said.

"I am innocent!" she said. Then she writhed beneath me. "Please do not make me yield to you this way, Master," she wept. "Oh," she cried. "Oh!"

"Speak," I told her.

She closed her eyes. "Have mercy!" she begged.

"Speak." I told her.

"I was taking the tunics to the tubs," she said. "I would have put them in with the others!" She half reared up beneath me, struggling, her eyes open and wild. She was strong for a girl, but girls are weak. I thrust her back down, shoulders and hair into the blood. Her head was back. She writhed, impaled and held. How weak she was. How futile were her struggles.

"There is no escape," I told her. "You are mine.

"I know," she said. "I know."

"Speak further," I said.

"Oh," she cried. "Oh!" Then she wept, "Please, Master, do not make me yield this way!"

"Speak further," I said.

"I was tricked," she cried. "Bertram of Lydius, in the halls, followed me. I thought little of it. I thought only he wanted to see my body move in the livery of the house, that he only followed me as a man will upon occasion follow a slave girl, idly, for the pleasure in seeing her."

"And this flattered you, did it not, you slut?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said. "I am a slave girl."

"Go on," I said.

"Please, Master," she wept, clutching me. "Oh, oh!" she cried.

"Go on," I said.

"Yes," she cried, angrily. "I was pleased! He was handsome, and strong, and Gorean, and I was a female slave. I thought he might ask for my use, and that it would be granted him by you in Gorean courtesy!"

It was true. Had a guest expressed interest in Vella, Elizabeth, a former secretary from Earth, one of my slaves, I would surely have given her to him for his night's pleasure. And if he were not fully pleased, I would have had her whipped in the morning.

"He spoke to me," she said. "so I turned and knelt before him, the tunics clutched in my arms. 'You are pretty, he said to me. This pleased me." Slave girls relish compliments. Indeed, there is a Gorean saying to the effect that any woman who relishes a compliment is in her heart a slave girl. She wants to please. Most Gorean men would not think twice about collaring a girl who responds, smiling, to compliments. It is regarded as right to enslave a natural slave. Most masters, incidentally, make a girl they own earn her compliments. She must struggle to be worthy of complimenting. She so struggles. Gorean compliments are generally meaningful, for they tend to be given only when deserved, and sometimes not then. A girl desires to please her master. When she is complimented she knows she has pleased him. This makes her happy, not simply because then she knows she is less likely to be punished, but because she, in her heart, being a woman, truly desires to please one who is her complete master. "'Do you know me? he asked," she said. "'Yes, Master, I said, 'you are Bertram of Lydius. guest in the house of my Master. 'Your master has been kind to me, said he. 'I would make him a gift to show my appreciation. It would be unfit-ring for me to accept his hospitality without in some small way expressing the esteem in which I hold him and my gratitude for his generosity. 'How may I aid you, Master? I asked. 'In Lydius, said he, 'we encounter often the furs of snow sleen, fresh and handsome and warm. Too, we have there cunning tailors who can design garments with golden threads and secret pockets. I would make a gift of such a garment, a short coat or jacket, suitable for use in the tarn saddle, for your master. "

"Few," I said, "in Port Kar think of me as a tarnsman. I did not so speak myself to Bertram of Lydius in our conversations."

"I did not think, Master," she said.

"Did you not think such a gift strange for a merchant and mariner?"

"Forgive a girl, Master," she said. "But surely there are those in Port Kar who know you a tarnsman, and the gift seems appropriate for one to proffer who is of Lydius in the north."

"The true Bertram of Lydius would not be likely to know me a tarnsman," I said.

"He was not then what he seemed," she whispered.

"I do not think so," I said. "I think he was an agent of Kurii."