"We are truly honored," said the auctioneer.

I knew Ulafi of Schendi only by reputation, as a shrewd merchant and captain. I had never seen him before. He was said to have a good ship.

"Deliver the girl to my ship," said Ulafi, "at the Pier of the Red Urt, by dawn. We will depart with the tide."

He threw a silver tarsk to the auctioneer, who caught it expertly, and slipped it into his pouch.

"It will be done, Master," promised the auctioneer.

The tall black then turned and left the warehouse, which was the market of Vart.

Suddenly the girl, her hands still behind the back of her neck, threw back her head and screamed in misery. I think it was only then that her consciousness had become fully cognizant of the import of what had been done to her.

She had been sold.

Vart gestured to the slaves at the windlass and they turned its large, two-man crank, and the girl 'who had been sold was drawn from the sales area. The next girl was a comely wench from Tyros, dark-haired and shapely. At a word from Vart she stood with her hands behind her neck, arching her body proudly for the buyers. I could see she had been sold before.

It was near the fifth hour.

It was still dark along the canals. Port Kar seems a lonely place at such an hour. I trod a walkway beside a canal, my sea bag over my shoulder. The air was damp. Here and there small lamps, set in niches, high in stone walls, or lanterns, hung on iron projections, shed small pools of light on the sides of buildings and illuminated, too, in their secondary ambience, the stones of the sloping walkway on which I trod, one of many leading down to the wharves. I could smell Thassa, the sea.

Two guardsmen, passing me, lifted their lanterns.

"Tal," I said to them, and continued on my way.

I wore, as I had the night before, the garb of a metal worker.

I heard an urt splash softly into the water, ahead of me and to my left.

I passed iron doors, narrow, in the walls. These doors usually had a tiny observation panel in them, which could be slid back. The walls were sheer. They were generally windowless until some fifteen feet above the ground. Yards, and gardens and courts, if they exist, are generally within the house, not outside it. This is very general in Gorean architecture. But there were few gardens or courts in Port Kar. It was a crowded city, built up from the marshes themselves, in the Vosk's delta, and space was scarce and precious.

There were pilings along the walkway, to which, here and there, small boats were moored. The walkway itself varied from some five feet to a yard in width.

I had stayed at the sales in the warehouse of Vart for a time after the sale of the blond barbarian. I had not wished to leave immediately after her sale, for that might have indicated, had there been a curious observer present, that that sale had been the one in which I had been interested.

The dark-haired, shapely girl from Tyros had gone for twenty-nine tarsks. She had proved, under Vart's touch, a hot, helpless slave and the bidding then had been quick and meaningful. She had been purchased by Procopius Minor for the Four Chains. He seemed well pleased with the buy. She was hot and she had cost him not forty but only twenty-nine tarsks. He had then, I conjectured, forgotten the blond barbarian. Tyros is a city enemy to Port Kar. Many men in Port Kar would enjoy having a girl of Tyros weep herself slave in their arms. She would make good money for Procopius Minor. She had been an excellent buy, a superb bargain. He might even enjoy using her himself. Who was the girl who had been previously sold? Ah, yes, the blond barbarian, purchased by Ulafi of Schendi.

The next two women sold had been a mother and daughter from Cos. they were sold to separate buyers, as pot girls. The mother brought sixteen tarsks and the daughter fourteen. They were among the eleven women, including the blond barbarian, who had been sold by Bejar to Vart. They had been taken in the capture of the Blossoms of Telnus. The crew and male passengers of the Blossoms of Telnus had also been sold by Bejar to Vart, but these had been auctioned by Vart in the morning, on the wharf blocks, as work slaves.

I had then stayed for only two more sales, and had then left, those of a peasant girl, blond, from southwest of Ar, and a merchant's daughter from Asperiche. The peasant girl brought eight tarsks; the merchant's daughter, to her indignation, brought only six. She had not yet learned slave heat. A strong master would teach it to her. She would learn it, or die. Frigidity is accepted by Goreans only in free women. Slave fires, of course, lurk in every woman. It is only a question of arousing them. Once the slave discovers her sexuality, a venture in which the humiliated slave, to her dismay, is forced to participate to the fullest, she can never again ignore it. Once she has begun to learn the orgasms of the slave girl she can never again be contented with anything less. She is then a master's girl. "I beg for your touch, Master," she whispers. Perhaps he will satisfy her; perhaps he will not. It is his whim. He is the master.

I stopped on the walkway. Ahead, some yards, was a girl dark-haired, lying on her belly on the walkway, reaching with her hand down to the canal, to fish out edible garbage. She was barefoot, and wore a brief, brown rag. I did not think she was a slave. Some free girls, runaways, vagabonds, girls of no family or position, live about port cities, scavenging as they can, begging, stealing, sleeping at night in crates and under bridges and piers. They are called the she-urts of the wharves. Every once in a while there is a move to have them rounded up and collared but it seldom comes to anything.

I was not worried about the girl. I was more alert to the fact that, moments before, two guardsmen had passed. The rounds of guardsmen are generally randomized, usually by the tossing of coins, different combinations corresponding to different schedulings. One of the most practical strategies for those who would avoid guardsmen, of course, is to follow them in their rounds. I was very aware of the fact that I carried, in my sea bag, the ring which the blond barbarian had had on the Blossoms of Telnus and the notes, bearing the signatures and seals of Schendi bankers, who had been made out to Shaba, the geographer of Anango, the explorer of Lake Ushindi, and the discoverer of Lake Ngao and the mysterious Ua River. I thought these might bring him out of hiding, with the Tahari ring, if I could not locate him by means of the blond Earth girl who had been purchased by Ulafi, captain of the Palms of Schendi, merchant, too, of that city.

The girl, hearing my approach, drew her legs up quickly under her, and rose to her feet, turning to meet me. She smiled, brightly. She was pretty.

"Tal," said she.

"Tal," said I.

"You are strong," she said.

We were in the vicinity of the pier of the Red Urt. It is not a desirable district.

I put down my sea bag.

She looked up at me.

"It is dangerous for you here," I said. "You should be home."

"I have no home," she said.

She traced an idle pattern on my left shoulder with her finger tip.

"Who would want to hurt a little she-urt," she said.

"What do you want?" I asked. I was alert to the tiny sound behind me.

"I will please you for a tarsk bit," she said.

I did not speak.

She suddenly knelt before me. "I will please you as a slave girl, if you wish," she said.

"When I want a slave girl," I said, "I will have a real slave girl, not a free woman pretending to be a slave girl."

She looked up at me, angrily.