This delighted the crowds, who cried out their pleasure.

"No," she begged. "Not talenders."

"Yes," said I, "talenders."

The talender is a flower which, in the Gorean mind, is associated with beauty and passion. Free Companions, on the Feast of their Free Companionship, commonly wear a garland of talenders. Sometimes slave girls, having been subdued, but fearing to speak, will fix talenders in their hair, that their master may know that they have at last surrendered themselves to him as helpless love slaves. to put talenders in the neck ropes of the girl at the prow, of course, was only mockery, indicative of her probable disposition as pleasure slave.

"what are you going to do with me?" she asked.

"Whe the treasures have been checked, tallied, and appraised, which should take some four or five weeks," I told her, "you, with your maidens, in the chains of slave girls, will be displayed, together with samples of, and full accountings of, the other treasures, before the Council of Captains."

"We are booty?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Apparently then, Captain," said she, icily, "you have perhaps a full month of triumph before you."

"Yes," I said, waving again to the crowds, "that is true."

"What will you do with us after we have been displayed before the council of captains?" she asked.

"That," I told her, "you may wait until then to find out."

"I see," she said, and turned her head away.

More flowers fell, and there was more cheering, and hooting and jeers for the bound girl.

Had there ever been triumph such as this in Port Kar, I asked myself, and answered, doubtless never, and smiled, for I knew that this was but the beginning. The climax would occur in some four or five weeks in the formal presentations before the Council, and in the receipt of its highest accolade as worthy captain of Port Kar.

"Hail Port Kar!" I cried to the crowds.

"Hail Port Kar!" they cried. "And hail Bos, Admiral of Port Kar!"

"Hail Bosk!" cried my retainers. "Hail Bosk, Admiral of Port Kar!"

It was now five weeks after my triumphal entry into Port Kar.

In this very afternoon the formal presentations and accountings of the victory and its plunder had taken place in the chamber of the Council of Captains. I rose to my feet and lifted my goblet of paga, acknowledging the cries of my retainer.

The goblets clashed and we drank.

It had been five weeks of entertainments, of fetes, of banquets and honors piled one upon another. The treasures taken were rich beyond our wildest expectations, beyond the most remote calculations of our most avaricious scribes. And now, in this very afternoon, my glories had been climaxed in the chamber of the Council of Captains, in which had taken place the formal presentations and accountings of the victory and its pluder, in which had taken place the commendation of the Council for mh deeds and the awardings of its most coveted accolade, that of worthy captain of Port Kar.

Even now, in my feast of celebration, hours after the meeting of the council, I still wore about my neck the broad scarlet ribbon with its pedant medallion of gold, bearing the design of a lateen-rigged tarn ship, the initials in cursive Gorean script of Council of Captains of Port Kar in a half curve beneath it. I threw down more paga.

I indeed was a worthy captain of Port Kar.

I smiled to myself. As the holds of the round ships, one by one, had been emptied, appraised and recorded, hundreds of men, most of them unknown to me, had applied to me for clientship. I had received dozens of offers of partnership in speculative and commercial ventures. Untold numbers of men had found their way to my holding to see their various plans, proposals and ideas. My guards had even turned away the mad, half-blind shipwright, Tersites, with his fantastic recommendations for the improvement of tarn ships, as though ships so beautiful, so switft, and vicious, might be improved.

Meanwhile, while I had been plying the trade of pirate, the military and poitaical ventures of the Council itself, within the city, had proceeded well. For one thing, they had now formed a Council Guard, with its destinct livery, that was now recognized as a force of the Council, and, in effect, as the police of the city. The Arsenal Guard, however, perhaps for traditional reasons, remained a separate body, concerned with the arsenal, and having jurisdiction within its walls. For another thing, the four Ubars, Chung, Eteocles, Nigel and Sullius Maximus, their powers considerably reduced during the time of the unsuccessful coup of Henrius Sevarius, had apparently resigned themselves to the supremacy of the Council in the city. At any rate, for the first time in several years, there was now a single, effective sovereign in Port Kar, the Council. Accordingly, its word, and, in effect, its word alone, was law. A similar consolidation and unification had taken place, of course, in the realm of inspections and taxations, penalties and enforcements, codes and courts. For the first time in several years one could count on the law being the same on both sides of a given canal. Lastly, the forces of Henrius Sevarius, under the regency of Claudius, once of Tyros, had been driven by the Council forces from all their holdings, save one, a huge fortress, its walls extending into the Tamber itself, sheltering the some two dozen ships left him. This fortress, it seems, might be taken by storm, but the effort would be costly. Accordingly the Council, ringing it with double walls on the land side and blockading it with arsenal ships by sea, chose to wait. The time that the fortress might still stand was now most adequately to be charted by the depth of its siege reservior, and by the fish that might swim within her barred sea gates, and teh mouthfuls of bread stored in her towers. The Council, for the most part, in her calculations, ignored the remaining fortress of Sevarius. It was, in effect, the prison of those penned within. One of those therein imprisoned, of course, in the opinion of the Council, was Henrius Sevarius, the boy, himself, the Ubar. I looked up. The slave boy, Fish, had emerged from the kitchen, holding over his head on a large silver platter a whole roasted tarsk, steaming and crisped, basted, shining under the torchlight, a larma in its mouth, garnished with suls and Tur-pah.

The men cried out, summoning him to their table.

It had been on one side, a land side, of that last remaining fortress of Henrius Sevarius, that Lysias, Henrak, and others had emerged from a postern, carrying the heavy sack which they had hurled inot the canal, that sack from which I had saved the boy.

Fish put down the whole roasted tarsk before the men. He was sweating. He wore a single, simple rep-cloth tunic. I had had a plate collar hammered about his neck. I had had him branded.

The men ordered him away again, that he might fetch yet another roasted tarsk from the spit which he had been turning slowly over the coal fires during the afternoon. He sped away.

He had not been an easy slave to break to his collar. The kitch master had had to beat him often.

One day, after he had been three weeks slave in my house, the door to my audience chamber had suddenly burst open, and he had stumbled in, breathless, the kitchen master but two steps behind him, with a heavy switch.

"Forgive me!" cried the kitchen master.

"Captain!" demanded the boy.

The kitchen master, in fury, grabbed him by the hair and raised his arm to thrash him.

I gestrued that he not do so.

The kitchen master stepped back, angry.

"What do you want?" I had asked the boy.

"To see you, Captain," said he.

"Master!" corrected the kitchen master.

"Captain!" cried the boy.

"Normally," I said to the boy, "a kitche slave petitions to enter his master's presence through the kitchen master."