"Aren't you slave?" asked one the men nearby, a Warrior, looking closely.

Elizabeth slapped him rather hard and he staggered back. "No, I am not," she informed him.

He stood there rubbing his face, puzzled. A number of people had gathered about, among them several free women.

"If you are free," said one of them, "you should be ashamed of yourself, being seen on the bridges so clad."

"Well," said Elizabeth, "if you like walking around wrapped up in blankets, you are free to do so."

"Shameless!" cried the free girl.

"You probably have ugly legs," said Elizabeth.

"I do not!" retorted the girl.

"Don't choke on your veil," advised Elizabeth.

"I am really beautiful!" cried the free girl.

"I doubt it," said Elizabeth.

"I am!" she cried.

"Well then," said Elizabeth, "what are you ashamed of?" Then Elizabeth strode to her, and, to the girl's horror, on the of the public high bridges, face-stripped her. The girl screamed but no one came to her aid, and Elizabeth spun her about, peeling off layers of Robes of Concealment until, in a heavy pile of silk, brocade, satin and starched muslin the girl stood in a sleeveless, rather brief orange tunic, attractive, of a sort sometimes worn by free women in the privacy of their own quarters.

The girl stood there, wringing her hands and wailing. The slave girl had backed off, looking as though she might topple off the bridge in sheer terror.

Elizabeth regarded the free woman. "Well," she said, "you are rather beautiful, aren't you?"

The free woman stopped wailing. "Do you think so?" she asked.

"Twenty gold pieces, I'd say," appraised Elizabeth.

"I'd give twenty-three," said one of the men watching, the same fellow whom Elizabeth had slapped.

In fury the free woman turned about and slapped him again, it not being his day in Ko-ro-ba.

"What do you think?" asked Elizabeth of the cringing slave girl.

"Oh, I would not know," she said, "I am only a poor girl of Tyros."

"That is your misfortune," said Elizabeth. "What is your name?"

"Rena," said she, "if it pleases Mistress."

"It will do," said Elizabeth. "Now what do you think?"

"Rena?" asked the girl.

"Yes," snapped Elizabeth. "Perhaps you are a dull-witted slave?"

The girl smiled. "I would say twenty-five gold pieces," she said.

Elizabeth, with the others, inspected the free girl. "Yes," said Elizabeth, "Rena, I think you're right." Then she looked at the free girl. "What is your name, Wench?" she demanded.

The girl blushed. "Relia," she said. Then she looked at the slave girl. "Do you really think I would bring so high a price-Rena?"

"Yes, Mistress," said the girl.

"Yes, Relia," corrected Elizabeth.

The girl looked frightened for a moment. "Yes-Relia," she said.

Relia laughed with pleasure.

"I don't suppose an exalted free woman like yourself," said Elizabeth, "drinks Ka-la-na?"

"Of course I do," said Relia.

"Well," said Elizabeth, turning to me, who had been standing there, as flabbergasted as any on the bridge, "we shall have some." She looked at me. "You there," she said, "a coin for Ka-la-na."

Dumbfounded I reached in my pouch and handed her a coin, a silver Tarsk.

Elizabeth then took Relia by one arm and Rena by the other. "We are off," she announced, "to buy a bottle of wine."

"Wait," I said, "I'll come along."

"No, you will not," she said, with one foot kicking Relia's discarded Robes of Concealment from the bridge. "You," she announced, "are not welcome."

Then, arm in arm, the three girls started off down the bridge.

"What are you going to talk about?" I asked, plaintively.

"Men," said Elizabeth, and went her way, the two girls, much pleased, laughing beside her.

I do not know whether or not Elizabeth's continued presence in Ko-ro-ba would have initiated a revolution among the city's free women or not. Surely there had been scandalized mention of her in circles even as august as that of the High Council of the City. My own father, Administrator of the City, seemed unnerved by her.

But, long before such a revolution might have been successfully achieved, Al-Ka, from the Nest, arrived in the city. For this mission, he had permitted his hair to grow. I almost did not recognize him, for the humans in the Nest commonly, both men and women, though not now always, shave themselves completely, in accord with traditional practices of sanitation in the Nest. The hair caused him no little agitation, and he must have washed it several times in the day he was with us. Elizabeth was much amused by the forged slave papers prepared for her, giving in detail an account of her capture and exchanges, complete with endorsements and copies of bills of sale. Some of the information such as Physicians' certifications and measurements and marks of identification had been compiled in the Nest and later transferred to the documents. In my compartment, Al-Ka fingerprinted her, adding her prints to the papers. Under a section on attributes I was interested to note that she was listed as literate. Without that, of course, it would be improbable that Caprus could have justified adding her to his staff. I kissed Elizabeth long one morning, and then, with Al-Ka, she, hidden in a wagon disguised to resemble a peddler's wagon, left the city.

"Be careful," I had said to her.

"I will see you in Ar," she had said to me, kissing me. Then she had lain down on a flat piece of rain canvas which Al-Ka and I had rolled about her, and, concealed in this fashion, we had carried her to the wagon.

Beyond the city, the wagon would stop, drawing up in a secluded grove. There Al-Ka would release Elizabeth from the rain canvas and busy himself with the wagon. He would set a central bar, running lengthwise in the wagon, in place, locking it in. Then he would change the white and gold rain canvas to a covering of blue and yellow silk. Meanwhile Elizabeth would have built a fire and in it burned her clothing. Al-Ka would then give her a collar to snap about her throat and she would do so. She would then climb into the wagon where, with two ankle rings, joined by a foot of chain looped about the central bar, she would be fastened in the wagon. Then, whistling, Al-Ka would pull the wagon out of the grove and Elizabeth would be on her way to Thentis, for delivery to the House of Clark, only another slave girl, naked and chained, perhaps lovelier than most but yet scarcely to be noticed among the many others, each day, delivered to so large and important a house, the largest in Thentis, among the best known of Gor.

It was one day to Thentis by tarn, but in the wagon we knew the trip would take perhaps the better part of one of the twenty-five day Gorean months.

There are twelve twenty-five day Gorean months, incidentally, in most of the calendars of the various cities. Each month, containing five five-day weeks, is separated by a five-day period, called the Passage Hand, and every other month, there being one exception to this, which is that of the last month of the year is separated from the first month of the year, which begins with the Vernal Equinox, not only by a Passage Hand, but by another five-day period called the Waiting Hand, during which doorways are painted white, little food is eaten, little is drunk and there is to be no singing or public rejoicing in the city; during this time Goreans go out as little as possible; the Initiates, interestingly enough, do not make much out of the Waiting Hand in their ceremonies and preachments, which leads one to believe it is not intended to be of any sort of religious significance; it is perhaps, in its way, a period of mourning for the old year; Goreans, living much of their lives in the open, on the bridges and in the streets, are much closer to nature's year than most humans of Earth; but on the Vernal Equinox, which marks the first day of the New Year in most Gorean cities, there is great rejoicing; the doorways are painted green, and there is song on the bridges, games, contests, visiting of friends and much feasting, which lasts for the first ten days of the first month, thereby doubling the period taken in the Waiting Hand.