Dunes of Gor Chapter Five

Chapter Five: The Resourcefulness of Free Women

“Well this is intolerable,” said Serafina Shahzad with a delicious jingle of slave bells as she and Jaleesa stepped out into the narrow alleyway to the side of the Narenj café, and heard the side gates being closed behind them. A small brass bell was fixed to the side of the gate for returning kettle slaves to ring when they came back from their chores in the market district.

“This hasn’t gone well, sister,” said Jaleesa, stating the obvious. “What are we going to do?”

“There are a number of aspects pertaining to our current situation that are less than satisfactory,” agreed Serafina as she gazed down the narrow alleyway to the wider street beyond. “I see our predicament as follows. Firstly,” she began ticking off the problems on the fingers of her hands, “We appear to be belled with erotic chiming slave bells that we cannot remove from our slim ankles because you lost the key.”

“Oh!” sobbed Jaleesa as the bells chimed as she fidgeted.

“Secondly, a boorish rough man has locked these terrible identification bracelets to our left wrists! They clearly mark us as Kettle girls belonging to the Narenj café! I do not want to wear one.”

“Oh!” moaned Jaleesa in dismay. She moved her left wrist and felt the slip of metal swing freely beyond the extent of her sleeve.

“Be that as it may, we have one obvious advantage.”

“And that is, sister?”

“We are both resourceful free women of high caste and good breeding!”

“That is an advantage, I suppose,” said Jaleesa, though she couldn’t immediately think how that might help in a practical sense.

“High caste free women can overcome any tribulations that seek to confound them.” Serafina gazed at the closed gate of the Narenj. “You know, we didn’t even get a bottle of ka-la-na.”

“You’re thinking of ka-la-na at a time like this?” cried Jaleesa. “What are we to do? We are belled as slaves!”

“We have three whole ahn before slave curfew,” said Serafina as she pondered the situation. Slave curfew in the city of Tor was when guardsmen routinely approached and checked why unaccompanied slaves remained on the streets of the district. Slaves with their masters was another matter entirely, but slaves on their own should not be walking around the city after dusk. Slaves with identifying tags such as the ones dangling from the left wrists of the Shahzad sisters would be force marched back to their pens for a lesson in sharp discipline. 

“Sister, I don’t want to sound critical, but I think it was a mistake for us to leave the storeroom before we found the key to our ankle bells. Now we’re locked out here and the key is in there,” said Jaleesa.

“Better than being locked in the courtyard. How would we have got out then?” Serafina asked.

“We could have…” Jaleesa thought about this for a moment, “climbed over the wall when there were no men about?”

“Yes, well, fine, okay, yes, I suppose so in theory, BUT if you’re so clever, just how would we have done that with our ankles tied together with these walking ribbons?”

“We could have untied them?” suggested Jaleesa. 

“You think you have all the answers, don’t you?” Serafina didn’t like to think she might have made a mistake by hurrying out from hiding before they could have found the brass key. “Well, as it happens we don’t need the key.”

“We don’t?” 

“No, for I of course took into account that we would be out here with the bells around our ankles. You don’t think I’m so stupid that I wouldn’t have considered that there was another way to remove them without the key?”

“Oh.” Jaleesa looked relieved. “You’re so clever sister. So, um, how do we remove the bells?”

“With a hair pin,” sighed Serafina. Surely it was obvious. “Our lovely hair styles under these haiks are pinned in place with pins. It is commonplace for expert thieves to use the hair pins of ladies in order to pick the most complex of locks. I read about it once. One need only insert a couple of pins and work carefully and diligently. Then the lock will open.”

“That is so clever,” said Jaleesa. “I had no idea.”

“So,” Serafina placed her hand under the hood of her haik and found a couple of pins holding her hair in place. She removed them, feeling her long dark locks now come loose, as loose as a slave’s hair might be. “Here are my pins.” She held out the long metal objects. “To work! I shall unlock my own bell anklet first. You will keep an eye out so we are not disturbed.”

As Jaleesa peered anxiously from one end of the alleyway to the other, Serafina sat down on her pert bottom in the alleyway, hoisted up her complex array of haik and skirts and revealed her left ankle with the jingling slave bells locked so snugly around it. She squinted in the poor light in the alley and worked the ankle cuff round until she could see the lock. “We’re almost there,” said Serafina. “I have the lock in place. Now to pick it. This will be a simple task for the woman who one day will dash across rooftops and be known as the Grey Shadow.”

“You are so clever, sister,” said Jaleesa. 

“I am a resourceful free woman of high caste,” she said, nodding. “Men stand little chance when they try to outwit us. In mere moments these bells will lie scattered on the ground, and then I shall see to these wrists tags.” She placed the point of the pin at the lock and tried to insert it. Unfortunately the pin was too broad and didn’t pass between the delicate tumblers. “Oh.”

“Is it done?” asked Jaleesa hopefully.

“The pin is too big. And so is the other one.” She pouted beneath the veil of her haik. “Do thieves use special hair pins, perchance?”

“I really don’t know,” said Jaleesa. “Can you just wiggle it a bit?”

“It won’t fit between the tumblers.” Serafina tried again and again, but the pins were just too large. 

“So we do need the key!” said Jaleesa in dismay. “We should not have sneaked out of the storeroom! I told you so!”

“Well I know that now!” said Serafina. “That’s obvious now. There’s no need to keep pointing that out.” She rose, the slave bells jingling again in a very slave like fashion. “The lock on the wrist cuff seems just as small as the one on my ankle bells. Why do slavers have to build these things so fiddly? It’s almost as if they don’t want girls to use hair pins on them.”

“You have another plan, sister?” asked Jaleesa.

“But of course. As I said, I am a resourceful and intelligent free woman of high caste. The other plan is we simply walk home. There we will find smaller pins and I will free us both.”

“I want to be back home,” sighed Jaleesa. “I don’t want to walk around Tor with slaves bells and an ownership tag locked on me. Can we go now?”

“Of course. No one will be concerned when two kettle slaves return to the estate. We shall head straight to our rooms and work on these horrible locks with pins of a smaller size. I remain supremely confident.”

Despite her vocalised confidence, there was a sense of marked urgency now as the sisters walked as quickly as they could towards the gateway that marked the boundary of this quarter of the city. The quarters of Tor were many and they were mostly self-contained, so that in times of crisis they easily could be sealed off. This sometimes happened when disease ran rife through the congested city, or when there were brief periods of civil unrest, or perhaps when martial law had to be implemented by the Shah. The main route out of the market quarter was through a broad arched gateway called the al Jassah. Wide enough for three carts to rumble through in line, it occupied a place on the busiest and broadest street, around which the market squares sprouted each morning like spring buds on a tree. Serafina and Jaleesa moved through the throng of people visiting the market or, as the afternoon was growing to a close, leaving it. Free women carried baskets of vegetables and cuts of meat for their families. Kettle slaves in haiks finished their chores for the day and began considering returning to their owners soon, bells a jingling as they walked back to their pens. The sisters kept to the side of the road, avoiding the traffic that flowed through the centre. Most of the traffic was on foot, but there were also tharlarions and kaiila and several carts and wagons. As they approached the mouth of the al Jassah gate, a guardsman called out to them both.

“Kajirae! No further!” He had heard the jingle of their slave bells and saw the tell-tale identification plates hanging from locks at their wrists. He stepped forward, carrying his spear. He was dressed in the uniform of the Tor guards – a white jellaba with a red fez to note a warrior. A sword belt crossed diagonally over his shoulder and he wore heavy sandals on his feet.

The girls froze, anxiously, wanting now just to pass through the gate so they could travel home.

“Where do you think you are going?” asked the guardsman.

“To the al Quabac district, Master,” said Serafina, remembering to tack on the word master to her sentence. The jingling of the bells made it impossible for either of them to seem free.

“I think not.” He took hold of Serafina’s left wrist, raised it and as the sleeve of the haik slid back, he traced his fingers over the slave tag. “I cannot read. To whom do you belong?”

“The Narenj café,” she said, a lump forming in her throat. She gazed anxiously through the archway. Home lay in that direction.

“Then to the Narenj you should return, kajirae. You have no business roaming the city if your home is in the market quarter. Go now, before I take a switch to your bottom.”

“But we have to go somewhere,” said Serafina urgently. She didn’t know another way home other than through the main gate. The merchant quarter of Tor was like a rat run of narrow alleyways and cramped buildings, many of which were dangerous to explore. Two girls walking through the maze close to dusk might never emerge again, except as collared and branded beauties, whisked away to a slave market deep in the desert. And it was now less than two ahn until slave curfew.

“I think not. Go, kettle girl. Hurry back to your pen with a jingle of bells before I make a note of your name. Beyond this gate there are fine districts, in which fine men and women live. It is no place for the lowest of café slaves.”

“What now?” said Jaleesa bleakly as the girls were forced to walk back the way they had come. A free woman heard the jingle of their slave bells and she glared at them. Serafina saw her hand touch the handle of her switch and so Serafina urged her sister to keep moving.

“Don’t look at the woman,” she said quietly. “She thinks we’re lazy loitering slaves.”

They had to keep walking. Whenever they tried to stop for a moment, to get their bearings, men and women noticed the loitering slaves and with a wave of their hands shooed them on. 

“We can’t just keep walking,” wailed Jaleesa. “It will be slave curfew soon! What are we going to do?”

The day was hot and dusty and by now the girls were both very thirsty from the stress and the walking. They approached a drinking fountain with three bowls. The top was reserved for free men and women, the second for animals, and the third for slaves. They crouched beside the lowest bowl, as suspicious free women gazed at them, and cupped handfuls of cool water beneath the heavy black veils of their haiks.

“I’ve never drunk from the bowl of a slave before,” said Jaleesa.

“Nor I. But I am thirsty.”

“So am I. The afternoon is so hot. I’m tired, Serafina. What will happen to us when it is slave curfew?”

“It doesn’t bear thinking about. Slaves must be back in their pens by then.”

“But we don’t have pens! We’re not slaves!” She gazed at the strip of metal on which were stencilled the words, ‘Property of the Narenj café.’ “Guardsmen will think we belong to the Narenj café! They will take us there! What will happen then?”

“We will be placed in their slave pens…” gasped Serafina, an awful realisation dawning now. “With the other slaves! We will be there until morning! And then what? When we are allowed out they will lock the bells around our ankles again! And these wrist cuffs!”

“We will have to tell them that we are free women! They will be annoyed with us of course. They will have harsh words for the game we’ve played, but then they will release us and send us home with an escort to ensure our safety.”

“Will they?” Serafina seemed uncertain. “What if… what if they choose not to…?”

The girls clutched each other’s hands in horror at the thought. And then Serafina saw him. Father’s slave – Ghadir. He was walking across the street with a girl on a leash – a girl wearing the same black haik as Serafina and Jaleesa. A girl whose ankle chimed with slave bells each time she took a step. 

“It’s Ghadir!” said Serafina suddenly. “He has a slave from our house with him!”

The girls watched the man as he walked proudly, head held high, almost as if he was a free man. He wore a fine robe and only the collar clearly visible on his throat suggested otherwise. Occasionally he gave the mysterious leashed girl a sharp tug to move her on, but on the whole she seemed obedient.

“Where is he going?” said Jaleesa.

“Down Brand Street it seems. But of course! That will be a new slave on his leash. One of his duties is to have new slaves professionally assessed, their details recorded and placed on record by a professional slaver for the house books.”

“We have to speak to Ghadir! Tell him who we are! Explain how our prank went horribly wrong! Swear him to secrecy. He can then remove these locks and take us back to the house and we will avoid the slave curfew and being chased back to the Narenj café with sticks!”

Serafina nodded enthusiastically. “Our salvation is at hand, sister. He will have papers authorising him to be out on the streets. He can escort us back through the al Jassah! Quick, let’s catch up with Ghadir. Tonight we will see the funny side of all of this as we relax in our sunken bath, recovering from this terrible ordeal.”