Secrets of Gor Chapter Seven

 

Now it was just a waiting game, and I confess I am not a patient woman. I wanted this to be over and done with sooner rather than later. A single day and night was not something likely to break me, but if it would return my life to some semblance of normalcy, I would consider it a necessary evil. After all, Donna was my friend. I knew she was strict with slaves, but then so am I. I would do her house chores and no doubt be fed slave gruel (if she thought such a thing would break the spirit of an Assante, she underestimated me) but unlike real slavery it would only last twenty ahn, so it would hardly matter.

 

To be honest I didn’t see how such a brief taste of slavery might teach me anything, but Donna seemed to think it would either make me embrace or reject the lifestyle. The idea that I might actually yearn to be a slave after spending a morning scrubbing her floors was actually quite laughable. 

 

But I saw benefits immediately, as Simon was very happy when I told him.

 

“I want us to return to normal,” he said, holding my hands. “I want you to be my woman again. This will help us.”

 

I nodded and thought of something I might say back, but my mind was a blank. I had been feeling frustrated again throughout the day. I felt on edge and I wanted some relief from these urges that grew steadily stronger as the days and weeks wore on. 

 

“We will have children,” he said. “We will be happy together.”

 

I thought of Mikos. I thought of bondage knots around my wrists. I thought of lying on my back in a paga tavern alcove. I tried to clear my mind of these distractions. “That would be lovely, Simon.”

 

Bondage knots.

 

Tight bondage knots.

 

Pleasure silk.

 

The feel of his fingers lifting the light hem of that silk that just about covered my sex, as I wriggled and struggled with my wrists tied to a slave ring.

 

“I’m sorry, Simon, I wasn’t concentrating.”

 

He smiled and kissed me softly on the lips. I wanted him to do more. I touched his chest with the flat of my hand, but he politely drew it away. “I’ll be able to look you in the eyes, Cassandra, when you’re back from this, and see clearly from your expression that you are once again a chaste Free Woman. Frigid and beautiful.”

 

I imagined lying in a paga tavern alcove with the curtain closed, alone, my ankle in a steel chain, knowing that soon a man would appear to put me to use. My pulse quickened at the thought. He would brush the curtain back and enter, pausing perhaps to gaze down at my body, naked except for a wisp of pleasure silk, as he drew the curtain closed for privacy.

 

I imagined myself in that alcove, scrambling back as far as the short chain allowed, looking at him in alarm, for I didn’t know him, didn’t know what he might now do. 

 

I felt hot in my suffocating robes and gowns. I wanted to tear them away and plunge into my bathing pool and pleasure myself with my fingers, but Evona would be there, watching me. 

 

“When will you be doing this, Cassandra?” Asked Simon.

 

“I don’t know. Donna wouldn’t say. Soon. I want it to be soon. I want this to be over.” I hadn’t mentioned my fears concerning the slave papers lodged in the Cylinder of Justice and the House of Andronicus, and how I had learned they could be produced in Vonda at any time. I needed Simon to do something about them before there was any risk Mikos might change his mind. 

 

I imagined Mikos returning to Vonda and presenting my slave papers to a court.

 

“She is my legal slave. She has been acting the part of a Free Woman.” That is a very serious charge. Very serious. For a slave to masquerade as a Free Woman is unthinkable. I would be brought swiftly to the court room so that the magistrate could compare my finger and toe prints, and then I would be rendered over to Mikos despite my protests that the enslavement had been illegal. 

 

“I love you, Simon,” I said.

 

Simon had begun to set up a medical practice in the city, now that he was an established citizen, companioned to one of Vonda’s most famous Free Women. He had yet to master his profession, which I believe takes many years of study and apprenticeship, but I had smoothed matters with his caste and, with a generous contribution to their hospices, they had fast tracked Simon’s paperwork to permit him to practise as a junior Physician. It is not good for a man to be idle. Such a man spends too much time with slaves and wine. Simon was pleased to have this profession for it made him feel useful and important in the city. A Physician is always respected. It is one of the High Castes of Gor. 

 

He sometimes worked unusual hours, and so it wasn’t strange if he spent a night away from our town house. We lived almost permanently now in the town house, only returning to my villa for the occasional weekend break. The villa with its lands was too far outside the city walls to make commuting into the city an easy matter, and Simon preferred to be close to the heart of Vonda where he might enjoy the pleasures that a city can provide to a young man with money. He had friends now, and they would usually spend three nights a week in expensive brothels where wine and good food was served in place of paga and stew, and where the slaves were more expensive. These places had gaming tables and were frequented by the sort of men who might help further your career. Deals were often done over the dice tables, or over dinner, or while they took it in turns to enjoy some hot slut in an ornate pleasure alcove. On these nights he would return before dawn, between the third and fourth ahn, usually drunk from wine and sated by his choice of slaves. Even then I had no privacy, for on the nights he was away, Brianna slept in my bed chamber, in case I ‘needed anything’. It was clear to me that regardless of her sympathy for her Mistress, she was duty bound to inform on me to Simon if I touched myself in the dark, though nothing of the sort was ever stated so clearly. 

 

Brianna had good ears. Once when I thought I was being quiet, I suddenly froze in bed as I heard her voice in the darkness. “Please don’t, Mistress. I would have to tell my Master.”

 

If I thought this deception of Donna’s would take place soon, I was clearly mistaken, for the days turned into a week, which turned into another week. I began to wonder if she had forgotten about the arrangement, and after a while I began to hope she had. I didn’t relish the prospect, and, like an upcoming visit to a dentist, I both hoped the day wouldn’t come, while simultaneously wanting it to be over. I spoke to Simon over dinner and suggested he didn’t need Evona watching me every day.

 

“Oh?” He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

 

“She’s been with me now for many weeks and nothing has happened.”

 

“On the contrary, she provides updates on lapses of your judgement frequently.”

 

“What?!”

 

“Two days ago you wished to walk to a drapery that you have never visited before.”

 

“So? I like clothes! Where is the harm in that?”

 

“From where you were, the route through the market would have taken you past a slaver house that has an outdoor display. Did you hope you might see something exciting?”

 

“No. I just wanted to look at fabrics.”

 

“Hmm. Evona thought differently.”

 

“She’s living a very dangerous life,” I snarled. “She’s either incredibly stupid or doesn’t know what I’m capable of.”

 

“If Evona meets with an accident, I shall know it is you, Cassandra.”

 

“Possibly.” I ate a little of the delicious casserole that Brianna had cooked. “It will be a little too late for her, though, by the time you do know.”

 

But after a few days Simon seemed to relent, on the grounds that I had agreed to test myself with Donna, and I saw much less of Evona. I had enough privacy that occasionally I could ease my frustration with my fingers, though I had to be consciously aware of the approaching soft pad of slave feet in the house when I did. Slave girls move around a house like stealthy urts.

 

And so I thought nothing of the night when Simon didn’t return by the fourth ahn of the next day. I know now of course that he had been told to absent himself for when my pretence of slavery was due to begin. 

 

With Simon absent from my couch bed, and with Brianna not rousing me for breakfast, I awoke a little later than I might otherwise naturally do. There was that sense that dawn had broken some time ago, and the room was lighter than I might have expected. Normally Simon would have been up and about, rousing me, too, or perhaps Brianna would have entered softly, enquiring whether we wished breakfast, but neither of those things had occurred this morning. 

 

I heard song birds in the garden outside and I rubbed my eyes as I sat up against the plump pillows. I had slept a deep sleep for once, though I had a vague recollection that my dreams had been of greater intensity than usual. 

 

The first thing I noticed was Simon’s absence, but to be honest it was no great surprise. His carousing at the brothels had perhaps lasted longer than usual, and it was no hardship for him to rent a room rather than find his way back through the early morning streets. I would no doubt see him for lunch, worse for wear, and nursing a sore head. But Brianna should have entered my rooms by now. I rose from my bed, yawned, stretched my arms, and regarded my body in the long night gown. My hair was tousled, but I otherwise looked fresh enough to face the day. A bath first, after I found Brianna, and asked her why she hadn’t roused me. Perhaps the girl simply felt I needed a lengthy sleep. Perhaps she had indeed looked in on me and concluded I should be left to wake myself. 

 

As it happens, she had looked in on me, several times throughout the night, but mostly to ensure that the sleeping draught in my wine had put me into a deep sleep, from which there were no dangerous complications. Donna had administered the sleeping draught through the hands of Simon and then Brianna. The first clue I had to any of this was when I wobbled slightly on my feet and felt a wave of dizziness from the drug still in my system. I suspect the sleeping draught had included some essence of Thassa powder along with other herbs and additives. 

 

It made what followed next, easier, for I was less likely to put up a fight. 

 

My dressing gown hung from a hook on the wall. I draped it about my night gown and tightly belted it about my waist. As I did so I felt another dizzy spell and I had to steady myself with a hand against the wall, taking deep breaths before I felt clear headed enough to walk unaided. “Brianna!” I called, but there was no response. “Brianna?” I slid my left foot and then my right into a pair of sequined slippers as I moved to the door, noticing how quiet it was.

 

In fact the whole house sound unusually quiet as I left my bedroom and walked down the hall towards the stairs. 

 

“Brianna! Where are you, girl?”

 

I wobbled slightly at the bottom of the stairs but then gathered my wind back and moved on through the ground floor, calling out, astonished that no one was answering. 

 

“Brianna?!”

 

And then I felt it. That sensation that runs down your spine when you suddenly have a sense that you’re not alone in a room. I had passed through into the living room, still rubbing sleep from my eyes, and I suddenly became aware of a soft movement to one side of the room. I turned quickly and saw a man standing there, dressed in the blue and yellow of the caste of slavers. 

 

“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

 

“I have business here,” he replied. He held a piece of paper in his left hand and he threw it to the floor. I could see it bore a seal and had neat writing on it – the writing of a trained scribe, no doubt.

 

“I will give you three ehn to leave this house before I call a guard.”

 

“There are no guards here this morning. Only myself, and the two men in the doorway behind you.”

 

While my attention had been drawn to this interloper, two of his assistants had appeared in the doorway through which I’d just now passed. I was caught between them and the interloper in the colours of the slaver caste.

 

It is instinctive for me to reach for my knife, but of course I didn’t have one. I straightened up and looked coldly at the slaver. “I asked who are you?”

 

“Hersius, Second Rank Slaver of the House of Andronicus.” His eyes fixed on mine. 

 

I felt a stab of fear at the mention of the House of Andronicus, for it was at that particular house my assessment had taken place and my papers had been written. 

 

“Is this to do with Donna? Did Donna send you?” My heart began beating quickly as logic told me this was the beginning of the slave service I had agreed to carry out for her. But I had thought she was going to send for me, herself. 

 

“You mean the Lady Donna, your Mistress.” He seemed angry. I gazed backwards and saw that his two heavy set assistants had taken a couple of steps into the room. I stepped further in to keep away from them, but that brought me closer to Hersius.

 

“She is not my Mistress.”

 

“Sounds like this slave is asking to be whipped,” said one of the two men moving now behind me. 

 

“Get out,” I said to them. “Tell Donna she needs to give me some notice. Today is not a good day.” I backed away to the side of the room, away from the men, but this essentially moved me away from the only two exits. “I said, get out. Do you know who I am?”

 

“Your name is Cassie,” said Hersius. And then he pointed at the paper on the floor. “You are a kajira who has been pretending to be free, and that is my authorisation to bring an end to this charade.”

 

“I will have you killed. It will be slow and very painful,” I said.  

 

Donna had told me that the lesson in slavery was going to be realistic, and now, suddenly, I did not want to go through with it. This was too realistic, and not what I had agreed to. 

 

Hersius seemed unimpressed by my threats. He simply placed a collar on a table, alongside which he slowly added a pair of slave bracelets and a leash. Then, and only then, did he look back at me and say, “Remove your garments, kajira. All of them.”