Secrets of Gor Chapter Seventeen

 

My wrists were braceleted behind the small of my back as I preceded Victor into the living room. Something was wrong, I could sense it, and I knew Donna well enough that braceleting me like this meant she thought there was a chance I’d react badly to whatever it might be. I felt a tightness in my chest and tried to fight back against a rising sense of panic.

 

“Stay calm,” said Victor as he touched my upper arm. 

 

That’s easy for you to say. You haven’t been braceleted because your Mistress fears how you might react, I thought to myself.

 

“And don’t give us any reason to have to punish you, Cassie.” Victor motioned for me to kneel on the tiles, which I did. “Just take a few deep breaths. You’re a good girl.” He ruffled my hair in a way that was supposed to reassure me. 

 

The two agents of the Sardar watched me as I entered the room. The woman was inscrutable, of course, and any expression she might give off was hidden behind many layers of robes and veils. She could be thinking anything, and it wouldn’t be apparent to me or Victor. Strangely, I felt a twinge of fear as she gazed at me, and I found myself averting my eyes. It was a natural motion, done without me even thinking. When I pulled my gaze back up and looked at her, I felt acutely uncomfortable doing so. Her eyes seemed to narrow above her veil as she realised a slave was looking at her the same way she was looking at me.

 

“Eyes down. Cassie,” said Victor quietly. “Don’t let the Free Woman demand we should have you whipped.”

 

I looked back down, my heart beating frantically from stress and worry and… a sense of discomfort that a Free Woman was judging me. A little of the stress reduced now that I wasn’t looking directly at the Free Woman. It felt easier not to look directly at her, I found. It felt strangely right and appropriate that I didn’t meet her gaze. 

 

My thighs were of course closed together as I knelt, for there were two Free Women present. They would be scandalised and angry if I had dared to kneel in nadu. 

 

“Is this her?” asked the veiled woman.

 

“This is Cassie,” said Victor. “She is a good slave.”

 

“She seems an impudent slave. She looked directly at me,” said the Free Woman. “In some houses, that would be a whipping offence.”

 

“She is new to her collar,” explained Victor. “My apologies, fair Lady. She is still learning.”

 

The man, Sadric, looked young, and he smiled as I entered the room. He had the poise and self-confidence of a warrior as he sat on the floor, though he did not wear the scarlet tunic common for the warrior caste. His blade, still in its scabbard, rested with its hilt against the wall, close by, where he might reach it with a sudden move. 

 

“Cassie, this is Sadric of Corcyrus,” said Donna. It was common place for the man to be introduced first. “He serves the Sardar.”

 

“Master,” I said. I looked up, but did not focus my eyes directly upon him. 

 

“You may look at me, girl,” he said with a warmth to his voice, and so I did. Yes, he was young, probably only an apprentice of his caste, like Simon was to the Physicians, but I hadn’t been mistaken about his level of self-confidence. It was his relaxed attitude in this house, as if he knew he might deal with any danger that presented itself. 

 

“And this is the gentle Lady Marissa of Corcyrus,” added Donna. This time I most certainly did not look at the Free Woman. I knew she would be furious if I did so. Again, I felt a tingle of fear as the thought of gazing at a Free Woman crossed my mind. She was robed and veiled, and dignified. I was collared, branded and dressed in a scandalous tight fitting slave tunic, that probably offended her on principle. 

 

“I thought you said she was only recently enslaved?” said Lady Marissa. She rose from the floor and paced slowly around me as I knelt before her. With my eyes downcast I was only aware of the long hem of her skirt, swishing around her ankles and slippers as she walked. Again I felt a rising sense of panic as the long skirt swished close to where I knelt. A kneeling slave is only aware of the slippered feet and hem of the skirt, and she can only imagine how the Free Woman must be regarding her. Does her hand hold a whip? It is impossible to tell without looking up. Is she satisfied with the slave’s submission? Again, without looking up, it is impossible to tell.  Slave can only hope that she is found to be pleasing. 

 

“That’s correct,” said Victor. 

 

“She seems to have swiftly adapted to slavery. She can’t have been much of a Free Woman to begin with.”

 

Victor laughed at the Lady’s jibe and I felt a sense of anger at being described that way. 

 

“The collar and brand changes many women, dear Lady,” said Victor. “No woman truly understand the profound affect such things might have on her until she finds herself branded, collared and on her knees before men. I understand the effect can be quite overwhelming.”

 

“I think you will find that a true Free Woman would hold on to her dignity and composure a little better than what I see from this girl,” said Marissa. She turned to regard Sadric. “This is Cassandra Assante? The terribleCassandra Assante? Really? I’m not impressed. I expected some fierce eyed woman. All I see is a cheap pot and kettle girl who should know enough to tug down the hem of her skirt when she is in the presence of a Free Woman.” She touched my bare thigh with the toe of her left slipper.

 

I quickly tugged down the hem of my tunic, realising it had ridden up a little on my thighs. I couldn’t tug it down very far, but an extra hort or so of rep cloth now covered my skin from view. 

 

The Lady Marissa chuckled as she saw my clumsy attempt to cover a little more of my thigh in her presence. 

 

“We’re probably not seeing her at her most ferocious,” remarked Sadric with an amused smile. “I have it on good authority she can be really vicious if provoked.”

 

Marissa laughed at this suggestion and turned her gaze back to me. “She doesn’t scare me. Really, Sadric, I think you have been misled. Are we wasting our time here? The girl has accepted her brand. She seems acclimatised to it. She has found her place, perhaps.” With another swish of her long skirt, the Lady re-joined Sadric, where he sat, cross-legged. 

 

If you were a slave girl in a collar, sharing a kennel with me, Lady, we’d soon see how scared you would be, I thought to myself. 

 

“Do you know who we are, and why we’re here, Cassie?” asked Sadric. He raised a goblet of wine to his lips and took a sip from it. 

 

“I think so, Master.”

 

“And?”

 

“You are agents of the Sardar, and you are here to deliver a healing balm to my Mistress.” The magic of the Priest Kings that would erase this hated brand from my thigh.

 

“And?” Sadric smiled kindly as he spoke.

 

“The healing balm will be used to erase the brand on my thigh, Master.”

 

“Is that what you wish for? Truly? You wish to be free?”

 

“Yes, Master!” I said with a sense of urgency to my voice. “I am not a slave!”

 

“I see.” Sadric placed the goblet down on the low table and turned to whisper to the veiled woman who sat to his side. She shook her head once to whatever it was he said to her, and then leaned slightly to whisper back to him. “Well, the Lady Marissa thinks you might be happier as a slave, once you warm to your natural slave belly. She says it would perhaps not be a kindness to restore you to freedom.”

 

I forced myself to control my feelings. She was a Free Woman and was entitled to say what she liked about a kajira. “No, Master, that’s not true.”

 

There was an icy silence in the room, and I suddenly realised to my horror that I had contradicted a Free Woman in public. I had said she was wrong about something. I felt Victor step away from me and shake his head sadly.

 

“Are you contradicting a Free Woman?” asked the Lady Marissa. “You dare to suggest a Free Woman is wrong?”

 

“Fetch the whip, Cassie,” said Donna, without emotion. I had contradicted a Free Woman, and that is something a slave must never do. Free Women are beyond reproach, especially from a girl in a collar. 

 

I rose and walked miserably to where the whip hung on the wall. Taking it between my teeth I brought it back to my Mistress and presented it to her, on my knees.

 

Donna gazed down at me as she shook the blades of the whip loose. “Whipping position, Cassie. And remove your tunic.”

 

Victor freed my hands, and I did as I was told, crying silently inside my head, for I knew this would be painful. I received four strokes from the whip, and screamed from each taste of the leather against my back. But four strokes was merciful, for what I had said. No slave can ever contradict a Free Woman. And then the Lady Donna turned her gaze on the Lady Marissa. “Do you wish her to receive more?”

 

“No.” 

 

I was surprised to hear that, surprised too that there was a trace of trembling emotion in the Lady’s voice, as if she hadn’t actually enjoyed seeing me whipped. 

 

“No?” Donna continued to gaze at the Lady, curious now, as I was. “Just four strokes?”

 

“Four is…” her voice sounded uneasy, as if the whipping, the four lashes, troubled her, “enough, Donna.”

 

“Hmm.” 

 

I crouched on all fours, feeling nauseous, my back on fire, as Donna coiled the whip again and passed it to Victor. “Tell me again how and when you think a Free Woman is wrong?” she said.

 

“A Free Woman is… never… wrong, Mistress.”

 

“So, you would be happier as a slave, then?” asked Donna. “Keeping your collar?” 

 

“Yes, Mistress.” I did not want to be whipped again. A second offence would be at least six lashes. 

 

“That’s because you’re a natural slave?”

 

“Yes, Mistress.”

 

“The truth is of course,” said Donna as she turned her attention back to Sadric and Marissa, “that the whip will make a girl say anything you want her to say. As a tool to extract a confession, or the truth, it is clumsy and often ineffective. Trust me when I say she hasn’t yet found her slave belly. I mean no offence to you, Lady Marissa, but you would soon say similar things if you were kneeling naked before my whip.”

 

There was an audible gasp from the Lady. 

 

“And I have seen strong men break and curse their Home Stone in order to put an end to torture. Every man and woman has a limit.”

 

“She could of course still be speaking an unrealised truth in this case?” suggested Sadric as he drank some more wine. 

 

“Be that as it may,” said Donna. “I have decided she will be denied her true happiness as a kajira, hence my request for the medical kit. She belongs to me. It is my decision to make.”

 

Sadric nodded. “Of course. Cassie, your Mistress made a very specific request to the Sardar. It has been granted.”

 

I swallowed back my nausea and nodded. He had brought the magic medicine. I would be rid of this brand. My life would return to normal. 

 

“But, the request came at an opportune time.” Sadric leaned forward slightly, placing his chin on his upturned knuckles as he considered me. “We wish you to do something for us in return.”

 

“I am not an agent of Priest Kings, Master.”

 

“Perhaps not, but then no one is, until the day they are. You respect the will of the Priest Kings?”

 

“I do, Master. Ta-Sardar-Gor. They are our Gods, our Masters.”

 

Sadric nodded. “The Sardar has need of your skills.”

“What skills, Master?” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. I certainly wasn’t a skilled kajira – not by a long short, and I didn’t think I had any other skills as a Free Woman that might benefit the Sardar. I couldn’t see where this was going.

 

“Are you familiar with the current political and military situation in the western territories of the Northern Forests? The region bordering the cities of Lydius and Laura?”

 

“A little. I follow the news, Master.” He was referring, I suppose, to the stand-off between Port Kar and the Ubarate of Cos. Port Kar is dependent on large sources of timber to build and maintain their fleets. They depend on naval superiority to protect their port and shipping lanes, not to mention, necessitate their acts of piracy. Port Kar is built on the marsh lands of the Vosk delta, and that region of Gor has little in the way of trees. Port Kar therefore depends on importing lumber from the region of the forests to the far north, and to that end has established logging camps, fortified over time with palisades and military enclosures. What began as a couple of small logging camps has expanded into a colony of sorts that is now stretching further eastwards. The Ubarate of Cos is Port Kar’s main rival for control of the shipping lanes of the glorious Thassa – that wide ocean that separates the mainland from the region of the Farther isles of Thera, Daphna, and Chios, and on to the edge of the world where it is said aquatic monsters dwell. 

 

It wasn’t long then until the Ubar of Cos established his own camps on the west coast of the forests, also plunging inland and establishing military camps. Now there are two rival colonies glaring at one another behind their wooden palisades. The aim of the Cosian forces is simple – disrupt and cut the lumber supplies from the forests to Port Kar, and thereby cripple their maritime power. And so the two city states fight a proxy war of sorts, far from their homeland, fighting in skirmish fashion in the depths of the forests. Cos spends considerable money to disrupt the logging work of Port Kar, and Port Kar spends considerable money to defend their operations. Both sides, it is said, recruit bands of Panther girls, native to the forests, as skirmishers, scouts and mercenaries. The panther girls are cheap, but highly proficient in their native terrain. Some bands side with Cos, some with Port Kar, and some have nothing to do with the men who despoil, ravage and slowly dominate the land that the Panther girls claim as their sanctuary. 

 

Sadric nodded and picked up a plate. On it he placed a few delicious looking pieces of food from a buffet that had been laid out for the guests.

 

“Are you hungry, Cassie?”

 

I was, but I didn’t wish to make the Lady Marissa angry again. “A slave should not eat at the table,” I said. 

 

“Nonsense.” Sadric threw a piece of food to the floor before me. “Try it. It’s really tasty.”

 

I bent down and picked the canapé from the floor between my teeth. Sadric was right. It really was delicious.

 

“She eats like an animal,” said Marissa.

 

“She is an animal,” said Donna, without emotion. “All slaves are.”

 

As I finished the morsel, Sadric threw two more pieces down beside me, and I turned to pick those up with my teeth, too. He waited until I had finished before he continued. 

 

“The will of the Priest Kings is that Port Kar maintains its fleet in the Thassa.”

 

I nodded. This was of no interest to me, but it didn’t come as any surprise. I knew from my brother that Samos of Port Kar was a trusted and high ranking agent with the Sardar. Through him they had influence in the Council of Captains. Cos, as far as I knew, was less prone to following the will of the Sardar. 

 

“The Cosians have a competent Governor who oversees their operations. While not a military man, he has a keen understanding of how to deploy his limited resources, and he is particularly good at bribing and employing bands of Panther girls to make his life easier. This governor is a valuable asset, and Cos would lose much of its capability if anything was to happen to him. I have been tasked with killing him.”

 

I licked my lips. It sounded to me like a suicide mission, for Sadric did not strike me as an assassin – one of the black caste. The Governor would be guarded, and even if Sadric could get close, on some pretext, he would never escape with his life. My only concern was that Sadric would give Donna the magic medicine before he left to die for the Sardar.

 

“You wish me to advise you in some capacity, Master?”

 

There was laughter in the room. To my fury, everyone found this remark very funny.

 

“Advise? No.” Sadric drank some wine in between laughing. “Certainly not. Though that is very amusing.”

 

“How ridiculous,” said the Lady Marissa. “What could a slave possibly advise?”

 

“I don’t understand what you want from me, then, Master.”

 

“I want you to kill the Governor for me.”

 

And now there was silence in the room again. Victor of course knew nothing about this and he stood there looking astonished. Donna had obviously been briefed in advance, and she, to her credit, looked embarrassed. 

 

“Master… I don’t quite see…”

 

“You were Cassandra Assante. You have a reputation. I want you to answer me honestly, without fear of offending anyone in this room. You are, are you not, quite capable of killing a man or a woman, in cold blood, without feeling any remorse at all?”

 

The silence continued to hang in the air. I considered my response carefully. “I am an Assante. It is how we are.”

 

“You could kill a man you had never met before, and not think anything of it?” said the Lady Marissa in disgust.

 

“Yes, Mistress, I could.” I dared to look at her. “Or a woman. It wouldn’t trouble me at all.”

 

“It is safe to say there are few women on Gor who would share your lack of remorse. Most would be terrified at the thought of taking a life and, come the moment, would fail spectacularly. Tell me, do you enjoy killing?”

 

“No.” It was the truth. 

 

“But you could? You could kill someone?”

 

I shrugged. “If I had to.”

 

“And you wouldn’t feel…”

 

“I don’t understand any of this, Master. Whether it might upset me or not is irrelevant. I am not an assassin. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

 

Sadric grinned and threw me another piece of food. This time I just gazed at it. 

 

“But if I arranged things so that you could easily kill the governor?”

“Then I would presumably die shortly afterwards. Master, why do you think I would do any better than the bravest of swordsmen? I’m just a woman.”

 

“And therein lies your chance. You will kill the Governor, close up, with a kiss.”

 

“A… kiss?”

 

“A poisoned kiss. Your lips will be coated with a highly toxic poison. You will be given an antidote beforehand, of course. A single kiss will kill the Governor. Not immediately. You will have time to make your escape. I will arrange all of that. I’m really quite brilliant at the planning stage,” he said with mock modesty. 

 

“Why… why do you think the Governor would… kiss me?”

 

“Because you would be delivered to him as a gift, as a beautiful, seductive, enticing, silk-clad…” Sadric smiled again, “pleasure slave.”

 

I gasped. “I am not a pleasure slave, Master.”

 

“True enough.” Sadric observed me. “You have none of the fluid motions of a pleasure slave, but that’s simply due to a lack of training. It is not your fault. You simply have not been taught.” He placed the wine cup down on the table. “You are familiar with the House of Andronicus?”

 

“Yes, Master.” It was a place I feared now.

 

“They train pleasure slaves.”

 

“Please, no…”

 

“Very soon, Cassie, you will be unrecognisable for the stiff, clumsy, Free Woman you once were. Very soon, Cassie, you will be a fully trained pleasure slave, and then, then we shall travel to the Northern Forests where you will kill the Cosian governor for me. Ta-Sardar-Gor, my lovely little kajira.”