I studied the glass that separated us. The two girls strolled near the glass and one of them, lifting her hands behind her head, studied her reflection gravely in the mirror, retying the band of silk which confined her hair.
“On their side of the glass,” said Ho-Tu, “it seems a mirror.”
I looked suitably impressed, though of course, from Earth, I was familiar with the principles of such things.
“It is an invention of the Builders,” said Ho-Tu. “It is common in slave houses, where one may wish to observe without being observed.”
“Can they hear us?” I whispered.
“No,” said Ho-Tu.
Now one of the girls laughed and pushed the other and then turned and fled, pursued by the other, also laughing.
I looked at Ho-Tu sharply.
“There is a system of sound baffles,” said he. “We can hear them but they cannot hear us.”
I regarded the two girls running off. Beyond them I could see some others. Two of them were playing catch with a red ball.
There seemed to me something strange about these girls, though they were beautiful. They seemed, in a way, simple, very childlike.
“Are they slaves?” I asked Ho-Tu.
“Of course,” said Ho-Tu, adding, “but they do not know it.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
I could now see the girl playing the lute. She was lovely, as were the others. She was strolling about one of the pools. Two other girls, I now saw, were lying by the pool, putting their fingers in the water, making circles in the water.
“These are exotics,” said Ho-Tu.
That expression is used for any unusual variety of slave. Exotics are generally quite rare.
“In what way?” I asked. I myself had never cared much for exotics, any more than I cared much for some of the species of dogs and goldfish which some breeders of Earth regarded as such triumphs. Exotics are normally bred for some deformity which is thought to be appealing. On the other hand, sometimes the matter is much more subtle and sinister. For example it is possible to breed a girl whose saliva will be poisonous; such a woman, placed in the Pleasure Gardens of an enemy, can be more dangerous than the knife of an Assassin.
Perhaps Ho-Tu guessed my line of thought, for he laughed. “No, No!” he said. “These are common wenches, though more beautiful than most.”
“Then in what way are they exotic?” I asked.
Ho-Tu looked at me and grinned. “They know nothing of men,” said he.
“You mean they are White Silk?” I asked.
He laughed. “I mean they have been raised from the time they were infants in these gardens. They have never looked on a man. They do not know they exist.”
I then understood why only women had been seen in these rooms.
I looked again through the glass, at the gentle girls, sporting and playing together by the pool.
“They are raised in complete ignorance,” said Ho-Tu. “They do not even know they are women.”
I listened to the music of the lute, and was disturbed.
“Their life is very pleasant, and very easy,” said Ho-Tu. “They have no duties other than to seek their own pleasure.”
“And then?” I asked.
“They are very expensive,” said Ho-Tu. “Normally the agent of a Ubar who has been victorious in battle will purchase one, for his high officers, to be brought to the victory feast.” Ho-Tu looked at me. “The attendants, when the girl is purchased, give her a drug in her food that night, and remove her from the gardens. She is kept unconscious. She will be revived at the height of the Ubar’s victory feast, commonly to find herself unclothed in a cage of male slaves set up among the tables.”
I looked back at the girls through the glass.
“Not infrequently,” said Ho-Tu, “they go mad, and are slain the following morning.”
“And if not?” I asked.
“Commonly,” said Ho-Tu, “they will seek out a female slave, one who reminds them of the attendants in the garden, and this woman will comfort them, and explain to them what they are, that they are women, that they are slaves, that they must wear a collar and that they must serve men.”
“Is there more to the House of Cernus?” I asked, turning away.
“Of course,” bowed Ho-Tu, leading me away from the area.
One of the women looked at me as I left and smiled. I did not smile back.
10
To the Pens
We had soon passed through the two doors, the first being locked behind us by one of the white-gowned women, the second by the two guardsmen.
In the hallway we passed four female slaves, naked, on their hands and knees, with sponges, rags and buckets, cleaning the tiles of the corridor. A male slave stood near, a heavy band of iron about his throat, a whipping strap dangling from his right hand.
“This is an interesting room,” said Ho-Tu, opening a door and leading me through. “Sometimes it is guarded, but now it is empty.”
Once again I found myself staring through a large rectangle of glass, but this time there was only one such panel.
“Yes,” said Ho-Tu, “on the other side it is a mirror.”
On our side of the glass there was a metal grillwork, with rectangular openings about twelve inches long and four inches high. I gathered this was in case someone on the other side would attempt to break the mirror. In the room, which now had no occupant, I saw an open wardrobe closet, some chests of silks, a silken divan of immense size, several choice rugs and cushions about, and a sunken bath to one side. It might have been the private compartment of a lady of High Caste save that, of course, in this house it was a cell.
“It is used for Special Captures,” said Ho-Tu. “Sometimes,” he added, “Cernus amuses himself with the women kept in this room, leading them to believe that if they serve him well they will be well treated.” Ho-Tu laughed. “After they yield to him they are sent to the iron pens.”
“And if they do not yield?” I asked.
“Then,” said Ho-Tu, “they are strangled in the chain which bears the crest of the House of Cernus.” I looked down into the room.
“Cernus,” said Ho-Tu, “does not like to lose.”
“I gather not,” I said.
“When using a woman,” said Ho-Tu, “Cernus is in the habit of placing the chain about her neck.”
I looked at him.
“It encourages docility and effort,” said Ho-Tu.
“I expect it does,” I said.
“You do not seem much pleased with the House of Cernus,” observed Ho-Tu.
“Are you,” I asked, “Ho-Tu?”
He looked up at me, surprised. “I am well paid,” he said. Then he shrugged. “Most of the House you have seen,” said he, “with the exception of training areas, the iron pens, the processing rooms, and such.”
“Where are the women who were brought to the Voltai last night on the black ship?”
“In the kennels,” he said. “Follow me.”
On the way down the stairs to the lower portions of the cylinder, several floors of which, incidentally, are below ground level, we passed the office of Caprus. I saw Elizabeth there, in the hallway outside, carrying an armful of scrolls.
Seeing me she fell to her knees and put down her head, managing somehow to retain her hold on the several scrolls.
“I see your training has not begun even yet,” I said, rather sternly.
She did not speak.
“Her training,” said Ho-Tu, “will begin soon.”
“What are you waiting for?” I asked.
“It is an idea of Cernus,” said Ho-Tu. “He wants to train a first small set of barbarian slaves. She will be numbered among those in the first set.”
“The girls who were brought in last night?” I asked.
“Only two of them in her set,” said Ho-Tu. “The remaining eight will be divided into two larger sets and trained separately.”
“Barbarians, I have heard,” I said, “do n
ot train well.”
“It is our belief,” said Ho-Tu, “that much can be done with a barbarian girl—it remains to be proven, of course.”
“But such would not be likely to bring a high price,” I observed.
“Who knows what may be the case by the month of En’Var?” asked Ho-Tu. “Or perhaps even by En’Kara?”
“Should the experiment be successful,” I said, “it seems the House of Cernus will have the largest supply of such girls.”
Ho-Tu smiled. “Of course,” he said.
“You already have several in the pens?” I speculated.
“Yes,” said Ho-Tu. “And more are obtained each rendezvous.”
Elizabeth looked up, as though puzzled at this, as though she did not understand the reference, and then dropped her head again.
“When will you begin the training?” I asked.
“When the two new girls chosen for the first set grow weary of the kennels, and of the gruel of the iron pens.”
“Do girls in training not eat such gruel?” I asked.
“Girls in training,” said Ho-Tu, “partake of the finest of slave porridges. They are given mats to sleep on, and later in their training, furs. They are seldom chained. Sometimes they are even permitted, under guard, to leave the house, that they may be stimulated and pleased by the sights of Ar.”
“Do you hear that, little Vella?” I asked.
“Yes, Master,” said Elizabeth, not lifting her head.
“Further,” said Ho-Tu, “after the first few weeks of training, if sufficient progress is made, they will be permitted foods other than slave porridges.” Elizabeth looked up brightly.
“One might even say,” said Ho-Tu, “that they will be well fed.”
Elizabeth smiled.
“In order that they may bring,” added Ho-Tu, looking at Elizabeth, “a higher price.”
Elizabeth looked down.
At that time we heard the fifteenth bar. Elizabeth looked up at me. “You are permitted to leave,” I told her. She sprang up and returned to the office of Caprus, who was closing the top of the desk before which he stood. She replaced the scrolls in the pigeonholes of a scroll bin and Caprus slid the cover over the bin and locked it, and then, with a word to him, she lightly ran past us and disappeared down the hall.
“With speed like that,” said Ho-Tu, smiling, “she will not be the last to arrive at the porridge trough.”
I looked at Ho-Tu and smiled.
He lifted his shaved head to mine, and the black eyes met mine. He scratched his left shoulder. He stood squarely there before me, and then he grinned.
“You are a strange one for an Assassin,” he said.
“Are we now to go to the pens?” I asked.
“It is the fifteenth bar,” said Ho-Tu. “Let us go to table. After we have eaten, I will show you the pens.”
Here and there, down the hall, I could see slaves hurrying in one direction or another, depending on the location of their feeding quarters. I could also see members of the staff moving about, and could hear doors being closed and locked.
“All right,” I said, “let us eat.”
There were various matches in the pit of sand that evening. There was a contest of sheathed hook knife, one of whips and another of spiked gauntlets. One of the slave girls spilled wine and was fastened to a slave ring, stripped and beaten. Later the Musicians played and a girl I had not seen before, whom I was told was from Cos, performed the collar dance, and creditably. Cernus, as before, was lost in his game with Caprus, this time lingering at the board even long after paga and full-strength Ka-la-na were served.
“Why is it?” I asked Ho-Tu, whom I felt I had come to know somewhat better in the day, “that when others have Ka-la-na and meat and bread and honey you eat only this porridge?”
Ho-Tu pushed back the bowl.
“It is not important,” he said.
“Very well,” I said.
The horn spoon snapped in his hands, and he angrily threw the pieces into the bowl.
“I am sorry,” I said.
He looked at me puzzled, his black eyes glinting. “It is not important,” he repeated.
I nodded.
He rose. “I will take you to the pens now,” he said.
I indicated the door to one side through which, the night before, the shackled slave had been led, through which Cernus had left as well. This night, I had been pleased to note that none of the slaves who had come out poorly in their contests had been shackled and led through the door. The slave who had won at hook knife the night before, I observed, was again eating at the foot of the table. The collar had been taken from his throat. I gathered he might now be free. There was a whipping strap looped about his belt, and in the belt, sheathed, was a hook knife, the hilt buckled down in the sheath, as was the case with that of Ho-Tu. “The thing you call the beast,” I said, “lies through that door.”
Ho-Tu looked at me, narrowly. “Yes,” he said.
“I would like to see it,” I said.
Ho-Tu paled. Then he smiled. “Pray to the Priest-Kings,” he said, “that you never see it.”
“You know nothing of the beast?” I asked.
“Cernus, and certain others,” said he, “can look upon it—they alone.” He looked at me closely. “Do not be curious, Killer,” said he, “for commonly those who look upon the beast do so only in death.”
“I trust,” I said, “it is safely caged.”
Ho-Tu smiled. “I trust so,” he said.
“How often is it fed?” I asked.
“It can eat many times a day,” said Ho-Tu, “but it can also endure long periods without food. Normally we feed it a slave every ten days.”
“A live slave?” I asked.
“It likes to make its own kills,” said Ho-Tu.
“As long as it is safely caged,” I remarked, “I gather there is no danger.”
“Fear of the beast keeps good order in the House of Cernus,” said Ho-Tu.
“I expect it does,” I admitted.
“Come,” said Ho-Tu. “I will show you the pens.”
11
Two Girls
After having passed through several doors of iron, each with an observation panel, descending on a spiral ramp deeper and deeper beneath the ground level, I could at last, clearly, smell the stink of the pens.
In the cylinder there are several varieties of retention areas, ranging from the luxuriousness of the cell shown to me earlier by Ho-Tu, in which Cernus was accustomed to keep Special Captures, to the iron pens. Some of the facilities were simply lines of reasonably clean cells, some with windows, usually a lavatory drain and something in the way of a mat to sleep on. Other rows of cells were rather more ornate, with heavy intricate grillwork taking the place of bars, hung with red silks, floored with furs and perhaps lit by a small tharlarion-oil lamp set in a barred recess. But the pens, of which there were several sorts, boasted no such luxuries. The expression “The Iron Pens,” incidentally, generally refers to all of the subterranean retention facilities in the house of a slaver, not simply cages, but pits, steel drums, wall chains and such; it is the name of an area, on the whole, rather than a literal description of the nature of the only sort of security devices found there. The expression “kennels” is sometimes used similarly, but more often it refers to a kind of small, cement cell, customarily about three feet by three feet by four feet, with an iron gate, which can be raised and lowered; similar cells, but entirely of bars, are also common, and are to be found in the house of slavers; the smaller cells can function as separate units, and may be used to ship slaves, but they can also be locked together in groups to provide tiers of cells, usually bolted into a wall, conserving space.
Ho-Tu led the way, moving from catwalk to catwalk, spanning cages below. In these cages, through the bars, male slaves, crowded together, naked and wearing heavy collars, glared sullenly up at us.
“It would not be well to lose your footing,” advised Ho-Tu.
I
supposed it was from this sort of facility that the general expression “The Iron Pens” took its origin. On each cage we passed, as we took our way over it, I saw a thin metal plate covered with numbers. Some of these numbers referred to the occupants within the cage, but other numbers were coded to instruct the keepers in such matters as diet, special precautions, date of the lot’s acquisition, and its intended disposition. Some of the numbers had been scratched out, and others had been hammered into the plates, which were changed from time to time. The pens seemed humid and, though we were below ground, warm from the heat of the bodies. The only sanitation facility was an open metal mesh, supported by close-set horizontal bars, in the bottom of the cages, beneath which, some five feet below, was a cement floor, washed down and cleaned by slaves once daily. There was a feed trough at one side of each cage and a low watering pan on the other, both filled by means of tubes from the catwalk. The cages of female slaves were mixed in with those of the male slaves, presumably on no other basis than what cage happened to be empty at a given time. The female slaves, like the men, were unclothed, and wore collars; their collars, however, were not the typical locked collar of the female slave but, since they were only in the iron pens, a narrow band of iron, with a number, hammered about their neck.
I noted that the females tended to remain near the center of their cage. Their food and water areas were protected from the wall of bars shared with the next cage, which might contain male slaves, by a heavy iron mesh rather like that of the flooring, riveted by hammer to the bars. Sometimes I supposed a girl might wander too close to the bars and be seized, but, because of the bars, little could be done with her. Mating among slaves is carefully supervised. One or two girls I noted lay on the flooring mesh, their heads near the bars separating them from the males, their hair cruelly tied to the bars. They had been careless.
I did not try to count the pens over which we passed, and we descended two more levels, which were similarly tenanted. We stopped on the fourth subterranean level, beneath which I was told there were three more levels, retention levels, on the whole similar to those we had just passed. The fourth level, though containing many retention facilities, is used for the processing, assignment, interrogation and examination of slaves; it can be reached independently by a spiral ramp and tunnel which does not pass through the area of the iron pens. The kitchen for the pens is on this level, and the infirmary, and certain facilities for smiths; Ho-Tu kept his chair of office on this level; also, discipline was administered on this level, I gathered, seeing certain racks and chains, certain stone tables with straps, certain carefully arranged instruments designed for the exaction of pain; certain irons and high-heat-level fires in perforated metal drums.
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