The room was convulsed with laughter.

"Kitchen Master!" I called.

"Here, Captain!" cried Tellius, from behind the tables.

"Come here!" I called.

The man approached the table.

"Here," I told him, gesturing to the girl, "is a new girl for the kitchens."

He laughed, and walked about her, his switch in his hand. "She is a beauty," he said.

"See that she is worked well," I said.

"She will be," he promised me.

The Lady Vivina looked on me with fury.

"Fish!" I called. "Where is the slave boy Fish!"

"Here!" he cried, and came forward, from behind the tables, where, with other slaves, for some time, he had been watching what had been going on.

I gestured to the girl. "Do you find this slave pleasing?" I asked.

He looked at me, puzzled.

"Yes," he said.

"Good," said I. Then I turned to the girl. "You please the slave boy Fish," I said to her. "Therefore your use will be his."

"No!" she cried. "No! No!"

"The use of her," I told the boy, "is yours."

"No!" she cried. "No! No! No! No!"

She threw herself to her knees before me, weeping, extending her arms. "He is only a slave," she wept. "I was to have been Ubara! Ubara!"

"Your use is his," I said.

She held her face in her hands, bent over, weeping.

There was much laughter in the room. I looked about, well pleased. Of those I looked upon, only Luma did not laugh. There were tears in her eyes. This irritated me. Tomorrow, I thought, I will have her beaten.

Sandra, at my side, was laughing merrily. I gave her head a rough shake. She began to kiss my left arm, and I, with my right hand, brushed her away. But in a moment she again held her cheek to my left arm.

The boy, Fish, was looking on the girl, Vina, not without compa.s.sion. They were both young. He was perhaps seventeeen, she perhaps fifteen or sixteen. Then he reached down and lifted her to her feet, turning her to face him.

"I am Fish," he said.

"You are only a slave boy!" she cried.

She would not meet his eyes.

He took her by the collar and turned it slightly upward in his large hands, forcing her head up to face his.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am the Lady Vivina of Kasra!" she cried.

"No," he said, "you are a slave."

"No!" she said, shaking her head.

"Yes," he said, "and I, too, am a slave."

And then, to our surprise, holding her head in his hands, he kissed her gently on the lips.

She looked at him, tears in her eyes.

Raised as she had been, in the sequestered quarters of high-born women in palace of Tyros in Kasra, I supposed it was perhaps the first time that the lips of a man had touched hers. Doubtless she had expected to receieve that kiss standing in the swirling love silks of the Free Companion, beneath golden love lamps, beside the couch of the Ubar of Cos; but it was not in the white, marbled palace of the Ubar of Cos that that kiss was to take place; and it was not to be receieved as a Ubara from the lips of a Ubar; that kiss wa to be taken place in Port Kar, in the holding of her enemies, under barbaric torchlight, before the table of her master; and she was not to wear the love silks of a Free Companion and Ubara but the brief, wretched garment of a Kettle Slave, and a collar that proclaimed her slave girl; and the lips would be those of a slave which touched hers, those themselves of a slave.

To our surprise she had not resisted the boy's kiss.

He held her by the arms. "I am a slave," he said.

To our astonishment, then she, in all her friendlessness, in all her misery and loneliness, lifted her lips to his, with great timidity, that he might, should it please him to do so, again touch them.

Again he gently kissed her.

"I, too, am a slave," she said. "My name is Vina."

"You are worthy," he said, holding her head in his hands, "to be a Ubara."

"And you," she whispered, "to be a Ubar."

"I think you will find," I told her, "the arms of the boy Fish more welcome, though on a mat of a slave, than the arms of gross Lurius, on the furs of the Ubar's couch."

She looked at me, tears in her eyes.

I spoke to the kitchen master. "At night," I said, "chain them together."

"A single blanket?" he asked.

"Yes," I told him.

The girl collasped weeping, but Fish, with great gentleness lifted her in his arms and carried her from the hall.

I laughed.

And there was great laughter.

How rich a joke it was, to have enslaved the girl who would have been Ubara of Cos, to have put her to work in my kitchens, to have given the use of her to a mere slave boy! This story would soon be told in all the ports of Tha.s.sa and all the cities of Gor! How shamed would be Tyros and Cos, enemies of my city, Port Kar! How delicious is the defeat of the enemies! How glorious is power, success, triumph!

I reached drunkenly into the bag of gold beside my chair and grabbed up handfuls flinging them about the room. I stood and threw about me showers of the tarn disks of Ar, of Tyros, of Cos, Thentis, Turia and Port Kar! Men scrambled wildly laughing and fighting for the coins. Each was of double weight!

"Paga!" I cried and held back the goblet and Telima filled it.

I regretted only that Midice and Tab were not with me to share my trimuph.

I stood drunkenly, holding to the table. I spilled paga. "Paga!" I cried, and Telima again filled the goblet. I drank again. And ten, again, wildly, shouting, crying out, I threw gold to all the corners of the room, laughing as the men fought and leaped to seize it.

I drank and then threw more coins and more coins about the room.

There was laughter and delighted cries.

"Hail Bosk!" I heard. "Hail Bosk, Admiral of Port Kar!"

I threw more gold wildly about. I drank again, and again. "Yes," I cried. "Hail Bosk!"

"Hail Bosk!" they cried. "Hail Bosk, Admiral of Port Kar!"

"Yes," I cried. "Hail Bosk! Hail, Bosk, Admiral of Port Kar! Hail Bosk, Admiral of Port Kar!"

I heard a cry, as of fear, from my right, and I turned to stare drunkenly toward the end of the table. There, Luma, chained at the table, in her bracelets, was looking at me. On her face there was a look of horror.

"Your face," she cried. "Your face!"

I looked at her, puzzled.

The room was suddenly quiet.

"No," she said, suddenly, shaking her head. "It is gone now."

"What is wrong?" I asked her.

"Your face," she said.

"What of it?" I asked.

"It is nothing," she said, looking down.

"What of it!" I demanded.

"For an instant," she said, "I thought-I thought it was the face of Surbus."

I cried out with rage and seized the great table, flinging it, scattering dishes and paga, from the dias. Thura and Ula screamed. Sandra screamed, darting away, her hands before her, with an incongruous clash of slave bells. Luma, fastened by the neck to the table, was jerked from the dais, and thrown over the table to the tiles of the hall. Slave girls fled from the room, screaming.

Enraged I took the bag of gold, what was left of it, and hurled it out into the hall, spilling a rain of golden tarn disks before it struck the tiles.

Then, furious, I turned about and, stumbling, left the hall.

"Admiral!" I heard behind me. "Admiral!"

I clutched the medallion about my neck, with its tarn ship and the initials of the Council of Captains.

Stumbling, crying out in rage, I staggered toward my quarters.

I could hear the consternation behind me.

In fury, I rushed on, sometimes falling, sometimes striking against the walls.

Then I burst open the doors of my quarters.

Midice and Tab leaped apart.

I howled with rage and turned about striking the walls with my fists and then, throwing off my cloak, spun weeping to face them, in the same instant drawing my blade.

"It is torture and impalement for you, Midice," I said.

"No," said Tab. "It is my fault. I forced myself upon her."

"No, No!" cried Midice. "It is my fault! My fault!"

"Torture and impalement," I said to her. Then I regarded Tab. "You have been a good man, Tab," I gestured with my blade. "Defend yourself," I said.

Tab shrugged. He did not draw his weapon. "I know you can kill me," he said.

"Defend yourself," I screamed to him.

"Very well," said Tab, and his weapon left its sheath.

Midice flung herself on her knees between us, weeping. "No!" she cried. "Kill Midice!"

"I shall slay you slowly before her," I said, "and then I shall deliver her to the torturers."

"Kill Midice!" wept the girl. "But let him go! Let him go!"

"Why have you done this to me!" I cried out to her weeping. "Why? Why?"

"I love him," she said, weeping. "I love him."

I laughed. "You cannot love," I told her. "You are Midice. You are small, and petty, and selfish, and vain! You cannot love!"

"I do love him," she whispered. "I do."

"Do you not love me?" I begged.