"You were once the Lady Temione, were you not?" I inquired.

"Yes, Master," she said, lifting her head a little from the dirt, where, before me, in the camp of Cos, on the south bank of the Vosk, north of Holmesk, she knelt, head down, the palms of her hands on the ground.

"Lie on your right side before me," I said, "extending your left leg."

She did so. In this way, the bit of silk she wore fell to the right, displaying the line of her hip, thigh and calf. I saw the brand, tiny and tasteful, yet unmistakable, fixed in her thigh, high, under the hip. It was the common kajira brand, the staff and fronds, beauty subject to discipline, worn by most female slaves on Gor. She had the toes of the left leg pointed, lusciously curving the calf. I saw that she had had some training.

"You may resume your original position," I said.

She returned to it, a common position of slave obeisance.

I noted that her hair had grown out somewhat, in the weeks since I had last seen her, a free woman on the chain of Ephialtes, a sutler whom I had met at the inn of the Crooked Tarn, on the Vosk Road. He had been kind enough to act as my agent in certain matters.

"Tell me of matters since last we met," I suggested.

"It was at the Crooked Tarn, was it not?" she asked.

"Perhaps," I said.

"Or was it in the camp of Cos, near Ar's Station?" she asked.

"Perhaps," I said.

"I with others was once there blindfolded, and displayed," she said.

"Oh?" I said.

"Yes," she said.

"Speak," I said.

"As master recalls," she said. "I was detained at the Crooked Tarn, as a debtor slut."

"Yes," I said.

"And forced to earn my keep." she said.