Common scenes in Port Kar

Blankets laid out along sides of canals
Wares displayed for sale

(Samos and Bosk are in a barge on the canal, in the morning)

"We are passing a market," said Samos. "You had better close the window slats."
I glanced outside. The smell of fruit and vegetables, and verr milk, was strong. I also heard the chatter of women.

Dozens of women were spreading their blankets, and their wares, on the cement. There are many such markets in Port Kar.

Men and women come to them in small boats. Also, of course, sometimes the vendors, too, will merely tie up their boats near the side of the canal, particularly when the space on the cement is crowded. The markets, thus, tend to extend into the canal itself."

"Verr milk, Masters!'' I heard called. "Verr milk, Masters!"

I opened the slats a tiny crack. I wished to see if she were pretty. She was, in her tunic and collar, kneeling on a white blanket, spread on the cement, with the brass container of verr milk, with its strap, near her, and the tiny brass cups. She was extremely lightly complexioned and had very red hair.

"Verr milk, Masters," she called. Slaves may buy and sell in the name of their masters, but they cannot, of course, buy and sell for themselves because they are only animals. It is rather for them to be themselves bought and sold, as the masters might please."
Raiders

A lakelike area near the arsenal
Floating marketplace
Monument commemorating the battle on 25th of Se'Kara


"The only fully floating market authorized by the Council of Captains occurs in a lakelike area near the arsenal. It is called the Place of the Twenty-Fifth of Se’Kara, because of the monument there, rising from the water. On the twenty-fifth of Se'Kara in Year One of the Sovereignty of the Council of Captains, the year 10,120 C.A. Contasta Ar, from the Founding of Ar, a sea battle took place in which the fleet of Port Kar defeated the fleets of Cos and Tyros. The monument, of course, commemorates this victory. The market forms itself about the monument."

It was now shortly after dawn. We were making our way through the canals of Port Kar. Here and there, on the walks at the edges of the canal, men were moving about. Most were loading or readying small boats, or folding nets.

I saw, through the small, slatted window near me, a slave girl drawing water from the canal, with a rope and bucket."

"I saw a man outside on the walk, a few yards away, mending a net. Ovoid, painted floats lay beside him."

"On a gently inclined slope of cement leading down to the canal, the water lapping at her knees, there knelt a slave girl doing laundry. She wore her steel collar. Her tunic came high on her thighs."

We were now passing an open slave market. The merchant was chaining his girls on the broad, tiered, cement display shelves.

One girl lay on her stomach, on her elbows, her head down.... another girl, a blonde, sat on her shelf with her knees drawn up, her ankles crossed, her arms about her knees; ....another girl, a long-haired brunet, on all fours, faced me, with glazed eyes.... several girls, standing, awaited their chaining...more than one of them shaded her eyes against the morning sun; it would be a long day for most of them, chained in the sun, on the hard, granular surfaces of the hot cement shelves.

The women were chained nude, of course, for that is the way that slave girls are commonly displayed for their sale, particularly in low markets, and, indeed, even in a private sale from one of the purple booths in the courtyard of a rich slaver there will come a time when the slave, even an exquisite, high slave, must put aside her silks and be examined raw, as though she were a common girl. "

I looked over the low roof of the barge's cabin to the canal beyond. A hundred or so feet away there was the small boat of an urt hunter. His girl, the rope on her neck, crouched in the bow.

This rope is about twenty feet long. One end of it is tied on her neck and the other end is fastened on the boat, to the bow ring. The hunter stood behind her with his pronged urt spear.

These men serve an important function in Port Kar, which is to keep down the urt population in the canals. At a word from the man the girl, the rope trailing behind her, dove into the canal.

Behind the man, in the stern, lay the bloody, white-furred bodies of two canal urts. One would have weighed about sixty pounds, and the other, I speculate, about seventy-five or eighty pounds.

I saw the girl swimming in the canal, the rope on her neck, amidst the garbage. It is less expensive and more efficient to use a girl for this type of work than, say, a side of tarsk. The girl moves in the water, which tends to attract the urts and, if no mishap occurs, may be used again and again.

Some hunters use a live verr but this is less effective as the animal, squealing, and terrified, is difficult to drive from the side of the boat. The slave girl, on the other hand, can be reasoned with. She knows that if she is not cooperative she will be simply bound hand and foot and thrown alive to the urts.

This modality of hunting, incidentally, is not as dangerous to the girl as it might sound, for very few urts make their strike from beneath the surface.

"Some free girls, runaways, vagabonds, girls of no family or position, live about port cities, scavenging as they can, begging, stealing, sleeping at night in crates and under bridges and piers. They are called the she-urts of the wharves. Every once in a while there is a move to have them rounded up and collared but it seldom comes to anything."

"She went then, as not noticing me, to the basket of garbage. She tried to saunter as a she-urt. Steeling herself she thrust her hand into the fresh, wet garbage. She looked up at me. She saw I was still watching her. In her hand there was a half of a yellow Gorean pear, the remains of a half moon of verr cheese imbedded in it. She, watching me, lifted it toward her mouth. I did not think it would taste badly. I saw she was ready to vomit.
Suddenly her wrist was seized by the girl, a tall, lovely girl, some four inches taller than she, in a brief white rag, who stood with her at the basket.
“Who are you?” demanded the girl in the white rag.
“You are not one with us.” She took the pear from her, with the verr cheese in it.
“You have not laid with the paga attendants for your garbage,” she said. “Get out!

"I saw her with several other girls, behind the rear court of the Silver Collar. They were fishing through wire trash containers. These had been left outside until, later, when the girls had finished with them, when the residues would be thrown into the canals. It was not an act of pure kindness on the part of the attendants at the paga tavern that the garbage had not been flung directly into the canals."

"In a few moments, beside one of the canals leading down to the wharves, in the vicinity of the Spice Pier, we came on four she-urts. They were on their bellies beside the canal, fishing for garbage."

I soon hurried my steps, for an alarm bar had begun to ring.
I heard steps running behind me, too, and I turned about. A black seaman ran past me, he, too, heading toward the wharves. I followed him toward the pier of the Red Urt. (In this case, a slave is missing.)