Explorers Of Gor

9
I Decide To Change My Lodgings

"Master?" cried Sasi.

"Do not fear," I said to her. "I am not ill. But we must leave this place quickly.

"Your face," she said. "It is marked!"

"It will pass," I said. I unlocked her bracelets and slipped them into my pouch.

"I fear I may be traced here," I said. "We must change lodgings."

I had left the paga tavern by a rear door and then swung myself up to a low roof, and then climbed to a higher one. I had made my way over several roofs until I had found a convenient and lonely place to descend. I had then, wrapped in the discarded aba of Kunguni, made my way through the streets to the Cove of Schendi. Outside, from the wharves and from the interior of the city, I could hear the ringing of alarm bars. "Plague!" men were crying in the streets.

"Are you not ill, Master?" asked Sasi.

"I do not think so," I said.

I knew that I had not been in a plague area. Too, the Bazi plague had burned itself out years ago. No cases to my knowledge had been reported for months. Most importantly, perhaps, I simply did not feel ill. I was slightly drunk and heated from the paga, but I did not believe myself fevered. My pulse and heartbeat, and respiration, seemed normal. I did not have difficulty catching my breath. I was neither dizzy nor nauseous, and my vision was clear. My worst physical symptoms were the irritation about my eyes and the genuinely nasty itchiness of my skin. I felt like tearing it off with my own fingernails.

"Are you of the metal workers or the leather workers?" she asked.

"Let us not bother about that now," I said, knotting the cords on the sea bag. I looked about the room. Aside from Sasi what I owned there was either on my person or in the sea bag.

"A girl likes to know the caste of her master," she said.

"Let us be on our way," I said.

"Perhaps it is the merchants," she said.

"How would you like to be whipped?" I asked her.

"I would not like that," she said.

"Let us hurry," I said.

"You do not have time to whip me now, do you?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I do not."

"I thought not," she said. "I do not think it is the peasants."

"I could always whip you later," I said.

"That is true," she agreed. "Perhaps I should best he quiet."

"That is an excellent insight on your part," 1 said.

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"If I am caught, and it is thought that I have the plague," I said, "you will doubtless be exterminated before I am."

"Let us not dally," she said. We left the room.

"You have strong hands," she said. "Is it the potters?"

"No," I said.

"I thought it might be," she said.

"Be silent," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.