The offer
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After the meeting, the women were led—— or half-driven to a dusty, crippled room which despite the fact that the woman was in her trance, floating in a half-coma, stunned her with its existence amid the furnished room crowded in TOWER; she hardly thought such a room would exist in the TOWER. It might be as well reflecting the early proposition that there were rooms in the building, to feed the others. thus being eaten away from corners, porches, beams, and floors, exposing the holes of stones. She could see a hole connecting the open sky right to the far left. “Well, don’t get vexed, chick.” The woman who stood by her since the beginning grabbed her arm after her failure to fall and kneel properly, who then clearly reckoned her as a pitiful moron in need of some guidance and protection, revealing her inner hospitality unusual enough for her apparent old age, addressed the woman an ignorant girl, yet, perhaps after all, at that moment, she was right and generous indeed to offer the help. After the arrival of the last guest, the meeting resumed its agenda with some quibbles, quarrels, announcements, food, drink, and recreation. The Perity in white and Perity in corners said nothing and processed nothing they had listened, while the woman trembled half of the time and was lost in tangled thoughts in the other. Her distraction was such that when they were commanded to leave, her cranky old friend forcefully pulled her up from the ground and then almost blasted her into the line as if handling a sheep—— the woman learned later that unsurprisingly she did administrate sheep in her youth, and later, young women in her middle age, now in her final and supreme glow she flexibly applied the method according to subjects and she was, in her eyes, something of the two combined.
“May I leave now?” At her hauling she felt ever dizzier, asking in a feeble voice. “Am I allowed to leave the TOWER now, madam?”
“Shut your bootless mouth up and move.” She simply growled at her and laughed when seeing her quiver. “You have made yourself as sharp as a worm on the cabbages inviting some pinches.”
She must have some experience with gardens or vegetables or both. But she was right again and the woman admitted her own folly with no frustration but fear. Then sitting in the shabby hall gray with clay where the slave women gathered, she felt her eyes sore and her teeth shake. When she felt like crying, the old woman shrieked: “You are going to cry? You are going to cry? Don’t tell me you are going to cry!” She inhaled heavily and lowered her head to avoid her glare, then raised her head, smiling faintly, saying yes that she was not going to cry and thank you.
Thanks to her, she wasn’t spotted by the shepherd who glanced at her for some time and then strode away. She had made enough scenes that day despite barely doing anything. She bit her tongue hard when again felt the urge to ask for an excuse, away from the high and mighty tower to a secluded world. She did not ask yet the old woman understood, who at the time grinned at her merrily.
“You are not going to leave.” She claimed. “We are not going to leave. This will be a nasty meeting and being nasty means being dreary.”
The woman was perplexed, which effect most of things in the world would exert on her, so she simply held her tongue and waited.
“Dinner.” Moments later the shepherd went in, followed by some carts. “Serve yourself and I need some of you to come with me to bring some wood otherwise you will freeze yourself to stone through the night. We got cold winter this year.”
The woman was about to stand up, thinking to herself that she needed some contact with the fresh air. Good lifts or muscle and arm would do just well, but again the old woman prohibited her from doing so and grasped the edge of her gown. “You are not going anywhere, stupid girl.” She hissed. “You are not even safe here.”
She was not angry yet she replied with some resistance. “I am gracious to your help just now, madam, as I was not quite myself then. Yet I am not as young as you might think and let me serve you now by bringing some wood, or maybe I could bring you a bowl of soup on my way back.”
“No.” Responded her steel-willed lady, “No you are exactly yourself just then. Try going nowhere, girl, you will be frightened.”
During the time they were conversing, the lid of the container that held food and liquid had already been lifted, teeming the room with a gloss and hot odor incompatible, perhaps with the TOWER. She sighed knowing that she could not pass her out of the reason unknown to herself, or, known, but eluded also by herself for a certain good reason. “Then let me bring some food for you.” She proposed, met with a shake of the head. I shall go with you. She said. Then together they moved to the queue of women, waiting for a spoon of mixture they would deem as food in order to fill the belly.
The starch was too sticky and the seasoning was out of balance. It was quite unappetizing but they ate in silence. She sighed when some women went for the wood.
The women fetching wood didn’t go far, for by the time the woman finished their meals a voice came by the entrance of the room halting them: “There’s no need to go.”
She—— the emitter of the voice paused for a moment and apparently was gazing at the room. She lamented mildly the wretchedness of its condition then gave the order to bring in the wood. She brought loads of timbers with her servant and guards and burnt them right at the hearth in the center of the room, whose crackling and sizzling muffed her voice. She had a very cold and mild voice and fell on the stone floor like needles into the water.
“I too bring some food but it seems that you have finished the meal.” She explained, to the shepherd, who was thanking her benevolence. “It’s very kind of you to do so, madam, for these slaves…”
“There’s no need that you grant me the gratitude.” She replied candidly, “It was my husband’s idea, and I might as well admit I thought that he would be here. Hadn’t he been here?”
“No.” The shepherd said, “He hadn’t.”
“That was strange.” The lady who brought their warmth pondered to herself with the cold voice. “Very unexpected.”
The woman had finished her soup, holding the bowl with two hands, not aware that she was clutching the edge, not daring to look across the flying flame to see the lady’s face. Her elder and wiser companion giggled out with her raspy voice and shook her brittle skeleton, making the woman want to hide her ear.
“You could look at her.” She recommended. “She was a beautiful and generous lady.”
“It would be inappropriate.” She said weakly. “And I am afraid there was fire blinding my sight for her.”
After the noblewoman left the old woman described her figure: She was tall, slender, with a stunning frame decorated with clean pearls, a necklace, and earrings dangling from her in the air. She too wore a white gown but not the gown made near dull gray for them. It was pure white, holy, and gorgeous.
“I think she looked like you, in terms of the face.” She said in her hoarse voice.
“Please, do not tease me. ”Her voice was full of fatigue.
“I am not teasing you.” She mumbled to herself, complacently, “I am simply telling the truth. She looks like you, except that she was strong, while you are so very weak!”
2.
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As the night ripened, the door hatched, and the shepherd left with a lock on the door, the slave women, to the women’s astonishment, were freed and unshackled from their manners and masks. It made her ever more ill-fitting to the group, first by not being dead enough, then by not being alive enough. The wood brought by the noblewoman burned higher and higher, ashes bouncing against the ceiling, while the scent of women’s bodies glossed the air of the room. “A smell that can revive a dead man from a grave.” The old woman chuckled to herself, and to which remark the mass of crowd, maddening with this fleeting freedom, cheered: “If he loves women!”
“Even if he doesn’t, he loved a woman’s warm corpse.” One proposed. “But surely this one loves women and this one brings us warmth! To the lord who ravishes women!”
The sensational one exploded the hall, besetting the woman with the idea that the shepherd might come and punish them. But she didn’t come.
“No. You are looking for naught——she won’t come. She is now busy climbing up one’s bed and sucking some cocks. That is all women’s destiny when not crippled as I am. ” The old woman said. “I bet sooner or later the chain on the door won’t hold and some thugs will break in. Some blood will be shed floor be shitted. ”
“Please do not speak like this.” The woman spoke wearily. “This is the TOWER.”
“And it is.” She replied nonchalantly. “It is the TOWER that made the brothel and we are at its bane.”
The woman diverted her eyes, to the clamoring and hugging crowd of women and the burning flame, recollecting brokenly what she had heard just then. She might have wanted to ask something yet said nothing, only gazing at the glowing flash of light, lost herself, half in it and in the warmth, unconcerned and impervious to the women’s jibing, till the approaching footsteps arose from outside the door, devoured by the scream of the girl.
“Here they come!” One raptured, in a mixture of expectation and fear. “Fallen is the true night!”
The woman’s complexion was pale. She turned back her eyes to see the old, hunching woman, who stretched her arm for her with her clawing finger. “Want protection, girl?”
She smiled softly, in pain. “Should there be any commotion, let me guard you somehow, madam. I am younger.”
When the chain broke in a clattering sound and the door flung open, the old woman was snorting in her nose telling the younger one that she needed no guardian, and anyway, this was something the woman couldn’t have provided with. The figure haunted the position around the door was gloved, again by the flame, and by her cringing her own body, obfuscated in the lukewarm numbness, by the exclamation of the women.
“What, my lord!” One cried out, “You are going to offend your lady wife by presenting yourself so soon and so early in the night?” An outbreak of guffaw was encased and echoing in the worn old hall, to which the man stood by the door replied with no discernable word. “She had just come.” The speaking woman then proceeded, “Wish she would have come earlier. We have swallowed the food that time. The meal was not half as good as the TOWER”s reputation, but thank for the woods.”
“Would you mind eating another then, my lady?”
Quietly the man replied. He was in a sense like his wife, mild and gentle, in which they contrast in that she was icy-cold but he was slightly different. There was a certain dose of passionate geniality under that coat of decorous courtesy, and right then it was this manner that was incurring giggling here and there. The slave women seemed to be familiar with him, and vice versa. Infusing in the room was a shroud of the smell of women, of their bodies and voluptuousness, their warmth and chained curves under the grayish white gown, unbuttoned near the bosom.
“No.” Collective answers were given. “We don’t think so. A meal is appropriate for the slave. We are virtuous and do not like luxuries, unlike your blatant covetousness, aren’t we, my lord? ”
The woman lowered her head as if to diminish herself onto the floor, suspending her answer even to the gruff laughter from her companion. “That is the man you stumbled so hard at to have a glimpse,” She proposed, “Don’t you feel like looking at him now?”
The woman did not respond. She was rigid and frozen, her eyes cast upon the ground, face painted a hue of redness yet plagued by apprehension. Not far, the other women blared upon a word by the man, intercepted in the fire on its way to the woman, such that when she raised her eye in a blurry sight, she could only see the white figures stood up, clinging feverishly to each other, arms locked with arms, tumbling over each other as if encountering corpses prostrating in ditches. Not long, her watery and hazy vision was completely claimed by her jiggling and mocking elder fellow, who certainly by then knew she was the one the woman should plead for an answer for the present tumult, as she had mentioned, that should any commotion occur, it was her the old hag who came to rescue, not the shivering woman who displayed some good-willed yet futile gallantry.
“Where are they going?” She inquired helplessly, still curling herself. Buffeted by her confusion as well the good, strong tap and drag of the old woman, she reluctantly stood up, merging again into the flow of women. The door was forced wide open to facilitate a quick exit, right at the moment gone was the rule and line, all breaking through as each wished, leaving her probably the only one forced and compelled so hard to go.
“You might as well choose to stay.” “That would be too conspicuous…” “Indeed!” She laughed out aloud. “Where are we heading to?” She whispered again.
“Nowhere. ” Another voice, from a member woman close to their share of the pack of women, “Somewhere. That brought us warmth, her husband is leading us to better rooms. Imperial suites, seven or in total, to have some good sleep. She was one of us, but he loves many of us, so we got to sleep.”
The woman was inhaling painfully, at the edge of tearing, wanting an answer to a question she did not want: But who was the man, after all? Yielding to the confusion, she surrendered ashamedly, inquiring in her own meek way of half-frenzy to the surrounding, but who is the man? Who is he?
She was dragged—— amid such a company one couldn't speedy answer. It was thrown and relayed on a directionless flow prone to be struck down and lost. Evaluation and emotive comments came here prior to her required answer, where her dealer and dragger remarked with some exclamation: “You are really ignorant!” She pondered to herself that at beginning she thought of her but a normal imbecile prospering in the world since the prosperity belongs to either the ferocious or the unconcerned; now she felt sorry for her lack of wit and might. “You are truly a pity and a wonder to survive this long.”
Her voice was in amazement, overlapping the women’s own question to inquire about her origin: “Where are you before now, child? Just hatched from eggling, darling? ”
Some laughing bones successfully tickled; it would be fine, for a second the idea appeared to herself, that yes, she would rather be in the state not hatched, like bolt failed to be plastered on the door, and her own question too bounced back: “He was a Dominion. Four times.”
A woman before her turned back to inform her, the poor ignorant, “You must know? We postulate he might be planning another term so he came, or he came actually for women hearing that so many would be present. He is famous, yes, because he is a Dominion. He is even more famous for he loves women. He loves slave women; particular slave women. Slaves in white.”
“And he is married?” The voice quivered and they laughed. Of course, he is. You just saw his lady wife.
“He loves slaves so that he himself married a slave. But it was just not enough.”
They saw her eyes dimmed; something struggled and got snuffed quickly. She reposed herself in a blink.
“Was he different? I mean, as Dominion?”
They now too got confused, by this woman from another convention. “Where have you been before” was the common prerequisite for an answer and she failed to answer. She grew persistent and stubborn on this answer, even rasing her voice slightly, only shaperning the voice into a pitched pleading, such that they wanted to very much to tease her and got more. “Maybe. Tell us something about you. Where have you been before? What have you done?” “I am a slave.” She replied faintly and curtly, “I do what slaves do.”
They asked the woman taking her that where and how she found this new-brew. Child is not supposed to be here; The TOWER does not call on them. The night shade had completely covered the scales by her eyes so only the bright iris stood out in emerald glow. She got that kind, vulnerable green eyes, like the glass embedded in the socket of a child.
“I didn’t search. She appeared. ” The old woman answered.
“Very well.” The purveyor of the worthless information set forth, “Then where are you working?”
She told her she worked in somewhere north. The reply pained herself. She regretted that she had opened her mouth and went to purse that, switched to minimum reply of shaking or nodding her head. South? You look south. ——she shook her head. Gettylesvian, then. Can’t be more. Yet she still repeated the movement. “You are lying if you said Nord.” “I am working in Nord.” She spoke in a low voice. But it was still a lie. North still, and she no longer worked for anyone. She only worked for herself. For the mere subsistence.
“Then the tanned Nord,” That woman spoke in an ironic way, “What do you do?”
“What slaves do.” She insisted. They got bored and had to let it go: “Are you married? Do you take care of children? Do you know any men, just, any?”
Then they were brushing through the corridor, led by the man holding a candle, the light emitted were so feeble that one could hearly say it was light. At first the line was widely distributed in broad hallway, but then it narrowed for the head was making its way into the chamber.
“Slower, please do not hurt yourself, ladies.” The man said, gently. “There should be seven straight chambers to form a vista and enough room for all of you. I will light the wood as soon as possible.”
“Don’t you think we will be warmer with your presence, my lord?”
The slave women laughed; the woman held herself hard.
“I am afraid no.” The man replied, still mannerly, “I have to return to the court since the meeting will continue throughout the night into the morning.”
They sighed. It would be boring. So boring. One reached her hand to him, sighing ruefully for a lack of sweetness amid the reek of life.
“It was indeed a great pity, my lord. With all of my heart—— despite that there’s nothing you can do to change our life and beings as the world dictates so and, what are you, the glorious Dominion, but also a creature binded? But it has been good and purely good enough that you truly love us, out of a reason unknown.”
The woman spoke up and clung to the man, who held her and touched her shoulder, they were standing by the porch and halted half of the lines, yet he seemed composed and undisturbed. “We are kindred.” The former Dominion said, as light as such. “My lady, is there anything you need from me to help your daughter? I am sure to be able to discuss it with you after the meeting.”
“She once slept with him.” The elder woman explained to her, the woman who muted herself since the man began to speak. She even restrained from breathing, one might suggest. Hearing the word she filched further and the woman who just interrogated her of her origin concluded that she must be very young with no experience of men. “He slept with the women of his taste. He asked them but of course, most simply consented for what’s the risk, his wife is not revengeful and he is generous when satiated and long after being satisfied. But it was pity, you could see, for women like her, as after his baby was born he had limited the leisure. ”
She was smiling like whore but deep down inside the poor bitch was crying like a beggar. She must have planned for long to plead to him for some gold.
The woman commented.
“So you mustn’t have a child. Have you ever tended to a child? You are a child yourself.” She put across. They were passing the door; passing by the man. The candle now burnt brightly in his hand and its light felt ever more like fire at the close distance. The woman turned her head sternly, answering not the question and looking not in the man by her; the light was washing over her face and her fellow companion thus spotted her scales as well her visage: How strange you are not a child. She muttered. Hell and god and heaven, you are indeed pretty old!
“How do you say her look?” That old woman, who had silenced for considerably long time compared to what had been before amused the idea. The other walking companion perched there like a bird then took off, lightly and rapidly. She turned to see the man standing by the door who upheld the candle, smiling faintly.
“Strange he smiled even slightly like her.” She was speaking the truth. That smile under shadow was tremendously similar and she was certain that the woman was missing a great fortune. “She had the face our womanizer lord prefers. So like his wife but meeker, weaker. He preferred such feeling. She could have earned a lot tonight or tomorrow but for his abstinence from the activity now.”
The woman in their topic walked past them suddenly. She wedged through the mass with force unusual for her with the old woman behind her shutting: Careful, child! Don’t get stumbled. She trembled but didn’t look back. She pushed herself forward and had herself devoured by the seizure of the mass and a new, open room, with a sharp turn. Two women thus parted with her and never saw her again during the night;they glimpsed the man was too looking at her. It seemed that he truly did fancy her. They later conversed; she had been peculiar to their eyes since she appeared as she was so like the noblewoman who married a Dominion but was once a slave and she would make a great recommendation. It also seemed that, the rumor was true, the former Dominion too held his unquenchable appetite, his relentless pursuit for an idealized visage whether for the alleged reason that the new child was born. Their efforts to capture her were wasted despite the near victory; they sighed, and the Dominion looked at the disappearing woman with such yearning and hankering, the oil dripped down and flowed out to burn his finger. He paid no attention. What was this smaller frame but a disposable flesh for a Dominion? The dripping, burning oil was more like a slow and painful craving, like the man’s desire or the two women’s pity for a lack of fortune. Nonetheless the deal was closed and offer was never to be made, when the noblewoman, the man’s lady wife appeared from the other side of the corridor and addressed to him with her chilling voice: time for the meeting, my lord.
“We are waiting for you.”
So the man turned, muffing the light of the candle with the night.
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