"Drink. Mistress?" I asked.

"Yes, Brinlar," she said.  She lifted the veil delicately, almost flirtatiously, drinking behind it.  She looked at the man across from her.

"Drink, Master?" I asked.

"No." he said.  I then withdrew a yard or two and knelt in the grass, holding the vessel of light Ka-la-na.  I wore a tunic of white silk.

She dabbed at her lips with a napkin, under the veil, and then let the veil fall again into place.

"This is a pleasant spot," she had said earlier.  "Spread the cloth here, Brinlar, and lay out the things from the basket."

"Yes, Mistress," I had said.

We could see the Sardar Mountains in the distance.  I had been her servant for some three days.  After the first night she had not commanded me to her intimate service.  I think that first night had terribly unsettled her.  She had apparently not understood that she could have such feelings.  At times she had seemed almost taken out of herself.  At times, clearly, she had responded uncontrollably, reflexively, at my mercy, almost as might have a slave.  This sort of behavior was inappropriate in her, inexcusably so, she doubtless deemed, as she was a free woman.  Roundly had I been scolded for my part in matters.  Yet with mixed feelings, it was, I think, that she chastised me.  I pretended, of course, to ignorance and innocence, and a perhaps overzealous desire to please.  In any event she clearly now feared her feelings.  She had not dared to again order me to her pleasure, I think she was now afraid of herself in a man's arms, and what she might become.  Too, I think she clearly understood that what I had done to her might, as a matter of fact, have been done to her by almost any man.

"He is coming now, Brinlar, she had said earlier.

"Yes, Mistress," I had said, shading my eyes.

A rider, mounted on a high tharlarion, flanked by two footmen, had been approaching.

I had little doubt this had to do with her business in the vicinity of the Sardar.

"I must make my identification," said the fellow to her.  "Lower your veil."

She unpinned the veil.

"Lady Yanina," he said.

"Yes," she said.  I gathered they knew one another.

"You may replace the veil," he said to her.

"It does not much matter, does it," she asked, "as in the course of our work you have, of necessity, several times, seen me face-stripped?"

"Do as you please," he said.

I saw that she repinned the veil.  She was extremely modest.  She was not a slave.  She was a free woman.

The fellow, clad in dark garments, with a cape spread behind him, sitting cross-legged at the edge of the cloth, she kneeling across from him, turned to look at me.  I lowered my head.

"I do not care to speak before him," he said.  His two footmen were in the background, a few yards away, where the tharlarion was tethered.  Two of Lady Yanina's men, from her camp, were also nearby.  They were withdrawn several yards to the rear, behind us, as his men were behind him.  They were sitting cross-legged in the grass, playing stones.

"Do not mind him," she said.  "He is only a servant."

"What sort of servant?" he asked.