In any case, after the woman’s visit, there was nothing. The men did not come back. She heard muffled voices from outside or in the house at different times, but that was all. She couldn’t fathom why the two men might do this – simply tie her up and leave her in a room – what could they possibly think they would gain by it? She had gotten the impression that they thought there was something valuable about her to them, something they could gain from her, but it all made so little sense.

The day turned into evening then into night and still nothing. She slept, her dreams again troubled and worrisome. She was rudely awoken this time by a nudge to her shoulder with a man’s boot. She blinked her eyes open. The man was telling her to do something, and grabbed her by the hair and dragged her up to sitting when she didn’t respond to his words with anything but a tired, confused, and weary look. The other man was there too, and a third man who was looking her over appraisingly as the two men who’d locked her away in here talked to him.

Kes paid attention to them and slowly it dawned on her from the mental impressions she was able to glean that the men were trying to exchange her to this third man for something else. They meant to… barter her. It was a disgusting realization and she felt hate for these men well up inside her. To treat someone like they were a thing? She’d never even heard of so horrible a thing! Her people didn’t even have a concept for something like that.

She met the man’s eyes who was appraising her defiantly and he noticed right away, and reacted angrily, backhanding the man next to him. The man who was holding her hair pressed her head to the floor and said something angrily to her. Telling her to show…. deference, that’s what it was. Apparently for a female to look one of the men in this society in the eyes as she had would cause a violent reaction. Not that she would have done differently had she known that, she considered – not and have them thinking she accepted what they were trying to do with her, because she was very sure that was something she would never do, no matter what they did.