Iviriel, Sorceress of Eneden, awoke to pale morning light stabbing her exhausted eyes.

She was…in the forest. Or she had been, last thing she remembered. (Her thoughts spilled across her brain, jumbled.) Exploring. Mapping. She had not yet set up camp… (Late night was the best time for work, of course. It was at those hours that her eyes saw best).

What had happened? Her vision swam, and she could see only sky. Her body felt stiff. She tried to adjust her position: felt coldness about her ankles and knees and wrists and neck. Cold… Had she fallen in a stream, or something – ?

– No. No, she remembered now. A sharp pain in the back of her neck, as she’d stood in the night surveying a shallow ravine – and then sleepiness, heavy and unnatural, pressing down on her from above –

Now she understood, and a different kind of coldness gripped her heart.

A blowdart. She had been attacked. By a Mannish hunter, no doubt. If she had shown the caution befitting her title she would have seen her assailant coming. Stupid. But now she was captured, taken by a hunter on safari, and…

She tried to move her arm. Nothing. Her wrists and neck and ankles and knees were bound in iron manacles.

Metal! Metal, against her bare skin. Truly, Men did not know right from wrong. To make their tools of the stuff was bad enough, but to put it against the flesh of an elf? She had heard the stories like anyone, but to feel it herself…

With difficulty, she moved her head, working to get a glimpse of her surroundings. Yes, she was bound to a table, tilted at an angle, with the sky above her, and below that…

Buildings. Buildings of wood and stone, blotting out the horizon, dozens of them, with streets between them stretching as far as the eye could see. A city. A Mannish city.

Repulsive. Elves did not have cities. They had dwellings, a handful clustered together. Why on earth would anyone herd their people into narrow walls like this, stack themselves one atop another like bees in a hive… Did they not see how unnatural it was?

At least there did not seem to be many people about. Not now, in the early hours of morning. And that was very much for the best, because –

– because, as she realized abruptly, she was naked.

Her cheeks flushed hot. Naked! They’d stripped her. Someone had taken her clothes off while she slept, and now her body was nude in broad daylight. The manacles on her knees held her legs wide apart. Her vulva would be on display for anyone who walked by. She needed to escape, now, or Men were going to lay eyes on her naked body. Mannish males. She could hardly imagine the shame –

How long did she have? Where was she, anyway?

Her eyes scanned the street – fixed on what lined the edge across from her, and her lip curled. Stands. Market stalls, selling grain and vegetables and meat. Their awnings were of colored canvas, and their booths were unoccupied as yet. Beside each stall was a sign with writing in chalk, showing how many copper coins each item cost. Five, for a sack of grain. Three, for a large orange squash. Eighteen, for a small cut of good beef…

Coins. What a remarkable Mannish invention those were, she thought bitterly. Utterly mad. How could they possibly believe that the value of a thing could be reduced to a single number?

In the Elven lands, if a member of another family came to you and asked how many hazelnuts he could trade for your heirloom knife, you would turn on your heel without another word and remember the insult for three generations. Because your knife was not worth any number of hazelnuts. They were incomparable things: useful in different ways, valued for different reasons. To attempt to make them equivalent was to degrade them both. No: you could only ever trade one object for another object of the same sort of value. A garment for a garment, a tool for a tool, a piece of food for a piece of food; and even then only after long rumination on the precise way in which each item was precious.

But not in the lands of Men. In the lands of Men there were coins, and everything had a price: everything was the same, and everything was worthless.

Yes: she needed to be away out of this place, and the sooner the better.

Struggling was no good, not against metal. She gritted her teeth, and began to whisper a spell.

To burn metal cuffs to ash was a very difficult thing, and the power required was probably enough to immolate half the city – but Iviriel was among the most powerful sorceresses of her generation, and she was not feeling merciful. Whoever had conceived of the bright idea to abduct her was a fool. Men: too ignorant to recognize a sorceress when they saw one. (But how did they think she had traveled the wilds so long and survived, without strength?)

She spoke the words in flowing Elvish, and the power built within her, coursing through her nerves from head to foot. Now it was finished, and the power reached a crescendo – the iron collar about her neck flared with heat –

And the magic sputtered and broke, and slipped away into nothing.

For a moment she was frozen in disbelieving horror. How could a spell have failed? These were Men who had caught her, weren’t they? Elves would certainly not abduct an innocent, and while they had the knowledge to craft charms that would suppress a caster’s magic, Men had no such spellcraft. They had no magic within them at all. So how was this possible? Unless –

If it hadn’t been for the manacles holding her tightly in place, she would have been shaking with anger.

Another captive. An elf, imprisoned before her. The Men had forced one of her people to work magic for them. To cast spells on metal.

She was furious. Furious with herself, furious with her captors, furious with the whole race of Men. Everything they did was monstrous and backward and wrong, and here she was, their captive, and if she did not find some way to free herself –

People were starting to appear on the streets. Not many, but some. They were coming this way: to the market, to shop, no doubt. Her heart beat faster. She couldn’t let them see her. Couldn’t let the Men use her as – what, a decoration? An attraction? To bring people to their market, encourage them to spend their coins. Yes, that must be it. Come and see the elven sorceress we caught! She is wise and powerful and skilled, and has made half the maps currently in use by the Kingdoms of Eneden, but you don’t care about any of that! Come and see what an elf-maiden’s naked body looks like!

She didn’t have much time. With effort, she twisted her head to the left, struggling against the tight collar. Maybe there would be something beside her she could use, somehow –

It was her traveling equipment.

Her most precious possessions, hanging there from hooks beneath a striped red awning. Her coat of pangolin scales, which she had made after ten years of hunting, selecting scales by hand for their shape and hardness, which had saved her life half a dozen times. It hung there, and there was a sign beside it. Writing in chalk. Three thousand copper coins. The price of six hundred sacks of grain.

Her bone knives, a matching pair, long and curving and sharp, which had been given her by her grandmother when she passed, and which had never once failed her: four hundred copper coins. Her bow, of fine polished yew, strung with moose sinew, and her quiver of stone-tipped arrows fletched with owl feathers: seven hundred fifty copper coins.

Her heart pounded fiercely in her chest. These people deserved to burn.

She twisted her head to the right. At least on the other side, she thought, there would be no more selling of her possessions, because everything she possessed hung to the left. She wrenched her head into place –

And to her right was another stall, with a gold-striped awning, and a short woman with sandy hair standing in the booth, calmly, wearing a placid smile, as if she was not a party to a disgusting crime, as if those things hanging six feet from where she stood were hers to sell for filthy lucre, not the precious possessions of someone her people had kidnapped.

And there was a sign, too. Just beside Iviriel’s head.

Exotic elf-maiden, it read. Freshly caught. Virginal.

Ten minutes of use – 500 copper.

Thirty minutes of use – 2,000 copper.

One hour of use – 5,500 copper.

Permanent ownership – 120,000 copper.

Her eyes hung on that last line for a time that felt like forever. She saw the words, and she knew what they meant, but she could not quite make herself believe it.

She should have known. She should have understood from the beginning. She’d heard the stories, of course: who hadn’t? But deep down in her heart she’d never really thought they were true. That Men would take people, their own or elves alike, and – and make them possessions.

They were going to sell her. They were going to exchange her for coins. As if a number could be assigned to the whole value of her person. As if Iviriel, Sorceress of Eneden, was really no different from a sack of barley.

One hundred twenty thousand copper coins. How absurd. How could Men find themselves writing such things and not see that if they needed to resort to such preposterous numbers, they had done something wrong from the beginning? That number of coins could buy – it could buy forty thousand of those large orange squash. She thought of a man walking home from the market, a wagon beside him piled high with myriads on myriads of gourds. Of course no one would ever make a purchase like that!

What did they even want her for? Why – (and her heart lurched) – why own an elven sorceress? Did they want her for her magic? But they couldn’t unbind her. She would kill them all. (Oh, yes, they would die, and it would not be quick.) Were they stupid? Well, they were certainly that – but they had her magic suppressed, so they must know it was a threat…

She looked at the heading again. Exotic elf maiden. Freshly caught. Virginal. Her lips tightened. The nerve of them – pointing out her virginity as if it was anything to speak of. Of course she was a virgin. She was only ninety-two years old, though she had distinguished herself very well for her age, and her family had not yet selected a mate for her. For that matter, how had they even known…?

They had inspected her. Some man had pulled apart her lips and looked at her hymen. (Her face was burning with shame.) But it wasn’t even necessary. Surely. They didn’t need to visit that indiginity on her. Why would anyone care? What did her virginity matter, if someone was going to, to buy her, and use her for…

Her eyes fell on the headings. The prices. Ten minutes of use. Thirty minutes of use. She thought about how the sign made clear that she’d never mated before. She thought about how they’d stripped her naked.

Her intestines felt like they’d filled with ice. Now she understood.

She had heard stories, now and again, of how Mannish females would accumulate money by offering males sexual access to their bodies in exchange for coins. But those couldn’t be true, she’d always thought; they must be fanciful inventions – because who in the world would ever willingingly endure such total degradation? Reduce herself to nothing but a source of pleasure, to be assigned a value in coins, as if her womb, that sacred crucible of life, was a thing to be bought.

Her heart was sinking into her belly. But it was obvious. It had been obvious from the moment she’d allowed herself to think the thought. The Men intended to visit upon her the ultimate insult. She would be offered for sale so that Mannish males could mate with her: not because they had proven their worth in the way of tradition, not because her family wished it, not because their souls made music together – but because those males had given coins to the people who had attacked and abducted her. She was going to be raped. For money.

She cried aloud, horrified, desperate, pulling with all her might on the iron bands that held her body captive, but they did not give a fraction of an inch. The sandy-haired woman, the slavemonger – she didn’t even flinch. Just kept gazing forward, that unconcerned smile on her face, looking pleasant by design, no doubt, to attract customers, to bring Men to rape her and shame her –

No, Iviriel thought. No. This cannot happen. I won’t allow it. There is a way out. There must be a way out.

“Woman,” she said, aloud, in a voice that sounded terrified even to her own ears. “You there! Slave-seller!”

(She could speak the Mannish tongue, of course, and read it too. She had seen Men in ones or twos, out in the borderlands, and traded with them, sometimes, in the proper Elvish fashion. There were few other ways to get what she needed, in the wilds.)

The woman glanced at her, but only raised her eyebrows, and it did not look to Iviriel as if she understood. Did she have the wrong dialect? But no, the signs were written in Cantish; she had that right. “Woman! Listen to me!” she said again, desperately – and realized with a start that she was speaking Elvish.

The collar flared hot with every word.

Her next sentence died on her lips, and the slavemonger smiled pleasantly and turned back to the street.

Another enchantment. To keep her from speaking the language of Men, even though she knew it. Why? To stop her from pleading in a way they would understand? She swallowed. This…this gave her hope. Maybe her captors were frightened that if she could be understood, she would convince the slavemongers or the customers to free her. And that meant – maybe they did have pity.

She took a breath and spoke again, in Elvish, as clearly and calmly as she could manage, hoping dearly that her meaning would come across.

“Please, slave-seller. You must let me go. I’m certain you know that it is wrong to make a person property. This is an abomination. Release me, and I will not punish you!”

(That was a lie.)

But the slavemonger hardly reacted. She glanced at Iviriel, briefly, and then returned her attention to the slowly-filling street as if she had not just heard a person begging desperately for help.

Because, of course, she hadn’t. To the slavemonger, Iviriel was no person at all. She was stock to be sold. What meaning did an object’s words have?

The people in the street had begun to wander dangerously close, and Iviriel’s breath came in gasps. Panic built, flooding her veins. She would be seen like this by crowds of Men: naked, and helpless. She would be raped, and the slavemonger would cross out the line that marked her as a virgin and replace it with one that said how many Men had violated her. She imagined the number going higher and higher, while she lay here bound hand and foot and cried, and the Men laughed at her tears. Surely no one would buy her, permanently, not for such a preposterous number of coins, but –

She swallowed down the cry for help that had threatened to escape, and did her best to control her breathing. She needed to think: how bad would this really be? Perhaps not as bad as she assumed.

The one constant in all the wild talk of Mannish slavery was the mention of a law. A mitigating factor. Perhaps it was intended to be merciful, if Men could imagine such a thing; perhaps it had some other purpose. But the law said that if a slave stood for sale for three days, and was not bought, she must be freed. No exceptions.

So that was it. Her salvation, at least in part. For surely she would never be bought, not at so high a price, and so she would endure this indignity for three days and then she would go free and her life would be hers again. Now that she thought of it, even the price of – having use of her – was very high. Maybe she would go free with only the shame of being looked at naked. After all, surely no man would want to spend the price of thirty cuts of fine beef on a few minutes of mating. Besides, did they not have Mannish females they could mate with? True, those were brutish beasts hardly more elegant than the males, like the stocky slavemonger, but that was what best attracted Men, wasn’t it? Surely there would be no interest in a slender and delicate elf like her.

A man came up to the stand.

He was tall, because all Men were tall, and he wore fine blue and silver clothes and a long sleek dagger at his hip. His hair was gold and his eyes were blue, and a smirk kept tugging at the side of his mouth. (Iviriel could not tell if it was an expression or a tic. The faces of Men were so difficult.)

He was strolling along the market stalls, and spent a moment looking at Iviriel’s possessions with interest: and then his eyes came to rest on her naked body. He looked at her face and her nipples and then between her legs, and Iviriel, burning with shame, could do absolutely nothing but lie there, motionless, unable to stop him.

He glanced at the sign. “Virgin, you say?”

(He was speaking Cantish, of course.)

“Yes!” the slavemonger answered, smiling pleasantly at him. “A hunter caught it just last night, out in the Needleback. It’s had its hymen inspected, of course, and you’re the first to approach this morning.”

“Hmm,” the man said, and turned back to look at Iviriel again, appreciatively.

She had a sinking feeling.

The man’s eyes lingered on her vulva. She wondered if he was trying to see her hymen, and her cheeks were aflame. Then he reached out a hand (a huge Mannish hand, clad in a glove of black velvet) and the slavemonger tutted.

“No touching, sir. Not unless you pay.”

Iviriel exhaled softly, relieved. She would be all right. Five hundred coins – surely he would not pay so much just for the pleasure of humiliating her. Not even a man could be that sadistic…

He tilted his head, looking consideringly between the sign and Iviriel’s nude body.

Now panic rose in her throat, and words spilled out. In Cantish, but of course that didn’t work – the collar flared uncomfortably against her neck, and her speech was Elvish.

“Please, sir. I, I know you’re a Man, but you must have some pity. I don’t want this. I’m scared, sir. Please. Just save your money and leave me be and go home. You don’t need to do this to me, I’m only an elf, I’m…”

The man’s eyebrows rose.

“Funny language they speak, isn’t it?” He turned to the slavemonger. “You speak Elvish, don’t you? What’s she saying?”

Another smile on the slavemonger’s plump lips. “Oh, nothing important. She’s just very happy that the man who’s going to take her chastity is so handsome and rich.” The smile deepened. “You are going to take her, aren’t you?”

Cheeks burning, Iviriel struggled to shake her head, straining against her manacles. She opened her mouth desperately to speak, but now no words at all came out, only sounds. The collar flared. Was this the slavemonger’s doing? Stopping her from speaking at all, even in her own tongue?

The man’s eyes met hers, which were wide and desperate and welling with tears. He laughed.

“Look at that expression. I suppose she must be desperate for some Mannish cock. …Oh, go on then, why not.”

And Iviriel watched with mounting panic as he pulled a bulging leather pouch from his belt, counted out five silver coins, and handed them to the woman.

(Just how much money did he have in there? It was a lot of coins filling that pouch, and she could see the glint of gold. Silver coins were worth a hundred coppers, and gold worth a hundred silvers…)

The slavemonger smiled wide. “Thank you for your patronage, sir.”

Iviriel felt sick.

Money had changed hands, and now the man had a right to her body. She was a whore. No, worse than a whore: at least a whore commanded her own fate.

The man grinned, and reached out to touch her.

It was humiliating. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt her whole face burning with shame as his big Mannish hands groped and squeezed and rubbed her naked body in broad daylight. There were other people nearby: try as she might she couldn’t make herself forget that. She desperately hoped they weren’t watching. That this didn’t interest them. She couldn’t bear the thought of opening her eyes to find out.

Goddess, his hands were strong…

“Look at its hair,” she heard him say, fascinated, and she felt a violent pull. Her hair was long and black and splayed out underneath her, and the man had taken a lock in his hands, none too gently. “So beautiful and glossy…”

A jolt of horror. He thought it was pretty. She’d – she’d been certain that a Mannish male like him wouldn’t have any interest in an elf. But he’d only touched her so far, not – anything else – so maybe he only thought she was pretty to look at. Like a painting, like a statue. Maybe he would just have his fun enjoying the texture of her elf-flesh, and then leave.

“Now,” the man said, as he released her hair, “time to feel you properly.”

She heard a rustling of cloth and her eyes shot open and now she was face to face with a Mannish penis.

She had never seen one before. She had never even seen an elf penis before. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were hotter than ever and before she could even blink the head of that thick Mannish organ was pressed threateningly against her virgin cunt.

She shook her head desperately. Tried to speak: couldn’t. Just made helpless mewling noises.

I don’t want to be raped. I don’t want to be a slave. I don’t want to lose my virginity to a male I’ve never met in front of a crowd of people. Goddess, why is this happening to me? Somebody help…

The man looked at her expression, and laughed. “Don’t worry, cutie,” he said, planting a huge hand on her head and rubbing himself against her vulva. “I’ll make sure I finish inside you.”

So he raped her.

His cock was hot and hard and felt so terribly large inside her, and it hurt, and in between the bursts of pain there were flashes of much nicer feelings, and that was so much worse. She struggled and whimpered and couldn’t do anything at all: could only lie there in her chains and feel it. A penis, deep inside her, rubbing against her most intimate surfaces, pressing up lovingly against her womb – the heat of it, pulsing with his heartbeat, melding with her own unwilling arousal. She was feeling him, and he was feeling her, and it was the more humiliating than she could possibly have imagined. This man was joining with her in this most intimate of ways: because he had given coins to the people who’d abducted her, and she was an object.

She gritted her teeth and forced herself to endure it. It was only temporary, she thought. Just wait, just let it happen. It was horrible, but it would end. Then he would leave. And maybe others would rape her too, and she would want to kill herself from shame, but eventually it would all be over and so long as nobody bought her she would be free. Her life would be hers again. For surely no one would pay the price to own her.

She looked up at the man’s blue eyes. His face was looming over hers.

Please don’t be enjoying this, she thought. I’m just a weak elf. Not even a woman. You’re not having a good time, are you?

But his breath was escaping in gasps as he raped her. She felt it warm against her face. He gave a low groan, and Iviriel hoped desperately that it was effort, maybe, or even pain: not pleasure.

“God, it’s tight,” he said, and his voice was taut with feeling.

“Never had an elf before, sir?” said the slavemonger from the right, sounding amused.

“Can’t say I have.” Another low groan. “Hard to believe I’ve been missing out on this all my life. Fuck, that’s amazing…”

Her eyes were wide and her heart hammered swiftly in her chest. He grinned as he went on using her, his groans growing louder, more obviously pleasured.

Tears were filling up her eyes. If he was enjoying her this much, did she have any hope left at all…?

What was he feeling? What exactly was the sensation that made this male tremble with every deep thrust, until he was shivering with pleasure? Did it really feel that good to be inside her, to feel her warm flesh squeezing down on that organ of his? Was the sensation so delightful – so addictive – that it was the reason these people could bring themselves to do such horrible things? Burning their consciences to ash just for the pleasure of a tight elven cunt…

It should have been hard to imagine, when for her it hurt so much. But that look in his eyes. The way he was focused intently so intently on her face, obsessed, as if nothing else mattered in the world but the satisfaction of his next thrust into her depths.

He was touching her, too, just as he had at the start, squeezing her small breasts, his thumbs brushing her nipples. She noticed with a start that they were pebbly and erect, and another rush of shame took her over. She heard her own voice gasping, and marveled in horror at it. If she been making those sounds all this time…

The man’s cock penetrating her was still an overpowering sensation, and it was difficult to concentrate on anything else – but some of the pain had lessened, the gaps filled in with pleasure. She hated it. She wished it would only hurt: she could endure that. She didn’t want to participate in this man’s horrible enjoyment. Awful enough that her body was being used for it…

But the man’s strokes were deep and smooth, and he looked down at her expression of shame and laughed at her and rolled her glass-hard nipples between his gloved fingers, and she tried desperately to keep control of the sensations but they had already gotten away from her, because just as in all other things she was helpless against them. A crashing wave of heat and pleasure surged out through her nerves from her cunt to the tips of her toes. She trembled. Her lips parted against her will and she heard a keening moan. She hated the sound.

“That’s it,” grunted the man in triumph. “Cum all over my cock, little slut.”

He kept thrusting as she climaxed, deeper, more cruelly, obviously enjoying the way her walls were squeezing down on him. He was feeling even better, extracting yet more pleasure from her, because she could not control herself. Another, higher moan escaped her, helpless and pitiful. She cast her eyes about, fleeing the delighted smirk on the man’s lips, and saw that a pair of women at the stalls across the way were looking at her. Staring, as she climaxed on her rapist’s cock. She could have died of shame. Her eyes met theirs, and they turned away, hiding smiles.

Now the man buried himself deep inside her and let out a long, low groan.

“Yes. So good. Best I’ve ever had. Incredible…”

Such delight in that voice, so much that the words came in gasps. Because of her. Because of her shame and violation. She was suffering for his pleasure.

His manhood pulsed and a now different type of warmth was spreading inside her, thick and powerful, filling up her womb.

She gazed up at him. He was smiling. Of course he was. Why shouldn’t he? He was feeling good. He’d had his satisfaction with her, because he’d been able to pay, and she had done nothing to stop him because she was helpless.

(In all her years of exploring the wilds and mapping them, she had never heard such glee and happiness in the voice of another person. In all her efforts she had never – she had never been so useful to another creature as she had been just now, in her shameful defeated torment – )

He pulled out of her and tucked himself back into his trousers. She twisted her head to the side to avoid his gaze, every inch of her body burning with humiliation.

The slavemonger smiled at him. “Did you have a good time?” she asked.

“Very,” the man said, grinning. “Excellent elf you’ve got here.” He squeezed her inner thigh, painfully hard. “Worth every penny.”

Iviriel swallowed, hard.

Then the man stretched and smiled and glanced at the sign. His eyes lingered on the final line. One second. Two seconds. Her heart almost stopped.

Every muscle in her body was frozen with dread. She tried to speak. Only whimpers came out.

“…Oh, what the hell,” the man said, casually. “One time’s not enough. Not when it’s this good. I want to feel that around my cock every night.” He rubbed himself, and grinned. “I can afford it.”

And Iviriel watched in silent horror, unable to run, unable to fight, unable to speak, as the man took his pouch of his belt again, and counted out coins. Copper, silver, gold, a wealth of them, a bounty, because that was how much she was worth to him, as a rape object, as a source of carnal pleasure.

He handed them to the beaming slavemonger with a clink.

Sold.

“Enjoy your purchase, sir!” she said, cheerfully.

The man’s eyes glided over Iviriel’s naked body. “Oh, I certainly will.”

The woman released her from the manacles around her ankles and knees – took the ones around her wrists and bound her hands behind her back, and attached a long iron chain to her collar. She was made to stand, her rapist’s semen dripping from between her legs.

“Would you like a robe to cover it with, sir?” asked the slavemonger. “Complimentary, of course.”

He laughed, and shook his head.

Yes. She would be made to walk to his home, behind him, on a leash like an animal, naked in broad daylight. She didn’t get a choice. She would never get a choice again. Not in anything. Every night, he’d said: he was going to rape her every night.

And he was looking at her, even now as he began to lead her away. In his eyes there was a mixture of base hunger and self-satisfied pride. As if he’d bought a choice cut of meat: something delicious to cook up for his supper. Because he had. What was the difference? Why should Iviriel think of herself as anything more? She had been purchased for a hundred and twenty thousand coins. Iviriel, Sorceress of Eneden: she had a price now. The Men had taken all her thoughts and dreams and skills and qualities, and crushed them to a pulp and weighed it. In the place of her soul there was a number.

Twenty-four hundred sacks of barley, or forty thousand orange squash, or six and half thousand prime beefsteaks.

No more pride. No more personhood. She was nothing but an object. She always would be.

(Maybe she could escape. Maybe, if she was clever. What good would it even do? How could she possibly face her people again, after this? After the shame – after what the Men had turned her into – )

The man pulled on the chain, hard, and she stumbled and nearly fell to her knees. Her eyes brimmed with tears. The man laughed.

“Come along, slave.”