Songs of the Dancing Gods by Jack L. Chalker

undo something once done.
    Irving thought it would be a good idea to change the subject.
    “Hey—back there you said you was Dad’s mistress and slave, even. You’re his wife, ain’t you? Why the other line?”
    “Not only under the Rules, but under the law, we’re not married anymore,” she explained. “We just consider ourselves married. The one who married him is different from me. Officially, legally, and under the Rules, I’m somebody else. So is he, for that matter. That dizzy nymph ran off in his old body and this one, which looks the way he originally looked, was actually a magical transformation. Under the Rules, I’m of the underclass—the class of the masses, like the people in those towns, and serfs, and slaves. I was not married within my class in proper fashion, but instead I am a dancer who dances before crowds for money. That places me in the same category as a trained animal who performs in the square for coppers for its owner. An animal has no rights at all, let alone the right to marry. An animal can only be wild or owned.”
    “Yeah, but—slave! You ain’t no animal! You’re just a person bein’ treated like an animal!”
    “Joe has explained to me how terrible that idea is to you, which is one reason we never brought it up, but it is like the thing we discussed about women’s dress here. This is not only a different world, it exists stuck in a different, earlier time and way of thinking.”
    “But keepin’ slaves is wrong! It’s evil!”
    “There is a lot of evil in both our worlds, some practiced by very good people. You must learn to think differently. There will be no revolutions here to change things like this. Not ever. Things can only become worse. Now that you know, you should be aware that I will be telling everyone here that I am Joe’s slave. It is vital to me that I do so. Being someone’s property is the only protection I have here.”
    “Come again?”
    “Otherwise, you see, I am nothing at all, without status or position of any sort, and, therefore, anyone could do anything with and to me that they felt like. As his slave, I am protected under law and the Rules because of his property rights.”
    This kind of thinking made Irv dizzy. Still, it suddenly occurred to him that this put her indiscretions of the night before in this new light. “But, if he gets mad at you or somethin’ he could sell you or even just give you away!”
    “That is so,” she admitted, “but we are married in our own minds, and I think I know him better than that.”
    “Couldn’t he just give you your freedom?”
    “No, that’s not permitted. If he freed me, renounced me, or sent me away, I would still be without status and unable to be anything other than I am. I can only survive as someone’s property. It is the only way I get some measure of independence.”
    “Come again?”
    “He is my owner, not my puppeteer. I am as independent as I can get away with.”
    This was too much for the boy. If they weren’t married anymore, then she wasn’t cheating on him last night, and, likewise, he could have all the flings he wanted and not be cheating on her. But he still didn’t like it. Slavery was evil; when it was the good guys who kept slaves, what did it take to be a bad guy? He had been with them many months now, and he was only discovering what they already knew.
    “What was that bit about a nose ring?” he asked her.
    “He means a small ring that would be inserted through my nose, of course,” she told him. “Each nation has its own unique alloy for making them, all done by fairy folk, of course. In addition, it carries a spell which identifies the owner and all previous owners. They’re usually not worn unless ownership is transferred—sort of a bill of sale, as it were. You notice how the guardsman barely questioned the two of you but went to some length to determine I really was of Marquewood?”
    “Yeah. So?”
    “Because I had no ring, he wanted to make certain that