The Mist and the Lightning. Part 16

“I don’t want. This is your mother’s name, it is… as you say… ignominy.”

Lis chuckled.

“Your mother… she began to engage in this activity, falling into difficult life circumstances, and where was your red father?”

“Kors, he just played with the black girl and forgot about her.”

“She went back to blacks, and they punished her?”

“Yes.”

“Was she in jail?”

“Yes.”

“Where were you at that time?”

“I was with her, women are often imprisoned with their young children, you know. Then we were released.”

“But she was shamefully marked as a whore and made indelible arrows on her eyes, right?”

“What do you think?” said Lis.

“I can't imagine how it feels…”

“Really? You have them drawn on you too.”

Kors swallowed the mockery:

“I seem to be getting used to your unrestrained language. And you know, the name Atley really doesn’t suit you. And the name Sigmer – it is too alien, unusual, this is the name of the reds. Your nickname really suits you best, and even Karina calls you that,” Kors smiled.

And Lis smiled back at him. Seeing his triangular teeth, Kors couldn’t restrain himself and shook his head.

“I now understand that I acted biased. That I was tactless and rude. But you never crushed me in full force, endured. You only hurt me through my daughter.”

“I love her. You began to understand something, but you still didn’t understand about Karina and me. I endure in this relationship! She is my weakness. She will die and I will die!”

“But why, then, are you dragging her everywhere you go and pushing her to the front line?!”

“Yes, because I can’t live without her for a minute!”

“That’s what gives you the strength not to love the Demon, you have Karina! But she also loves you, don’t doubt, I know,” Kors said confidently and remembered about Nija. And about Prince Arel, and Nikto, and Zaf, yeah…

And Lis took a cigarette and silently lit it.

Kors entered the room with the bear on the wall.

Nikto was lying on the bed without moving.

But Kors was determined to ask for Lis with a firm intention to stop this chaos at last.

“Nik?”

Nikto didn’t answer or move.

“Nik, is everything all right?” Kors asked cautiously, something was wrong, and he felt it.

Nikto rose heavily, his face was covered by a mask, black empty eyes “looked” at Kors from the cracks. He just sat with his head turned towards Kors and was silent.

“Where are Arel, Verniy?”

“I sent them to the stable, and what?” nevertheless, to the relief of Kors, Nikto answered.

“Why don’t you ride your horse too?”

“I don’t want.”

“Why? You love him so much.”

“I don’t want anything,” Nikto said, and fell back on the bed.

“Every day you don’t take off your mask and sleep in it.”

“I glued it to my face.”

“But why?!”

“Why?! In order not to do anything else with this face! Not to spoil it even more.”

“Gods, no,” Kors whispered, “you can’t make it worse, everything is already ruined there!”

“I know that no, so I glued this fucking mask to my face,” Nikto shouted, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly and very quickly, grabbed his knife and stuck it into the thigh of his lame leg with all his strength.

Blood splattered in different directions.

Kors’ face changed:

“A-ah! Stop it! Stop it! Leave this body alone! Stop mutilating this body!”

“Damn, I’m going to cut off this fucking leg! Stay away, Kors! Better don’t come!”

Kors rushed out of the room, he ran after Lis, it seemed to him that Lis knew Nikto better, and knew better how to handle him and extinguish his seizures:

“Lis! Lis!”

Lis ran into the room, Nikto was sitting on the floor, fortunately, he didn’t have time to cut anything of his body. And Lis, to Kors’ amazement, quickly approached and kicked Nikto with a foot, right to say, kicked him in the gut, and then with a fist in the temple, and Nikto seemed to lose consciousness from a blow to the head.

Lis turned to dumbfounded Kors:

“This is how these seizures are removed. He needs to be hit and distracted. It is better to blow him down immediately. He blown down, then comes to his senses more or less normal. He will not punish you for this, don’t be afraid. And if you don’t do that, you don’t extinguish him, he will disperse, and it will only get worse, then you will not calm it down at all.”

“Are you crazy?! You hit him too hard!”

“Crazy? Are you fucked up?! Who is normal here? Who?! You spend so much time with them, have you seen your normal Nik well?” Lis eloquently looked at the leg of Nikto, blood continued to flow from the deep cut.

“Did you see him stoned? When he is stoned and having fun? His favorite pastime is to get hold of Arel’s cock or ass or of his own, and drive everything that comes to hand into it. Or fuck Arel for several hours without a break. You have a bad idea, Kors, about the whole degree of douchebaggage of him and Arel, and what they are doing. When Nikto collapses into insanity, he mutilates Arel and himself, and he doesn’t give a damn that scars remain. This is his only favorite pastime. Have you seen his body, his face?”

Kors covered his ears:

“Gods, why can’t you do without such an abundance of obscene words!”

“Because what they are doing can’t be named in another way!”

Nikto stirred with a soft groan:

“Li-i-is, where are your handcuffs?” Nikto held out his hands. “Close me.”

“Maybe you should be attached to the pipe?”

“I'll rip it out, probably,” Nikto raised his impersonal face to Lis, “Lis, I allow you to erase the jester’s mask and pull out the bell. Your soldiers need you. Be what I made you in the Limit.”

“Silver fox?” Lis grinned, he took out his handcuffs, with which he never parted, but was in no hurry to close Nikto’s hands.

“Silver fox is more expensive than an ordinary fox…”

“Are your unclean ones coming soon?”

“They have about one day left to get to Riverside.”

“Maybe you should go to meet them? You will wind down, do something and take your mind off your madness?”

“Yes,” Nikto agreed.

And Lis looked at Kors and said:

“Thanks,” and left.

“But I haven't had time to ask for you yet, oh devil!”

3

The trip

Black water chomped loudly over the side of the ferry raft. Nikto was sitting with his back against the side, his legs bent at the knees and his straightened arms resting on them, his head was lowered. He wasn’t moving.

Kors looked at him closely.

“Nik, are you high?”

Nikto raised his face covered with a mask:

“Yeah,” he drawled.

“And strong? Completely stoned? Yes, Nik?”

“Uh-uh… yes,” Nikto answered a little more clearly, but in unclean, “Nik, you're high,” he repeated and laughed softly.

“Gods, you’re finished! You are really finished, and you will catch an overdose again!”

Nikto answered, dropped his head between his hands again. And Kors saw now only his white top and long bangs with a black strand.

“It’s really difficult with you! Nik… I don’t understand. Do you feel so bad in a human body? In our world? Is it so unbearable?”

“Leave me alone, how tired I am of you all!”

“Nik, speak to me in black, please.”

Nikto raised his head again, and straightened his hair, slightly removing it from the mask:

“I'm fine,” he said in black, still responding to Kors’ request.

Arel, standing nearby and holding his horse by the bridle, as usual, silently listened to their conversation. Smiling slightly, he raised the flask of the unclean to his lips, taking a good sip of it.

“Nik,” Kors continued, “I think you’re doing the wrong thing. You are going crazy from your supposedly limitedness in this body. You have too much pride and no humility. Rather, you completely misunderstand him, you confuse humility with humiliation.”

“As if you understand!”

“Yes, I understand.”

“And, of course, impeccable Vitor Kors, who knows and understands everything!”

“At least I try. I am walking this path. I made peace with Lis, and I understood him. And you continue to mock and humiliate him, yes, then you allow him to hit you on the head, but this is not humility! This is a perversion! And I realized that the half-blood is no worse than me, that he is the same! He’s a man too! And we are equal. And you – no! You, Demon, don’t want to accept the fact that you are the same as us!”

“You are mice!”

“And your wings are now black! And broken. Your wings were broken, I felt it and I was very scared. What is Bustwich?”

“World of Shit, nothing special,” Nikto answered, to Kors’ disappointment, rather indifferently, “just World of Shit, like everything else.”

“What is happening to you?!”

“Nothing,” Nikto shrugged, “nothing happens to me.”

“Do you understand that you are bad at performing tasks and your Missions?”

“So what? Oh, yes, that’s what you said to Arel for ten years. He tried and did. He tried for you, but you stopped loving him!”

“Like your Father God? He disowned you, fell out of love and severely punished you, depriving you of your voice and eyes. You don't have your own voice, you wheeze. And no eyes. They say that the eyes are the mirror of the soul, instead of eyes you have empty glass!”

“What? Oh, spare me this. It's just ridiculous,” and Nikto put his finger to the mask at the level of his mouth, turning it slightly diagonally.

“Arel was unworthy of my love,” said Kors.

“However, you fell in love with him again, but only when he chucked in!”

Kors looked at Arel, who, as before, stood at a distance and was clearly not going to take part in the conversation.

“Arel, why did I stop loving you, what do you think?” Kors asked.

“Because I became dirty,” oddly enough, but Arel answered and drank from the flask again.

“Why did I love you again?”

“Because you have become as dirty as I am,” said the prince. He smiled the indulgent smile of a sir, showing Kors the slightly chipped edge of one of his front teeth.

“Everything is simple for the prince,” Kors grinned, “give me a drink.”

Arel silently handed him his flask. Kors took a sip of the strong unclean moonshine:

“Fuck, what a shit! What the hell are you always shoving in yourself!” He lit a cigarette to interrupt the unpleasant aftertaste:

“Addict and drunkard, it will all end badly. And I want to help you, fallen Angel. Help! Only you bury yourself deeper and deeper, but you have to try and start to change your life and your attitude towards it and people! That is why you feel bad, that you are moving in the wrong direction and on the wrong path! You are doing good deeds! After all, you are doing them! You have saved so many people from slavery in the Western colonies. You destroyed the Farm. In the Black City, you helped a lot of people. Now we are fighting the red invaders. You are trying to somehow remake our world, bring it to a better place. And people aren’t mice or leather shit bags, are they?”

“Vitor, you are a leather bag full of words. You are a leather bag too full of words. Why would you care about my welfare? Tell me also that you are worried about your son.”

“And for the son, and for you!”

“Why for me? Are you afraid that if I poorly perform tasks, your Mission will fail and you will not become the king of black?”

“Is this my Mission?”

“Don't you want it?”

“I don’t even know what I want and what my Mission is. Maybe it’s about getting you out? Help you?”

“To set on the path of the true dirty Demon?”

“You need support.”

“You said yourself that I’m finished.”

“I believe that the point of no return has not yet been passed.”

“Did you get Arel out? Have you raised him?”

“I did my best! And helped him a lot!”

“Taught him to suck well? I agree that this skill is very important in this life.”

Kors grimaced.

“Unfortunately, there is no merit here, this talent was innate in him.”

Nikto just shook his head.

“I know where to start,” Kors continued, “you need to cut back on your medication, that’s for sure. You inject yourself every two hours, and then, of course, you are hard hit by the withdrawal. I tried it and I know what I'm talking about.”

“Oh, what did you try there, Vitor? Like a girl who drank a glass of wine and thinks she understood everything about alcohol. It’s funny! Do you want to try ‘black water’?”

Kors’ face changed:

“No.”

“Well, then don't give a fuck.”

“Follow the culture of your speech, this is also important. Watch your appearance. Heal! You have hepatitis! You healed Lis and removed all his scars. Do the same with your face and body! And then you will have intelligent thoughts. Not like this, when you barely open your eyes in the morning, and immediately rush for a drink and a syringe, and let the day pass as it should, but go to wash, comb your hair, eat normally. Plan everything and strictly follow the plan, don’t go to your unclean ones in the evening, but be sober at least once.”

“And read a book?” Nikto said and laughed.

“You would have achieved more if you listened to my words. Once you are in a human body, live according to the laws of people and the rules for the normal functioning of the body. Respect and love it. You seem to intentionally force your brain with substances, you want to kill yourself, and then what? They will, as Lis says, ask you. What will you tell your higher overseers: “The body died, it is not my fault that I couldn’t complete your tasks!” Yes? It is foolish to hope that they will believe you. You will go back to your world of shit!”

“I'll take you with me next time,” Nikto said.

“Yes please! I'm not afraid of anything anymore! Even there I will find a way to organize an acceptable space around me.”

“Arel, do you hear? Vitor will teach everyone there how to live properly!”

“He will be in charge there,” Arel answered.

“Why are you like that?!” Kors shouted, unable to bear it.

“What?!”

“Spoiled! I love you with all my heart! You are like my son! You are my son too! I want the best! It hurts me to see you destroy yourself. I know that you are capable of more! And you trample and trample my feelings!”

“Vitor, you liked my Limit, you were there for the first time, and you liked it immediately.”

“I liked it. And I don't mind relaxing, resting and playing. I am not saying that I am perfect. But business before pleasure.”

“Exactly,” Nikto said. “We have sailed up.”

He fell off his back from the side, and, so inhumanly resting his palm on the wooden flooring under his feet, pushed off with force, rising. He walked over to his Unclean Power, inserting his foot into the stirrup, jumped into the saddle. The horse danced under him, and the raft under his hooves too.

“Hey!” Kors shouted, grabbing the railing to stay on his feet.

Unclean Power, having made an incredible jump, almost without a running start, jumped the distance to the coast in one fell swoop, shaking the ferry even more.

“You motherfucker! You will knock us over! Insane!”

Turning to the hail, Nikto, for a moment, turned Power around, putting it on the hind legs, and then, without answering, hitting his steep sides with his feet, he directed the horse at a gallop along the hillside up to the abandoned village. After him, Arel also immediately jumped into the saddle, and, without waiting for the ferry to finally land on the shore, he forced the horse to jump, whipping up his lash and loudly shouting a command. And only Kors, swearing and wiping the drops of spray from his clothes, waited until the raft moored to a small pier, and neatly brought his horse back, holding onto the reins. He secured the ferry, tied it up, and, getting into the saddle, headed for Riverside, having long lost sight of both Nikto and Arel.

4

The house

Kors drove slowly along the main street of an abandoned, dead village. There was deathly silence here and there was not a single living soul. Tol’s soldiers transported people to Crimson Rock. Some peasants of Prince Arel, who had recovered from typhus, refused to cross the river and left Riverside, returning to the Estate. In the evening twilight, ruined houses looked longingly at Kors with empty eye sockets of broken windows, and Kors felt the heavy atmosphere of hunger and suffering that had reigned here quite recently. He seemed to hear the drawn-out groans of people dying in agony from everywhere, and he was haunted by an unconscious feeling of despair and hopelessness. Or were they the sounds of the wind rushing in hysterical gusts through empty lanes? This place was cursed, Kors thought. He approached one of the houses he recognized. Here he used to play “the fool” with his son and prince Arel. Then he had fun. It seemed that it was in another life, and Kors was different, also from another life. He was free, cheerful and confident. He was himself and was not defiled or touched. How dignified, proud and calm he was then! Absolutely confident that he was in complete control of the situation and nothing bad could happen to him. He was the commander of the true blacks, an unquestionable authority. He was their faithful companion and friend. He looked good and looked boldly into the future. He fearlessly approached the Demon, studying him with curiosity and not even knowing how it would all turn out. He was amused by the way the Demon scared over Arel, then Kors couldn’t even imagine, did not even admit the thought that something similar could happen to him. Not a single doubt or premonition of danger crept into his soul. He was so presumptuous! Just a fool, confident in his righteousness and infallibility.

Kors dismounted near one of the houses and climbed the porch. Here he once stood and smoked before the beginning of a meeting of commanders. And Nikto that evening first opened his face in front of people, having arrived without a mask. He was so handsome. “Kors, don't smoke. Everything will be fine,” Nikto told him. “Yes. Sly Demon, you got me through. You winded round my little finger like I was a naive child”. Kors went into the room, there was still a table, and on it lay a crumpled dusty tablecloth. He sat down in his place, just as he sat then, during the meeting. He just sat blankly, as if hearing the voices of his officers. Nothing could be returned. He couldn’t go back to that moment and do everything differently, replay, stay free. How good it was for him then, but he realized that only now. He didn’t value it then. He didn’t appreciate freedom, because it was a natural state for him, a familiar sensation, like the air you breathe and you don’t notice it until your throat is squeezed. And how thoughtlessly he gave the most valuable thing, only later realizing what it was like to breathe with permission, breathe because you were graciously allowed to do so, and to be not a person, but a thing. “Arrogant fool!” Blinded by his pride and sense of power, which turned out to be only an illusion! His whole life collapsed overnight. He understood that the beginning of this fall began long before Riverside, but here, as it seemed to him, it took final shape. At what point did he make this fatal turn in the wrong direction?

“I don’t understand why you are protecting this boy like that? Son of the Devil, here's your time! I must confess that I didn’t think he looked so much like a girl!”

“What?!”

“The Son of the Devil is a pretty blonde with blue eyes. I have never seen white male half-bloods live, only female slaves. But it turns out that they are all the same! And guys are like girls, they are the same.”

“Crassus, I will kill you!”

“Vitor, stop it! I need to tell you something urgently. Very important, confidently. Let's go freshen up… I need fresh air, it's stuffy here. Vitor! Calm down, what are you doing?! Don’t be silly! What's the matter with you?!”

“What's happening? You are crazy?! What are you doing?!”

“Nothing! Everything is fine!”

“You started smoking again! You don't come to sit with us in the evening. I saw his unclean horse at your camping tent, he stood there until morning. Kors, I have known you for a long time, I know your preferences. This white half-blood is very similar to Iness, I paid attention to this today. Do you see familiar features in him? Yes? Are you crushing on him?”

“What?!”

“And judging by the looks he throws at you, he also reciprocates you, however, it just doesn’t surprise me, but you?! Vitor, what are you doing?”

“What looks does he throw at me? What are you making up, Varah?”

“Don’t show your relationship so clearly. Don’t stand up for him so openly! Do you have love with him?”

“I don’t blame you,” Kamiel tried to cheer him up somehow. “The boy is really cute, nice features, though not tall and march.”

“What?! Gods!”

“Do what you want with him, but in secret. Please, not so openly! Don’t embarrass yourself! Vitor, you ruined your reputation in the city. I don’t believe in all these stories of naive commoners from Lower. The Son of the Devil, who opened a portal to the catacombs of the prison dungeon. This is all bullshit! You helped him escape! You lost his position because of him, came to him here! You help him! Vitor, what are you doing, are you crazy?”

“Yes. I just went crazy and derailed my life.”

“For a young boy?”

“He is already twenty-five years old.”

“So what? He could be your son, Vitor!”

“It’s terrible, right?”

“No. Just don’t advertise it so clearly! Just as you didn’t advertise your relationship with the prince.”

“Damn! Have you all already guessed?”

“No, but after you began to protect him so much… and you should have seen your face at the meeting when Crassus called him a cripple. You started to shake. You were ready to kill Crassus, I know you and I know what your face is when you want to kill. Of course, everyone was surprised and began to think too much. By the way, unlike you, he made no sign. It's good, he doesn't give you up.”

“He doesn’t give me away.”

“What?”

“So they say.”

“Vitor, stop it!””

“Varah, I'm lost. I'm lost…”

It got completely dark, and the sky was clouded with low black clouds. The wind intensified, already clearly howling in the cracks. Kors left the empty house, listening to his feelings, so that, like a beast, like a faithful dog, he could smell where his Master was. They were further away, at the edge of the village, near the forest. Exactly where the camp of the uncleans used to be. Kors spurred his horse, trying to drive as quickly as possible through the houses where his officers and himself had once lived. He no longer wanted to remember anything, because it was unbearable and only agitated and depressed him. Silently he entered a low rickety house, where a candle barely glowed on the table and an open bottle stood. Everything as usual.

“Here he is. Finally!” Said, displeased, Prince Arel, seeing him. “Well? Have you walked enough?”

Kors silently looked up at him, and Arel opened the door to the adjacent room for him:

“Come here.”

Kors doomedly walked deep into the house, where he was shown. They went into a room that apparently had previously served as the master's bedroom. There was devastation here, and there was a large, rickety bed without legs, with broken vertical poles at the edges, which were once intended to support the canopy. Now there was nothing: no canopy, no pillows, no blanket – only a dirty mattress, from which a fat rat, the true mistress of this room, slowly jumped off.

Nikto was sitting in the corner right on the dirty floor in the same position as on the ferry, his mask was lying nearby. He slowly raised his head, and his gray face and black eyes looked creepy in the gloom.

Kors was suddenly seized by an inexplicable sticky and all-consuming fear. All this atmosphere of decay of an abandoned village, longing for the past lost life and some indescribable feeling of hopelessness in this house, rotten through and through, intensified a hundredfold. Before he could say anything, Arel rudely and forcefully pushed him onto the bed, knocking him over onto his back. Kors felt his invisible hands gripping him, pressing against the musty mattress. Kors froze. Arel just stood by, and at the same time Kors couldn’t even move. The prince slowly approached, leaning, and Kors, unable to restrain himself, screamed in pain, because he had an absolutely real feeling that Arel penetrated deep into his body through his skin and strongly squeezed something inside, and again and again. Stronger and stronger. He seemed to feel and squeeze every internal organ, twisting the insides, and it was unbearable. Kors was literally paralyzed and sprawled on the bed. He lay with his arms outstretched and couldn’t move. Arel didn’t stop, continuing to twist and press on every piece of flesh, making him feel a truly hellish pain, which was impossible to get rid of. And his victim writhed in agony under invisible, tenacious fingers. Overcoming these terrible sensations of pain, unable to utter a word and really breathe in air, Kors, by some incredible effort of will in his thoughts, confused and incorrectly began to feverishly read the divine saying, and Arel loosened his grip a little.