The Mist and the Lightning. Part VII

“Painted face. One of the people of the prince?” He turned to Vitor Kors, “What makes them all make their faces gray?”

“Apparently he is,” Kors nodded, “and it’s a sign of belonging.”

“Done,” the soldier reported, demonstrating Nikto’s arm, freed from the bracelets and strips of black cloth from the wrist to the elbow.

The three of them involuntarily stared at the picturesque picture of all kinds of patterns and drawings, interspersed with disgusting looking in some places, barely protracted, and in some places continued to fester ulcers. The old doctor grunted and inserted a needle into one of the barely healed veins. Nikto gritted his teeth.

“You see,” said Balthazar Nate, as if giving a lecture to students, “the main veins died and secondary ones took on their functions, this compensation is very interesting, and speaks of the limitless possibilities of the human body.”

“You are not stabbing yourself in the arm yet, if I understand correctly?” He turned to Nikto with old-fashioned politeness.

“No, I stab,” Nobody said, often blinking, “but more often in the neck.”

“That's right,” the doctor agreed, “we will stab you in the neck,” he smiled, “shall I look?”

Leaning towards Nikto, he moved the slave collar to the side, now it became clear that where the dye ended under the chin, tattoos started again.

 Vitor Kors laid the portrait of Iness on the table, face down, as if to prevent her from seeing this.

“Why all these drawings?” as if he asked himself, somehow sad.

Nikto rubbed his eyes with his hands.

“These are tattoos,” he said grimly.

“I know!”

“Surely his whole body is covered with them,” the doctor made an assumption, “and his face, too. This is was the “Lower” with all its identification marks: earrings in his nose, tattoos, overwhelming fascination with drugs… which would cost a lot to our prison infirmary…”

“And the face?” Asked Vitor Kors.

“What difference does it make? This is my face!” Nikto tried to snap back. But it was evident that he didn’t like these questions and the words of the doctor, and he was upset.

Kors exhaled noisily and ran his palm from his forehead to his chin, as if trying to erase fatigue. He closed his eyes.

“Well, the young tattooed man, do you feel better?” The doctor smiled.

“Yes, a little.”

“Well, so sit still, after all!”

“The insides, the stomach, I can’t…”

“Everything hurts? Is the liver infected?”

“Yes.”

“For a long time?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you wrote me this drug here?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The doctor again took up the syringe, Nikto clenched his teeth and closed his eyes.

“Nips a bit, right?”

“I usually dilute it with more than just purified water,” said Nikto.

“I know,” the doctor smiled, “but it's more interesting, isn't it?”

 Nikto bent, holding his hands to his forehead, then folded his hands in a boat, covering his eyes.

“Yes, and look at what is with his eyes,” Kors recalled, his face was somehow distorted, “he told me that he didn’t see us.”

The doctor pressed on Nikto’s forehead, throwing his head back, removed his palms from his eyes:

“Look at me, a young man from the very, most “Lower”, below than nowhere.”

“Just don’t shine in my eyes!” Nikto literally shied away from the old man.

“What?! Stop twitching like that!”

“Don't shine in my eyes,” Nikto prayed.

“Don't,” said Vitor Kors, “don't shine.”

“Well,” the doctor shrugged a little offended, “I just wanted to look at the fundus, but we can do without it, as you say. Although, the case is interesting.”

“What do you have in mind?” asked Kors.

“Eyes are definitely redone as unclean. Reconstructed competently, he sees well in the dark, I think, and even sees a little now in the light.”

“You see a little now?”

“Yes,” Nikto nodded.

“Here it is twilight, thanks to the fact that you have closed the curtains, and now stimulants that we introduced to him are acting.”

“Thanks for the clarification, does that mean he needs darkness?”

“Yes.”

“That is, in the afternoon in the light, he doesn’t see anything?”

“Yes, unfortunately. And for a long time, as I understand it. When was this done with you?”

“When were you captured by the unclean?” Specified Kors.

 Nikto shook his head.

“No. A long time ago, I did it myself.”

“Yourself?!” The doctor was surprised. “It is commendable, it requires remarkable skills.”

“Yes, he said here that he would like to be a doctor,” Kors said skeptically.

“Really?!” Balthazar Nate was delighted. “How interesting! He wanted to become a doctor, but became a patient!” He laughed at his joke.

No one else supported him.

“Okay, and look again, what is with his throat, he wheezes, you hear? Do you have a cold? Or an infection? Isn’t it all enough?”

 “Yes, I hear that he wheezes. Open the mouth, young man, I’ll shine in your mouth, okay?”

“It’s nothing to do with a cold,” he said after a while, moving away, “the vocal cords were cut,”

“What?!”

“I confess that for the first time I see a person with such vocal chords generally talking. By all laws, he should not speak. He can't talk!”

Nikto looked up and for the first time in all this time looked at Kors, and he realized that he had finally seen him!

Their eyes met.

And Nikto looked down. His shoulders slouched again, he froze, cringing in his chair.

“Who are you?”

Nikto flinched at this simple question, as if Kors had hit him. He squeezed his in leather gloves fingers into the lock.

“Get out,” Kors ordered quietly, but in such a voice that the convoy and the doctor literally flew out the door.

They two stayed in a room together.

* * *

“You're not a human!”

“So be it,” Nikto agreed, somehow doomed, “so it’s easier. And you don’t have to blame yourself for the mistakes.”

“Bravo!” Kors clapped his hands several times. “And you almost threw dust in my eyes!”

“What does it mean?”

“That I really believed…” Kors suddenly grabbed a portrait lying face down from the table:

“Who is it?! See?! Or should I put your head in a bag and let you look from there?”

“I see now.”

“Well? So who is it, do you know?”

“I know.”

“Who?!”

“Your wife, Iness, Karina’s mother,” answered Nikto.

“Correctly! My wife and mother of Karina. Mother of only Karina!”

Nikto stupidly looked at his hands in expensive gloves lying on his knees, one arm remained unfastened and not closed. Bracelets were lying in a heap on the desk of Kors.

“After everything you did to him… to appear in the corpse of my…” Kors hesitated. “In a so cynically mutilated corpse.”

Nikto was silent and still looked at his hands.

“What do you really look like? What are you? This?” Kors pointed a finger at the spoiled drawing on Nikto’s hand, forcing him to recoil.

“Will you answer me something?!”

Nikto raised his face, looked at Kors, and it seemed to him that his eyes were laughing:

“I can’t,” said Nikto. “After all, my vocal chords are cut.”

 And Kors hit him. With all his power, with a fist to the temple. Nikto fell from a chair, crouched on the floor.

“You think I'm afraid of you?! I will rot you in a stone bag,” Kors whispered, “it will be a tombstone for him. A beautiful gravestone, and you will lie there and you will not be able to move, and you will not be able to control this body anymore. What do you think about my idea?”

“No…,” Nikto said.

“Are you afraid of me?!”

Nikto covered his face with his hands.

“Nolan!” Cried Kors.

The soldiers readily returned to the room, and the doctor with them, seeing Nikto lying on the floor, none of them seemed surprised.

“Do you still need me?” Balthazar Nate asked carefully.

“No. Thanks for the help. And I think you will have to arrange injections for him at least for a while, because I will still need him…” Kors hesitated. “Alive.”

“I understand,” the doctor nodded, “I will organize everything. We will support him as long as needed. And we can even treat him, I think there is a running infection in the blood and liver…”

“Don’t treat. Just give it a minimum so that he moves and that's it.”

“Yes. Can I go?”

“Go, and… thanks for the help.”

“I’m always at your service.”

The doctor left, and the soldiers, on the contrary, habitually approached the victim. They knew that all interrogations end in such a way, and this will not be an exception.

“Undress him,” Kors waved his hand wearily.

He sat at the table and covered his face with his hands, as if gathering his thoughts.

A few thuds were heard, he knew that the guard, undressing Nikto, had already begun to act.

“Wow! What does he have there? Some kind of piece of iron… Sir Kors?”

He took his hands from his face:

“Well, what's the problem…” And fell silent, staring at Nikto as well. Probably, it was a very stupid sight, Nikto in Arel’s belt of fidelity.

“That's even how…” Said Vitor Kors, somewhat perplexed.

“To take off?” Asked Nolan.

“No. Don’t. Let it remain so.”

“And what is this, sir? Some kind of protection?”

“Well, you have to ask him. Just I don’t think that he will tell us about it now.”

Kors examined his tattooed hips, and a chain encircling them. He looked at the crooked sign of Prince Arel, with a healed burn instead of a bird's head.

“Nikto, how did you think to take me for a ride, disfiguring his body like that? Didn't Arel tell you how my interrogations usually end?”

“He told me,” Nikto said.

“And what did you hope for, you didn’t think how it would infuriate me?”

Nikto was silent and didn’t raise his head.

“Or did you want to infuriate me?! Throw this in my face and say: “See what I did?”

Nikto raised his left hand to his face, put his fingers under the edge of the half mask near the ear, and pulled it away, tearing it from the skin, revealing the scar.

“See what HE did? The one you wrote to the dead! He got involved in the stories one dumber than the other! He cut himself in despair.”

“I'm glad he resisted. It pleases me!”

“Enjoy it!”

“His grave will be beautiful! Do you believe me?!”

“Yes! Cram him into the grave quickly, out of sight. And then howl in sorrow as if for your wife, for the rest of your life! Bury him deeper, no matter that he is still alive!”

“And what is this?” Suddenly Kors asked himself rather quickly, and going up to Nikto, who pressed into the wall, leaned over him and with a sharp movement tore off a thin gold chain with a small ring on it from his neck.

He clenched the ring in his fist:

“Don't you dare desecrate her memory!”

“This is my girlfriend’s ring,” Nikto said defiantly, “why do you care?”

Kors looked at him a little in surprise and grinned:

“To begin with, this ring… however… what a difference now.”

He returned to the table and, opening his palm with a strange expression on his face, looked at a small piece of jewelry.

“Lead him away,” he finally whispered. “Take him away! And… damn you!” He cried when the convoy picked up Nikto from the floor and putting a bag over his head, dragged him out the door.

Chapter five

Afterwards

“Well?!” Karina in joyful excitement ran into the interrogation room. “Did you make sure? I couldn’t wait when you finish…” She looked at her frozen, hunched father, on an overturned chair, blood on the floor, a hill of bracelets of Nikto lying on the edge of the table.

“What did you do with him here?” Her voice became deaf, “Are you out of your mind?”

“Don’t dare,” Kors rose sharply, suddenly shouted at her so that Karina's tears came involuntarily because of this evil shout. But she restrained herself:

“You can… you can, at least explain to me.”

“Nikto is a demon!”

“Nonsense! I don’t believe in demons!”

“And I believe!”

“And you will execute him?”

“Sure! But first, I will avenge him, cruelly I will avenge! I’ll give him a walnut finish, my daughter! I have some thoughts on this subject, I’ll mock him great, be sure!”

“Gods! You already scoffed at him enough! Much more than enough! You didn’t even look at him, without understanding, you sent him to the mines! And if then I talked with him, then I saw him… It is quite possible then he could still be saved and he would not be so spoiled!”

“I don’t have time to meet and interrogate personally everyone!”

“But you regret doing so then? Are you sorry? Well, confess to me! Confess that you could have done differently!”

“I could. But I don’t regret it!”

“You regret!”

“Well, I'm sorry, but I don't care what you think about it. And then it was too late! And now even more so.”

“I don’t think so, he’s not as bad as he seems, he’s better than other people of the prince. Well, of course! How could I have thought that you would accept him! How would you introduce him to all your pompous friends. Tell them that your son is a slave, a rag from the “Lower”, and a half-breed.”

“And a drug addict.”

“Yes!”

“With a redone body, a disfigured face, head to toe covered with tattoos, the prince’s slave wearing his…” Kors froze in mid-sentence.

 “Wearing his what?!” Karina didn’t understand.

 “His brand. The brand. Clear?”

“Yes! It's so awful! It outweighs everything, and the fact that he is your blood and flesh and that he is your desired son and son of your beloved woman. I wonder if his mother would accept him as anyone? I don’t really know him, but I accept him as my brother, no matter what he is!”

“You won't accept him. Neither I nor you. He is not a member of our family – he is nobody, in the literal and figurative sense of the word!”

“You are so embarrassed about him that you are ready to believe and convince yourself that demons exist, and they inhabit human bodies and live in our world.”

“Yes.”

“Father, don’t you find it funny yourself?”

“It’s not funny! It’s not at all funny, Karina. And I hope that when you were there in the castle, you didn’t communicate with him.”

“I communicated with him! He saved my life, in the “Lower” people of the Black Bey ambushed us, and Nikto closed me with his body, and received a strong poke in the stomach.”

“You lie, I didn’t see any scar on his stomach, just a small burn, and even that seemed to be putting out a cigarette. What I quite believe. He has a scar from a stub on his stomach, not a sword!”

“Because he used the “black water” and “sama” to heal the wound and stay alive. I saw it! He saved me! And I thank him for that!”

“You hope you didn’t tell him in a burst of gratitude about your assumptions about your relationship?”

“No, I didn’t. But I showed him mother’s medallion.”

“Oh! Now it’s clear how he knew about Iness.”

“Yes. And I think he understood everything, and if he didn’t understand, then I will tell him anyway! Let it be for him even a small consolation that I admit him, since his father betrays him and betrays him time after time!”

“You won't tell him anything! You won’t even get close to him. By the way, he is contagious. You are very lucky that you didn’t pick up an infection from him in the Castle. Why are you keeping silent? Agree, lucky?”

Karina pulled herself together:

“It doesn’t matter! What matters is what you are going to do with him! Is not a drop of gratitude stirred in you after I told you? That he saved my life.”

“No. Quite possibly, it was all rigged. He is cunning. He almost took me for the ride as well as you. He managed to deceive you!”

“What does it mean: “He almost took me for a ride? You scare with these words.”

“Never mind. The main thing is that I resisted.”

“Have you even tried to talk to him? Or did you immediately hit him, father?” Karina looked doubtfully at the dried blood smeared on the floor.

“Well, why couldn't you just try to talk to him?”

“No need to make me a monster, as you love it! I talked to him normally! I behaved with him kindly!”

“Are you serious?!” She was delighted. “And he?”

“He… he also behaved normally,” Kors muttered.

“Here you see! When a person is treated in a good way, he behaves appropriately! I knew this, he wasn’t at all some kind of a moron and a drug addict, how you present him. Ruined his soul and became a demon! Nonsense! There is still a lot of good left in him. It's just that no one has ever treated him humanly. He saw only evil. And you were no exception. I am very sad, father, you, who may be the only one who could, who had to support him, seeing his brand and what else, immediately turned away with disgust! I hope he still doesn’t know that you are his father, otherwise he really felt very painful. If I had a son, I would accept him in any way, even demon, at least a thousand times a murderer and a criminal. This is your child! What else can you talk about!”

“I think he doesn't know,” Kors said.

“What doesn’t he know? That he is your son?”

“Yes.”

“What was it worth talking to him calmly? Just try to find out?”

“I talked to him! I figured out! Look.”

“What is it?”

“Your mother’s engagement ring. It hung on his neck.”

Karina took the decoration:

“Lay me like a seal on your heart, for love is strong as death.” She said. “You have exactly the same. I remember this engraving.” She looked at her father’s right hand, Kors never took off his ring, he wore it all his life, and Karina from childhood remembered it.

“Yes.”

“So he knows?”

“No. He believes that this is a ring of his girlfriend.”

“Rosa?”

“Yes. If he doesn’t deceive me on purpose.”

“So mom…” Karina hesitated, and tears appeared in her eyes, “she put her wedding ring on his neck…”

“Apparently so.”

“So you find him and recognize him! Do you still doubt it?!”

“Never mind. Don’t get involved in this anymore. Listen to me and don’t meddle, I beg you, Karina. I ask you in a good way, still!”

“Father, you're wrong…”

“Leave me. Go do something.”

“What?!”

“Go, talk to Donatella Valerie. She went to the doctor. Clive watched her. Her doctor was questioned and claims that she had a concussion. She was hit with something heavy on the head, but she says she fell down.”

“I don't care about that! It is not interesting. And even if she was hit. Even if you are hinting that Nikto hit her, then there is a way for her. I will not collect facts against him!”

“I don’t claim that it is he. So go and bring me evidence that it’s not him.”

“Will this change anything?”

“I don't think so.”

“Then I don't want to!”

“You have to do your job and my orders! Why is Clive doing his job, and you are not? Do you want me to fire you?”

“In that case, I’d better go and question Zara, according to agents, a former slave from the farm…”

“Why do you need her? Because Lis visited her? You are fixated on Lis, and Arel, and now Nikto!”

“I'm not fixated!”

“Zara is of no use to us!”

“As well as Doni!”

“Why should I argue with you?! To persuade you! You constantly do everything contrary to! I didn’t let you go to the Castle to Arel. I didn’t let you make friends with them. But you wanted to figure it out! You want to figure it out on your own!”

“But my information helped you, and try to say that it is not so!”

“How did it help me? You were just trying to find reasons to soften the accusations. They are all victims of circumstances! And Chris Wass, and Vish Cazen provoked Arela themselves, going up to him at the autumn ball, and summoned him to the battle.”

“Yes!”

“And in your words I provoked Arel, and because of my words he killed Lamy.”

“Yes!”

“And now you don’t want to go to Doni Valerie, because you don’t want to know that your unhappy offended friends beat her on the head.”

“I just want justice, father. I still don’t know for sure what happened to my maid, and who is guilty of the death of the singer from the “Lower”. I don’t justify them, but I want everything to be fair!”

“I will remove you from this business altogether! Do you understand me, Karina?”

Chapter six

Karina and Dony

       “I'm in a hurry, I have a lot of things to do,” Dony was not at all disposed to host Karina as a guest. She didn’t even offer her tea.

“I won’t take you much time,” retorted Karina, starting to get angry, she didn’t want to do this job, she was sick of learning something from Dony, because she didn’t see any point in it. This was a meaningless task, which her father sent to fulfill just to occupy her with something else, so that she didn’t interfere with him with her conversations about Nikto. Waste of time. But, unfortunately, Karina had a rule – if she took up work, even it was most uninteresting, she should have done it well. If possible. As best as possible. And so she was sitting in Dony’s living room and was angry. Slaves and servants scurried past with boxes and suitcases, the bustle of moving was in the air.

“You see what’s going on,” Dony told her nervously, “I haven’t packed anything yet, the move is like a fire or an earthquake. At four my fiancé arrives, but nothing is ready, I still need to make up!”

“Now it's only half past three,” said Karina.

“Yes! During half an hour it is impossible to have time to put yourself in order. However, you don’t understand it, you are a warrior, not a woman.”

Karina silently swallowed a mockery, or what it was. She should just do her job well.

“You look beautiful without make up as well,” she said as good-naturedly as possible, not at all sure that her words sounded really sincere. And not because Dony looked bad without makeup, but simply because Karina didn't give a damn about it.

“Ah, don't talk nonsense!” Dony turned away from her, peering attentively at the surface of the mirror. “When I am without make up, I look ill, pale and tormented.”

“But you really were sick recently,” Karina remarked, glad that there was something to cling to in the conversation.

And Dony froze with a snow-white puff in her hand.

“I am absolutely healthy. And if I was sick, it was a very long time ago,” she said in an icy tone.

“I just have to do my job well,” thought Karina once again and said:

“You had a concussion.”

“Is this an interrogation? You follow me!”

“What is it about my simple question? Why are you so nervous?” Karina shrug her shoulders.

“Have you come to ask me about this?”

-Dony, we were hanging in the same company, we were almost friends. We could be close friends if you wanted to. What is strange that I came to find out howyou are doing and say goodbye? After all, you are leaving.”

“Yes, I'm leaving. We can write letters to each other if you want to be friends.”

“And aren't you sad to leave all this? Your own theater…”

“No! I want to have a family, give birth to a baby. I will write new plays. There, by the sea. I will be a writer. I will have an ideal life with my beloved man, which I also wish you, Karina. Finally find your ideal man, your second half, and become happy.”

“But wasn’t Nikto your ideal man?” Karina suddenly caught herself thinking that she could hardly pronounce that name.

Doni laughed pretendedly:

“Karina, it’s all in the past, and I'm leaving. I'm leaving! Understand?”

She seemed to be running away from something, a thought flashed across Karina, as if afraid. She is afraid!

“Have you quarreled?”

“No! Karina, what do you want from me?!”

“Heck!” Karina could no longer drag this out with Dony. “I just need to find out who cracked you on the head so that you had a concussion!” She could not stand it.

“How rough! But at least thanks for the directness. I fell down! Is that all?! Is the conversation over?”

Karina stood up, Dony turned to the mirror, furiously began to wave her brush, putting pink blush on her cheeks.

“Maybe you should, nevertheless, return to your female destiny, Karina, it seems to me that what you are doing doesn’t suit you at all,” the ex-girlfriend of Nikto blurted out suddenly quite sharply. “Before it's too late! Love someone in the end, and stop shaming!”