Ви Корс - The Mist and the Lightning. Part 9

“Nik, don't do it! You can't pull it out! Special tools are needed! You will only cripple yourself! Don’t do it! These jewelry don’t disfigure you.” She hesitated, realizing that she was talking nonsense. She needed to somehow try to calm him down. To make him stop hurting himself. He hit himself in the head with his fists. She screamed. And suddenly he shuddered, as people usually shudder when they fall asleep. And he stared at her, and, apparently seeing her twisted face, immediately understood everything. He turned away, ripping the rag off his forearm. The wound healed completely, leaving only a white streak of light new skin on the tattoo. And Karina looked at his slave collar and thought that she saw him now in a completely different way. Nikto walked in it, never expressing or showing any inconvenience. He never touched it with his hands in an attempt to remove or adjust it.

He never jerked it with his hands. He slept, ate and drank in it, fucked in it, and for her it was some kind of a part of him. And only now she looked completely differently at this dubious decoration. She suddenly saw with all clarity how thick, wide and certainly heavy it was. She saw the inscriptions engraved on it, the date and place of the stamp, the serial number of the slave. A welded ring to which the chain was to be attached. The demon apparently didn’t care, but the human, her brother, suffered, the collar constrained the movements of his neck and prevented him from breathing. Nikto picked up the torn ring from the grass, took it into his mouth and, drooling to the touch, put it back in his nose, put a rag with the remnants of “sama” to the torn hole in his nostril, winced, but didn’t pass out.

“Why don't you take off the collar?” Asked Karina. Nikto looked at her warily:

“I’m a slave, have you forgotten?”

“So what? You've never led the life of a slave.”

“Really?” Nikto smoothed his hair:

“What do you know about this? I was on the “farm”, and then I was sold to the unclean, and in the city I was in prison and fought like a slave, like meat that is thrown into the front line. I was a great slave!”

“But then, when you met Arel?”

“I became his slave. His whore. Arel liked it, he fastened me to the bed for it, he didn’t order me to remove it. It takes a long time. This needs to be cut.”

“I understand. But it was possible to do it! And… And I understand now why you don't! Now it just dawned on me! You don't take it off, not because you're a slave! And not because Arel liked it! You don't take it off, because the slave is my brother! And you show it to him! He, he must walk in this heavy collar, because he is your slave! You don't film to show my brother who he is. And you treat him like a slave. And the joke is that you look like a slave – you!”

“I treat your brother very well, believe me, you just have no idea what a slave should look like in my world. What a collar and what else should he wear! Trust me, this collar is the least of what he should really wear! But this is my body too, so I limit myself to just a few attributes.”

“And the collar among them? Yes?”

“Yes!”

“I want you to take it off.”

“No!”

“But is it comfortable for you yourself?”

“Fine!”

“And he feels bad! Take it off!”

“You want to take it off right now you?! Then cut off my head!”

Karina covered her face with her hands;

“Please don't be angry, please. Maybe it's possible to put a lighter collar on him? How much does this one weigh?”

She raised pleading eyes to him, trying to put into her gaze everything that she felt, all the prayer:

“Please! Come on, when we come to Arel at the Estate, you will order this collar to be cut and put on another one, a little lighter. I am not asking to take it off at all, I understand that he is your slave and should be wearing a collar, no matter how absurd it sounds and looks, because you are one whole.”

“I'll think about it,” Nikto said, and Karina saw that he was not going to respond to her request yet.

“Better make a loofah out of a bunch of grass, as you do, to scrub my clothes. Hey? Get down to business. Your brother is fine, I didn’t do with him a hundredth part of what I had to, because I also need this body. That's all. Don't worry about him.”

Karina turned away so that he would not see her tears, and began to tear the grass.

He silently took the twisted bundle of grass from her, went to the water's edge and began to wipe off his boots from the dirt, he was silent and didn’t look at her and clearly no longer wanted to continue the conversation about her brother, about the collar, about slavery and the rules of behavior of the Demon in the human body, and the rules of behavior of the human in which the Demon settled. And she looked at him, and before her eyes there was a picture of a creature scratching its collar with its claws, with a face distorted with despair and hopelessness. Blind and dumb.

“Do you know?” She said suddenly.

“What?” He glanced at her from under his brows, not looking up from his occupation.

“Now for the first time you didn’t start to play around and come up with excuses, you now for the first time admitted that you are a Demon in my brother's body.”

“So what?”

“Nothing. It's just weird why?”

“Well, you anyway think so?”

“Yes. And I think correctly. It's true. And if had said before, I would not have left. If you were afraid to say, thinking that I would be scared and leave, and you needed me for your witchcraft…”

“Ooh, fuck you,” Nikto drawled. He threw away the grass washcloth and looked at Karina very carefully. “Come here.”

“What for?”

“Are you afraid? How are you going to go to Arel? He is more terrible than me in the way he treats women. And Lis is there.”

“And if I tell them everything? That you are a Demon.”

“They know.”

Karina was taken aback:

“Did you tell them?”

“Come here.”

She came up, and he pulled her to him, brought her face close, looking straight into the eyes.

“Tell them what you want, I don't care. And I told you now simply because now it is possible. But don't ask any more.”

He pushed her away lightly:

“Are you going to wash?”

In the evening they came to the Estate, Nikto led them in roundabout ways, literally in vegetable gardens, so as not to catch the eye of rare peasants, however, most of them, apparently, worked in the fields and didn’t meet them. Having gone around a large massive house, Nikto opened some kind of back gate.

“We sneak like thieves,” Karina said.

“Do you want all the servants to stare at you?”

“No.”

And still, in spite of all the precautions, at the very porch they still came across some burly maid, who, seeing strangers coming out from around the corner, gasped, bulging her eyes, and rushed in the opposite direction from them.

Chapter five

Friends

Karina and Nikto entered the house and the main hall of the Estate. Arel and Lis were sitting at the table in front of them. And Lis’ face was crudely painted in the way cheap jesters usually paint themselves at fairs. And in his ears, instead of earrings, jester's bells glittered. The absurd make-up distorted his features, and he could only be recognized by his red hair.

“Oh,” Karina involuntarily burst out at the sight of this.

“Hello,” said Nikto, and looking at Lis, too, couldn’t resist and grunted.

“Nik! Nik! Gods! My Nik!” Arel shouted, jumping up and not paying any attention to their somewhat dumbfounded appearance. He rushed to Nikto, falling on his knees in front of him and hugging his legs, repeating as if instinctively:

“Nik, Nik, Nik! I don't believe in this happiness!”

Nikto bent down to hug him and lift him from his knees. He smiled:

“I'm back,” he said. And Arel showered him with kisses, kissed his hands, and there were tears in his eyes.

Karina sat down wearily on the bench at the entrance. The prince, not paying any attention to her, dragged Nikto with him deep into the room, to the stairs leading to the second floor of the house.

“Come on, come with me,” he literally dragged Nikto behind him, and he, without resisting, followed him.

Karina and Lis stayed in the room together. She was afraid to look up so as not to meet his eyes. He looked so terrible, so shameful. However, Prince Arel didn’t look better. She remembered how she missed them and regretted that she had left the Castle then. As she looked from afar, sitting in the lower Coliseum at the final fight of Nikto. How she worried about Arel when he was beaten during interrogation. And now there they were, close again. Arel was so sharp, impulsive, as always, it seemed to her that he was not sober. Has he ever been sober at all? The prince was now very close, and she felt nothing, no joy or awe. He was dressed bad, without jewelry, also barefoot, somehow all careless, sloppy. His dark hair was not combed, it was disheveled, in tangles, it fell in untidy strands on his face as he spread, crawling in front of his Nikto. And this tattoo of his, she forgot about it, and now she saw it so clearly; a black dragon on his entire cheek, really on half of his face (as it seemed to her) caught her eye. She was generally afraid to look up at Lis, he was also not combed, his hair was pulled away raggedly, he looked better on trial. And now they seem to have completely sunk down. She didn't even want to think about the fact that his nose and mouth were painted red. Arel painted him like a jester, and Lis allowed it to him again. As well as when they put on him a “shameful strip” with bells. What a fool? And so she sat, afraid to move and look up, not understanding what she was doing here and what was next. She looked up only when she heard that Lis was getting up from his place, the bells rang, and he went up to her. Their eyes met, he looked at her from top to bottom, looked with challenge and, as it seemed to her, with anger. In fright and confusion, she lowered her eyes again, and then he grabbed her by the forearm, pulling her upward, lifting her from the bench. He struck her backhand, she clenched her teeth, not uttering a sound. He struck again, throwing her in the middle of the room to the table. Karina seemed to be numb, not resisting. Lis grabbed her and threw her roughly on the trestle bed in the corner of the room.

Approaching her, he began to tear off her clothes. She let him do whatever he wanted. The bells in his ears rang unbearably and out of tune when he, crushing it under him, leaning on top, feverishly fucking her, breathing heavily and hoarsely, all his actions and movements – everything was with force, roughness, with some kind of anguish. He quickly froze on her, the bells fell silent, and she heard his heart pounding wildly in her chest. Karina stretched out her arms and hugged him, hugged him, holding him closer to her, squeezed his head with her palms, turning his face, no longer distorted by malice, towards her. He tried to turn away, looking away. His mouth, painted in red, smiled from ear to ear. He pushed her away, getting up, walking away.

He sat down at the table, she remained lying, there was no strength to get up, there was no strength to say anything. This is just the beginning, she thought. “Forgive me, dad.”

So they sat in silence until dusk thickened over the house and the room became almost dark; Karina dozed off, she saw that Lis was smoking, lighting a cigarette from one another. And he didn’t touch either the wine or the food on the table.