Ви Корс - The Mist and the Lightning. Part VII

“And I can’t watch you jerk, can I give you a cigarette? Give him a cigarette.”

“Thanks.”

“Smoke already…”

Chapter four

Vitor Kors and Nikto (continued)

Balthazar Nate, an old prison doctor, was skeptical about Nikto sitting in front of him in a chair.

“Nah,” he said thoughtfully, “young man, don’t stoop so, sit upright, straighten your shoulders.”

“I think he's having withdrawal already,” Kors said a little nervously.

“Yeah… Where do you find them,” the doctor shook his head, “after all, how many times I have seen them, and every time I never cease to be surprised!”

Once again, Nikto raised his handcuffed wrists and scratched his nose.

“Extend your hands to the doctor, he will give you an injection now,” ordered Vitor Kors, and Nikto dutifully extended his arms forward.

Balthazar rolled up his jacket sleeve and, bumping into a shell of steel bracelets, rolled his eyes:

“Here it starts! Hey!” He called one of the guards. “Open these bracelets to me here and here.”

“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.”