The Mist and the Lightning. Part 18

“Or would you sell him into slavery? Why kill him if a white child is worth good money?”

“Well, why are saying this!”

Nik, slightly raising his head, quickly looked up: the day ceased to be cloudless, and the sky was increasingly covered with gray clouds:

“It looks like it’s going to rain,” and he put his black glasses into his belt bag, not putting it on as usual.

Kors looked at him, still a little sleepy and rumpled, looked at his face, realizing that no matter how hard Nik tried to pretend to be indifferent, inside behind this inept mask he was upset and depressed.

Guided only by his passions, Kors, without hesitation, transgressed the laws and regulations, having entered into a relationship with a woman of another race, thereby dooming his descendants to life-long torment to be half-breeds, second-class people. And no matter what Nik did, he remained a mud for the blacks from birth to death. Yes, the soul of Kors belonged to the Demon, and he was completely devoted to him, but the human body of the Demon was the body of his son and belonged to Kors: the Demon had nowhere to escape from him, and he couldn’t do anything about it.”

And Kors involuntarily smiled: he understood that it was ugly in relation to Nik and unpleasant for him, but now Kors no longer regretted what he had done, he was satisfied with this alignment.

“Put on your glasses!” He ordered, just to demonstrate his power over his son. And, since it seemed to him that Nik was hesitating, he added sharply:

“Do you hear badly what I said?”

Nik silently took out his glasses and put them on. Kors was pleased, his mood improved a little:

“Tell me, Mara, this witch – did she pay them a lot for you?”

“Enough,” Nik said barely.

Kors felt sorry for him: “What am I doing? Why am I humiliating him?!”

“Forgive me,” he said hastily, “forgive me…”

“Why are you asking for forgiveness from me, it makes no difference to me,” and Nik, covering his face with a mask, turned away and walked away.

Kors saw Nik walk up to his Unclean Power and, inserting his healthy leg into the stirrup, confidently jumped into the saddle. Kors turned away in frustration. With annoyance, he looked at Adrian – he also looked at him, looked with his narrow, deep-set eyes, surrounded by black stripes of indelible arrows, looking at his master, as it seemed to Kors, even somehow too impudent. And now Kors didn’t feel, as usual, his inner suffering. He didn’t like it at all.

“I could kill you with one blow,” said Kors. He stroked his iron stick hanging from his belt, and Adrian noticed the gesture, the way he gently stroked it.

And now Kors listened with pleasure to his emotions:

“Coward,” he chuckled. “I’m not going to kill you, because then you’ll go to a feast for your gods. No, no, you will suffer here much more, Adri…”

Adrian dropped his eyes.

“Useless stupid creature,” Kors hissed with anger and disappointment, and spat in his face.

Chapter 4

The unclean ones drove slowly behind the main army of blacks: they were clearly in no hurry and often stayed at a halt all night and all the next day, lagging behind the people more and more. The warriors of Zagpeace and Tol have gone far ahead. Kors was not upset. He wanted to be with Nik and didn’t want to return to the Black City, he was afraid of this and was also playing for time. It was better that way – to stay with Nik as long as possible, until business in the capital didn’t twist them into a deadly whirlpool. Therefore, Kors was ready to go on this road endlessly.

This time they stood near a small picturesque lake for two days, and although Kors really didn’t want this, he still had to let Nik go play cards with his unclean ones. Kors and Arel remained in their tent, Valentine brought them dinner, and then removed the dishes and folded up a small camp table and chairs so that there was more space inside and the sirs could lie on the skins.

“Valentine, burn some more of this resin against insects,” said Kors. “I am annoyed by its smell, but the mosquitoes infuriate me even more!”

“Yes, sir,” Valentine immediately responded and put a tightly pressed piece of coal on a small censer in the corner.

With the help of a thin candle, he set it on fire: the coal began to smoke, covering a small area of the tent with thick gray smoke. Valentine, lifting the bottom of his helmet as far as possible, began to gently blow on the flat piece until it stopped smoking, red-hot. Then Valentine put small balls of tree resin on top of it. Softening on a hot coal, the resin spread a rather specific aroma over the tent, to which one had to get used to; but this pungent smell was good at repelling insects.

“I all like the southern lands,” said Kors, “except for the abundance of all kinds of flying and crawling evil spirits. I hate insects, as well as spiders and snakes!

“Yes,” Arel agreed with him and slapped himself on the leg, trying to kill an impressive, but already sluggish from the smoke and smell of tar, mosquito.

Kors looked skeptically at Valentine, who easily straightened and wiped the jar with a stone flower hanging from the ceiling with a rag.

“Arel, why did your slave become so tall? Is he almost as tall as you? I don’t understand something?” Kors asked, watching the lanky Valentine closely.

Arel didn’t answer.

“Or am I not aware of something?” Kors looked at him with his professional gaze, which had always instilled fear in those poor fellows, who, unfortunately, found themselves in his office. “And he continues to grow. Arel, he will soon catch up with you and overtake you. Look at his legs! How long his shins are! He will be very high, I understand this. Where did you get him from?”

“This is a slave from my Estate,” Arel answered clearly reluctantly, but nevertheless he answered.

“Take off his helmet. I want to look at his face. You hide his face carefully all the time. Take off his mask.”

Valentine was very frightened and involuntarily froze, squeezing into the wall away from them. He didn’t want the sirs to look at him at all, since he was not at all stupid, despite the difficult living conditions and the mental disorders associated with them. Valentine nevertheless perfectly remembered Arel’s questions about sir Chester: he was smart enough to understand at that moment that he was sir Chester’s illegitimate child from a little slave; a bastard who wasn’t killed just because sir Chester had died earlier. And his owner Arel was his half-brother.

Valentine also realized that their father was very cruel, not only with the slaves, but also with his legitimate son. Therefore, Arel with all his soul hated his father and never pronounced his name, always calling him only “damned”. And Valentine, as luck would have it, grew up and matured in the Limit, and if now his helmet is removed… What if during this time, he became even more like the damned? And seeing the traits he hates… Arel would simply kill him!

Valentine began to shake with a small shiver: he was terrified of Arel, and this uncontrollable reaction always started when the prince paid a little closer attention to the boy. Yes, Valentine suffered from the heat in a slave helmet, but at least he was composed.

“Why have I grown and changed so much?! What for?!”

“No, I won’t take off his helmet,” Arel said.

“Valentine is Chester’s bastard? Yes?” Kors asked. “Arel, do you want to deceive me? Have you forgotten who I am? I don’t even need his face, I see his physique, and this is not the body of a peasant and a commoner. Was your father having fun with the pretty slave girls from the Estate?”

“Yes,” Arel replied reluctantly, realizing that it would hardly be possible to hide this fact from the former head of the security service, “and this girl was a little over ten.”

“Sorry,” Kors nodded knowingly. “Your father was very unrestrained. I will say more: Chester was just a pompous turkey, confident that only he was always right and only his opinion and point of view were the only true ones. He managed to quarrel with everyone! Even with Leonardo, who was initially very loyal and sympathetic to him. Yes, your father was a rare kind of shit…”

“I killed him,” Arel said calmly.

At these words, Valentine froze and shrank even tighter.

“Yes, now the owner will kill me too. Exactly.”

“You killed him?” Kors was surprised. “After all, it was an accident, a fatal coincidence: Chester burned down in a fire in your ancestral chapel, when he offered prayers to the Gods.”

“It was already afterwards,” said Arel, “first I killed him, and then he burned down in the chapel, because I set it on fire.”

“But! Arel! How did you deal with him? After all, you were at that time… mmm… no more than sixteen years old, and he was such a healthy and tall, experienced warrior.”

“He was on his knees and prayed, kept whining and complaining to the Gods about injustice and his unhappy fate, as usual. I just quietly approached from behind and cut his throat, then stuck a knife in his back, up to the handle, and then again and again… He didn’t expect this: he wheezed, grabbed his neck with his hands, tried to stop the blood. He considered me a weakling and didn’t take me into account,” Arel smiled bitterly. “He didn’t have time to do anything. And I hit him from the back. It wasn’t fair.”