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“Is it easy for you to forget what's on your face?”
They looked at each other. Nikto bowed to him. Almost face to face. Letting him see himself, his scars, his tattoos on the cheeks.
“This is not about me,” finally said Nikto calmly. “But…” he hesitated, “I'm trying. I'm trying, Toby.”
He flinched when Nikto called him by name.
“You need a family,” Nikto pulled away from him, stepping back and letting him get up.
Toby chuckled bitterly, brushing dust and moss off his clothes.
“And where would you advise me to look for a family? Maybe at the market on a market day?” And he laughed sadly.
“If only so. Good luck!” Nikto turned away from him, leaving.
“And… and to you…” Toby, who had become very serious again, barely uttered.
Nikto approached Karina:
“Let's go,” he said simply.
Karina got up.
“You know,” she said a little later, as they left the woodland cemetery and almost reached the Royal Route. “This is some kind of nightmare, Nik! And the feeling that we were like the heroes of some adventure novel never left me all the time. A very bad novel, I would say!”
Chapter four
Encampment
“Let's stop here,” said Nikto, heavily sinking into the grass.
“Yes. Okay,” agreed Karina. She herself liked this cozy forest clearing, surrounded by bushes on all sides. “Here is a small lake, we can wash ourselves.»
“Yes,” Nikto said, and in his voice she felt the fatigue. He sat down on the grass, as usual stretching out his lame leg, and his healthy leg slightly bent at the knee, and, slightly lowering his head, stared blankly in front of him at one point. She saw that he was not at all looking at the clover leaves that grew in abundance there, but was looking at the grass as a background that helped to delve into his thoughts. His eyes were blank, and he stared ahead unseeingly. And Karina, looking at him and remembering what happened to them today, once again thought that his sweet and so soft appearance with delicate neat features, devoid of any brutality and rigidity, didn’t at all fit with his actions, with the way he behaved – tough and fearless.
“How can you be so soft on the outside and so strong on the inside!” She thought. “This body doesn't suit him at all. All the same, the men of the “upper white race” are too cute, however, this is not surprising, because they are absolutely peaceful people, not at all like “black” or “red” ones.”
She said:
“You fought so hard now, one against all! Was it very difficult for you?”
“Yes, this was a fucking disaster,” he said, still looking in front of him, in a voice devoid of any intonations, so simple and everyday.
And Karina froze, stunned by such an unexpected response. With his answers, he periodically confused her, she remembered the first time she came to his chamber, all trembling with excitement, expecting that he would start presenting to her now, well, or utter some kind of condemning speech, and he said something in style of “Ask this old asshole to dilute not with water.” And no pathos, did he take it over from Prince Arel or was it he himself? And now she was expecting from him some obviously different words, something heroic: “I didn’t give a fuck!” or “All this is nonsense, you see! Who are they before me! I would have dealt with them with one left!”. And he sits here, so tortured, tired, and admits that he was in trouble.
“What?” And Karina laughed.
He looked at her in surprise and smiled too.
And without knowing why, she suddenly reached out and stroked his face, on the unscarred cheek, where there was a black tattoo on the cheekbone. She stroked with tenderness, on his blackened cheekbone, on the ornate letters of the unclean, some with “tails” reaching up to the very eye, others, on the contrary, with “tails” downward in an arc descended from the cheekbone to the cheek. Both of his tattoos on his cheekbones were exactly the same and arranged symmetrically, but she didn’t dare to pat him like that gently and on the scarred half of her face, he already raised his eyes at her, full of surprise, and somehow confusedly said:
“Hey, what are you doing?”
Still, she noticed that mischievous sparks flashed in his gaze, and he stopped staring blankly at the clover.
“I'm trying to cheer you up,” she smiled. “Everything will be all right?”
“Yes,” he nodded, “the arm is completely numb.”
Helping himself with his left hand, Nikto pulled off his jacket; everything was soaked in blood through and through.
“You lost a lot of blood. Arel will find a doctor, I think.”
“Not. I will cope myself now,” he reached for the bag, taking out a bottle with “sama”, which Ver brought them to the swamp.
“Will you be able to?” Asked Karina, a little scared.
He didn’t answer, still using his left hand – his right one hung like a whip. He unscrewed the lid and moistened a cloth with the medicine.
“You are good at acting with the left hand, I have noticed,” said Karina, carefully observing his actions.
“They often fastened me on the right arm, so I had to learn,” he said, “don’t worry and… you better not look.”
“I'm afraid.”
“Don't be afraid,” he said, and applied the medicine to the wound.
And as soon as Nikto applied a cloth that was abundantly moistened with “sama” to the forearm hit by the arrow, his face was contorted with pain. He was literally thrown onto his back, but with his healthy left hand he still grabbed his forearm with a dead grip, continuing to press the “medicine” to the wound. His body jerked convulsively, his hand finally unclenched, releasing a flap soaked with “sama” and blood, his face turned deathly white, and his eyes rolled back. He lay there, sweeping his long blond hair across the grass, and didn’t move. Had he lost consciousness? Karina got scared:
“Nik? Nik!” She screamed, frightened.
And he stirred. He breathed hoarsely, slowly and somehow awkwardly raised his hands to his throat; his fingers, finding a wide collar, suddenly to Karina’s horror, began to scratch it, as if in a desperate attempt to take it off. Claws scraped against the metal, he grabbed the edge of the collar at the very throat, thrust his fingers under it, and pulled down. It was useless and pointless, and probably even worse because of that – the way he in a helpless attempt tried to free his throat from the slave collar. How convulsively he twitched, trying to pull off the tightly welded collar, which couldn’t be removed, only sawed, and even then, this would obviously take more than one hour of time. Feeling the sealed seam, Nikto froze, staring with dead empty eyes at the sky. His face was distorted by a grimace of some kind of inhuman suffering and hopeless despair, he continued to languidly scratch the metal of the collar with his fingers, then suddenly opened his mouth and seemed to want to scream, but only a dull wheeze escaped from his throat. He wanted to scream, but he couln’t.
“Gods! He's a human now!” Flashed through Karina's head; The demon has lost control. Karina jumped to her brother, lifting him. He sat up, trembling, his mouth was open, but not a sound left his lips, although Karina was sure that he was screaming, screaming from pain and his unbearable condition. His empty blind eyes looked straight ahead and nowhere. His fingers let go of the collar limply. He grabbed his face with his hands, feeling himself the same way as then in the prison chamber, and these convulsive movements frightened Karina more than the Demon himself. Nikto bent over, as if he was about to vomit, grabbed his nose with his fingers, feeling for the rings, trying to unclench and pull out the apparently hated heavy jewelry. He managed to unbend and pull out only one thinnest ring. Blood flowed from the torn nostril. Karina got scared:
“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:
