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Alone with Lis. She looked into his eyes and didn't recognize him, it's a different glance, completely different. A glance of a very mature person, of an old man. He really did get old, or maybe it's that dye made him look older, and the black hair. What does his face look like without this dye, are his cheeks and nose still covered in freckles, or maybe they're gone, just like the light from his eyes. So silly… And he was almost a king, a king of the "reds" in this world. But he lost everything. Became a slave. Because of her.
"Why didn't you tell them yourself?" – she finally asked the question that was taunting her all this time. Why didn't he tell Orel, why did he keep quiet, covering for her. And if she hasn't told them, would he just keep quiet?
"I was waiting for you to do it".
"And you weren't even scared".
"No. This doesn't change anything. You saw how Arel took it".
"I did".
She looked at him, right into his yellow, slightly slanting eyes, eyes so different from those of the "blacks", the strange eyes of another world's dweller. "I couldn't do it differently back then…"
He just grinned, opening his jacket and exposing his chest: "You see, not even a scar left. You might have known and even killed some 'red' half-blood Sigmer. But Atley Alis has never met you before."
"That's true. You know, when I first saw you… I didn't recognize you! You have really changed," – she paused, – "Changed a lot. Why are you with them? Grey and black just like them!"
"A slave to Arel".
"Why?!"
Lis shrugged: "That was his condition, and I didn't have a choice back then".
"Arel is insane, totally insane, actually. For real. This honesty of his… He's not even afraid to be weak."
"He's only honest with those he considers close, and he isn't afraid to appear weak, because he is very strong".
"And you?"
"I'm not like that. Once in a lifetime I also wasn't afraid to be weak, dared to open up, exposed myself, my heart…and got a knife in it. No nobody else will ever be able to get so deep inside of me. To know my weaknesses, to know me. You think that I'm crushed, that I'm lonely, but no, not at all. There's no one in this world, whom I would want to enter my heart again, open all my doors towards. I love Arel a lot, but that's different. We don't need this all-consuming closeness. For him, wherever I let him – it's enough. Generally, Arel never pries, it's very easy with him in this sense. And you can't defeat him like me. You are walking around so pleased, thinking you've got him in your staunch paws, but you are mistaken. You succeeded with me, and you would with anybody else, but not with Arel. Me, I'm a regular guy, with a regular way of thinking, and my feelings are pretty primal, as well. I'm just a bit more attentive than others, a bit more hardworking, not as lazy as most people. And you are also regular, you may not flatter yourself. That's why it all worked with me. But Arel is different, you could never understand him, and so you could never defeat him. His heart will forever be unavailable for you; you don't have the key. You may be grinning inside right now, thinking 'how come not, but he's with me', but soon you will realize you were mistaken. I was mistaken the exact same way. I also used to think that Arel was with me. Everybody think Arel is with them. And he is with everybody, and with nobody. All this time you were staring at me like this, you think I'm miserable, but you don't get it, I like it here, I'm good. I'm among my own kind. And you, you are all alone, just like before, not a single loving soul by your side…”
“I truly am sorry…”
“What is it that you want? You came to finish whatever you couldn’t do back then? Why didn’t you tell them that you hand shook and your blow wasn’t exactly to the heart? I know, don’t answer that, you didn’t tell them because you were afraid, afraid to appear weak. Because they might have thought that you too, fell in love with him, with your enemy.
“Tell them”.
“Why should I, I don’t need it all the more. I don’t care! It would be better if everything happened just like you said. And would be better if I died back then!”
“I caused you pain…”
“None of this matters.”
“Why did you stay in the castle, if you think that I came for you?”
“I have nowhere else to run, I told you, here is my real home, my family, which I didn’t have otherwise. Not with my mother, not with my father, not with you…”
“Don’t say that!”
“I’ve been through a lot, and I’ve had everything, even love”.
“No!”
“I will go to a slaughter like a ship”.
“Stop it!”
“Go to sleep in peace, Carina, I won’t escape from you”.
“Lis…”
“Go away already! Don’t you see that everything has finished a long time ago? I don’t give a damn what you do. With Arel or with anybody else. As far as I’m concerned, you can fuck all of them, if Arel will share you around, just like his other girls! I will fuck you like the rest. I warned you!”
Carina’s face changed, they really had nothing to talk about anymore, he became as damaged as everybody else in this god damned castle, he is right, there’s nothing left in him from the great Sigmer, he really was a different person. Arel’s person. Arel’s slave. She got up: “Good night!”
Why do her legs feel like wood?
When her footsteps died down upstairs, Lis kept sitting without moving for a while, staring on the flames in the fireplace. Then he suddenly fell upon the furs, tucking his face in the pelage. And just lay like this, face down, on the old furs, alone in a huge empty hall, and the glare of the fire have tried unsuccessfully to dye his hair red.
Chapter Two.
Who is he?
“What else did you realize for yourself?” – Lis asked. “Tell me”.
“What’s in it for you? It’s all just small talk” – Orel said, lighting a cigarette.
“You think outside the box, and I’m curious”.
Orel laughed: “Is this a complement? Did you just praise a ‘silly pretty prince’?”
“Think whatever you want! I’ve always considered you rather sharp, just somewhat crass. As for your smarts, you have to agree, Arel, you never even really learned how to read, or wright, or count. You’re not silly, of course, but you are uneducated and illiterate”.
“I know all that stuff” – Orel shook his hair.
“You’re a child! It’s ridicules! You are almost thirty years old! Even if a miracle occurs, and you die a natural death, in your own bed, even though it’s unlikely, even in the very best case it will happen within fifteen years tops! And the “blacks” usually live till hundred years easily! You understand that?”
“Yes”.
“Did you already catch the liver infection?”
“Yes…”
“What were you thinking?! Are you still going to claim you’re not stupid?”
Orel was silent.
“How much time did you spend in prison?”
“Two”.
“Two and a half, to be accurate. Best years of your youth! Only fools, like you and Squint-Eye, serve time in prison! Or even get there!”
Once again, Orel didn’t answer.
“Do you know why I like you, Arel? You never make excuses, you take all my mockery quietly. And I mock you in a mean way, it hurts me that such an interesting thoughts come into your head instead of mine. Even though I am the one who always kept searching for the answers, and still do”.
“But I told you, you were the one who gave me the basic idea. You were the one who said, ‘He is a nobody. He actually doesn’t exist! And you get from him whatever you bring in”.
“Well, you’re basically right, I said something like this, but I wasn’t the one who gave it the final shape, it was you”.
“You suppose my theory is final? It’s only one of the ideas”.
“There’s more?!”
“Yes.”
“?!”
“There is the feedback. The feedback we get from him”.
“Your slave girl? Shela, whom he supposedly killed to get back at me. I got you”.
“The black-braided. Yes, it’s possible. Shit, why do I keep forgetting her name!”
“Never mind. You also got something? You love him, after all!”
“I got some. Big time! I got no less than Enriki, and definitely no less than you! I’m almost ruined!”
“But what for? And wait, what does Rik have to do with it?”
“Squint-Eye and Enriki, the two miserable ones, they really do resemble each other. Only Squint-Eye doesn’t deny his own nature, and Enriki would give up his hands, just not to touch the abomination that lives inside him. Eventually, it all ended up the same for both of them, they have both punished themselves. Only one of them cuts his own veins and mutilates himself almost consciously. And the other doesn’t. I had beaten Nikto for that, I was sure it was him…” – and, upon seeing the misunderstanding in Lis’s eyes, Orel shook his head violently.
“Try to understand! I’m trying to convey this to you now the best I can”.
“I’m trying,” – Lis nodded, extinguishing his finished cigarette, but only after lighting a new one from it, that was probably the fifth time he did it: “Let’s go through this. Why did you decide all Enriki’s troubles were Nikto’s fault?”
“If we go through this, first I’ve realized he was punishing me, or at least that’s what I thought. I’m going to tell you first now, I never told this to anybody. He has actually knocked my eye out”.
“What?!”
“Yep. He’s knocked out my eye back then. I have a crooked eye. I was the first one to catch it in the head, even before Enriki, and that’s despite all my love towards him. Well, you received a warning in a shape of a killed slave, and I felt it all on my own flesh. By the way, Lis, it’s all about the womans with you, I wonder why? There, now Carina is torturing you”.
“Don’t get destructed, keep talking”.
“He knocked my eye out, irretrievably, intentionally or not – I don’t know. I recalled all our conversations, looking for a reason, why would he treat me this way. And I remembered how I reproached him for changing his eyes. He adjusted them for the ‘unclean’ and almost turned blind. Or at least that’s what I thought back then. I used to say: ’What an idiot you must be to change your own eyes! Not to see anything during the day! The world in all its’ splendor!’ I was probably wrong, after all, I have no idea how he really sees everything, maybe it’s not all grey and white, maybe it’s not that bad. He told me the world wasn’t any worse at night. I didn’t believe him. And now I know it’s
actually true. Because he has planted an eye of the “unclean” in me, and I see in the dark with it”.
“Are you kidding me right now?! Please tell me it was just a joke!”
“No. What jokes, the jokes ended long time ago. I’m telling you, he altered me! I have his black tattoos on my arms and legs, and his jewelry in my ears and on my chest!”
“And what about Enriki?” – Lis said hardly, slowly.
“Enriki, Enriki always smack-talked and despised him, once he was braze enough to drop that it’s better not to have fingers at all, than such an embarrassing hands like Nikto’s. And then it dawned to me. I’ve decided that it was Nik punishing him for these words, letting him feel what it’s like to have no fingers. But Nikto tells me it was not his fault, on the contrary, he was trying to help Enriki however he could. He employed all his knowledge, everything the witch and his sister taught him about doctoring. And they are both great healers. And it was just the same with me. After all, my eye was impossible to return, and he didn’t want to leave me mutilated”.
“Whatever he says, you don’t even have to tell me! So at first, he punished and mutilated you. And then graciously helped you, but altered everything his way”.
“That’s what I thought, but he denies it. He says he has nothing to do with it, that we are punishing ourselves. Just like Squint-Eye, when he cuts his veins. That’s what I told you about in the beginning. By the way, to Squint- Eye he didn’t do anything. Because he does everything by himself”.
“And Tol”.
“Well, Tol isn’t even a person, just instincts, without thinking”.
“And that’s what saves him” – Lis said. – “And me?”
“You? You are staring at Carina every day, remembering how you used to love her and how you got a knife in your heart from her!”
“I wanted to it. I wanted to do it to Nikto. Stick a knife in his heart while he was in coma”.
“I know”.
“You know?! And you keep quiet about it? You didn’t raise stink, didn’t even talk to me!”
Orel shrugged: “What’s the point now. I wanted to, at first, but Nik talked me out of it, he said it wasn’t so simple to eliminate him. Of course I was enraged, and now I’m more worried about you, you’re acting silly and walking on the edge”.
“Carina is here to finish me off. Where did she come from?! And him! Where did he come from on our heads! Who he even is?!”
"What difference does it make?! Who he is, what he is. Remember, you said once, in the beginning, that we jumped into the abyss, and now it's too late, no going back. It's impossible."
"Oh yeah…"
"You know what's the funniest part, though?"
Lis lifted his head and looked at Orel, waiting.
"It fits him all, all the theories, all the ideas. From the most complicated one to the dumbest. Anything you can think of, it's possible. He could summon the demon himself, just like Squint-Eye said, and pay for it. Or maybe he's not paying for his deed at all. Serving his master loyally, by mutual agreement, and everything goes as it should. Why have we decided the demon was torturing him so much? And what if he actually protects him and gives him unlimited powers? Huh?
And maybe it's not like that, and the witch turned him over to serve the demon, his own will had nothing to do with it. He was just a victim. A body they didn't even bother to give a human name to. That's also possible, and then Enriki isn't so wrong.
And my theory also fits. He is reflecting our wishes and ambitions, and giving back to us. And look, he totally could hurt us, punish us for treating him badly, or simply for our wicked deeds".
"He could".
"And it's also possible that he didn't do it, we could just get into a scrape on our own. Me, for example, I got smacked in the eye with my own ring, for my own lust!"
"So we still don't know anything about him!"
