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“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.”
“I'm glad he resisted. It pleases me!”
“Enjoy it!”
“His grave will be beautiful! Do you believe me?!”
“Yes! Cram him into the grave quickly, out of sight. And then howl in sorrow as if for your wife, for the rest of your life! Bury him deeper, no matter that he is still alive!”
“And what is this?” Suddenly Kors asked himself rather quickly, and going up to Nikto, who pressed into the wall, leaned over him and with a sharp movement tore off a thin gold chain with a small ring on it from his neck.
He clenched the ring in his fist:
“Don't you dare desecrate her memory!”
“This is my girlfriend’s ring,” Nikto said defiantly, “why do you care?”
Kors looked at him a little in surprise and grinned:
“To begin with, this ring… however… what a difference now.”
He returned to the table and, opening his palm with a strange expression on his face, looked at a small piece of jewelry.
“Lead him away,” he finally whispered. “Take him away! And… damn you!” He cried when the convoy picked up Nikto from the floor and putting a bag over his head, dragged him out the door.
Chapter five
Afterwards
“Well?!” Karina in joyful excitement ran into the interrogation room. “Did you make sure? I couldn’t wait when you finish…” She looked at her frozen, hunched father, on an overturned chair, blood on the floor, a hill of bracelets of Nikto lying on the edge of the table.
“What did you do with him here?” Her voice became deaf, “Are you out of your mind?”
“Don’t dare,” Kors rose sharply, suddenly shouted at her so that Karina's tears came involuntarily because of this evil shout. But she restrained herself:
“You can… you can, at least explain to me.”
“Nikto is a demon!”
“Nonsense! I don’t believe in demons!”
“And I believe!”
“And you will execute him?”
“Sure! But first, I will avenge him, cruelly I will avenge! I’ll give him a walnut finish, my daughter! I have some thoughts on this subject, I’ll mock him great, be sure!”
“Gods! You already scoffed at him enough! Much more than enough! You didn’t even look at him, without understanding, you sent him to the mines! And if then I talked with him, then I saw him… It is quite possible then he could still be saved and he would not be so spoiled!”
“I don’t have time to meet and interrogate personally everyone!”
“But you regret doing so then? Are you sorry? Well, confess to me! Confess that you could have done differently!”
“I could. But I don’t regret it!”
“You regret!”
“Well, I'm sorry, but I don't care what you think about it. And then it was too late! And now even more so.”
“I don’t think so, he’s not as bad as he seems, he’s better than other people of the prince. Well, of course! How could I have thought that you would accept him! How would you introduce him to all your pompous friends. Tell them that your son is a slave, a rag from the “Lower”, and a half-breed.”
“And a drug addict.”
“Yes!”
“With a redone body, a disfigured face, head to toe covered with tattoos, the prince’s slave wearing his…” Kors froze in mid-sentence.
“Wearing his what?!” Karina didn’t understand.
“His brand. The brand. Clear?”
“Yes! It's so awful! It outweighs everything, and the fact that he is your blood and flesh and that he is your desired son and son of your beloved woman. I wonder if his mother would accept him as anyone? I don’t really know him, but I accept him as my brother, no matter what he is!”
