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The Mist and the Lightning. Part VIII
Ви Корс
The novel's grand comeback. But the guard didn’t finish, blind and weak Nikto at the oblique trajectory cut him from neck to chest. Содержит нецензурную брань.
A little earlier:
“He is alive, sir Kors,” said the overseer, “for three days we kept him in a stone bag and he is alive!”
Kors looked up at him.
“Are you surprised?”
“Allow me to answer?”
“Of course, since I asked you myself!”
“Honestly? Yes, sir, I’m surprised.”
“That means nothing,” Kors smiled slightly at the edges of his lips, “nothing, after a couple of days… He certainly won’t stand it! Without his drugs!”
“Yes, sir, he seems to be unconscious, but breathing, and there is a pulse.”
“It's not for long, it’s just a matter of time. Four days…”
Kors stumbled half a word. As if in horror, someoneknocked on the door.
“Well, who else is there?!”
“Sir Kors! This is Clive Gabriel! Allow to report!” Heliterally burst into the office, without waiting for permission. He was breathing heavily and generally looked out of breath. His eyes seemed to bulge out even harder
“What?!”
“Sir Vitor Kors! I'm just out of court! Karina didn’t confirm that Lis was Sigmer!”
“WHAT?!” Kors looked at Clive as if not understanding his words.
“I ran here to report to you. She said: “No, I don’t know him! Sigmer has long been dead and you're wrong.”
Kors looked with a distant look at the warden who was just reporting to him about Nikto, and whom he listened with such interest only a couple of minutes ago.
“You are free, I will call you later!”
The guard immediately jumped out the door without any questions
“How so?” Kors even somehow bewildered, as if looking for help and support from Clive, looked at him.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, he, too, looked bewildered, and also frightened.
“I needed to go with her,” Kors said, reasoning rather than addressing Clive. “But hell! I have a lot to do here! And this demon is not dying!” He paused and looked at Clive again. “Hey, sit down already… And now what?”
“Now? “ Clive squirmed in his chair. “Lis was released, the case is closed for lack of other witnesses. And evidence.”
“They’re crazy there!” Kors literally yelled, and Clive staggered back startled.
“Dumb warriors! Gods, how stupid they are! They lethim go! And his confession is not enough for them?!”
“But he did not confess, sir. No matter how they beat him, he didn’t confirm anything.”
“They don’t know how! They don’t know how to work! And still try! They didn’t manage to knock it out of him, to press him to sign… Oh Gods! Why didn’t he come to me! Why did these stupid warriors take himfrom me! Well, that’s what they need! And where is henow?”
“I don’t know. He was released from the courtroom.”
“Why didn’t you detain him?!”
“But how? On what basis?”
“Fuck! It was so easy for to invent, he is a man of the prince, which means we have questions for him! Dumbass!”
***
“Karina! Karina, open the door!” Shouted Vitor Kors, having lost all composure, he violently pounded on locked door:
“Karina, open! Open, you the motherfucker! Oh Gods, forgive me, forgive me, Iness, that I involuntarily offended your memory, but this bitch has driven me to frenzy!”
And Kors kicked the door with force.
Clive huddled beside him, in such fury he had never seen his boss before.
With a couple of strokes, Kors kicked the door open and burst into the room. Clive was behind him. Karina’s apartments were empty, only a dress thrown apparently in a hurry lay on the floor. The dress of black velvet in which she performed in court. Kors picked it up:
“I knew it! I knew that this stupid bitch would run away with him!” He yelled again. “Well, we’ll see! I will catch you! I know where you will go…”
“Where?” Literally meowed Clive.
“To the estate of the prince, where else! Now we will go, we will catch up with them, remember the tavern outside the city, in the east?”
“Yes.”
“They will have to stop there. At least in order to water the horses! Check out immediately! I will kill Lis! Gods see, in memory of my Iness, I will kill this son of a bitch!”
“Sir Kors!” They heard shouts, this was the overseer of the root part of the prison tower hurrying to them/ “Sir Kors, finally I found you! We have big problems!”
“What?! Has he died?”
“No! He ran away! He is not in the chamber, and the guard is killed.”
And seeing Kors turning pale right before his eyes, the overseer hastened to add:
“I think he’s still in the tower, it’s not so easy to get out of there, and we raised the alarm…”
Kors looked at Clive, then at the overseer, he clearly didn’t know where to run, where to rush.
“Clive! Go for Lis and Karina! Kill Lis, bring Karinaback! Do you understand? Why are you looking at me like that? Show me what you are capable of!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Act!”
“And I’ll deal with this damn demon, he can’t go far. Did you block all the exits?”
“Yes, sir, all exits are blocked!”
“Follow me!”
Chapter one
What really happened
Karina felt complete devastation and fatigue, it would seem that she should have been happy, because she had done good, and Lis would not be hanged. The crowd in the marketplace will not mock him, and the platform will remain in the full possession of the dancer Norta. But Karina was not at ease, probably she was afraid of her father. Of his reactions. And this fear poisoned and overshadowed all other feelings. It froze everything, leaving only emptiness. She just didn’t know what to do! And what she had already done, was that right? Her head was full of confusion, and she really needed to talk with someone, talk about everything and hear some kind of unbiased opinion in response. Maybe hear some practical advice. How to look in the eyes of her father now. What to tell him?
“I need to talk to Nikto! He reasons wisely and he will help me to gather my spirit before meeting with my father! He’ll tell me how to behave!”
Nikto has some kind of wholeness that she so lacks. And yet, there is an inner calm in him, which she too is very lacking now!
He told her to stay away from him and not come again, but in this situation it doesn’t matter. No!
And, quickly changing clothes and grabbing her bag, with which she usually went to Nikto (it contained all the passes, medicines and a “stone flower” in a special glass case, it didn’t need light, but lit everything around no worse than a candle), Karina rushed along the usual path into the depths of the prison tower.
The guard near hs chamber, not at all surprised, already as usual, without question, let her in.
And trembling with excitement, Karina ran to Nikto:
“Nik! Nik! Are you sleeping?”
Nikto didn’t answered her. He lay on his side, not moving, holding one arm under him, the other was twisted up, fastened by the handcuffs to a ring in the wall.
“Nik?” She called him again, already scared. He didn’t seem to sleep, and there seemed to be something very wrong with him. “Oh Gods!”
Nikto really looked like a corpse now. Not a spot on his pale face, cheekbones very clearly defined, facial features sharpened unhealthy. And the complete absence of at least some reaction to her words…
She tried to moisten his forehead with a damp rag, constantly repeating his name, interspersed with affectionate words, and to her joy he stirred, opened his eyes, but his gaze didn’t express anything.
“Nik! Wake up, please! I beg you! I need you!” Unable to see him in such a deplorable state, so exhausted, Karina burst into tears. She began to lift him, because his unhealthy twisted arm scared her. He sat very slowly, still without making a sound. Karina brought a cup of water to his lips:
“Here it is, drink, you need a drink. What should I inject you? Gods! If you need “black water,” she stopped short, because with these words Nikto flinched and recoiled from her, clinging to the wall. Karina didn’t understand him, she continued:
“If you can't do without it… I will try to get it somehow, steal it from my father’s safe in which he stores material evidence. I think it should be there… Or… I don’t know… I will go to the castle, to Arel, and there I will turn everything upside down and find it. I have nothing to lose! You just tell me where to look?”
Nikto seemed to hear her, he somehow strange, frantically ran his hands over his face, over his eyes, over his scar, lips with rings. And his face twisted in such despair, in such anguish that Karina instantly forgot all her problems and questions.
“Gods! What's the matter? Answer me something?! Don’t act as if you are out of your mind!”
Nikto touched his hair, ran his palm along the entire length of his face, it felt as if he were feeling himself, while his eyes looked into the wall behind Karina’s back, past her, and she realized that he couldn’t see anything.
“Are you okay?! Oh please! Stop it! Gods! He moved off his mind! What to do now?”
Nikto turned his head slightly, as if guided by the sound of her voice, and shook his head in a negative gesture, this made her unspeakably happy, since it meant he still heard and understood her.
The chain clanged, Nikto ran his hand along the rough wall, then with his free hand down, he felt the floor slabs and straw as if he didn’t understand where he was and what was surrounding him.
“Nik! Can you hear me? Tell me something! You scare me very much!”
Nikto froze, and slightly bending his head, slowly ran his fingers over his dry cracked lips, as if crossing them crosswise.
“What does it mean? I don’t understand you! Can’t you talk? You have a dumb attack, that’s why you are called “dumb” in Lower? Not only blindness, but also dumbness happen to you? Fuck!” She remembered how the doctor said something about his cropped vocal cords, she then missed it by her ears. Apparently a stone bag, and the non-regular intake of “restoratives” perceptibly violated something in his body.
“I understand that you have not yet returned to normal, you cannot see and speak. I have understood. Now I'll inject you something, just… Wait!” Karina feverishly began to delve into her purse:
“Here! Hold on!” She put a small little book for notes and a pencil in Nikto’s hand:
“Write me as you can. I will understand what to inject!”
Nikto took a pencil and slowly scratched something on the sheet, his fingers didn’t obey him. Karina literally grabbed the notebook from his hands, but instead of the name of the drug and the proportions, it was written on the sheet:
“What is today’s date?”
Karina sat and stupidly looked at these curve uncertain words. Then she looked up and said:
“Three and a half days, if I'm not mistaken, you spent in a stone bag. My father told me so.”
Nikto shook his head, and held out his hand, she immediately returned the notebook to him. He wrote only one word: “Date.”
And stunned, Karina, called him that day’s date and year.
“By the way,” she said, “to believe my father, today is your birthday,” she tried to smile, forgetting that Nikto couldn’t see her smile anyway, and barely said, “congratulations,” and the words got stuck in her throat.
Nikto leaned back against the wall and bowed his head. He didn’t move. She, too, was silent, not knowing now what to say, waiting for Nikto to come to his senses and give her a sign. But he seemed to become numb. So minute passed by minute, and nothing happened. They sat together in a dark and moldy prison casemate, and a stone flower, unlike a candle, could dispel the darkness all around forever. Nikto was cringed, cowering in the corner, and Karina sat next to him, just opposite, on a low bench.
“Nik?” She finally called, unable to waste any more time in vain, her father had probably already been informed of her act in court, and he would soon begin to look for her. Of course, looking for her here would never come into his head, or it would come last, but still…
“Nik?”
He raised his head. And to her disappointment, Karina saw that nothing had changed. His gaze was still frighteningly empty. Only… or it seemed to her in the obscure flickering light of a flower, his eyes shone strangely somehow, and his cheeks were wet.
And Karina couldn’t stand it, she rushed to him, hugging him:
“Dear, darling, don’t do that… Gods, I can’t bear it! Why is my father so cruel to you?! Why does he think you’re a demon?! He should have seen you now! It is unbearable! It is inhumane to make you suffer because of idle gossip and speculation!”
Nikto didn’t pull away from her embrace, and she put the pencil in his hands again:
