Ви Корс - The Mist and the Lightning. Part 18

“Now I understand this and admit my mistake, but in fact I am not as noble as you think due to your inexperience. I am not as pure-blooded as Prince Arel, Prince Ariel or Salafael. There is no royal blood in my veins. Yes, I am from the race of masters, from a good decent family, but my ancestors did not observe purity so much: sometimes there was a misalliance. Of course, I am not a peasant or a commoner. But in many ways, I built my career myself. Thanks to my intelligence and hard work, I reached the top and approached the true blacks, became one of them and entered their Supreme Order.”

Nik listened intently.

“And more, more, Nick, I was young and madly in love!”

Kors fell silent, lost in thought and lost in memories.

“What would you do when you saw that your son had blond hair?” Asked Nik, tearing him out of the past. “When you saw that he was such an obvious half-blood? You would get rid of him, right? You planned to let live only dark-haired children? People like Karina? Yes?”

“Yes,” Kors replied barely audibly. “Maybe I would leave a blonde girl…”

“And the boy?”

“No. No, I’m sorry. I’m telling you honestly.”

“So this is how you were going to solve this problem. And how would you explain this to your beloved Iness?”

“Small children often die…”

“It turns out that your son was lucky that the Reds stole Iness: they themselves, unwillingly, saved his life.”

“Nik…”

“You were looking for your child, you suffered, and if you found and saw that he was light-haired, you yourself would get rid of him! Great!”

“Please don’t…”

“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.