“Shut up! Shut your crooked mouth! She is just a slave, my fleeting whim, and if she didn’t understand it from the very beginning, this is her problem!”
“No, she understood everything, and didn’t pretend to be anything! Just this man reassured her. By the way, have you ever seen Arel having fun with his slaves? He kills them so slowly. Hours pass in agony. It may pass all night. Before…”
“Will you shut up?!”
“Here you will begin to grab at any straw. And of course you will believe, if someone promises you…”
“Shut up!”
“And quit you.” “Shut up.”
“To the mercy of fate.” “Shut! Up!”
“Betray you.”
“You're just a dream. My wacky nightmare! And I don’t care what you mean, Nikto. I'm sick of listening to you! You delivered her from a painful death, what a benefactor! Maybe it was easier not to choose her that day?”
“Maybe,” Nikto agreed. “But you made your choice, and I made mine. The first move was yours, first you. Then I.”
“You mean if I chose another…”
“I just fulfilled her last request. She wanted to see you again, nothing more,” and Nikto limped toward the door.
He opened it without any difficulties. And Lis nearly howled with rage. However, in a dream, locks really rarely save from uninvited guests.
“He walks around my room, touches my things, considers everything here!” Lis in indignation went to the table to hide his book.
Involuntarily he leaned over the open page:
“For, with hasty steps, at dawn someone is approaching me, someone who takes possession of me and cuts me down with a sword piercing me, and knocks me in order to bring me into harmony. And by the power of his hands holding a sword, he separates the skin from my head, and he connects the bones with pieces of meat, and all together, according to his plan, burns on fire until I feel how my body is transformed and becomes a spirit. And this is my unbearable torment.”
Lis sharply raised his head, suddenly realizing that he had read out, completely forgot about Shela. And in vain. Standing on the bed on all fours, Shela was preparing to jump.
And Lis screamed. Loudly, desperately, to finally wake up.
Chapter two
Lis reflexes
Lis looked in disgust at his reflection in the mirror. Black hair dye almost washed off, the color faded. Now he was neither red, nor black. Some dirty gray hair, not dark copper as originally, and not coal black as intended. Before, the color of his hair was often compared to fire. Women flatteringly told him this when he bent over them. They said that his face seemed to be framed by flames. And now the fire has gone out. Only gray ash remained. Not live hair. And Lis, with disgust, stroked them back, removing them from his face. He reached for his hairpin. The fluffy bright fox tail, habitually, gently caressing, lay down in the palm of his hand, but Lis immediately sadly laid it aside. His
favorite hairpin would have looked ridiculous on this dull hair. It used to be that his own tail argued with a fluffy decoration and clearly won, but now…
And Lis involuntarily caught himself thinking that now, as never before, he understands Squint-Eye. Squint-Eye, whom he always despised and humiliated. He called him a weakling, and considered a rag. Now he guessed the motives that moved Squint-Eye. Now these motives sounded in his soul. Now he barely restrained himself, so as not to grab the knife, and not cut to hell all his hair. Cut off this sign of the lord and the chosen warrior, and so on and so forth. A sign that has become so pathetic. And if he had been drugged, like Bert at that moment, oh!
Lis really wanted to inject something into himself now. But he endured because he was afraid of new trips. Even more terrible nightmares. He felt tired, awake, old and broken. Old wounds ached and reminded about themselves regularly. His body began to lose ground. He understood that. But he couldn’t fix anything.
And the face… it began to peel off because of this damn dye. Just like Arel’s. But Arel didn’t suffer too much from this, or it seemed that he didn’t suffer. It seemed to him that he really didn’t give a damn that people shied away from him in different directions. They look at them secretly, fearing a direct look. However, for Lis it is also all the same! Have they had enough of staring at him?!
“But why?! Why I was born this way?” asked himself a question stupid
Lis, not understanding how beautiful he really was. His mother was embarrassed of him, and Karina…
The sky is blue, there’s not a cloud, as if they are in the “Upper world”. Two captives are fighting in the arena below. Two blacks. They are just entertainment, meat, and Sigmer looks not at the battle of the “doomed to death”, but at her. At Karina. His Karina. He watches how intensely and concentratedly she watches the actions of her compatriots exposed for fun. As if she herself were fighting down there. She flinches at every attack, at each dangerous moment she moves forward, clutching her fingers in the parapet. He wonders, which one of them she supports. Sigmer is annoyed by it. But she does not notice that he is looking at her carefully. she is all down there, in dust and blood. He wants her to be distracted, to notice him, to look at him. Empty hopes.
A satin red ribbon is tied around her neck, hiding bruises from a completely different “jewelry” – an iron collar. It was removed recently. And there are traces of his teeth there.
And Sigmer catches himself thinking that he wants to do this with her again. Make pain so that she glances, remembers him.
“Gladiators inevitably,” they fight really brilliantly. Neither one nor the other wants to give up. “As for the last time” is ridiculous, because it is so. The battle drags on, two desperate people are already just rolling
in the dust of the arena, violently clinging to each other. “Blacks…” The instinct of self-preservation doesn’t allow them to give up. They are warriors.
“Have mercy on them!” She finally turns to him, with a plea in her eyes and voice. “Send them to hard labor camp, but don’t force one of them to kill the other. They fought honestly, and are equal in strength!”
What is she hoping for? That in the prisoner camp they will wait for release. That “their people” will come to save them. There can be no more stupidity! “Blacks” will never recapture lost positions. And those who were captured are doomed. What's the difference? Die now, or slowly and painfully rot in hard labor.
He signs, and both captives leave the arena alive. In a burst of gratitude, she snuggles up to him, hugging:
“Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!”
He stands, barely holding back such a stupid and inappropriate victorious grin now, with outward indifference accepting her grateful tenderness. And when she easily blows in his ear, dodges with made discontent: