Kors “sees” himself from the outside. This is the past, and he is still quite young, here he may be a little over thirty, but how bad he looks! Sunken, cloudy, bruised eyes, a swollen face, hunched shoulders, a bottle is on the table, and already empty ones are lying on the floor. Kors drinks. And by the number of bottles, and his appearance, it is clear that he has been drinking for a long time and a lot. O-o-oh! He forgot this period of his life, erased it from his memory, like a bad dream. In vain he scolded Nik. Judging by the way he looks, his son had someone to inherit his craving for alcohol from. Kors sits at the table and looks gloomily at Kamiel Varakh, who is standing in front of him.

“We need to leave,” Varakh says excitedly, “you are dying here. Enough of this madness. The capital is waiting for you!”

“No,” Kors shakes his head heavily.

“How many letters from our friends have you received?”

“I didn’t count them.”

“And how many letters from the Black City did you just throw away without reading them?!”

Kors doesn’t answer, turns away and reaches for the bottle.

And, seeing this, Kamiel Varakh suddenly rushes to the glazed cabinet, standing at the side wall of the room. With a hand in a leather glove, he hits it, with some desperate anger breaking the glass door with his fist. There is a deafening rattle and ringing, but Kors doesn’t even turn his head. Inside the closet, the orders and medals of Kors gleam on the shelves. They are beautifully laid out on black velvet cushions and coasters. Varakh grabs one of the orders, and, approaching Kors, literally shoves it in his face:

“Look! Was it all in vain?”

Kors indifferently looks at his order “For Courage”, received by him for the liberation of the village of Meadow. He doesn’t care.

“Your military merit gives you… us a chance to prove ourselves in the capital!” Varakh shouts at him. “And your talent to find deserters and traitors to the motherland? How many secret enemies we have neutralized thanks to your instinct! Now what? All down the drain?! You’re pouring everything into an alcohol pit!”

Kors shakes his head sadly.

“Take it away,” he points to the order, “take it away.”

Varakh obeys, and, going up to the cabinet, through the broken glass carefully returns the order to the shelf, lays it on a velvet pillow:

“You must understand, new prospects will open up for you in the city,” he says a little more calmly, “Leonardo has noted your abilities, the way we cleared the liberated territories from traitors. He has personally sent me two letters asking me to influence you and bring you to the city. The safety of the king is above all else, and you have no right to drink away your talent! You must use it for the prosperity of our world! Benefit the state and the king! You took an oath and swore to serve faithfully for the good of the motherland!”

“I don’t have any talent!”

“The king’s security is waiting for us!” And you will be able to figure out unreliable people in his environment.

“No!”

(“Ah, it seems that stupid stubbornness was also transferred to Nik from me,” Kors thinks, watching this scene from the past. “What a fool I was!” Now Kors understands that Varakh was right, but then he didn’t want to listen to him).

“I have to find my child!” Says Kors. “Until I find him, I’m not going anywhere from here.”

“Oh Gods!” Varakh seems to be barely restraining himself from exploding. “How many years have passed! We searched everything, the whole district, every child in Komra was checked a thousand times!”

“I have to find him!”

“Vitor, wake up, it is quite possible that he was not born and died along with Inness, because you can’t be sure that the child was not inside her.”

“No, I can’t,” Kors agrees and sharply raises his dark eyes burning with madness at Varakh, “did I have to cut open her stomach and see?!” He grabs the glass and drinks it in one gulp, returning it to the table with a bang.

(“Yes, you idiot, you should have done it!” Kors mentally shouts to his young self. Now he would have done it, but then… then he was too sentimental and couldn’t desecrate the dead body of his beloved.)

“Vitor, if the child had survived, we would have found him already!” Varakh continues: “All these years we have been searching! It is quite possible that he was not born, what are you looking for?”

“Her belly was smaller…”

“Vitor! Stop it! You just want to believe that your child was born and survived! But think of your daughter, here is your real and living child! She had lost her mother, and now she will lose her father! She needs you!”

Kors is silent.

“Let’s get out of here, let’s go to the city. Vitor, don’t kill yourself with fruitless searches, think about Karina! Do you really want her to live her whole life behind seven locks in the basement?

“I care about her safety!”

“It’s time for her to get some education… after all, she will become a noble lady in the future.”

“I’m teaching her!”

“Martial arts?”

“She must be able to take care of herself!”

“Teaching her to fight with a sword is not exactly what is needed to raise a future woman. In the capital, she can become a friend of the princess, shine at court, find a profitable match! You don’t want a happy future for yourself, but you don’t want one for Karina either! You don’t think about her future, you break her fate! Is this what Inness wanted for your beloved girl? What would Inez say to you?

And Kors shudders.

“What will you say to Inness when you meet in the afterlife? How will you justify your selfishness? How will you explain that you broke the fate of your daughter?! You don’t really love Karina! And you don’t love Inness either! You don’t care about them!”

“I love them. And for them I am ready for anything!”

“Then let’s go to the city!”

Kors sits silently for a while and then finally quietly says:

“My life is broken, and I don’t care about any career, but you’re right, friend, I have to overcome myself, for the sake of Inness and… Karina.”

Varakh freezes in tension, never taking his eyes off his friend.

“Let’s go to the city,” Kors says.

And Varakh, in a happy gesture, folding his palms, raises his hands:

“Thank Gods!”

Dad! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!

Having inadvertently touched and knocked over the bottle, Kors awkwardly gets up from the table, staggers him:

“Let’s get out of here! To hell!”

“I will order the preparations to begin immediately!” Varakh hurriedly adds, as if afraid that Kors will suddenly change his mind.

“Let’s go,” Kors repeats. “The Black City has been waiting for us for a long time!”

Don’t leave…

Don’t leave…

Don’t leave…

Chapter 6

Kors woke from the haze of memories and sat up abruptly on his camp bed. Yes, he left then, succumbing to Varakh’s persuasions, he left for the Black City to start a new page in his life.

He had forgotten the past, and later didn’t match either the place or the time. He hadn’t even bothered to think that the white half-blood from Komra was just about as old as his lost child would have been at the moment. Kors had completely forgotten about everything, and, without looking at the boy, by an evil irony of fate, he identified his son in the trash. He branded him as a slave, dooming him to death, or at best to a humiliating existence as a living thing. And ten years later he made him his lover. Kors put his head in his hands. Varakh knew something, he said: “I didn’t want to upset you even more, you were already crushed by the loss of Inness!” It would be better if you upset me, stupid Varakh! Do you see what your silence has led to?

Dying Kamiel Varah, lying on the bed, looks at Kors from the black wells of sunken eye sockets, he looks, as if already from the other side …