“It's just…” Karina looked upset. “He somehow toughly talks with him, and not about that… and Lis, I felt he was unpleasant from this …”
“Yes? Unpleasant? Why didn't he send him to hell, how he sent us here a hundred times a day?”
And Karina looked at her father very condemningly.
Igmer walked over to the table and sat down at it, gesturing to the chair opposite:
“Sit down.”
Lis came up and sat down, his father continued to examine him closely, and Lis looked away.
“You have changed, you have become different,” Igmer repeated again, “outwardly it seems that you have remained the same, but something in you has changed, changed a lot, and I cannot understand what!”
He again looked closely at frozen Lis, held out his hand, turning his hand towards him, looking at the inscription “Impudence”. Reds were calm about body modifications, and for warriors it was often mandatory: scarring, tattoos and piercings were not considered a sin and an unnatural distortion of the divine image of the ancestors, desecration of the body, created by the gods in their own image and likeness.
“You had scars on your face, now they are gone. Where are your battle scars? Did they disappear after thirty too?”
“No.”
“Did you remove them? Are black healers so advanced in medicine?”
“Yes, I got rid of the scars on my face.”
“Why so? Didn't you have the audacity to wear them with pride?” Igmer grinned.
And Lis said nothing.
“Okay. Congratulations. You took over the Ore town thanks to Kudmer’s stupidity. You are lucky. This fat fool was never clever, but this time his head just went blank, he kept repeating: “We will meet them behind the wall. We will meet them behind the wall”, as if a demon had possessed him, he behaved like a possessed person. However, it doesn't matter anymore. Tell me what do you intend to do next?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Lis.
His father looked at him very closely.
“You know. But you don't want to tell me. I'm not your enemy.”
Lis reflexively reached for his cigarettes and lit one. Igmer just shook his head silently and winced. Lis, without taking a couple of puffs, quickly put out his cigarette in a porcelain vase:
“Sorry.”
“What to do now, it stinks anyway! Smoke! What a disgusting habit!”
But Lis didn't light a new cigarette. He still tried not to meet his father's eyes: