Soldier in Blood Splattered Uniform

Chapter 10

They silently made their way back to headquarters, both revelling in the loss of Major Swift.

Obviously, the whole situation was sad and cruel, and she had a strong urge to strangle Logan. However, in her own mind, things didn't add up. She knew Logan could be vicious and cruel, but he wasn't like this. Logan was physically nauseous when it came to their father's sick and twisted actions - Skye would never have imagined he'd end up doing the same thing. She felt like there was more to this situation. However, she couldn't tell whether she genuinely thought that, or she just wanted to find a reason to redeem her brother's despicable deeds.

"We know what happened," Walter said, softly. "Swift was a good person, he died like a true soldier."

Ben's head snapped up. "A true soldier? Let's not pretend there was anything noble about the way he died." Ben almost choked on that word. He couldn't take it in - Swift was dead. He wasn't coming back. "He was tortured and murdered."

"But he didn't give Logan any information. I call that noble," Walter said.

"It was just a matter of time before Logan did this," Page said. "Before he decided to hunt us down. We have to fight back."

"We can't go straight away," Walter argued. "They'll be expecting us. We wait a week and then go."

The others trudged out of the main room, leaving Skye and Toby alone.

"Look, Toby," Skye began.

Toby held his hands up, defensively. "If you're going to find another excuse to fight with me then I'm leaving."

"What, no-" she stopped momentarily, taking in a deep breath before continuing. "I'm sorry, okay? I've been very much on edge lately, and then you come back and it adds more stress, and-" she hung her head, finding the strength to apologise to Toby - it was never easy, even for things as small as stealing his favourite toy as a child. "I shouldn't have taken that out on you. I'm sorry."

He didn't speak for a moment; Skye could only imagine all the things he was going to make her do by way of an apology.

Toby slowly nodded his head, and held his hand out. "Truce?"

Skye clasped it, with slight apprehension. That was a definite surprise. She wondered how much of the initial shock she wore on her face as Toby broke out into a wide grin.

"Okay, don't fight me on this one, but I think there's more to the situation than it seems," Skye said.

Toby raised his eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I just-" she sighed, unable to fathom what Toby's reacting is going to be when she tells him her conspiracy. "I know you told me earlier to stop thinking the worst of people - and I am trying - it's just I've got a weird feeling about all of this. I know it's something to do with James - I can just feel it."

Toby ran his hands through his hair and crossed his arms. "Are you certain? Because if you are then we can look into it and see if anything is actually going on, but I don't want to put things at risk for some impulsive theory you've made up."

"I know there's a lot to lose, but I also know Logan. He's not like that. Mindless killing disgusts him, you know that."

Toby shrugged. "It seems to me like that is all he's done since I've been back."

Skye brought her hand up to her face and began chewing on her nails - a nervous tick she did often as a child. "It's worth a shot, right?"

Toby rubbed his palms on his trousers and straightened his back. "Why not."

While it was nice that the two siblings were finally getting along again, with only the occasional outburst of an argument arising between them, they also didn't know where to start digging for information about the peculiarity of Logan's actions. A few days had passed since the execution of Major Swift, and they seemed no closer to revealing the truth behind what happened.

Toby slumped back in a huff. They had been rifling through any old documents they could get their hands on about their brother, James. All they knew was that he had gone travelling abroad in the name of 'education' after their father had died, which essentially meant that he wanted to escape the royal lifestyle as soon as he could. Toby had done the same, but his certainly wasn't for education, and was probably more in the name of 'exotic beer' than anything else.

"Is this all just a waste of time?" Toby flipped through the pages in his hand, none of them seeming to enlighten him in any possible way. "All of this we already knew. I don't understand how we're going to find anything out by just rifling through a bunch of old papers."

Skye snapped her head up from the document she was absorbed in. "What are you suggesting, that we give up?"

"No, I'm not saying that, I-" Toby leaned forward and began rubbing his temples. "Why do you think this has anything to do with James? I don't know where you got that idea from."

Skye stayed mute, not being able to form an immediate response. She didn't have any solid proof why she believed it was anything to do with James, perhaps it was just her intuition. Maybe she just thought that if Toby had returned, James might have done as well.

"I just had an inkling," she said, quietly, tilting her head down again.

"Well I don't think there's much use rifling through these," Toby kicked a few torn pages that had floated down to his feet. "What else may be a lead, if James has returned, where would be the first place he'd go?"

"The castle, obviously," Skye said. "But we can hardly snoop around there, that would be counter-productive."

"The castle? Unlikely," Toby frowned. "He'd have to go to check in with Logan, especially if Logan was making him work for him - and that's the concept we're going with, right? 'James is being forced into working with Logan for some reason or other that we aren't really clear on'?"

"I don't believe he would consent to work with Logan, especially if it involved mindless killing. James is better than that."

Toby raised an eyebrow. "I always thought Logan was better than that, but who knows," he cleared his throat. "So, we've concluded that James wouldn't want to work with Logan if he didn't have to. Therefore - he has to, and Logan isn't giving him any choice. So my point is, James would want to be anywhere but the castle, so where would he go?"

The corners of Skye's mouth upturned slightly, "you don't mean-"

Toby nodded enthusiastically. "Uh-huh. Brightwall Academy."

Skye seemed optimistic. "It's been closed for years and is the last place anyone would think to look."

"Well I guess it should be the first place we look," Toby abruptly stood up and began walking towards the door. "We have no time to waste!"

"Let me at least get my coat," Skye murmured.

It was drizzling outside, and the sky appeared downcast and grey. They hunched their shoulders as they scurried down the Brightwall bridge.

"What use would James be to Logan?" Toby said, keeping his voice low as to not attract any attention.

"Uh, what use wouldn't he be? James knows everything. History, mathematics, foreign languages - you name it, he probably knows it."

Toby nodded his head slowly. "Potions?"

Skye looked up towards him. "Potions? What are you insinuating?"

Toby gave a soft chuckle. "Would that not be useful to Logan? Having someone close by who is an expert in potions?"

"Well, I mean, I suppose."

"You can get a potion for anything there days. And I mean anything. I once met this girl who was so infatuated with me she slipped me a 'love potion'." Toby grimaced. "I thought it really had worked too, I can remember feeling this weird sensation in my stomach. Looking back it might have just been indigestion."

"Lovely." Skye lifted her head. They were at Brightwall Academy.

Whilst the exterior had fallen into significant decay due to lack of use, there was no way to describe the inside. The accumulated pages scattered on the floor paralleled the fallen hope on the few academic brains among Albion's population. Skye had been to the Academy recently to retrieve one of her father's treasures to give to Sabine - however it was hardly likely her father would treasure something as meaningful and poignant as an antique treasure box, more like beer and wine and other things Skye shuddered at the thought of.

Their steps echoed down the entrance hall of the old building, the soft crunch of forgotten pages beneath their feet.

Toby tried to break the otherwise silence. "It's-"

"Decrepit? Dilapidated, ramshackle, derelict..." Skye listed the words on her fingers.

"I was going to say it's not how I remembered. But all those work too."

Skye looked around; the bookshelves, though housing a large number of interesting-looking volumes, didn't appear to be of help. "What is it we should do now?"

"I don't know," Toby sighed, removing his rain-sodden coat and dumping it on the floor. He made a large gesture of rolling up his sleeves. "We get to work. Find anything that show a sign of James being here."

Skye nodded, removing her own coat in a more delicate manner than her brother.

They spent the remainder of the evening searching through long-forgotten tomes on various subjects, such as witchcraft, weaponry and the most popular shade of white for the past century. None, however, that seemed to be of any use.

Toby shoved the book he was flipping through onto the floor. They had fallen into the same routine of just looking through pages, coming no closer to any further lead, and, wasting their time. It would be impossible to search through all these books, and he was beginning to question whether it would lead to James at all.

He stood up hastily, determined to think of a new plan. He paced the length of the small room, his boots scuffing the edges of tattered books, abandoned on the floor. On his fifth length of the floor, he swivelled around, and a loose piece of the floor tile suddenly tripped him up.

He skidded into a bookshelf, and a book on the best types of gunpowder fell onto his head. "Bloody hell," he grumbled, raising himself onto his feet. He marched towards the doorway, desperate to be away from so many cast one backwards glance towards the place where he tripped and under the piece of floor there seemed to be a diary.

"You're excited that you found a book? In a library?" Skye shook her head in disbelief as she hurried to catch up with Toby, who had gone to fetch her to show his findings. "There are hundreds of books here."

Toby stopped in the doorway, a wild smirk playing on his face. "Not any old book. A diary. James' diary."

Skye stopped abruptly, pure bewilderment dancing in her eyes. "You're sure?"

Toby raised his eyebrows, "positive."

"That means- That means he is here, I knew it!" Skye said, incredulously.

Sure enough, it was the diary of their elder brother - James. They flipped through the beginning entries but they didn't seem to be out of the ordinary. However, as the pages went on, the diary entries became far more sparse and sporadic, and as if they'd been written in a hurry.

Skye stared at the battered notebook in utter confusion. "These more recent entries are so vague, it seems almost deliberate."

"There's nothing of use in here," Toby slammed the book shut. "I though this would tell us something."

"It does tell us something! We know James is here, and he has come back to Albion. He's obviously being secretive for a reason. And I'd give anything to bet it has to do with what happened with Logan the other day," Skye said.

"You mean Logan confirming he's pretty much a complete and utter dick?"

Skye furrowed her brows, not looking Toby in the eye. "Maybe there's more to it than what it seems," she said, quietly.

"Or maybe, you just don't want to believe it. So you created this idea in your head that there's this massive conspiracy," he shoved the diary into her arms. "When really, you don't want to think that Logan might have ended up like our fa-"

Skye gasped loudly, before Toby could finish the end of his sentence. A torn out page, from what looked to be like a textbook, fell from the diary. "What's this?"

Toby appeared skeptical, "it's just a page. There's a ton more down here if you're going to have an outburst every time you see one."

The page that had fallen was for a potion.

"'The Look-Alike Elixir'" Skye muttered, scanning her eyes over the page. "This is what Logan wanted James for?"

"'Magically transforms your appearance into that of someone else's for a full day.'" Toby's eyes darted to Skye's. "So... that man wasn't Major Swift? And it was just someone who had taken 'The Look-Alike Elixir'?"

Skye nodded slowly, all the pieces of the puzzle beginning to fit into place.

Toby's confusion still shone on his face. "But, I don't get- why?"

She shook her head, still trying to process the information. "I don't know why either."

"Maybe," Toby scratched his head. "Maybe it was just to scare us, y'know? To try and get people to stop the rebellion, but he couldn't go through with killing Swift so he got James to make the potion?"

"Possibly," she said. "But James must have still been in Albion for some reason, Logan couldn't call upon him that quick."

Toby's breathing seemed to stop for a second or two. "Maybe we should go to the castle."

Skye let out a burst of instantaneous laughter. "The castle! Are you crazy?"

He folded his arms. "Just think about, that's where James and most probably, the real, authentic, alive version of Swift is too."

"And also Logan! How are we going to get past that in this plan of yours?"

"You can't let me do all the work, I already came up with the base concept," Toby said.

"Yes. One that might get us killed."

Toby waved his hand as a dismissal. "No-ones getting killed. Logan wouldn't let us die."

Skye began flailing her arms around. "But we could get captured! And all this would be for nothing. The whole revolution - meaningless. And quite frankly, I would rather be dead."

"You're so over-dramatic," Toby chuckled. "No-one is dying."

"Usually that phrase gets said and then people die. You might have just cursed our whole lives."

Toby rolled his eyes. "Just trust me."