Chapter Seven

Brainstorm

Letum

She was lying on the soaked with her own sweat white sheets, strapped to the narrow couch. Among the muttering of her heavy breath, I distinguished a name. The name.

“Lewis,” she called feebly.

She was wasting her powers in vain, calling the man who was dead.

“I am so sorry,” I said and was to depart.

The complete silence that fell in the cramped room of the healer’s abode brought the rising eerie tension. The ghost body of mine trembled, and I pivoted to cast a sigh goodbye to her, driven by the urge of necessity to do it.

She was standing in front of me, her scar was fixed on me as if she was watching right through my very soul.

“Who’s here?” she whispered, and the hot breath of her burnt the skin of my face.

“Can you hear me?”

Her head tilted with a petrifying crack of her neck. The dark hood of her almost black in the darkness of the room hair covered her face, still, I could see the uncanny smile with bleeding cracks on her lips.

“I’m blind,” she wheezed, “not deaf.”

***

I had been asleep for three days and would have drifted in the realm of Morpheus longer if the veil of her long black hair which was pretty itchy had not disturbed my dreaming.

“You will oversleep your eternity, Letum,” Octavia crooned next to my ear.

I turned away from my lover to the stone wall and covered myself with the thick blanket, but even beneath the layer of lint her fingers, calloused from long-lasting training, managed to reach the sensitive area of my flesh–a tiny hollow behind the earlobe. Although the milky haze blurred my sight, I grabbed her forearm and cast the most disgruntled look which was only possible.

“Leave me alone, please, I am not into talking to you now,” I said to her and rested my head on the cotton pillow again, letting my eyelids shut.

My lover tsked disappointingly. “Then,” she chortled with unhappy laughter. She was in mood neither, “If you do not possess a will to talk to me, so maybe, you would like to know that Baleruhb sent me?”

The sheets crunched beneath my body when I adjusted my pose the way I could look at Octavia. “Did he mention the reason why he needs me?”

She crossed her arms and silently stared at me, facing me with a half-side, “No,” she informed me reluctantly, “He only asked me to summon you to his study. Do not look at me like that, Letum. Baleruhb bothered to tell me nothing about what he wants from us.”

“Us?”

“Yes, lover. He is expecting both of us to come.”

I raised myself on my elbows pokily. Despite the three-day sleep, I felt no better than the night of the attack in the world of the living. Baffled by a ton of thoughts that swept in my mind, I did not realize at once Octavia threw pieces of fabric that occurred to be my black trousers and knitted sweater into me.

“Dress up,” she said at the doorstep, “I will see you there, lover.”

The door shut, depriving me of the view of Octavia’s silhouette, nevertheless, I did not mind. Privacy was such a rare thing to happen since we had been mated forcibly. At least I had. Even the sheets were soaked with the scent of her skin and lavender soap she made herself withdraw from all afterword affairs, making her be with me even when she was not. I did not dislike it, but it created a kind of pressure on me.

I did not need much time to get washed and dressed, and when the softness of the sweater slid over my skin, my feet started motions before I was ready. The hallway seemed to be deserted. Most likely it was about the hour when all the inhabitants of the training center were gathering now at the rooms for the night practices. All the better.

The haze had not melted fully yet, though it did not disturb my subconsciousness to sort through all the possible options of the occasion of bidding me. The only reasonable consideration I could find in the crannies of my mind was the conversation that had happened upon my return from the world of the living. Had Baleruhb discovered anything that would explain how the female fleshy was capable of talking to me? I did not know. But I was going to find out whether the mentor was willing to give me a helping hand or not. The fleshy–Hope Hill–was haunting me even in my dreams. And I would not admit the circumstances of our meeting were a mere coincidence.

My path led me to the right, but the maneuver was not destined to take place. The cooper braided head I had not seen for a while popped up around the corner. Her smile could illuminate the entire universe. Talia did not let me start my greetings, holding me tight to the crack of my ribs and I gasped.

“I missed you so much, Letum,” she murmured gleefully into my shoulder. “Have gained some mass since I saw you last time?”

“Aye, I suppose so. When did you come?”

Her grip weakened which allowed me to inhale the necessary volume of air to function in normal ways. “This morning. Amatory told me you had had a rough night, so I did not dare to disturb your sleep.”

At least somebody cared. The thought that this person was Talia spilled through my veins with the sweetness of honey. She released my body and looked up at me with dancing flames of cheerfulness in her eyes and pinched my cheeks to slight pain on both sides of my face.

“I apologize, Letum,” she replied to the ouch which I had blurted out, “You look so sweet when you have just been bestirred.”

“You know, Tal,” her eyes looked at me absorbedly, “I sometimes think you should have been born as my sibling. Tory has never shown her sister’s tenderness like you do.”

“Well, I am your sister-in-law, as the fleshies call it.”

What would you be called if I had not been such a gutless coward? I did not vocalize it, although the words were mercilessly trying to overcome the obstruction in the form of my purse with all my might lips. Instead, I pulled one of her French braids in retaliation for my damaged cheeks which were burning with striking flame where her fingers had left the red spots.

“I am a bit in a hurry now, Tal. Baleruhb is waiting for me. Shall we find each other later tonight?”

“Actually,” she said, retrieving her hair from my fisted hand, “I was on my way to his study when I faced you.”

“Do you want to say that you are also…” I paused here, conceptualizing the current predicament, “You are not here only to visit the center, are you?”

Talia neither confirmed nor refuted my conjecture. “Let us go,” she changed the direction of our conversation, “Baleruhb’s patience is not unlimited.” She tugged me towards the massive staircase and I had no other option save to obey.

Our mute journey took no more than two minutes, but the awkwardness between us, caused by innuendo, remained even when the wooden door of the mentor’s study groaned its greeting and we found ourselves in the shining last beams of the sun room where Baleruhb, Amatory, and Octavia were sipping a scarlet liquor–viburnum wine, if my sense of smell did not fail me. The latter, seeing me in the company of my sibling’s lover, jerked her chin up haughtily out of her pride and did not even bother to greet us with a usual nod. Unlike my sister.

“Here you are, sleepy beauty,” my sibling said to me by way of salutation and smirked snidely.

I said nothing in response because what I was watching dumbfounded me. Amatory was wearing a figure-hugging black coverall that could not remain unnoticeable because I had known her since my very birth and she would never put on anything that would even vaguely emphasize her shapes. As far as I remembered, her closet used to consist of my clothes. Noticing my staring, Amatory endowed me with the sight of hers, saying stop gawking or you will regret it, little brother. She had a fairly difficult character to cope with and there was a really high risk of getting obtunded by henbane at the most inopportune moment and finding myself naked at the river bank, fully covered by ink writings which would remain on my skin at the very least several weeks like she had already avenged me for I had spilled a secret of hers in front of our group, although unwillingly. Frankly speaking, I was frightened of Amatory even now, so the best decision I could make was to draw my attention somewhere else like the dusty books on the shelf above the fireplace. Was it safe to keep such inflammable items near the naked flame?

“Do not taunt your brother, Am,” Talia reached Amatory and snaked her arm around my sister’s waist, pulling her closer to give a greeting peck to her cheek, but Amatory turned abruptly and their lips joined in a kiss.

“Foxy thing,” Tal laughed.

I had no idea where to fix my eyes on. There was no spot in the study where my peripheral vision would not catch the caress of those two. Why, it had been a while since two of them had claimed themselves as lovers and my eyes had not seen both of them for they had departed to the camp of calmness, and I had allowed myself to think that what I had been feeling to Talia would die with time, but it was still alive and was now devouring me from inside. Each cell of my body was screaming in agony at the sight of her kissing my own sister. The hardest part of it was to give my facial muscles no permission to betray me.

“Should you discontinue your lovey-dovey not?” Octavia cut in, “You two have enough time for all the sentimental slop. Now is an inappropriate time for this. We have much more important things to do than watching you two French kiss.”

“Do not be so rude, Octavia,” Baleruhb’s bass thundered, drawing everyone’s attention to him, “Though, I partly agree. Give me Talia for proper greeting, Am, and we will start. Now, come to me, girl,” he beckoned and embraced her with such gentleness as if she were his daughter. “You are so skinny. Do you feed her not, Amatory?”

“I missed you too, big B,” Talia said and let him go, coming back to her lover.

The original regent nodded to me by way of saying ‘hello’, “How are you, Letum?”

One of my lips’ corners jumped when the mentor eventually addressed me. “A glass of viburnum wine will soothe my state,” I assured him.

“That is my boy.”

A bottle gleamed in the melting light of the oil lamp on his desk. The alcohol liquid hit the bottom of a hewn from the clearest crystal goblet with a splash. The mentor handed it solemnly to me and I rested myself in the armchair on the left of the massive desk. Talia and Amatory took the other two. Octavia did not budge an inch from the spot by the Baleruhb’s desk, still holding her head up high.

“Well, big B,” my sister started unceremoniously. Yes, she was not a regent with a dreamy character like Talia. “My gut does not allow me to think that all of us were summoned for mere welcoming words, were we not?”

Her lover glanced at Tory and then shifted her sight to the mentor who was nestling himself on the matching desk chair, decorated with affinity to armrests. Baleruhb sipped from his glass and the wine painted his full lips crimson. He licked the remains of the alcohol away and met Tory’s gaze.

“Nothing can be hidden from you, Amatory,” he said apologetically, “I wish we met in other circumstances, girls, but alas, we have what we have.”

“Then could you please bother to explain what we have.”

Tal inhaled and pursed her lips. She was not into the manner of my sibling’s talking to the original, neither was I, but we dared to say nothing–Amatory was the best at interrogating. Psychology, as the fleshies called it, was her strong suit, and if she chose this way to extract the information she needed, then we would let it be.

Baleruhb pinched the bridge of his broken nose a million times. The dark circles shadowed his already black eyes. I assumed he had spent this night in his study without a split second of sleep.

“I have to insist on your consent to keep what you are going to hear confidential.”

Octavia, Amatory, Talia, and I exchanged blank stares.

Something had happened.

Something abysmal.

Getting our wordless consent in the form of slow nods, the mentor’s fingers brushed his slicked-back dark hair, and he began, “As far as I can suggest, you have already been informed about the homicide a few days ago.”

“That poor newly-born whose body was found under the Atriumidos bridge?” Talia asked.

Baleruhb nodded, “Yes, girl.” He had a little drink of the heady liquid before starting to talk again, “This night another body was discovered. The same pattern–she was stabbed in her chest to death by the Saint Silver sword.”

The study became silent.

One homicide was a homicide.

Two–serial murdering.

“Do you have any suspects?” I was not sure which of the girls spoke.

He shook his head, “No suspects, no evidence, no witnesses.”

“Are there any traces of narcotics or poisonous plants in their blood?” Octavia entered into a discussion.

“The first victim’s blood has none. We have not managed to carry out an examination of the one whose body was found yesterday. Still, I am certain we will not determine a single cue.”

I sipped the wine and its cloyingness spread in my mouth, harboring the burning touch of alcohol behind the taste until it went down my throat.

“Were the bodies brought to the crime scene?” The novelty I heard in my sister’s voice told me she was eager to get out of him all the knowledge the mentor had in his possession about the case. Sometimes it seemed to me Amatory had infomania.

“There were no traces of it. Everything points to the fact that the regents came willingly.”

“Then the victims were acquainted with their killer,” I suggested.

Talia leaned forward, putting her elbows on her lap, “It would be logical to suspect the common friends of them.”

“But you know it without us, do you not?” my sister asked casually.

All of our eyes were fixed on the mentor, waiting for him to reply.

“You are right, girl. We are working on it. The victims were from different districts of the Afterworld, so we excluded friendship and relations for the regents had never been seen together in their surroundings. The only mutual acquaintance we managed to puzzle out for now is Corrigan–the library keys keeper. Kirby is interrogating him right now.”

“I daresay you question his participation,” I knew my sister was about to ask the same and I could not help myself but outrank her, although I would regret it.

“I do doubt,” Baleruhb snatched me from my recollections, “Corrigan saved my ass at the Deathly Battle. I owe him my life. Nonetheless, I have to check on him despite my gratitude. I do not want to let the murderer escape from justice and wander freely around the Afterworld, assassinating our kin, only because my emotions affected my reasoning. We lost a great amount of us at the Deathly Battle and are still baren. We are immortal, but not unkillable. Each of us is on the account.”

Amatory drank her wine in a gulp and was now toying the empty glass with an elegant leg–twin to one which was half-filled in Talia’s hand. “With all due respect, Baleruhb, I have not got the answer to my question yet.” The original looked at her blankly, so my sister had to remind him what she was talking about, “Why are four of us here?”

His languorous sigh fulfilled the stillness of the room. None of us ventured to utter a sound while waiting for the answer.

“When The Death was gone to mourn His loss,” Baleruhb reminded us of the history of our kind, “and the Deathly Battle was declared to be over, all the swords, daggers, blades, and other attributes of the war which would be able to unalive regents were coercively confiscated to prevent the faith of our ancestors and extinction of regents–we would not get through one more conflict like the Battle. When peace was ingrained in the post-war Afterworld, those original regents who had managed to survive instituted the prohibition of possessing any kind of arm and established the punishment of ideological remodeling by injections of white lilies nectar into the veins of the culprit for as long as it required to for killing regents.”

Punishment was not a proper name for what they had established–white lilies nectar was a poison for my kin, but penetrating it in low doses would paralyze the nerve system and immobilize the body, while the poisoned brain would visualize the deepest fears. I had seen it work only once–when Baleruhb and Corrigan had detected the mole. My mind kept the memories of the Deathly Battle in the corners out of my reach, but my entire skeleton still quivered when my consciousness showed me the picture of the drugged regent. I remembered the blood that had been streaming from his eyes and the convulsions of his body as if he had been tortured by all kinds of torment at once.

“The forensic doctor concluded that the weapon of murder was a sword, which narrows it down. There are only two storages in the Afterworld which keep them.”

“But the locations of them are classified, are they not?” Talia protested.

“They are, girl. But the murderer had managed to descry one of them.”

“Something is telling me that it is somehow connected to us,” Amatory murmured.

Baleruhb joined his hands and put his chin on them, “The storage which has been robbed recently lies right under the training center.”

To say our features expressed an alarm was to say nothing.

“I was the only one who knew the whereabouts of it.”

“Does that not make you the most probable suspect?” Octavia asked with a note of disbelief in her voice. Or hope that he was not our murderer.

“I have an alibi if you are asking me for this, girl.”

My lover shook her head negatively, and I noticed a shred of solace go around her body.

“Do you want to say,” Amatory interfered, “that it is not impossible one of the mentees is responsible for the two homicides?”

“I cannot state that it is how you state. That is why you were summoned today.”

I brushed the edge of the half-emptied goblet, staring at the golden lines of the tracery, and asked the original regent, “Do you want us to spy our groupmates and other habitants of the training center each day, including nights, to confirm or to refute your assumption?”

Before Baleruhb’s lips divided to publicize the clarification of what we had gathered here for, the door of the study cracked, and Kirby’s curly head popped up from behind it without knocking. The plausibility of not witnessing the changes on his swarthy face at the sight of three of us sitting in the velvet armchairs was almost zero. The regent was definitely surprised to find the mentor not alone.

“Hello everyone,” Kirby timorously uttered and sent a quizzical gaze to the part of the room where Baleruhb was sitting on his chair like on the throne.

“That is fine, boy,” the original assured him, “they are trustworthy. Come in, Kirby, and have a seat,” he waved his hand and pointed to the chair on the left side of the desk I had not noticed, “I expect you to tell us what you have managed to extract from the keykeeper.”

Baleruhb filled another glass with viburnum wine and gave it suavely to the newly-come regent when the latter was passing by the workplace of the mentor.

“Corrigan has the undisputable alibi, confirmed by the library grimalkins,” Kirby declared, “He was sorting the books and manuscripts, left by the habitants, on the day of Roman’s murder. As for the time Ann was slaughtered–yesterday night–Corrigan was sent to serve as a sentry of the chronicles and would never leave his post till the sun painted the sky marigold.”

Baleruhb’s whole appearance demonstrated that the information he had just been told did not befall to be unexpected, however, a sign of relief for the man who had once saved his immortal but not unkillable life affected him by the feeble vibration of the mentor’s chest like he breathed out the accumulated air with a fraction of ease, regardless of the necessity to start searching for the mass murderer over again.

The original regent lifted himself, towering above us, “Then our theory is in charge once more.” He turned to face us, “As Letum said, I need you five to keep the leeriest regents under constant surveillance of yours.” To the quietude which reigned after his request, he added, “I am not obliging you to obey it. You are at liberty to choose whether you have the will to participate or to remain aloof. And I do not demand the decision right now, but have to ask you for the soonest answer for there is a great risk to find another assassinated newly-born.”

The cracking embers in the fireplace were singing the song of withering. The time had passed so rapidly that I had hardly noticed the gloom of future night had wrapped the study.

“I am at your service, big B,” Amatory’s voice sounded fairly enthusiastically for the nail-biting situation we had on the agenda.

“Me too, Baleruhb. It is a great honor to be useful, especially after what you have done for Am’s and my sake.”

The original had publicly supported their mating while the entire Afterworld had denied the bond of them, referring to the imperative of the regeneration of us, and same-gender lovers were not supposed for it. I had seen lots of star corridors since that time and was now able to say that the story of Amatory and Tory had inspired hundreds of regents for the same act, and the originals in charge had had to give up, allowing such lovers to claim. I had not said and surely would never say, but the pride for my sister I had experienced that time was immeasurable even if my heart had been torn apart.

“If you free me from the lectures with Cabernetty, I will spy on Letum brazenly,” Octavia told the original and looked at me for the first time since Talia and I had entered the study.

I was sunk into my sentiments when the unsolicited attention of all present became tangible on my skin, and my head abruptly flinched to face four pairs of black eyes staring at me ponderously.

“What about you, little brother,” Tory said wryly.

“Am.”

“Letum, I do not push. Take some time if it is needed.” Baleruhb had always been supportive and attentive to us after the Deathly Battle had claimed the lives of our parents, and I would swear to my immortal life he meant what he said.

“Of course, I am in,” was my reply. “I thought it was rather clear.”