The Society of Two Houses (Dissolution Cycle)

by William C. Tracy

  “A good way to throw off your suspicions.” Gompt tightened her bandolier of tools. “And if he is innocent, he can help us narrow down the list of members. The geas doesn’t keep people from lying to us, after all.” She pointed back the way we came. “Either of those maji could be spinning us a yarn, though I doubt it.”

  “I know.” I had been thinking the same thing, but I couldn’t help believing Tethan and Plithin. “Then it’ll be good to ask Aegrino about the situation in the Imperium.” We turned our steps toward the record room, passing other maji deep in conversation.

  Now everyone looks suspicious. Why are those two whispering? Who would want to do the Society ill?

  In short order we reached the records room, near the center of the mansion and Moortlin’s office. I would have updated the Benish on what we’d found, but they had gone back to the Spire of the Maji in the Imperium. They were busy, being on the Council.

  The record room seemed empty, and I wondered if Aegrino was still in the Imperium, too. It should be easy to spot the tall Etanela.

  “He made a portal back in the shelves when we left,” I said, turning a corner into a tight path between bookcases. They were higher than my head, stuffed with books, rolled papers, ideas, contraptions, and other, less identifiable objects.

  I stopped short. Aegrino Plumera Lunigi was lying face down on the floor, a puddle of greenish blood pooling beneath his chest.

  PART THREE

  More Than One

  - When I applied to be the record keeper for the Society, little did I realize the extent of the accounts Moortlin collected over the cycles. I have piles of notes on wartime uses of the Symphony rendered illegal by the Council, forgotten inventions, and secrets that could tip the politics of the Great Assembly to the benefit of a single species. It is little wonder our leader is paranoid about others finding us out. The Society may have more dangerous information stored than the rest of the maji combined.

  Aegrino Plumera Lunigi, Record Keeper for the Society of Two Houses

  “Gompt!” I called. My friend came running, then skidded to a halt, bracing herself against a bookshelf to keep from stepping in the puddle of blood.

  “Oh no! Is he…?”

  I knelt by the body, pressing a hand to the back of his neck. Still warm, but there was no rise and fall of breath, no movement.

  “It must have been recently. It’s only been a few lightenings since Moortlin and I spoke with him. If he cleaned up the Speaker’s study, he can’t have been back for long either. Help me turn him.”

  Gompt came forward, one paw over her mouth, but hesitated. “Shouldn’t we go to someone—?” She looked around as if one of the Poler Civic Watch would materialize out of the woodwork.

  “Who are we going to tell?” I asked, sitting back on my heels. “We are in a mansion filled with suspects, in an organization with a geas keeping it secret. We can’t let anyone outside know, and we can’t trust anyone on the inside. Now come help.”

  Gompt grimaced, but reluctantly came forward. She was obviously uncomfortable, but together, we lifted Aegrino’s corpse, bluish arms flopping lifelessly.

  The body had not stiffened yet, and our actions revealed the method of the record keeper’s death. There were vicious slashes across the front of the Etanela’s robe, parting both fabric and flesh. Gompt hissed and covered her mouth again, and I barely kept from jumping to my feet. The cuts were to the bone, vitriol and blood dripping from fierce lines of violence.

  “What could cut a body like that?” she asked. “It’s like the killer was in a rage.”

  “But there’s no sign of a struggle,” I said. “At least not from what I can see. Just like Speaker Thurapo.” I forced myself to stay over the body, though my mind screamed at me of what happened this morning, and two cycles ago.

  “What about the Symphony of Healing?” Gompt said, and I nodded, already listening for the strains of music. Losing myself in the music is always calming.

  The melody of Healing around Aegrino’s body was ragged, almost doubled, arpeggios cutting off and resuming in a different key like two pieces were playing at once. The usual forte measures of exertion were not present.

  “He didn’t fight, or even move much before getting gutted,” I said. “What could have done this with such speed?”

  “Maybe the Symphony of Potential can tell us.” Gompt’s eyes were far away again behind her glasses, and I could tell she was listening to our shared house. I transitioned from the music of Healing to Potential, like changing from a wind quartet to a drum solo.

  The melody of Potential was a different thing from Healing, from warm to cold, organic to artificial. Potential was the song of logic and forces.

  “There,” Gompt said. “That repeating cadenza, with the descending fourths.” I waded through the music, searching for the same part of the arrangement. It was situated around the wounds, like the broken measures in the Symphony of Healing.

  “What does it mean?” I asked. Gompt was better than I at deriving history from Potential alone.

  She mimed a path at head level through the air, in time with the beat of the music. It would have been at chest level for the Etanela. The same place his wounds were centered.

  “It’s like he was slashed by a bunch of blades, all at once,” Gompt said, screwing her snout up so her canines showed. “I keep our metal and woodworking tools that sharp, and there are other rooms in the mansion where corpses are dissected. The implement could have come from any of them. It’s ghastly.”

  I opened myself to both Symphonies, the organic rhythms of Healing meshing with the syncopation of Potential. I blinked in surprise as I realized the disruptions in one piece of music matched the spirited sections of the other. The Symphony of Potential had literally cleaved the Symphony of Healing in twain.

  “Interesting. This is not a normal injury.” I just can’t understand why. I pushed my glasses up. Something was nagging at me, begging for connection with some fact I knew intimately, but it made no sense. “This must have been done by someone Aegrino knew.”

  “Did Aegrino let the killer come to the mansion through a portal? Did he even finish cleaning up Speaker Thurapo’s body?” Gompt put her paws on her furry hips and looked away from the mess. “It makes no sense. There’s no way Aegrino invited the killer here, but they were able to get from the Imperium to Poler just as quickly as him. I’d bet Nether glass it’s a Society majus. It’s got to be.”

  “But why?” I stroked my beard. “There’s little reason for one of the Society to betray their own. Here we have safety, freedom to research and escape from persecution, others who think as we do—what’s the motive?”

  “Too much ambition? Jealousy? Just not satisfied with something?” Gompt shrugged. “Could be anything. Finding the perpetrator is the quickest way to the motive.”

  I wasn’t convinced. If we knew the why, that would lead us to the who and the how. There had to be a solid reason a second person—a second Etanela—was killed on the same day. I moved back from Aegrino’s body, feeling like I should do something with him. If we can find another clue here, it may lead us to the killer.

  “What about his records?” I asked. Gompt looked around as if they would appear out of the air. “What if he had another copy of the Society names? Could the killer have lost the first copy somehow?”

  “Let’s look around.” I was grasping at ideas, distracted and half expecting officials to come knocking at the mansion door. Whoever had the list could have gone to anyone in the Assembly, especially since this person knew where the mansion was and how to get past the complex System installed at the front gate. Normally, it caused others to overlook the mansion, in a similar manner to how the geas kept us from speaking of the Society. Maybe it wasn’t working anymore.

  We looked around the records room, led by dips and trills in the Symphony of Potential to follow Aegrino’s path. It was almost random, as if the majus was not familiar with his libra
ry.

  Gompt called out, “Aha!” a few minutes later. I ran to where she was bent over in front of a small cabinet, stuffed with records so ancient they were more dust than text. She had a roll of parchment in her hand with recent writing at the end of a long list of names.

  I took the sheet gingerly, tuning a few chords of the music of Potential to a lower key to prevent my fingers from causing any more destruction to the ancient list. I read from the bottom up, noting names of some older members I recognized, leading back in time. Tethan and Plithin were both on there. I rolled the scroll backwards, noting Moortlin’s name about a third of the way up. There were cycles noted for many of the names, with substantial gaps in places. The oldest reached into the single digits.

  “Gompt,” I breathed, “The oldest of these names are almost a thousand cycles old. They reach all the way back to the Aridori war.”

  Gompt shivered. “I don’t need any more nightmares. Growing up, my friend group would tell us tales of Aridori, sneaking about and making off with naughty children, taking their place and causing chaos. Stick to the present.”

  I rolled the scroll to the end. Neither I nor my two friends were on the list. It was an older copy, but likely one Aegrino had used to make a new version. Indeed, the Symphony of Potential had a soft chorus drifting into silence: the action of copying information from this place to another, but the music was too faint to determine where the new list was located.

  “This is useless,” I said. “It’s not complete, and the new sheet is missing. Even if we found it, we’re back to sifting through however many members of the Society there are at the moment.”

  I sagged back against a bookcase. I couldn’t do this. If the Society was shut down, I had no place to go. My family was gone, and our old house had been sold last cycle. I put the scroll on a nearby shelf and held my head in my hands.

  Gompt was there in an instant. “What’s the problem?” she asked. “What can I do?”

  I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing,” Gompt told me. “The Society can’t be shut down so easily. The Council has to know something about us. I can’t believe Moortlin—and over a hundred maji—have kept this place a complete secret, even with the geas. Some shred of evidence must have gotten out before now.”

  I looked up at my friend. “But where would we all go, if the mansion was closed? Think about Plithin and his family. About Tethan and Scampers.” That’s not the only reason.

  I hadn’t told Gompt about the accident with my family. Moortlin was the only one who knew.

  “Every majus has an apartment in the Imperium,” Gompt said. “If the Society closed, we could live there.”

  “I’ve never lived in the Imperium,” I said. It came out almost by accident and I closed my mouth. Gompt looked at me strangely.

  “How—” her brow drew down behind her glasses. “What about classes in the Imperium? Living with your mentor while apprenticed?”

  “I…we commuted,” I said.

  “That would take a lot of money, even for a majus,” Gompt said. “Using a portal to arrive in the Imperium every day? Leaving at night for home? Did you come from Methiem?”

  I was already sweeping my hands side to side, negating her words. It’s not like that. Not anything like that. A memory intruded—my mother watching while my future mentor stood beside me, the rusty brown of the House of Potential visible to us both. Abarham was leading me through my first attempt at changing notes in the Symphony of Potential. We were in my house, after a lunch with my parents’ good friend and his husband.

  Abarham Garhuk. The thought of my old mentor—practically another father—made a lump rise in my throat, and my hand rise to my scar. The emotion was stronger than my reaction to either the Speaker’s or the record keeper’s death, and I was still in the same room as the latter’s corpse. Poler was a large, but quiet town, and an insular community; relationships were long-lasting. When my mother’s childhood friend discovered we could hear the same aspect of the Great Symphony, a bond formed between us instantly. There was no doubt I would apprentice with him.

  “I grew up in Poler,” I said. “Right here in this town. My family—” My hesitation only lasted a heartbeat. I pushed away the feelings climbing up my chest. “My family knew the person who later became my mentor—Majus Garhuk.”

  I waited for the realization to catch up to Gompt. It always took a few seconds, when people heard his name.

  She blinked furiously behind her glasses. “Wait…you mean Majus Garhuk, who was killed in Poler two cycles ago?”

  I nodded. “The same. Most people pay attention to the high profile name in that story, but not much else.” Not to the other names.

  “What do you mean—” Gompt broke off, looking to the ceiling of the records room. This was not the first time I had been seated only a few paces from a rapidly cooling corpse.

  My Festuour friend looked back, concern on her ursine face. “A local family was with the majus when he died, in a strange disturbance. No one could ever figure out how one room had collapsed when the rooms next to it were whole. That was—that was your family?”

  I knew the look on my face was confirmation enough.

  “Oh, Mandamon, I’m sorrier than you can imagine,” Gompt said. She reached out, putting a paw on my shoulder, and squeezed. I placed my hand on her paw, feeling the fine fur on her three wide-spread digits.

  “I’ve only been out of the Nether twice,” I admitted, “both times to my grandparent’s villa on Methiem, in Ibra.” I took in a deep breath, breaking the bubble of memory that surrounded us.

  I can’t break down now.

  “But that’s in the past. If the Society is shut down, I suppose I’ll get an apartment in the Imperium, and find out what the big city is really like.” I made an effort to stop my mouth from turning down.

  “Hey, you’re welcome to stay with me!” Gompt said. “My friend group has a set of apartments in Mid Imperium, and there’s always room for one more.” Her furry brow creased. “At least there was the last time I was there.”

  “Maybe I will,” I said, and wiped at my eyes behind my glasses. “Though the first thing is to prevent anything happening to the Society.” Friend group. Always one more. The thought brought something that had been lurking in my subconscious to the fore.

  “Wait—we listened to the music around Aegrino’s death,” I said, and Gompt nodded. “So why didn’t we hear the notes of whoever killed him?”

  Gompt stood up straight as I pushed away from the bookcase. “You’re right. I should have heard some music around those knives that killed him. Who wielded them, and how? Rot and claw, I can’t believe you trust me to help you designing complex Systems for these automatons.” She fished the little Festuour System Beast out of her bandolier.

  I contemplated Gompt’s little figurine as we approached Aegrino’s corpse. “I missed it too. That’s why we’re working together.”

  Gompt saw where I was looking and held it up. “Mechanical,” she said. “Sort of like the music, isn’t it?”

  “Just what I was thinking,” I said. I listened to the System behind the little model. The beat, the key, even the tempo was like the faint echoes of the slashes on Aegrino’s body. Systems did not occur in nature, but were created by maji. They never had the same beauty as naturally arising music—the Grand Symphony.

  “This was done with a System,” I said. “The murderer has a weapon made by a majus, or stolen from one.” There was some part of this that still felt too familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  Gompt cocked her head from side to side, tapping her fingers to some beat I couldn’t hear. It must be the House of Grace.

  “Aegrino was a Dancer—Communication and Grace. Someone who could change the Symphony of Grace could waltz right out of the reach of whatever slashed him.” She waved her paw holding the figurine at the corpse, keeping it out of her sightline. Her other hand was tapping at
the air, as if touching points on an intricate diagram. “There’s no residue in the music. None of the scales are interrupted and all the chords are in place. If Aegrino had used the Symphony to move out of the way, I would still be able to hear it.”

  “Maybe another aspect can tell us more.” I braced myself, and bent over the body. The Symphony of Healing was a faint whisper. The body’s mechanisms were breaking down, even in the few minutes we had been here. I stood. There should be music here describing another person, but all the phrases seemed to define Aegrino’s body, ragged and fragmented as they were. Gompt’s and my measures were forte and in the foreground. It was unnatural. There was something we were both missing.

  “If I had some part of the weapon the attacker used,” I mused, “I could trace who held it with Potential and Healing combined.” Just like when I traced the paper the Speaker held.

  “What about the…the wounds?” Gompt suggested. “There may be a piece stuck…inside.” She looked away, and I think if Festuour had less fur, I’d have seen her turning green.

  “Good idea.” Physical contact was helpful for both my Symphonies. I took in a deep breath, then ran a finger down the tattered strip along Aegrino’s chest. As I touched the jagged flesh, several themes popped to the forefront, first a spiraling chord progression in the house of Healing—the identifier every being held within them. The music bled to everything a person touched, and was unique.

  Second was a martial beat in the music of Potential, decaying from a high register to a lower one. As seconds passed, the rhythm evolved in a regular manner. Try as I might, I could only hear one spiraling chord, with some minor variations, though that could have been an artifact of Etanela biology. There was only Aegrino here. Had he somehow killed himself?

  I wiped my fingers on a clean section of Aegrino’s coat, used a few notes in the Symphony of Healing to burn away any other contamination, then straightened.