Origon shook his head. “We were not finding anything useful in Dalhni,” he said.
“This one is sorry to hear, but that is, hmm, not the reason for coming.”
Origon raised his eyebrows and took a step back, waving a hand for Caroom to enter. As they did, the Benish’s passage revealed not only Inas behind them, but also a Lobhl.
“Oh,” Origon said, surprised. “Be coming in, please, all of you.” The Lobhl were still a rarity in the Nether, and Origon was ashamed to admit he sometimes had trouble telling aliens of that species apart. All their faces were remarkably without distinction, and many wore covering shawls around the lower half of their heads. This one waved a tattooed hand in thanks.
“Nothing about my sister or Sam?” Inas looked unwell. There were deep discolorations under the young man’s eyes and his hair was uncombed.
“No, not yet, but we believe they are alive and well. We will find them soon, I promise,” Origon told him. He had no idea if he could keep that promise.
He got the three seated, or standing in Caroom’s case, and even remembered to ask if they wanted refreshment. The movement and talking woke Rilan, and she appeared from the spare bedroom, looking as if she had been crying. He hoped she had been. That often flushed stress away, in Methiemum. He sat her next to him, refrained from patting her shoulder. It would only make her edgy.
“Hand Dancer,” Rilan said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” She addressed the Lobhl, and Origon squinted at the alien’s hands. That was where the distinction for this species rested, but he would be a rotted egg if he could remember one from another. Even the Nether wasn’t a lot of help.
“It’s no bother,” Rilan replied. “How should we address you today?”
Hand Dancer signed.
“Very well, let us know if anything changes,” Rilan said. Origon had never gotten used to that bit of etiquette when speaking with the Lobhl, but the species usually preferred others ask rather than misgender them. Rilan took in a breath, then added, “It’s just majus now, Hand Dancer. I see the word hasn’t gotten out yet.”
Origon watched the Lobhl’s eyes hover around Rilan’s middle, rather than her face. He always wondered how the translation looked to them.
“The Council hasn’t communicated with you, has it?” Rilan asked.
Rilan waved it aside. “No matter.” Origon gave her a look, which she ignored. She rarely dismissed things so easily. Left-over business? She had been definite about separating herself from old Council matters. She pulled her braid over one shoulder. Her dark hair draped like coils of oil, down her chest.
“Hand Dancer came to this one yesterday evening,” Caroom put in. “He heard this one had been in this company lately, but could not, hmm, locate either of these ones, for reasons we know.” Their flickering eyes danced between Origon and Rilan. “This may greatly interest both of you.” They moved a thick mahogany hand for Hand Dancer to continue.
The Lobhl turned his bald, bland head toward Origon, whose eyes slipped away from Hand Dancer’s head naturally, down to his hands, already in motion.
Suddenly, Origon’s attention was in the conversation, his crest rising. “Yes. What is this to be about?”
Origon looked to Caroom, who nodded back. “It seems, hmm, this one’s proposition was incomplete,” they said.
“Then the Drains could be naturally occurring after all, but happened to hit Methiem in force.” Origon ran a hand down his moustache. “Other homeworlds could have also seen them. We should ask.” The data were frustratingly sparse. If he could only learn something, anything about how the Drains formed. He put hands on the arms of his chair, made to rise, but Rilan waved a hand.
“One moment.” Her head was tilted, her eyes narrowed. She had hold of some feather, feeling to which bird it led. “Maybe I’m paranoid, but lately I feel I have reason to be.” She turned back to Hand Dancer. “Is your birth city, by any chance, Shifting Winds?”
The Lobhl indicated surprise—a gesture with hands stretching out to the sides, thumbs curled.
Rilan stared at Origon a moment, trying to force some concept through the air between them, but it had been too long since they worked and traveled together; he couldn’t catch her meaning. Though the situation felt familiar—had she told him something about it?
“I asked whether the Council had contacted you for a reason,” Rilan said. “I recently put forward your name for consideration.”
Origon’s crest flattened, contracted. The news about Bofan was still not common.
“That recognition may have brought you too much attention, if councilmembers, and potential councilmembers, have been targeted,” she said. “If correct, the issue is larger than we suspect.”
Caroom swung their head from Rilan to Origon with a creak, putting pieces together. They also knew of Bofan’s murder. “Does this mean the, hmm, coincidences these ones spoke of before may rise higher in the maji’s organization than anticipated?”
There was silence for a moment. “That seems to be one interpretation,” Origon said, carefully. If this was true, all the homeworlds could be affected. His crest fluffed in fear of what this would do to the Assembly.
“We should move fast,” Rilan said. “I trust Hand Dancer. Considering he may have been targeted as we were, I think it’s time to make our three into four.”
“You mean four into five.”
Origon blinked, and looked at Inas. The young man had been quiet the whole time, knees pulled up in front of him on the couch. “I want to help find my sister, and Sam.” He looked at the maji and licked his lips. Nervous, Origon thought. The young man was hard to read, even in the Nether.
“This is to be something for full maji,” Origon said. Apprentices were a risk, as they all well knew.
“If Majus Caroom is going somewhere, I will have to accompany them,” Inas said. “I haven’t gotten any work done since they were lost. I can’t think.”
“Inas is a part of this, as much as those ones’, hmm, missing apprentices are,” Caroom added. Origon saw Rilan wince, and he carefully kept his crest neutral. He hadn’t gotten the two lost, after all—they did that themselves. “That one has already led this group to the site of one of the, hmm, voids, and may be of more use.”
Origon started, and saw the others do the same. How they could hear the signing when they weren’t looking at the Lobhl, like a cough in an echoing building, was beyond him. He would never fully understand the Nether.
“Any disagreement?” Rilan asked. No one signaled a negative. “Then we will become five, as
Inas says, and after we find our apprentices, seven. This investigation is getting larger. Something is happening, and we must all be careful our information doesn’t spread.”
She explained the events of the last several ten-days to both Hand Dancer and Caroom, starting with the assassin on Methiem who sabotaged the space capsule. Origon broke in a few times to add corrections, especially how he had found Sam. Inas, in a shaky voice, told of the Drain that took his parents.
Last, Origon revealed Councilor Feldo’s news of a captured Aridori. Hand Dancer’s fingers fluttered in mute astonishment at the pronouncement and even placid Caroom jerked upright from their perch on the wall, their solid green eyes flashing. Inas’ fingers gripped the arm of the couch until they turned white, his back rigid. His face was pale, and clammy.
“I’d be interested in your input,” Rilan said. They were all fishing for data. Origon studied the Lobhl, wondering what he would do. Laying out everything at once had jogged something in his mind, and he sat back, letting the Symphony of Power in, listening to echoes of the connections between their stated facts, a five-part harmony in sultry horns. It was good for that sort of thing. The music was complex, a spiral of phrases bridging and building on each other.
Hand Dancer listened for a moment as well, in him, a stretching of thumbs. Then his hands moved again.
“We understand.” Rilan passed a look around at them. Inas shrugged.
Hand Dancer was listening to the same music Origon heard, as he—she—was also of the House of Power. The Lobhl’s sense of hearing was not as strong as the other species, and Origon wondered in what way the Grand Symphony appeared to Hand Dancer. A faint orange haze surrounded her intricate hands as they wove a complex tapestry in the air. It was laced with her personal bland gray. She traced lines in the air, each a different chord, a roadmap of the events. Origon had never had much patience with the technique, preferring his own mind to leaning on an artificial construct of the Symphony.
Hand Dancer snapped another orange line into existence with three of her thumbs, then lightly adjusted its place, as if painting a landscape. She shook a hand loose to communicate.
“We know this,” Origon said. He didn’t bother to correct the Drains’ name this time. “What we are not knowing is who.”
Hand Dancer pushed her construct, the lines connecting like a spider web on the edge of chaos and order. She plucked a strand with a finger and one thumb, and Origon heard a new chord in the melody. The construct was a masterpiece of the technique, and Origon thrust down a stab of jealousy. He could see why Rilan had wanted the Lobhl on the Council. Her analytic thinking would greatly offset Freshta and Scintien’s weak strategy.
Origon hadn’t thought of Teju—the assassinated majus who was originally supposed to pilot the Methiemum’s space capsule—for several ten-days. He had sent a gift of Nether glass to the young majus’ family, unable to think of anything else to do.
“Must the attacks be connected?” Caroom asked.
Hand Dancer signed, releasing the strand to gesture with both hands.
“It isn’t likely,” Rilan agreed, and Inas nodded. He was sitting forward now, and drew his hair back behind his ears. Origon thought Rilan looked a little better already. Something to focus her. That was what she needed right now.
“If they were are all to be connected?” Origon asked. He was beginning to hear the convergence of the chords into a new, deadly chorus, but he couldn’t quite make it out. He squinted at the glowing lines.
Hand Dancer gestured a smile, her hands opening out, one above the other.
The lines became a complex geometric shape, trilling a series of harmonics in Origon’s mind. It was beautiful, a riot of stars and triangles folded into a sphere.
“What is it?” Inas asked.
Hand Dancer answered. At Inas’ confused look, she continued.
Rilan poked a finger into the center of Hand Dancer’s creation. “If all the events are connected to the origin, then why is this model hollow?” The latticework of lines formed intricate shapes on the surface of the model, but the middle was bare.
Caroom suddenly leaned forward from their perch with a creak. “Because that is where the originators of this, hmm, this conspiracy are located.”
Rilan leaned back in her chair. “A conspiracy. Within the Assembly and the Council. A ten-day ago I would have called you crazy, but now, I wonder if whoever is behind this could really be controlling all these pieces?”
Origon nodded. This was what he had been worrying at the past ten-days. There was some intelligence at work behind all of this. Maybe he would look into Hand Dancer’s technique. “We must be finding the spider at the center of this web.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Aridori
-The Most Traditional Servants of the Holy Form are a small splinter of the Sathssn Cult of Form. In past cycles, they have caused little problem with their eccentric and unwholesome practices, but they are lately gaining power in the governance of Sath Home. I am worried.
Thesna, Sathssn representative for the Southern Coastal Coalition
Sam’s back hit the wall of the cell. Aridori. Things—little gestures, looks, reactions—all began to fall into new places in his head. Councilor Ayama’s warnings played on a loop. Never trust what an Aridori says or does. Slip through a crack like an Aridori.
“Sam?” Enos’ voice was soft. Is she getting nearer? Should I wave my fingers in front of my face? Will it help? His breathing was fast, too fast, and his hand curled around his watch. I trusted her—kissed her.
“Sam, it is still me.”
He shook his head, knowing she couldn’t see. Now Rey’s words came back: planning, for cycles on end, your best friend becoming a different person, revealed as a spy.
“Does Inas know?” She’d been leading him on the whole time. What else could the Aridori do besides shapeshifting?
There was a sharp exhale. Not a laugh. “He’s like me. He is Aridori too. We are—it is complex.” He heard a step, and pressed himself into the wall. She was close. “We wanted to tell you so many times,” she said, “especially when you helped us, at the place our family…was killed.” He could hear the hitch in her voice, knew how her chin raised when she was uncertain. Real, or an act? She was very near now, and he shifted sideways, trying not to make noise.
She gave a hit
ching laugh, or rather, somewhere between that and a sob. Sam cringed. “I was scared senseless to tell you, but now I’m light as a feather.”
He took another step to the side, and yelped when his arm touched her hand. She had been coming from the other direction. The echoes threw me off. Sneaky. He pulled his arm away from her.
“Sam, you must say something.” He could almost see her small hands, clasped together. “Please.”
The silence lengthened. What can I say to her? “What are you? What is Inas? I…I trusted you.”
More silence. “I am Aridori.” Her voice sounded surprised at the word. “Inas and I are—a pair. A set. Two instances.”
Sam worried at the strange descriptor. “Why did you lie to me?”
“That, I think, is obvious.” This was the old Enos’ voice, sardonic.
He imagined her half-smile, mirrored by Inas. Two instances? What does that mean? “I suppose it is.” He shifted again, away. It wouldn’t help in this tight place. Observe my own reactions, then make a choice. Odd that advice about anxiety came in so handy when one of your closest friends betrayed you. “Why tell me? Why not slip through the slot, disable the System, and slip back in?”
Now Enos was silent. He felt her come closer, heard the strains defining air change in the Symphony that now buzzed in the back of his head. He curled in, but didn’t move. There was a scrape as she slid down the wall, sitting. Slowly, he followed.
“The process takes time, and it is likely you would have noticed anyway.” He heard her pause, felt “but” hanging in the air. “I wanted to tell you, rather than have you discover it.” She sighed, but sounded relieved rather than sad. “It is so good to let go of this secret for once.”
“We could have found another way out, eventually.” He offered. Never trust what an Aridori says or does. She wasn’t doing anything to him. In Rey’s stories, the Aridori attacked as soon as they were found out. What’s different? “You could have stayed hidden.”
The Seeds of Dissolution Page 28