Though my first instinct was to go to the Imperium guard, I instead closed the study door. I had a few minutes during which the deceased Speaker and I were supposed to meet, before his secretary announced his next appointment. My mind flew through what questions the guard would ask if I alerted them.
Majus Mandamon Feldo, is it? Why were you here to see the Speaker? Why does a majus need approval from the Assembly? Shouldn’t this be going through the Council of the Maji?
Even thinking of telling the authorities about the Society of Two Houses made the jingly earworm of the geas threaten to derail my thoughts. The guard would quickly become suspicious when I further choked and fainted instead of telling where my prototype System Beast came from or under whose patronage I worked.
I shook my head, dislodging the music that kept the Society safe. Because of our…unconventional methods, Society maji went through a roundabout process of getting approval from the Great Assembly to introduce our new and disruptive inventions.
Per our usual methods, the head of the Society had ‘convinced’ the late Speaker not to ask questions about where my colleagues and I got our resources. Even I didn’t know how the Society provided so many high-quality metals and logical gearing ratios.
Once available, our System Beasts would be the perfect servants and secretaries. They could haul loads, act as butlers, deliver mail, remind owners of engagements, and much more. However, without a sponsor, Gompt, Kratitha, and I would never be able to supply them to the inhabitants of the Nether. If this murder even hinted at our organization’s existence, it would also compromise and taint our research by association. I’d be left with nothing, and the Society could no longer develop innovation without those in power asking severe questions. My heart sped, just thinking about it.
Now, the Speaker who would have sponsored us was dead. I let myself really look at him, sprawled out on the floor. He was an Etanela, half again as tall as me, hence the furniture.
What had happened to him? One hand rose to my mouth, then down to the small beard I was growing out, pulling at the hair in thought. Something in my head was silently screaming, though I had been near violent death before. Stay calm.
I had to concentrate—use the few minutes available to figure out what happened. Then I would at least have a way to defend myself against questioning authorities. Otherwise, they would detain me as a suspect, no matter what I said. Any questions would lead to the Society.
There was a pool of blood, slowly seeping into the carpet, and still dripping from the deep cuts which nearly severed the Speaker’s neck. His head was at an unnatural angle, wide glassy eyes staring out from his faintly blue face. Though his mouth was open in shock, the blue coloration was natural to the Etanela, not a symptom of asphyxiation. He wouldn’t have had time to suffocate before the blood loss to his brain killed him. I tried to push away the nausea threatening to bring my breakfast back. Adding to the mess would only complicate solving Speaker Thurapo’s death.
The Speaker and I had corresponded through the Imperium’s mail service just the day before, and he’d invited me to show him the model my colleagues and I had created. Introducing innovations developed by the select group of maji I belonged to had to be handled delicately—a dance of avoiding names, places, and methods of experimentation.
Was the Speaker killed to stop me from showing him the little System Beast? Did someone find out about the Society and its methods?
No. That was paranoia bordering on my mentor’s level. No one outside of my unique Society even knew what the System Beasts were.
Was this self-inflicted? I couldn’t see how. There was no implement here with which the Speaker could have cut his own throat—not like that.
The Speaker’s secretary would check on us soon—maybe even open the closed door without knocking. I had perhaps ten minutes—the time in which I would have presented my proposal—before someone else called for the Speaker’s attention.
The defining quality of maji belonging to the Society of Two Houses was that each of us could hear two of the six aspects of the Grand Symphony, rather than just one, like most maji. Each combination of aspects had its own label. My title in the Society was ‘Investigator.’ Until now, I thought the titles merely convenient masks for those members not wanting to be identified by name. Now it seemed more ironic.
So—I would investigate, and if I could clear any trace of the Society from Speaker Thurapo’s death, then I would go to the authorities. If not, well, I’d deal with that when I got to it.
Wood paneling made the office comfortable, and a dominating Festuour-made rug covered the tile floor. There was one desk, clean save for a writing mat, with a chair on either side. Beside me was the side table where my prototype sat. Both side walls held rows of bookshelves, dusty and obviously little used. The Speaker’s body took up most of the floor, splayed across the center of the rug.
I looked at the chronograph—an older invention of the Society—chained to my vest, marking time until I estimated I would be discovered with the corpse. I knelt by Speaker Thurapo’s body, careful to avoid putting the knees of my tailored suit in the pool of greenish blood seeping into the rug. I could feel the heat from the blood, and from the body, though the sticky liquid was already coagulating. He had not been dead long, whatever happened. I swallowed bile and leaned in.
Aside from the deep gash in the Etanela’s throat—certainly fatal—there was no other sign of a fight. I looked from the body to the closed door of the study, gauging where the Speaker would have been standing.
Falling back on the rug like this meant he was facing the door. Along with his killer? It was pure luck the body hadn’t hit the chair pulled out on this side of the Chorin-wood desk. I held one hand out, measuring. Speaker Thurapo’s frizzy mane of auburn hair was less than the width of my hand away from one leg of the desk.
I pushed my glasses up my nose, and tried to forget how Thurapo would have been the sponsor for our new company selling System Beasts, and a façade to remove interest in where and how my colleagues and I had developed the idea.
Many of the experiments occurring behind the walls of the mansion where I lived would not sit well in the public eye, yet the Society was a generator of progress. It also had connections—under false identities, of course—to many of the Speakers for the Great Assembly, using its members’ reach to exploit potentially embarrassing knowledge. I didn’t know what Speaker Thurapo had done, but I hoped his indiscretion had nothing to do with his death. The Society’s direct involvement would complicate things greatly.
From information gathered over the short time I had been a member, I knew the Society’s efforts had saved people’s lives and ended wars quickly and efficiently. Its members had added comforts to our lives like freezing and heating technology and remedies for bacterial infections. If, in the process, a few unknown persons suffered, or a few highly prized resources went missing, what was that against the good of all? Yet I was sure the Great Assembly or the Council of the Maji would not see it the same way.
Time was wasting, and I reigned in my thoughts, looking up to the desk. Someone must have been sitting on this side, speaking with the Etanela before pushing away. The Speaker had come from behind his desk before he was killed. I clenched my jaw. What prompted his death, and why did it have to happen this morning, of all mornings?
A non-majus might have difficulty discovering more in the brief time before they were found. But as an ‘Investigator,’ I had two advantages: the Symphonies I could hear.
I let the Symphony of Healing fill my mind with faint rising and falling scales. It told me Speaker Thurapo was definitely dead, his complex trills and glissandos degenerating into steady and uninteresting eighth notes.
Conversely, the Symphony of Potential dealt in transferring energy, and as I listened to the fundamental music underlying the universe, I heard residues of people’s actions, reactions, and movements. Each one was a traceable resonance, though some wer
e extremely faint.
As I got to my feet and went to the desk, the musical themes of energy became clearer. Speaker Thurapo had come around the desk—a glissando and dipping trill in the music—following another body, who was speaking with him. I crossed the rug on the other side of the Speaker’s body, stepping over his large boots, pointed out at angles. I looked away from the ghastly wound.
Sifting through the Symphony of Potential, I found another fading theme. Thurapo had been standing just here, and…I listened carefully, trying to separate out one rhythm, like listening to a single string playing in an orchestra. I thought his assailant had stood in the doorway, ready to leave, but it was hard to say. Closing the door had partially written over that music. I checked my chronograph again—I had found nothing yet, but there was still time.
Did this other person murder the Speaker? They must have. Could it be connected to showing the System Beast prototype model? The geas protected the Society and—some would say—its unethical practices. It was supposed to be foolproof. I didn’t want this extra complication. Just creating the System Beasts had been challenge enough.
Need more information. My eyes, almost of their own accord, were drawn back to the body, my subconscious registering something I’d missed. I wiped sweaty hands on my vest and stepped closer, pulling the hem of my pants away from the ruined section of rug, and Thurapo’s throat. The fingers and thumb of the Speaker’s right hand were together, as if he had held something. Going by the corpse’s open mouth and wide eyes, he had been surprised when he died.
The House of Potential revealed a fading jangle of discordant notes—tight muscles in the Speaker’s hand, now loosened in death. The House of Healing repeated an intertwined duet—he’d been holding something made from organic material, like cloth or paper.
I knelt down by his right hand. Another trait of an Investigator was to hear the past energy and biology of an object—like seeing a short way into the past. I listened to the pattern of harmonics between the two Symphonies.
The music of Healing was regular, overlapping chords weaving into a rigidly defined structure. The music of Potential held the fading change in beat that meant the object had been cut or torn from another source. It was probably a piece of paper, taken from a larger source of information—maybe something the Speaker had written? Finally, another clue.
I let the Symphony of Potential take the upper hand, retracing the descending melody. It led toward the closed door. So, whoever had killed the Speaker had taken what he held into the hallway and beyond. I checked the timepiece on my vest again. About half my interview time gone.
I opened the door, peering both ways. The short corridor was empty for the moment and I surged outside, closing the door silently behind me. The intersection of Healing and Potential rose out here, the notes more recent. Whoever had taken the paper went this way.
I turned left, following the melody. This hallway was in the lower level of the Dome of the Assembly, where each of the sixty-six speakers had their own rooms, and, unfortunately, their own secretary.
I had only gone a few steps when a face under a bob of golden hair stuck around the next corner. The Etanela who had let me in must have heard my steps. She was wearing the kind of makeup many female working Etanela adopted, with tiny red dots above and below her eyes, her lips tinted deep purple against the faint blue of her face.
She came fully around the corner, putting away a tube of lipstick, and I stopped dead, my mind whirling. Something about her movement looked suddenly familiar, as if I knew her from somewhere, but I couldn’t place it.
“Anything I can help you with?” she asked. “Are you finished with your interview? I’ll just pop in and see what the Speaker—” Her hands clasped together in front of her, each massaging the other.
She must have seen something. She couldn’t have killed him.
I interrupted her flow of words. “Ah, no. We’re not done yet.” What if…? “You haven’t seen anyone come past, have you? Perhaps with a piece of paper?”
The secretary considered me, looking down from shoulders and head above me. Her eyes were watery, and still puffy from sleep. They would have been comically large on one of my species, but in her faintly blue, freckled face, they only looked earnest. “I haven’t, but I got here just before you. You’re the Speaker’s first appointment.” She shrugged. “He works odd hours. Sometimes early in the morning, sometimes late at night.”
So whoever had killed him had left with the list just in time. I still needed to clear the Society from this mess, and somehow keep the Imperium guard from arresting me once this secretary figured out I’d been having an interview with a deceased speaker.
Perhaps a little misdirection. “The…the Speaker asked if he had another five minutes in his schedule.” I shrugged. “He seems to have lost some information necessary to my presentation.” I tried to keep my face neutral.
“Just a moment. I’ll check.” She sniffed, then ducked back around the corner, presumably to her desk. I let out a slow breath, trying to keep my hands from shaking.
In the few moments available, I focused on the fading musical traces of the paper’s thief. Whatever happened had been very recent, or I wouldn’t have been able to still hear the notes. It went right by her desk, and unless I wanted to run past and alert everyone to the body, the musical trail would fade away before I could follow it. The way the music was dropping notes into inaudibility, it wouldn’t be long until it was impossible to track.
The secretary popped around the corner again, her hands tracing elegant paths through the air. “He can spare another five minutes. I’ll come tell you when the time is up.”
She looks tired—must have been late coming in this morning. That will only make her feel worse when she finds the body.
“That will do nicely. I’ll let him know,” I said as I backed away, then threw a glance down at the chronograph. A few more minutes to search. Once I left, the Speaker’s cooling body would not stay secret long. My only chance was to find a clue inside the room.
I paused at the door to make sure the secretary wasn’t watching, then closed my eyes, separating out the bubbly, anxious music that defined her person from the rest of the Symphony of Healing.
Taking notes from my being, mimicking her chords and melodies, I tied them to a note keyed to the House of Potential. An aura of white and brown grew around me, visible only to maji—the physical results of changing the Symphony. I pressed my fingers on the doorframe, and the aura transferred to that spot. The new construct—a System—would send me an alerting tone if the secretary came down the corridor. Losing a few of my notes was worth the extra warning.
Inside the study, I closed the door, frowned at Speaker Thurapo’s body, and scanned the room. The desk was the only other place to look, and the fading music pointed in that direction, though it was nearly inaudible.
The Speaker brought the paper from his desk. Why? To give to the killer?
I positioned myself where Speaker Thurapo would have sat, though my legs dangled as if I were a toddler, and spread one hand across the writing mat on the desk. It was leather, dyed green, with filigree around the edges. The Symphony of Healing held a last leitmotif woven through the writing mat, swirls of notes corresponding to the swirls of writing. The source of the paper’s trail was here, maybe copied from another place. I only had a few more moments before it faded completely.
I closed my eyes, tracing the most recent indentations in the mat with a finger as I followed the music along a measure. I could almost make out what was written. It was a list of some sort, with names and…titles? Translating notes of the Symphony into writing was not something I had done before, and I hoped the tactile input from my finger would help me decipher the script.
My eyes flew open and the Symphony left me in a crash of noise. I was tracing my own name.
My finger continued its path, unaided now by the music in the back of my head. It would be even harder to
catch hold of that particular sequence of notes before it disappeared. The Symphony did not like maji fiddling with it overly much.
Mandamon Feldo – Investigator
Why would this contain the name the Society used for my combination of houses? Only a member should know of them. I traced the next line, now more familiar with the indentations.
Tethan – Overwhelm
The name was vaguely familiar—another member who worked in chemistry, I believed—and I felt farther down.
Timpomitnob Gompt, Watcher – Archeologist
It was the name of my friend and colleague, working on the System Beast project. The little prototype was modeled after her. That meant the next line was probably…
Kratithakanipouliteka – Engineer
Yes, Kratitha, our project team’s third member. It was conceivable the Speaker had all our names, likely even, as I had been scheduled to speak with him. But why and how were our Society titles included? What had this Tethan to do with it? The list went on.
Plithin A’Tyf – Psychiatrist
I knew him socially, a boorish Lobath.
There was one more indentation I could make out, below Plithin’s name.
Moortlin – Biologist
No, this was no list of appointments. This was a list of the members of the Society of Two Houses with our internal titles, which no one outside our group should have. My heart sped at the implication. The Speaker is not a majus, thus not a member of the Society. How did he get this? Someone else knows, but what do they know?
I knew exactly who I needed to see.
Moortlin wouldn’t like this. The Benish was paranoid about anything hinting at the Society’s existence. Could I get proof for them?
I ran a hand over the desk drawers to search for paper to make a copy of the names, but a sustained tone rang in the back of my mind, and I held my chronograph to eye level. My time was up.
I sprang from behind the desk, grabbing my prototype model and then the extra chair as I went. The Symphony of Potential’s beat grew louder as I dragged the legs across the rug beside Thurapo’s corpse, creating friction. I flung open the door, stepping out into the surprised secretary’s path, and left the chair teetering behind me, grabbing notes from my being and sliding them between measures in the music. I redirected the energy of friction and the movement of the falling chair into slightly different rhythms.
Tales of the Dissolutionverse Box Set Page 33