They turned into what at first appeared to be an alley between two buildings, both of cut marble, reflecting the walls’ light from an obscure angle and turning it into a cozy glow. Then Sam saw the fungal growth stretching from wall to wall overhead. Fleshy gills gaped underneath, sheltering him from the ceiling of the Nether. He relaxed, a little, then saw the rows of dishes set out. Bowls of brown, gray, and red pastes were displayed below a rainbow of powdery spices. Whole mushrooms, some with stalks and caps, others flat and wide, sat on trays between the two. Inas gently pushed Sam toward a podium with one of the squat rubbery creatures behind it, three head-tentacles braided together and pulled across shoulders like a fleshy scarf. Sam squinted as the Nether clued him into subtle features, letting him know this person was not what he would consider male or female, but a third gender. His mind spun at what to call the person and the Nether nudged his memory toward specific words. Sam squirmed at the mental intrusion, though he was thankful for the reference.
“Welcome to the Mushroom and Spice,” the attendant said. Hir voice was thick, as if zie spoke through a bowl of water. Zie had a look of perpetual surprise, as hir large silvery eyes did not blink. “Buffet is on special today.”
“Um.” Sam froze, feeling the alley start to spin around him. He couldn’t remember the last time he ordered something in person. He always ordered delivery online. What if I do it wrong? The others will laugh at me. He suddenly felt the absence of his cell phone. He sniffed his fear back and dug a hand through Majus Cyrysi’s bag of crystal coins hanging from his belt. The attendant’s slit pupils followed the motion, flicking down his shorts. Zie wore what looked like a brown jumpsuit, the many pockets buttoned shut. Zie pointed a long orange finger to the sign above hir head, which contained a confusion of descriptions and numbers. At least I can read it, even if I don’t understand it. Sam stared helplessly until Inas coughed next to him. He jumped.
“Here,” he said, and dumped a pile of coins into Inas’ hands. Sam’s hands were cold from nervousness, and he felt the heat from Inas’ open palms before he drew back. He had a sudden urge to cover the other man’s hands with his own, to share in that warmth. Sam put his hands at his sides, biting his lip.
Inas’ eyes widened slightly at the mass of reflective money, then he picked several small triangles and squares out and handed them to the attendant, who separated them into clay jugs by hir podium and waved a hand at the collection of tables and chairs in the alley, deeper in the shade of the gilled fungus that spanned overhead. Inas gave the rest back to Sam, who dumped them in his pouch with a sigh of relief. Well, they haven’t left me yet. Now to get through a meal.
Enos showed him how to sample a pinch of the different spices, then mix the flavors into the base paste of his choice, made from ground mushrooms in some manner. The whole mushrooms between the offerings doubled as utensils, the flat ones as mini-shovels, the others, with thick, woody stems, as a way to scoop up paste. No one mentioned his gaffe at the podium.
Once safely at their table, conversation started again, though Sam stayed quiet, watching the three. He grasped for the calm the others exuded. I won’t have a panic attack here, at least. He held on to his watch when he wasn’t eating, surprised at the range of flavors available from the pastes. Rey told several jokes he didn’t get at all, and a few more which were surprisingly funny, given he recognized none of the people or places.
Inas laughed at all of them, and eventually turned to Sam, sucking the last bit of paste off a mushroom with a lengthy stem. He had been using it to clean out the corners of his bowl. “Enos says you are new to the Nether and the homeworlds?”
“That’s right.” Sam scanned the three faces as he spooned in a mouthful of his red paste with a flat mushroom. Don’t think about Aunt Martha. Eating gave him time to push away the sadness threatening to burst back out his throat. “It looks like I’m staying for now. Can you help me learn how to be an apprentice?”
Inas waved the hand that still held his mushroom. It wobbled with the movement, and Sam’s eyes followed it, then back to Inas’ friendly face. “Do not worry too hard. Mostly, it seems the maji leave apprentices to learn theory on their own. Or with friends.” His mouth lifted in that crooked smile and Sam followed the smile as it rose through Inas’ dark eyes. “Basic theory, at least, is shared between the houses, even if specific rhythms and musical phrases are not. As long as you can hear the Grand Symphony, the maji are content to let us practice by ourselves, and sometimes show off what we’ve learned.” He paused, frowning. He must have seen something on Sam’s face. “You can hear the Symphony, can you not?”
“I…Majus Cyrysi and I haven’t had much chance to practice the basics yet, but I’ve heard bits of music a few times. It’s like the most complicated song I’ve ever heard, but everything works together.” Maybe I should have concentrated harder this morning. Can everyone else hear it so easily?
Inas nodded, his face grave. “Then you have heard it.”
“The Majus seems,” Enos hesitated, “flighty.”
Sam felt his mouth purse. “He probably hasn’t settled down completely. I think he’s been traveling.” I can hope.
“Yer mentor will want yer to find out where to focus yer study.” Rey’s face screwed up as he spoke. “Bein’ a bit mechanical-minded, I’m plannin’ on focusing on how the House of Potential fuels some of the more recent contraptions maji are devising.”
“What about you?” Sam asked the twins. Maybe they could help me study. Surely he had something in common with them.
“She has only started today,” Inas gestured with his mushroom, “though she has been practicing for the past few ten-days. I have been working with Majus Caroom for only nine days so far. They said it will take a few more ten-days before I’m ready to choose.”
A few ten-days. It was their equivalent of a week. Suddenly the time involved hit Sam. He had only been here a little more than a day. To have to study for weeks, months, years—
He swallowed a sob, hoping the others wouldn’t hear it. He covered his mouth and looked down, but it didn’t help.
Sam jumped at a light touch on his shoulder, then hunched inward. Enos had a hand on his shoulder. “You have lost your home.” It wasn’t a question, but Sam nodded anyway. “I’m sure you will one day find your way back.”
He rubbed at his eyes. Too late to hide anything now. He sat back and watched the others, heedless of how he must look. “No, I won’t. Majus Cyrysi already tried. My home is gone. The only place I remember well enough is ‘changed too far from my mental picture’ for a portal.” He tried for a rendition of Majus Cyrysi’s airy tone, but ruined it by sniffing afterward.
Inas studied his face. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Out wi’ it,” Rey said. The harsh command shocked him, for just a moment. “We’re all homesick and pent up-like. Yer not the only who’s missin’ his home. It’s good to be sharin’ yer troubles with friends.” The usually jolly Sureri stared at him, thick eyebrows drawn down.
Sam looked at the twins, their faces open, willing to listen. If I start, I won’t be able to stop. He resisted, but heard the words roll from his mouth. He told of his home, his collection, Aunt Martha, and finally, the Drain. He even told of trying to find shelter with the small village in Alaska—so many suspicious people—after his parents were killed, though he left out the specifics of their deaths. That was still too personal.
“That’s tough, mate,” Rey said after he finished.
Enos and her brother shared a long look. “You say Majus Cyrysi knows of only one more of these ‘Drains’?” she asked.
Sam blinked. That wasn’t the response I expected. “Um. Yes.”
“We have also encountered one of these ‘Drains’,” Inas told him.
CHAPTER NINE
Clothes Make the Man
-Some delegates in the Great Assembly whisper the Council of the Maji has too much power. They contr
ol transportation, imports, and exports between homeworlds, and have the ear of the Effature. I believe the Council must work in the best interest of the Great Assembly, for if not, they could reduce us to ten simple planets, spread wide across the universe.
Rabata Liinero Humbano, Senior Speaker for the Etanela
Rilan watched the speakers question Tad, thankfully now devoid of his guns. What was so familiar? It wasn’t him. Rilan had never met Tad before. Was it his family?
Baldek. The Sureriaj family name rumbled around in Rilan’s head, and her eyes narrowed at the implication. Around her, the Assembly argued over Speaker Veerga’s insistence on the Servants seceding. Tad is lying. It took several minutes for the Effature to calm everyone. The Most Traditional Servants had been much more influential a thousand cycles ago, when they led squads to exterminate the last of the Aridori. It was understandable they were scared now, but manufacturing a panic based on Tad’s testimony was foolish.
While the others probed the Sureri on the details of the crime, Rilan hastily scribbled a note and sent an attendant over to Jhina, as Speaker for the Council. She caught an interested frown from Feldo over his round glasses, and suspicious glance from Bofan A’Tof, who was re-tying his head-tentacles, but she ignored them, raising her eyebrows at Jhina. She caught the willowy Etanela’s subtle moment of shock—a widening of her large eyes. Jhina remembered. Surely, at the peril of losing a section of the Assembly, it was past time to let the secret of the Baldek medicine go?
Then Jhina slowly shook her head, and flicked her eyes toward the Effature. Rilan followed her glance and saw him watching her. Of course he had already figured it out. He closed his eyes and made the tiniest negative gesture.
Aridori had not killed the Baldek clan, because the Aridori were extinct. This was like every other wild rumor popping up over the cycles. They had only the testimony of Tad, a disgraced Sureri. The cloaked Sathssn representatives had listened to him because it furthered the worst-case scenario they feared and reinforced their prejudices.
Rilan wrote another note to Jhina: Ask him his sub-family’s name. When she looked over, the speaker took in a long breath, but signaled agreement with one hand. Rilan watched the five Sureriaj speakers on the floor of the Assembly, all male, reflecting their unbalanced gender ratio. That, and the women were far too busy running the country-sized families to deal with interspecies politics. One of the Sureriaj speaker seats had been vacant for several months. They watched their fallen son nervously give testimony from the center of the floor.
Rilan tried to pick out the family groups. Each family was as big as a province on Methiem, its members all related, led by the oldest of the family matriarchs—ruthless and effective women. There was at least one speaker from the Nara and Frente families, and maybe one of the Roftun. None from the Baldek, as far as she could tell. She looked up into the seating, trying to catch sight of an unusually pale Sureri—the nominal sign of the Baldek family. None she could see, but that family was isolationist even for the Sureriaj.
Jhina broke into an Etanela speaker’s questions. “Naiyul Tadisoful, formerly Baldek Tadisoful, will you give us the name of your Baldek sub-family?”
Rustling conversations in the Assembly went quiet, and Rilan leaned forward. It was considered very impolite to ask for more names than those a Sureri gave. Within their species, additional names pinned down ancestry to at least eight generations. They weren’t shared.
Tad drew up to his full height. “What’s that got to do wi’ anything?”
“Do you have the sub-family title, Speaker Veerga?” Jhina addressed the Sathssn who introduced Tad. The cloaked speaker shook his head. Jhina turned back to Tad. “As I understand, being disgraced to the Naiyul family releases you from all ties to your former family. Is this correct?”
“Eyah, ‘tis,” Tad said, “but—”
Jhina rode over him. “Then you should have little compunction about telling us, to further a matter which concerns the very integrity of the Great Assembly of Species, an organization that has lasted for thousands of cycles.” The Etanela’s ever-present movement had stilled, lending her the air of a predator about to strike.
Tad shrank, his hands drifting to where his guns would have been holstered. He swallowed and glanced to his species’ speakers. They did not meet his gaze.
“Meneltec.” The word was nearly inaudible.
Rilan pushed a fist into her thigh, looking again to Jhina, who closed her eyes. Got him.
This was not an Aridori attack. The Meneltec sub-family was one Rilan knew of from four cycles ago. They had likely committed mass suicide after discovering their increasing sterility, which was a punishment enacted by, and known only to, the highest echelons in the Great Assembly, including the Council. Rilan mentally praised the band of merchants who had first brought her information on the plot against the Methiemum. She had personally arranged for the tainted supplies, disguised as relief for an epidemic of the Shudders, to be slipped back into that sub-family’s own medical stocks. It had worked better than she expected.
Little conversations were starting up among the higher ranking speakers. Most of the Assembly did not know of the Baldek Meneltec plot, but those who wielded the most power—the Council and the Effature, the senior speakers, even some of the longest-serving diplomats—they knew. They were the ones who, in the end, guided the course of the Great Assembly of Species. Tad watched a senior speaker for the Methiemum lean over and whisper something to a Festuour speaker, who then looked to the disgraced Sureri. Tad slumped. His removal from the Baldek family was probably for not following his sub-family’s lead. The questions would continue, but it would be downhill from here. The Most Traditional Servants would have a hard time using this pawn to further their secessionist agendas.
Rilan glanced up to where Ori sat, his crest lifting and flattening as he followed the discussion. Despite herself, she was starting to think his voids might be the more important issue, especially with the continued lack of evidence supporting the Aridori threat. She had trusted him implicitly, at one point. Were they such different people now that he had to struggle to prove everything he told her?
“With this new information, and if there are no more questions—” Jhina began, but a runner appeared at her elbow. “There is a request for comment from—” She speared a glance toward Rilan, who frowned back, feeling a drop in the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t been paying attention. “The House of Healing?” The drop in her belly became a chasm. Why had the majus not come through her?
Her eyes moved to a small figure standing above, in the section of maji from her house. She recognized the dark hair, the carefully trimmed goatee, the prideful head tilted upward.
Vethis. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and inhaled. Shiv’s teeth. Rilan felt her hand drift to her belt, but of course her knife wasn’t there. Jhina was busy approving the request. Little surprise Vethis would ignore her authority as one of the Council. Nothing had changed since they were apprentices.
“This is not the only recent activity of the Aridori,” the man said, the System projecting his voice across the Assembly now that Jhina had approved him. He emphasized the lisp his rich friends in High Imperium affected. He thought it made him sound sophisticated, but instead it made him sound like the ass he was. “I have on good authority the Council of the Maji has suppressed another report of an Aridori assassin—one connected with the ill-fated Methiemum expedition to our moon.”
Vethis didn’t know the Baldek Meneltec had tainted medical supplies. He wasn’t high enough in the maji’s ranks. He would undermine her plan with his nonsense, whatever his current scheme was. It was known there had been an assassin—just not that he had been a disguised Methiemum guard. She almost gestured for Jhina to cut off his access to the voice projecting System, but stopped. If the Assembly saw her interrupt Vethis’ tirade, it would only cement his noise in their minds as reality. She gritted her teeth. Those who looked for conspiracies f
eared the power of the Council of the Maji.
Vethis poured out all he knew of the Methiemum assassin disguised as a Sureri—something the Council had desired to keep quiet for the moment. It was more than the majus should have known, but not everything. However, in his version, the assassin was not paid by the corrupt mayor of Kashidur City, but a free agent. Not only that, he had been an Aridori, capable of looking like whomever it wished. She saw the other councilmembers shifting uncomfortably in their seats. She would hear the snide comments and bear the disappointed looks for not keeping a tight enough leash on those in her house.
One of the senior Etanela speakers stood up. “If I may break in for a moment, Majus Vethis,” the tall woman said, cutting through his tirade. Rabata Liinero Humbano was a very old Etanela, a dominate female. Her ancestors had led the Etanela speakers for the last three hundred cycles, and her descendants would likely lead for that much longer. Speaker Humbano was on no one’s side but her own, but she was logical. The head of the House of Strength gave a sigh of relief next to Rilan.
“May I ask where this information has come from, and what proof you have of your claims before you throw the entire Assembly into chaos?” Speaker Humbano rotated to stare up at Vethis, and the whole Assembly grew quiet, waiting to hear the answer. Rilan started to breathe easier.
“I have this on the best authority, Speaker,” Vethis countered, puffing his chest out. “I have many sources of information on multiple worlds. All of them can see the benefits of being close to one of the maj—”
“I did not ask for your boasts of how many toady to you, majus,” Speaker Humbano interrupted. “I asked for proof.”
Through the amplification of Vethis’ voice, Rilan clearly heard him swallow. Few crossed the elder speaker. “There is a guard in the mayoral house who owes me a favor, Speaker,” Vethis mumbled. “She told me she personally saw the shooter, who was a Methiemum. At the scene of the assassination, the man appeared as a Sureri, with similar build and face. It is obvious he changed his shape, like the stories of the Aridori.”
The Seeds of Dissolution (Dissolution Cycle Book 1) Page 11
