Well, it was a big emotional mess, the next few hours. Ylfing couldn’t even stand up, he just curled up in the snow where he’d fallen and bawled, and I tried to explain myself to him, in between trying to explain to Consanza and the Nuryevens what had happened and why we didn’t have to worry about being slaughtered unless someone did something stupid like leap at one of the Umakh with drawn steel.
You know, your people have this funny way about them. I suppose it’s obvious to you, but I don’t know if you’ve ever realized what an interesting thing it is—as soon as they know you’re a sworn kinsmen, it’s as if they had never even considered killing you. One minute there was this storm of ferocious riders, weapons bloody, horses like war demons; the next moment the meekest, gentlest ponies you ever saw, and the riders—well, they’re still holding bloody weapons, but it’s with this natural, careless air, as if a bloody spear is as harmless as a bowl of milk. As if they had been caught with it by mistake, or they were just holding it for a friend. A complete transformation, in seconds! And you know, you people don’t ever say, Ah, sorry for the mistake, I didn’t know you were kin. It’s as if the fact that they were about to kill us became untrue the moment they knew who we were. It’s as if it never happened at all, as if it weren’t even something that a person could consider possible. It’s a sheerly delightful thing, and I quite love it.
Nuryevens are nothing like this—you can show them that you’re a friend, but they still think you might stick a knife in their back if you get the chance. Took so long to calm this particular flock down that your people all dismounted and started setting up half-camp, lighting a bit of a fire and brewing tea from melted snow and mare’s milk.
Ylfing wouldn’t be comforted at all. Every time he caught a glimpse of me, he was wrecked again and went right back to sobbing. “Listen, you can stop,” I said to him, a good dozen times. “I’m fine, see? It was all a story.” But it was no good.
I gave up on him after a while. I know you people are a little dubious of men together, but I found the cutest boy rider of the lot and bullied him into taking tea and hot milk to Ylfing. Figured that’d cheer him up if nothing else would. That boy could fall in love with a rock if it had eyelashes to bat at him.
So then I had to explain to Consanza why the Umakh had ridden so far into the heart of the country, told her everything. You’re supposed to tell your advocate everything, aren’t you? She was furious with me, obviously, especially when I told her that I was going to tell you people to ride straight across the country, pretend to lose two battles, and then massacre the Nuryeven army at the ravine on the Athakosa Plain near Byerdor, the extremely, extremely poor tactical position I had talked the Nuryeven army into taking. I mean, hiding in the bottom of a ravine? Against an army on horseback with short-bows and magicians? This is my gift to you: you saved my life, and I hand you a country on a silver platter for you to do with as you please.
Consanza was upset with me about that, even after I had explained about Ivo and his friends, about how it had been their idea as much as it was mine—but of course she would be furious. She wasn’t one of the people who had suffered, who had grown up suffering. She’s lived in the city her whole life, she has an education that she didn’t have to walk twenty or thirty or forty miles to get, she has a good job and so do all her spouses. There were things going wrong, and she knew about them. She’d had a chance to do something about the way things were, and she had been in a position where she could have done something about it . . . and she didn’t. Because there was no glory in that, no glamour. Because it was too much like real work.
She shouted at me and stomped back and forth through the snow, and I told her that all the prophecies had been a lie, that she wasn’t meant to be ambassador. I’d just said that so she and her family would be sent out of the city. I owed her a favor, you see, so I made her and her family safe. Debt paid.
Some of the Nuryevens ran off in the night, of course. They know nothing about the plan. All they will say is that we were taken by raiders, and that there was a spy in our midst. I mean, if they’re going to convict me of it, I might as well commit the crime.
And then the rest of it is what you already know. Your niece brought us here to you, escorted us for the rest of the journey. Consanza saw sense, once she’d cooled down a bit, particularly when I convinced her that you’d be needing an ambassador and a Nuryeven translator in the next few days. When she saw the size of your army, I think she was convinced then. How could a force like that lose against Taishineya Tarmos and her half-starved mongrels lurking at the bottom of a ravine? She’s a horrible twit of a woman, but she’s fairly savvy, I’ll credit her that. Knows which way the wind’s blowing. Knows how to pick her battles.
Ylfing cried and cried, and then he was just . . . broken for a few days. Followed me around like a lost puppy, all big sad eyes, like the miracle was about to end and I was about to collapse back into doddering imbecility at any moment. Then there was a day or two where he was angry at me—really angry, angry like I’ve never seen him before. I thought he was about to stomp off and leave me for good. I think he’s forgiven me now. Just a story, I told him. Just a tall tale that I’d spun to save our skins, and if he had swallowed it the same as Taishineya Tarmos and the others, then what was there to be angry about? It meant it was a good story, didn’t it? That it was truer than truth? It wasn’t that I’d lied to him, it was just that . . . Well, a Chant looks at a story and can see the shape of it entire. It’s not the same for us as it is for other folk—we don’t get lost in the woods, because we have maps. I needed Ylfing lost. He couldn’t know that he was part of it while it was happening. He said he felt like he’d been duped, said he felt like a fool. Said he’d thought that I trusted him. I do trust him, inasmuch as you can trust any seventeen-year-old boy. Wouldn’t have kept him around as my apprentice if I didn’t trust him. It’s just that he needed to be lost in the woods with the rest of them to get that particular forest to work properly. Maybe there was another way out. I only did what I felt I had to.
And here we are. So that’s that.
I don’t know what you plan to do next. Nuryevet is weak and hungry and ready to fall—it could be yours if you want it. Smash their army at the Athakosa Plain ravine: stand at either end, line your archers up along the edges, and just shoot and shoot until they’re all dead. Simple. Easy. You won’t lose more than five or ten on your side, if you lose anyone at all.
Take the army’s banners and ride southeast as hard as you can, and you’ll come to Vsila. You’ll know it when you see it. It’s the biggest thing you’ll have ever seen—as big as the winter Gathering of the Clans, or bigger. There’s a city wall you’ll have to get past, but that will be simple. Perhaps one of your wizards has a song to make it even more simple—otherwise, send word ahead to Ivo, and I daresay he and his friends will throw open the gates for you. Ylfing can tell you where to find him. Go into the city, and do whatever you feel you must. I daresay you know more about conquest than I do.
From there, you have options. You could go to the bank and fill your saddlebags with gold and silver and copper and ride home as rich as gods. Melt it down, make useful things out of it. Little silver bells for your horses and wizards, golden wind chimes to hang by the door of your tents . . .
Or you could go south to Enc and Cormerra, to Echaree and beyond. You’re past the mountains that protected them. You could be rich in gold or you could be rich in land. Vsila has a very passable harbor, and they get trade. Keep a presence here and you could have the finest horses brought to you from anywhere your coin can reach—from Vinte, from Bramandon, from Calabog. I leave it up to you. I can see you’re having some thoughts.
But you must excuse me now. I’ve been talking for ages, and my throat is as dry as the Sea of Sun. I’m going to go find one of your camp brewers, and I’m going to—oh, hell, I don’t have anything to trade but stories. I guess I’ll go talk someone else’s ear off until they give me a drink or five. Surel
y I’ve got enough left in me for a fair deal.
Oh, and by the way—as soon as my hangover eases enough for me to walk in a straight line tomorrow, I’m grabbing Ylfing and we are getting out of this goddamn country with all speed.
May the Woman and the Horse protect you and grant you cunning, wisdom, knowledge, and all that. Now I’m off to drown myself in milk-beer.
Acknowledgments
A very long time ago and half the world away, there was a little girl who felt a story in her fingers.
Hello. Here we are, at last. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you here. Before we go any further, I want to say thank you. My whole life, since I felt that first story in my fingers, you’re the one who has been at the center of things. You were never far from my mind when I was writing this book or the others. You, right there—yes, you, holding the book—you’ve always been the one who matters most.
Think of me reaching out and pressing your hands between mine when I say: Thank you. Thank you for letting me tell you this story.
I’m so happy we both made it this far.
There are, of course, dozens, if not hundreds, of people who helped me get here. I couldn’t possibly recognize them all, but there are a particular few who have especially distinguished themselves. So thank you, also . . .
To Vihra’s namesake, Veera Mäkelä, one of the softest and kindest and most full-of-thoughts people I know, whose friendship is summed up by our Facebook relationship status: “in cahoots.”
To Ryan Boyd, my favorite swamp goblin and a dearly cherished treasure of my heart.
To Amie Kinch, a creature of pure fire—a hearth-flame and an inferno by turns—who read this book in one sitting and believed.
To Jennifer Mace and Freya Marske, both innocent flowers and the serpents under them.
To Grace Slater, who arrived at the dawn of all things and will be here at the end of them, though she may wander in the interim.
To DongWon Song, my brilliant, rock-steady agent, who always seems to know exactly the story I mean to tell, even when I’m stumbling around in the woods trying to find it myself. One day I will manage to surprise him, and I consider that aspiration a very worthy one.
To Navah Wolfe, the perfect editor for this book, who didn’t let me get away with bullshitting anything, who is so intimidatingly cool, and whose vision and wisdom made the book better by several orders of magnitude. I might have forged the sword, but she and her whetstone put the edge on it. She made it from a pretty object into a beautiful weapon.
To every other person who laid hands on this story on its journey to being a Real Book out in the world. The incredible team at Saga and their care and expertise, precision, and talent has been nothing less than mindblowing. Jeannie Ng, the managing editor; Elizabeth Blake-Linn, the production manager; and Nicholas Sciacca, the jacket designer: Your work on this book awes and humbles me every day.
To every colleague and professional acquaintance who opened a door and invited me in from the cold, who introduced me to someone who then turned around and introduced me to someone else, in the long chain of serendipity that led me here, to this spot, to this moment, writing these words.
To every friend and family member and professor and bank teller and grocery cashier and stranger on the Internet who smiled and nodded and said, “Yes, you are,” when I told them I was going to be an author one day, beginning at age thirteen until the present. “Yes,” they said, as if they were agreeing that the sky was blue. “Yes. You are. Of course.” Sometimes they believed even when I had lost faith.
And lastly . . . to my father, who raised me on stories and who would have loved this book. He was a storyteller himself, one of the best I’ve ever known, although I don’t know that he would have thought of himself that way.
It takes a village to raise a child—or to write a book. I’ve had an incredible village, better than I sometimes think I deserve. I’ve gotten so lucky at every step of this journey, and there is no way I can adequately thank the people who need to be thanked . . . except by going out and telling another story, and striving, always striving, to make it even better than this one.
This book belongs to all of you. It belongs a little bit to everyone who loves it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
About the Author
Photograph copyright © 2018 by Charles Darrell
Alexandra Rowland grew up on a sailboat in the Caribbean and then in a house in Florida. Sick to death of the tropics, she attended Truman State University in nothern Missouri, where she studied world literature, mythology, and folklore. She now lives in western Massachusetts, where she works as a game monitor at an escape room company, is an occasional bespoke seamstress, and writes under the stern supervision of her feline quality control manager. She can be found on Twitter as @_alexrowland or online at alexandrarowland.net.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Alexandra Rowland
Map on pp. vi–vii by Drew Willis
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Book design by Nicholas Sciacca
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rowland, Alexandra, author.
Title: A conspiracy of truths / Alexandra Rowland.
Description: First edition. | New York : SAGA, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017047551 | ISBN 9781534412804 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534412828 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Storytellers—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3618.O8767 B66 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017047551
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