A Choir of Lies

by Alexandra Rowland

  And then after these little enclosed moments of genuine care and intimacy, she’d go back to her performance, loud and colorful and charming by design.

  At today’s party, I drifted around as though in a fevered haze, feeling like I’d done hundreds of these so far. I had told the stars-in-the-marsh story, as I was commanded to do, and then I sat quietly and had nothing to do but listen.

  “Yes,” Sterre said, “we’re doing amazingly well. They’re all the rage, of course, and they’re only getting more so by the day.”

  Heer van Vlymen agreed heartily. He was a short person, a mann with spindly legs and a great large belly, and he wore enormous amounts of frothing lace at his wrists and neck, and bright jewels on his fingers and ears, and shining silks encrusted with embroidery. He had a great energy to him like a twittering bird, and he spoke in sudden outbursts as if each time he was holding himself back until he could bear it no longer.83 It was exhausting, but I had no choice but to endure in silence. “Indeed, everyone talks of nothing but your flowers, Sterre my dear. I even overheard my upstairs maids talking about their plans to buy some for themselves!”

  “Well, they’d better buy soon if they plan to,” Sterre said. “We’ve sold out of the current shipment, and we’ve nearly sold out of the shipment that hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “Have you indeed!” one of the other guests said. “However did you manage such a thing?”

  Sterre shrugged. “It was simple, really—when people already know that they want something, and they know it’s on the way, they don’t mind laying down their money to ensure that it’s theirs when it arrives. It saves the hassle of crowding in front of my offices and fighting and elbowing to get inside—you remember a few years ago when that artist came through, Mevrol Alyden Gelvooht? I’m sure we all remember the dreadfully unfortunate incident that happened when everyone tried to buy her work at once. The riots! Such a vulgar display.” A murmur of agreement went through the room, and Sterre took the moment to sip primly at her lemonade. “My way is much more genteel, I think you’ll find.”

  “But what of mishap? What of accident or damages, like shipwreck?” This from a young man with a marked foreign accent—Pezian, perhaps, or Bendran. I dropped my eyes to my lap and remained still and expressionless. I suppose he hadn’t noticed how the people here regard “shipwreck” as a crude word, a curse.

  “Hush!” Sterre said, echoed by several other people. “Gods forfend. There are of course stipulations for catastrophe on either side. Am I the sort of person to demand someone pay up if half their family has died of plague, or if their house has burned down? Please! I respect my fellow citizens—are we not all siblings and cousins? Do we not all shelter each other from the storms? Do we not have a moral duty to bind together to keep back the waters? I’m an honorable and upstanding person. I strongly resent any suggestions otherwise.”

  I, for one, hadn’t heard anyone suggest anything like that, but a few people around the room said, “Too right!” under their breaths, so I gathered that perhaps the foreign man wasn’t popular in this particular circle.

  “In all my contracts, both parties are adequately protected, I can assure you. It’s a very elegant and civilized solution to the problem. To several problems.”

  The man cleared his throat. “I apologize, ma’am, I spoke without thinking. Of course you’ve put a great deal of thought into this.”

  “I have, Signore Acampora,” Sterre said primly. “And if you would like me to explain my thoughts on how these contracts for future sales work, I would be more than happy to do so. But it’s a terribly dull affair, not suitable conversation for garden parties at all. A matter for clerks and lawyers!”

  “Oh, don’t be so modest,” Heer van Vlymen said. “Your methods are always ingenious.”

  Sterre smiled and inclined her head, gracious. “I wouldn’t want to burden all these good people with technical language. I tell you, it makes even my head whirl to think about all that.”

  There was a soft murmur of objection from the guests, and Heer van Vlymen gestured around. “See, Sterre dear? We’re terribly eager—we’re hanging off your words.”

  “Well, if you insist. It’s quite simple. These contracts of future sale essentially say that you have paid for the right to claim a certain amount of the product upon its arrival in the city. A receipt in advance, if you will. As I mentioned before, you get to skip all the vulgar parts of going to a shop and fighting with other people for a limited amount of the product. The most excellent thing, however, is that I’m selling it at a discount. If it is bought with one of these contracts, of course.”

  Heer van Vlymen cackled. “The infamous Sterre de Waeyer, cutting into her own profits? I never thought I’d live to see the day! Someone go check the dikes; they’ll crumble any day now!”

  Sterre smiled indulgently as good-natured laughter rippled around the garden. “In a way, dear sir, but consider: you’re saving yourself money by removing risk for me, which allows me to reduce my operational costs and therefore lower my prices accordingly. You see, a merchant’s greatest fear is that she will go to all the trouble and expense of importing goods, only to find that there’s no demand for them upon their arrival. She then spends money storing them in a warehouse while they molder, while the rats get into them, while they age and get dusty. Perhaps they sell slowly, and she barely breaks even. Perhaps the damp gets in and spoils them—let’s use the example of cloth, since our good host is known so well for his creations. Aernoud, my good man, if I bring in a shipment of linen twill, but you’ve just turned the fashion to Vintish silk jacquard, then I’m out of luck until the fashion turns again, if it ever does. How am I supposed to know when that will be? That is, of course, what I employ you for.” They grinned at each other, and Sterre raised her glass in a modest toast to him. “But perhaps you and I talk, and you say that you’re prepared to pay me to bring you several bolts of silk jacquard. Then the sale is done, and I’ve already made my money on it. You like this deal because you know exactly what you’re getting and when. You know that the supply will be there for you—you can plan your business accordingly and kindle a burning rage for silk jacquard before it even arrives. And I too like this deal because I’m not taking a risk. It’s closed and tied up neatly in a box.”

  “And so the only risk is”—van Vlymen cleared his throat—“incidents on the voyage.”

  “Indeed. Unavoidable and unpredictable. But those are easily accounted for with an insurance policy.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you patronize those coffeehouse charlatans!” one of the guests cried.

  “Are they charlatans?” Sterre replied sharply.

  “It’s gambling! Uncouth and vulgar in the extreme.”

  “Perhaps—but it seems to me that more ships come in than not, wouldn’t you agree? And when they do, everyone is happy and the money comes rolling in. And what’s a few hundred guilders when everything is rosy? Once you think of it as an operating expense, it seems a lot cheaper, doesn’t it? And if everything turns out not to be rosy, well! You’ve saved yourself a cargo of heartache, and no mistake.”

  “I would trust Mevrol de Waeyer’s judgment in business matters more than my own eyes,” van Vlymen declared. “So let us lay this to rest before we ruin the day with silly arguments, eh? I have a particularly rare entertainment for you all today, dearhearts, just you wait. Henrik!” he called to the butler standing at the door. “Bring in the lady, won’t you?” He turned back to us and twinkled. “Such a discovery. My assistant, Theodora, was visiting the Rojkstraat a few days ago and found her, and as soon as she told me about her, I knew this would be just perfect for our little gathering.”

  I had mentally floated away, listening to all this conversation more from force of habit and training than any desire for or interest in the knowledge. But hearing Heer van Vlymen mention this, I sat up very straight and wanted very much to leave quickly and quietly, before she arrived.

  I knew it would be her. The othe
r Chant.

  And so it was. Her apprentices had donned neat, modest Heyrlandtsche clothes in muted colors with their instruments carried on their backs, but she herself wore the same colorful, outlandish performance costume she’d worn at the Rojkstraat. She glittered in the candlelight.84

  “Friends and honored guests, may I present Mistress Chant! A world traveler and a storyteller of no little skill, here to regale us with songs and tales of far-off lands and wondrous deeds.”

  “Surely such a person would be suited more for a lingering romantic dinner party than a gathering of businessfolk,” someone said. His voice dripped with amused disdain, and I couldn’t help but feel a pang of anger on Chant’s behalf.

  “I’m sorry, you said her name was Chant?” Sterre said, sitting forward. She nudged my shoulder with her knee, as I was sitting on the ground quite close to her. “A relation of yours, Chant?”

  Mistress Chant’s eyes fell upon me then, and I saw a glint of something in her eyes.85 “Ah, my esteemed colleague,” she said. “No, madam, no relation. We are only siblings in the way of monks in a monastery who call each other brother and sister out of respect and shared faith.”

  “Huh,” Sterre said, eying Chant. “I think he told me something about that once. It’s a title, isn’t it? Not a name. Right?” She nudged me again, and I nodded silently. “I thought you said it’d be too much trouble to find another one of you. Hah! A negotiation tactic, I suppose. Deftly done, my lad. Respectable work. Well, here we are, then.” She sat back, and I didn’t have to look to see that she was having another one of her brilliant business ideas. “Mistress Chant, after your performance, I would love to discuss a matter with you. But after.” She wanted to hire her, I could tell already. She wanted a little corps of Chants on her payroll, peddling all kinds of prosaic and mundane goods as if they were priceless treasures. The stars-in-the-marsh are one thing—at least they really are special—but I could imagine her doing the same thing for cloth or nails or wood or bricks, now that the proof of concept had proven so effective.

  Shipwreck the flowers. To hell with them.

  Mistress Chant dropped an elegant curtsy in the exact correct Heyrlandtsche style and gestured to her apprentices. “These are my wards, Arenza and Lanh Chau. Before I begin, they will play and sing for you.”

  I sat quietly, with my eyes downcast and my hands folded in my lap, and we listened as the apprentices settled themselves, checked the tuning of their instruments, and began.

  After only a few bars of music, I felt Sterre lean forward, and I felt the warmth of her breath on my ear, close enough to send unpleasant goose bumps down my spine. “You must help me, when she’s finished.”

  “Hm?” I said back, as softly as I could.

  “She’s a friend of yours?”

  “No,” I whispered. “I met her once at the Rojkstraat, a few weeks ago.”

  “Are there any other Chants nearby?”

  “Not that I know of. There’s no way for me to know. We wander.”

  “We? You seem quite tame and content to be still.” I had nothing to say to that. “I want to convince her to work for me. Do you think she would?”

  “I have a feeling she wouldn’t.”

  “Nonsense—look at her clothes. Ridiculous and gaudy, nothing of substance. And in comparison, her apprentices’, plain and poor. And their instruments are worn and battered.” I disagreed, but I didn’t dream of saying so aloud. Mistress Chant’s apprentices had dressed to the station they were expected to hold—two servants-of-sorts, just as I was. And Mistress Chant herself was a hired entertainer. It was appropriate for her to dress in fine bright clothes, and to wear jewels that would catch the light and our eyes.86 She was a Chant, after all. Stories weren’t all she held in her mind—she also had these little twists and turns of etiquette that let her sail through any level of society with comfort and grace, regardless of whether she was garbed in silk or wool or burlap. She would have been trained for it, just as I was. “She’ll do it for enough money, mark my words,” Sterre whispered.

  “Yes, mevrol,” I replied. I glanced up at just the wrong time and caught Mistress Chant’s eyes—she was looking at me and Sterre, thoughtful, concerned or perhaps disapproving.87 She didn’t look away, didn’t pretend like she hadn’t been watching the exchange between me and my employer.

  The apprentices played slower songs. They were already the center of attention; they had no need to grab for it with bright jigs and folk-songs. These that they played were elegant, restrained, genteel. I had heard songs just like them at almost every salon that Sterre had brought me to. I didn’t find anything remarkable about them.

  When they had played three or four songs, they bowed, and Mistress Chant politely applauded with the rest of the audience and stepped forward. Henrik came into the room, carrying a small, knee-high table, which he placed near the middle of the room, and Chant claimed one of the cushioned chairs to move closer to the table. Henrik produced a small candleholder from his pocket with a thumb-length knob of candle stuck in it. Chant took this and set it carefully in the exact middle of the table, and she lowered herself slowly into the chair.

  They were already hanging on her every movement. She was so deliberate. She moved in exactly the way that she meant to, and everyone could tell. She lit the candle with a snap of her fingers, and folded her hands in her lap.

  She looked around the room and made eye contact with each of us in that same deliberate way.

  I wondered why she always lit the candle. Every time I’d seen her in the Rojkstraat, she had a candle before her, just as she did now.88

  She hung her head, breathed deeply. Rolled her neck, exhaled. And then she began.89

  * * *

  82. Oh good, you’re aware of that.

  83. Hah, all right, I have to agree here—that’s a fairly apt description. And now I know which salon this was—you’re about to complain about me again, aren’t you? Poor little Chant, was I mean to you? Five guilders says that’s how you’ll frame it.

  84. Good god, you’re tiresome here.

  85. Yes, it’s called being pleasantly surprised to see you.

  86. A Chant should be eye-catching. Well, Eye-catching, anyway.

  87. No: Suspicious. I didn’t like the way she positioned you around her, sitting on the floor by her knee. I didn’t like the way she leaned into you or whispered in your ear. Do you know what that looked like? Like you were a dog sitting at her feet, a cherished pet to be doted upon or scolded as the whim took her.

  88. I needn’t answer you here, because you asked me directly later on, as I recall.

  89. Oh, you’d better not. You’d better not do what you’re about to do. Gods, I don’t want to look at the next page. I could just set this whole thing aflame right now. The hearth is right there. Ah, Lanh Chau, bless him, just brought me a strong drink. Precisely what I needed to get through this fucking ordeal.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Naturally, and unsurprisingly, she told different stories here than she did in the Rojkstraat.90 That’s just common sense. There are stories that can hold an audience of forty that can’t hold an audience of fourteen, and vice versa. My Chant taught me about this, lectured for ages and ages about picking the right story for the audience. Like a pair of boots, he used to say, stories were. Some fit you just right. Some rub and chafe until you’re blistered. Some keep out the damp. Some you can boil and eat if you’re really hungry. But you have to know how to fit them. You have to be able to look at your audience and understand them and what they want. You have to meet their hunger head-on.

  Mistress Chant knew her craft well, of course. She wouldn’t have been able to support two apprentices if she didn’t.

  I ought to copy down the stories she told, I suppose91—I ought to copy down any stories I hear, for lack of anyone to practice them on verbally until I’ve committed them to memory, and also for the lack of any inclination to do it that way. It still feels too tender. It’s too soon. I’ll do my best to
remember them until it’s time to write them down, if that time ever comes. Maybe later, when I’m feeling better, when I have the strength for it. But those stories aren’t important to my story, and that’s what I’m trying to muddle through right now—what I’m going to do, and where I’m going to go. And, most difficult of all, who I’m going to be—because who you are is just the stories you tell yourself about yourself, and the intersection of all the hurts you’ve ever had and how you survived them.

  So, for my own future reference, I suppose I’ll at least make a note of which stories they were:92 First, one about a band of mercenaries during the war between Vinte and Bramandon, a century ago—the mercenaries cleverly crept into the Bramandese camp at night and poisoned the commanding general and averted a battle that their side would have surely lost.

  Then, “The Tale of Peregrine Lee,” a story about a woman who led a crew of miners to chisel a tunnel through a mountain that lay between two countries who longed to make peace with each other.

  And finally she told a Heyrlandtsche story about seven siblings during a famine. I thought that, particularly, was strange—why tell them a story they already knew? And I could tell that they knew it by the way they smiled and relaxed and nodded along. Why?93

  She was very good, naturally. I could recognize that. But she didn’t set my heart on fire. She didn’t make me lean forward to reach for the words as she spoke them.

  The girl-apprentice, Arenza, spent the entire time kneeling off to one side, her hands folded on her lap just as Chant’s were, her back very straight, her expression attentive but impassive, giving no reaction—why? Didn’t she like the stories? Did she even care about them? And if not, why was she with Mistress Chant? When I was an apprentice, I threw myself into emotion with my whole heart. I remember leaning forward when my master told a story, propping my chin on my hands, my whole attention centered on his words, as if I could inhale them quicker that way. I gathered words up like armfuls of wildflowers.