A Choir of Lies

by Alexandra Rowland

  I sat there behind the shrubs and tried to think of what I should do. I stared into the water, ringed all around with lily pads and ornamental rushes speckled with tiny pink-white flowers. In the deepest part of the little pool, I could just see the twisted shape of several stars-in-the-marsh bulbs half-buried in mud at the bottom, their roots spreading out through the water in delicate tangles. One of them had a shoot that had grown just tall enough to break above the surface of the water.

  Obviously, that was where Mistress Chant found me. I looked up when I heard footsteps, and I knew who it was a moment before I saw her. “Hello again,” she said. “Brother Chant.”

  I stood up. “I didn’t know you were coming to the party. I would have excused myself from the invitation. I’m sorry.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Is there some reason why we can’t both be here?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Good. I’ve been hoping to speak to you again.”

  “I see.” I swallowed. “Your performance was interesting.” That was all I could manage for compliments. But I felt, desperately, like I needed to control the conversation, to get her talking about herself so she wouldn’t have a chance to ask anything about me. Easy enough for a Chant. It’s the first trick you learn. “The candle . . . thing. Why do you do that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The candle. You always have one.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Why?”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “Because that’s the way to do it. That’s how Chants do it.”

  “That’s not how I do it.”

  Even more bewilderment. “Why not?”

  “I’ve never even heard of it. I don’t understand what it’s for.”

  She was laughing at me now, I could tell.112 “You sound like an apprentice. No offense.” I flinched anyway. “Do you want me to explain to you as if that’s what you were? It’s an anchor. It’s important. I don’t know how else to describe it to you if you don’t instinctively understand it.”

  The anger and the hurt got the better of me. “I guess you must not be a very good teacher, then,” I said quietly.113

  “Mind your tongue, little brother,” she said mildly, raising one eyebrow. She clearly thought nothing of me.114 “A story needs two things to live: a teller and a listener. If you go out into the wilderness and tell a story to the wind, what’s the point of it? It dies as it leaves your lips. And that is a sacrilege. Now, think of every time you’ve heard someone ask for a story—‘Grandma, grandma, tell us the one about the princess and the singing sword.’ It’s . . . domestic. Enclosed. Warm. Home. Stories live by hearthfires; it’s not right to tell a story without a flame—not a serious one, for a serious audience. I light the candle to make my space a home for the people asking me for stories. That’s sacred too.”

  “I don’t know anything about sacrilege. I don’t—” I nearly choked, but I forced myself to look at her, to speak. “I suppose I don’t think things like that are necessary or important.” And then, with another huge effort: “I think it’s wasteful, actually. Pointless.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing my master taught me about Chanting had anything to do with sacred things,” I blurted. I wished immediately that I hadn’t. I didn’t want her to know anything about me. Mistress Chant’s face looked like distant thunder. “He was . . . elderly,” I scrambled to explain. “He was always very practical. Prosaic. He wasn’t interested much in the frills and fripperies of things.”

  “The fire isn’t a frippery. Making a home-space isn’t a frill.”

  I hadn’t said that it was, but—well, it was. It is. All this about stories live by hearthfires is . . . quaint, I suppose would be the word.115 It’s a deliberate performance of coziness, and a performance like that can’t be genuine. “I don’t think he would have thought stories to be as fragile and vulnerable as you do, that’s all. He thought they were strong. He thought they had power, sometimes power far bigger and farther-reaching than anything he was able to contain. He didn’t mind telling stories to the wind.” But what I should have said was this: People tell stories everywhere. They tell stories in the fields and in barns and on street corners. They tell stories in banks and on ships and in temples. They tell stories in summer and in winter, by sunlight or moonlight or starlight, or in perfect darkness. Stories don’t need to be coddled by the fire, because they have warmth and life in themselves.

  The only true part of what she’d said was the first part: that you need two things—a teller and a listener. Except she was immediately wrong about the implication. You don’t need two people. You can tell yourself a story. You can be teller and listener both. There’s no way to tell a story to the wind alone, because whoever is there speaking it is hearing it too.116 “He didn’t try to make them more special than they are,” I went on. “He let them be plain if they were plain and valued them just as much as the grand ones or the lovely ones.”

  “That’s unthinkable to me.”

  “He would have seen the candle as a piece of unnecessary excess. A waste of time,” I said. “Like clothing or possessions.”

  “Once again, I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, you know. Like the fancy cart you have, and the fine clothes. He taught me that a Chant shouldn’t have such things.”

  “Whyever not?” Her eyes flickered across me. “Is that why your clothes are so shabby?”117

  “A little,” I said slowly. “Yes.”

  “Did your master just go around naked like a beggar?”

  “No, of course not. He always wore a long tunic and a coat. And usually shoes118—he used to tell a story about a pair of turn-toe boots he was given in Map Sut. He wore them often until they were stolen.”

  “A long tunic, a coat, shoes,” she said, voice flat. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. He didn’t need anything else but his mind and his tongue.”

  “That’s ridiculous, though;119 that’s—” Dawn broke over her face. “Ah! I’ve figured it out—goodness, that solves a lot of mysteries. But I see now: You’re not actually a Chant.”120

  I felt as if she’d pried open my chest with a crowbar and stared straight inside at my innermost secrets and my deepest fears. “What?”

  “You met a Chant once, or—well, maybe not even that. You heard about a Chant once from someone else, and you thought that sounded like a great idea, and so you’ve just taken the name for yourself to make a quick coin. Disgusting and despicable behavior, but none of my business, and fortune will judge you as it will. But just as a free hint, from one professional to another—ditch the story about your master-Chant, young man. No one’s going to think it’s plausible. And if you ever do run into another Chant, well—maybe you can save yourself a repeat of the embarrassment.”

  “I’m not making it up,” I said. “I was apprenticed to a Chant, and I’m a real Chant now too. I traveled with him until my apprenticeship was done. We went all over—”

  “Oh, my boy . . . No. You seem sincere, so I’ll take that at face value, but that makes it worse.” She pitied me; I could see it. That was more embarrassing than all her accusations. “Your master, if he even existed, was the charlatan. That’s a shame. You should definitely stop telling people you’re a Chant.”

  “But I am one!”

  “Young man, what are the Chants?”

  “Wanderers, storytellers, people who remember—”

  “No,” she said flatly. “They’re holy people. Priests. That’s what we were thousands of years ago; that’s what we are today. We were intermediaries to our god.” She eyed me. “I suppose you don’t know about the Chants’ god either, if your master was so prosaic, as you say.”

  “You mean Shuggwa.” The very instant I said that name, I felt a chill run over me. I was prickling all over with . . . anger, I guess. Sometimes when I’m telling stories in front of a big crowd, my skin crawls with the weight of all those eyes on me. That’s almost what this felt lik
e, standing there with her judging me, measuring me. It was like I was being seen by a thousand people.121

  Her eyes narrowed, though. I’d gotten her with that one—chances are, I wouldn’t have known that name if I weren’t what I claimed to be.122 I might have known Skukua, the puckish trickster figure who comes up in tales from Kaskinen and the Issili Islands. But Skukua had evolved from something else, something much older and much darker: Shuggwa, the god of the ancient Chants. We were intermediaries, thousands of years ago.

  “I’m a Chant,” I said. “As real as you are.”123

  “How can you be, if you don’t observe any of the rites? And you’re so young besides—when did you sink your homeland beneath the waves? How long ago? And how long were you a journeyman? And where is your master?”

  My stomach lurched. I clasped my hands together, squeezing hard so she wouldn’t see how they shook, so she wouldn’t think I was afraid of her. I ignored almost all these questions and tipped my chin up.124 “What do the rites matter? We travel the world, learning the ways people are in one place or another—is it so unthinkable that Chants of two distinct lineages might be as different as regular people are? I learned our ways from my master, and he learned from his, and she from hers, and so on. I’ve come by my ways as honestly as you did.” My cheeks stung with the same low, simmering heat of anger that had set my hands shaking.

  “No,” she said. “Because we all started out the same. Somewhere in your line, someone decided that certain things just weren’t important, and they stopped teaching them. Your line has been corrupted and perverted from what it was meant to be and to do. By all that’s safe and secret, you nearly told them about Arthwend—”

  “Chant!” someone called from across the garden, and Mistress Chant and I both leaned around the shrubs to see who it was—Sterre. She waved me over.

  “Excuse me, sister-Chant,” I murmured, still brimming with the prickling sensation of eyes on me, and stepped around her. She followed close behind me once again.

  “You could change,” she said. My own master was up to his nostrils in wiles and guiles, so I heard it as clear as rainwater in her voice too. “Corruption and perversion is a choice, after all. If you’re so set on saying you’re a Chant, then do things the right way and teach them to your apprentices.”

  “How am I supposed to learn what the right way is?” I said. “Even if I wanted to learn, who is there to teach me?” She made a low noise of disgust, and I knew I’d been right—it’s not like she would have taken me on. “And I don’t have apprentices,” I added.

  “Of course you don’t. Quite right too—you’re in no shape to take responsibility for someone, and you’re practically a child yourself. But one day.” I didn’t tell her that I’m never going to have an apprentice.125 It wasn’t any of her business anyway. Nothing I do is any of her business.

  “Mevrol,” I said to Sterre as we approached. “How can I help you?”

  She clapped me on the shoulder, harder than I liked. “Catching up with your colleague, were you?” She was very good—you couldn’t tell from her voice that she was still angry at all. I only felt it in the odd pressure and tension of her hand. Sterre wouldn’t show the cards in her hand to anyone by accident, after all.

  Mistress Chant smiled. “My brother-Chant and I are only newly acquainted.”

  “Is that right? I would have thought folk like you would know each other well.”

  “Quite the opposite, Mevrol de Waeyer. Chants only meet each other rarely. There are so few of us, you see—only a few hundred in all the world, I’d guess, though I don’t have any real way of knowing.”

  “What great fortune I’ve had to meet both of you, then,” Sterre said warmly. “We should toast, the three of us, to this rare blessing.” Sterre summoned one of van Vlymen’s servants and had them bring us each a tiny cup of the best Vintish brandy,126 which we sipped for each effusive toast that Sterre offered. “And now, I have something of great importance to discuss with you.” She gave Mistress Chant a serious look. “Since you’re acquainted with this young man, you must know that he has been in my employ for the past few weeks. He’s been worth every guilder I’ve paid him.”

  “Has he indeed,” Mistress Chant replied. I set my jaw and met her eyes steadily. This too was none of her business. Plenty of people do what I’m doing, selling a skill for monetary compensation. It’s no different than building cabinets or making lace or painting a mural for a wealthy patron’s commission. It’s no different. It isn’t. It isn’t.127

  “He has! So I would like to offer you a similar arrangement as the one I have with him.”

  “You’d like me to hawk your flowers on the street?”

  “Not just the flowers! My Chant128 has that well-handled—no, I’ve been thinking about expanding the business. The people have responded so well to his methods that I’d like to do the same for other things: I also import a great deal of cloth, as well as perfume from Tash, Vintish wine, Oissic olive oil, and whatever those Araşti highway robbers that call themselves merchants will let me abscond with. What say you? I can tell you’re a person of the world like myself, and if you know nearly as much as your colleague does, I believe we could all expect to reap impressive profits from an arrangement like this.”

  “I will have to decline,” Mistress Chant said politely.

  “Ah, but I haven’t yet laid out the numbers for you. The most important part, hey? See, I give Chant here twelve stuivers per week,129 plus a meal every day that he’s working for me. I think you’ll agree that’s more than reasonable.”

  “Perhaps it is. But I am quite comfortable, and my time is fully occupied these days.”

  “Ha! A trick as old as the bones of the earth, but a classic. All right—sixteen stuivers a week.”

  “No, thank you. But you might want to offer that to my brother-Chant,”130 she said, tilting her head at me. “He seems to be more concerned with worldly matters than I am, and now that he knows you’re willing to pay that rate, he might feel slighted that you haven’t given him that much already. Especially,” she added, “since he’s worth so much to your business. Or were you going to offer me more still? I think my brother-Chant would be very interested in hearing further offers.”

  Sterre wholly ignored all of this but the part she found most objectionable. “You’re really not interested? I could make you very wealthy.”

  “Wealth is not something that motivates me. And I have existing duties to attend to.”

  Sterre fell silent. When she spoke again, her voice was cool and clipped. “That’s disappointing.”

  Mistress Chant nodded. “I can see that it would be. I can only offer my sincere regrets.”

  Sterre dropped the conversation with a scant few more obligatory pleasantries and excused herself. I made to follow her, but Mistress Chant caught my elbow.

  “If you’re really a proper Chant, you’ll put some thought into what you’re doing,” she hissed, leaning close to my ear. “If you’re going to sell yourself and your great calling like this, the very least you can do is to get a respectable price for them. Instead of letting people like her think that it’s something cheap.”

  I tugged my arm away from her. “She’s right, you know,” I replied. “You are a person of the world, just like her.”

  “I dismiss your insult. She knows the value of things. She knows your value, but do you?” I was quiet. I couldn’t answer that. “If you come to your senses, come talk to me. Truly. You think I harbor some ill will towards you, but I don’t. So come and talk. I’m staying at the Rose and Ivy Inn, on Groenstraat.”

  I turned. I left. I hope she moves along soon, out of this city and out of my life. I hope I never see her again.131

  You know what? I’ve just decided: to hell with her—any hell, I don’t care which one, even though in Xerecci that only means “the desert” colloquially. This language doesn’t have a lot of good ways to curse someone. Shipwreck her, then, as the Heyrlandtsche say. Maybe I’m
a bad Chant, and maybe I feel like my name didn’t leave me when it was supposed to, and maybe I should have stayed in Hrefnesholt. But I made choices, and I am a real Chant, and so was my master. I had my apprenticeship. I did my duty; I said my oaths; I unnamed myself and sank my homeland beneath the waves. I’m as real as she is. It’s not my fault that I was taught other ways.132 I don’t think candles and fine clothes make her any better than I am.

  I’m a real Chant, and nothing she says can take that away from me. I said before that it’s none of her business. It’s nobody’s but mine—and Sterre’s, I suppose. She gives a damn about me, at least. She wants me around, because she thinks I’m good at my job. She doesn’t pick at me like I’m a troublesome scab.133

  And anyway, so what if I had just made it up? What if I’d met a Chant once and decided to take it onto myself without any of the rites, as she accused me of? Would it matter? It’s mine.

  * * *

  90. Oh thank the gods. I thought you were about to copy down everything I said. Not just floods of relief but torrents.

  91. No! No, don’t you dare. I swear it: I’ll burn these pages, and then I’ll come after you and burn you too.

  92. Ugh, if you must.

  93. Ah, young Chant. There are things you haven’t learned yet. Sometimes a Chant tells stories to bring the world closer to itself, to make it smaller and cozier, to make it easier to understand. But sometimes you don’t need to bring the whole world in—sometimes you tell a story for another reason, to please your audience or to make them more . . . themselves. People like stories they know, because they emphasize an existing belief. I told “The Seven Siblings,” a Heyrlandtsche story, because I was speaking to Heyrlandtsche people. And the Heyrlandtsche people have certain ways about them—they believe in community. Of course they do: their entire existence for the last five hundred years has been a battle, themselves against the water. The sea is hungry, and if their vigilance slipped they would be flooded, swept away, overcome. So they build their dikes and their windmills, and drain themselves a garden from the tidelands. And if one of those dikes falls, the water comes in, and the city drowns, and people lose their homes—or die. They do not have the luxury of refusing to care about each other.