A Choir of Lies

by Alexandra Rowland

  I bowed in the proper style and came down onto my knees as well, so we’d be able to talk comfortably. “Good afternoon, Ambassador,” I said, demure as protocol demanded, my gaze respectfully lowered. “We have your order prepared.” I gestured to Gillis, who carried a wicker basket full of damp earth and bulbs. “Do you have the contract to confirm?”

  The ambassador folded their hands on the table. “I do not. I passed it along to my friend Hecht Mathys van Zandwijck, the city water-warden.”

  “Passed it along?” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “I sold it to him.”

  “Sold it. Why?”155

  “He said that there weren’t any more contracts available for this shipment, and he’s been desperate to get his hands on some of these exquisite specimens. A passionate gardener, he is,” they added. “So I offered to sell him my share. Somewhat unorthodox, but I don’t think it will be too much of a problem, will it?” Their voice gave nothing away, and of course I could not glance up at what I could see of their face, but their hands were fiddling with a stylus in a way that showed just a hint of uncertainty.

  I looked at Gillis, who just shrugged. “I don’t see why it would be,” I said slowly. “So . . . you didn’t want the flowers anymore?”

  “Oh, I did. I assure you, I did. But Hecht van Zandwijck was so disappointed, and it mattered more to him than it did to me.” I heard a smile in their voice. “I confess, I made a tiny little profit on it too. A hundred and fifteen guilders I paid, for ten bulbs. Van Zandwijck insisted on rounding it up to a hundred and twenty out of gratitude.”

  “That was kind of him,” I said.

  The ambassador paused and tapped one elegant finger against the tabletop. “So,” they said slowly, carefully. “It doesn’t cause any problems? Selling a contract on like that?”

  “No,” I said, blinking. The difficult thing about Tashaz is remembering to emote with your hands instead of your face. No one looks in your eyes, except your most intimate friends and relations or particularly rude people. “Why would it? The money has already been paid to us, so we don’t mind who we deliver the flowers to. If everyone’s happy and in agreement, then so are we. I’ll have to check with Mevrol de Waeyer, of course, but I can’t imagine that she would have any objections. . . .”156

  “Excellent!” the ambassador said heartily. “Tell Mevrol de Waeyer that I’d like to do more business with her. I definitely want a few more of those contracts-of-whatever-she-calls-it before the next shipment is booked up.”

  “Contracts of future sale,” I said.

  “Right, future contracts.”

  “But you know the next shipment isn’t coming until after the storms?”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  “All right. I’ll mention it to her. Do you know where we could find Hecht van Zandwijck?” We were given an address in the Coppel Square District, on Bardengracht, and Gillis and I went there promptly, where van Zandwijck received us and our delivery with great enthusiasm.

  As he was showing us out again, when all had been settled, I turned to him. “I was just wondering—you bought the contract from Ambassador Kha’ud. And you paid them a little extra?”

  “Well, that’s only fair, isn’t it?” he said. “They were being inconvenienced. Anyway, they’re a good friend of mine. Have been for years. And one favor deserves another, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  There’s something about all this that doesn’t sit quite right with me. I can’t put my finger on it. It feels . . . almost familiar. It feels like something I know about, like a familiar tune whose words I’ve forgotten.157

  It’s probably nothing. I’m so tired, and I haven’t been able to focus. Tomorrow is just going to be more of the same. We’ll walk all across the city until I’m footsore and blistered—and that’s saying something too, because there was a time when Chant and I would walk all day long, only stopping to eat. It’s been years since I traveled like that—he’d started slowing our pace a few months before we even reached Nuryevet, started taking a few more opportunities to hitch rides with passing carts and caravans. And after I sank my homeland beneath the waves and set out on my own, I’d go only a few miles a day on foot, stopping well before I was tired. Living in the city these past few months has been naturally even more sedentary.

  Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting old. Nineteen or twenty and I’m getting old already.158

  * * *

  150. Goddammit.

  151. It’s not about the romance!

  152. It’s not your job to change it! Again, it’s not about the romance! If le Paon is in the fort, then Iarainn’s motivation isn’t loyalty to a group or a community, it’s just fear for his lover.

  153. It’s not about what the tunnel does; it’s about the act of building it.

  154. And what did it matter what she wanted you to do? She didn’t own you. You could have left at any point, you know. That was your choice. You could have quietly left town in the night, like any self-respecting Chant does when they run into trouble.

  155. Aha, now I see. This is where it all started going wrong. Well, wronger—you’d been going wrong for weeks by this point.

  156. Oh, brother-Chant. Dear sweet naive little brother-Chant . . . Your problem, you see, was that you let the story get out of your hands. You told a story too big for you to handle, and it ran away from you like a wild horse. You should have been more humble.

  157. No, that was just your conscience. It was trying to tell you, “THIS IS A BAD IDEA!” but of course you were too busy wallowing to pay any attention.

  158. Oh, for gods’ sake. Don’t start with that.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I told Sterre about Ambassador Kha’ud and Hecht van Zandwijck’s little arrangement. It was still nagging at me this morning, and I thought that she might have some kind of insight about why it was so troubling. She didn’t, of course. She just laughed. “That’s wonderful news!” she cried. “I’ll send word to double the size of the next shipment.”159

  “You’re not worried about people selling the contracts back and forth?”

  “Of course not. It means people want them badly enough to haggle each other for them.”

  “But what if someone else gets the same idea?” That wasn’t the problem. I’d said it out loud and I could hear it wasn’t right.

  “Whatever do you mean?” she demanded.

  “If someone buys a lot of bulbs this year, then next year they’ll be able to sell the seeds, won’t they?”

  “Oh.” Sterre scoffed and waved me off. “That’s nothing. The plants take five years or more to bloom from seed, and the bulbs don’t grow offshoots every year. If you’re worried about competitors, we won’t have serious trouble for years yet, unless someone goes to Kaskinen and finds my secret supplier.160 And by then I expect they’ll be out of fashion anyway, or I’ll have imported so many that the canals will be choked with them.” She laughed. “Imagine that!”

  “I’d rather not,”161 I said, thinking of the stench.

  “And travelers would come from far and wide to see the wonderful canals of Heyrland,” she said. “Moreso than they already do, I mean. How romantic that would be, to row down the canal full of stars in the twilight.”

  There’s no arguing with her. I don’t think it would be romantic. I think it would be smelly—the canals are dirty, nothing you’d want to drink from or swim in, as I’ve mentioned before, but they don’t smell that bad. Just musty, especially at low tide—the Heyrlandtsche have a great deal of experience in managing their water flow, and there are currents running through the arteries of the city and sweeping all the filth out to the harbors, to the locks and pump systems, and thence to the sea.162

  Speaking of the flowers, the root I bought from Sterre weeks ago has sprouted. Already it has four spindly leaves, and its stalk is only a few finger-widths high. It’s still green and lively, too—it’ll darken to brown and go woody as it
gets taller, and then one day I’ll have to get rid of it or it’ll stink up the whole inn. Maybe I’ll sell it to someone, like the ambassador sold theirs to Hecht van Zandwijck.

  I don’t know what I’d do with the money, though. Perhaps it’s a silly idea, and I should just give it away to someone who could make better use of it.

  * * *

  159. Can you hold on for just a moment? I need to go bang my head against a wall.

  160. Has she been to Kaskinen? It’s not exactly hard to find stars-in-the-marsh! You just . . . find a marsh. And then you follow your nose. And then you wonder why you were thinking that this was a good idea. The sort of things that people decide are luxury items are really completely arbitrary.

  161. Ugh, nor I. Heyrland is quite pretty, as towns and cities go. They have all this greenery hanging around, all these neatly manicured trees in tame tiny plots along the streets, and the water plants growing in the canals, and the ornamental plants that they drape down their balconies. It’s as if the whole city is one of those public parks they have along the rivers in Vinte. Do they really want to spoil that with an overlying smell of rotting meat? And the bugs! Don’t get me started—they’d be up to their eyebrows in flies and mosquitos.

  162. If only you could apply your good taste for the prosaic to more elevated matters.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I need a break. It’s too much.

  That dream, I keep having it—not every night, but five in seven. I wander through the swamps, sloshing through water up to my thighs, or my waist, staggering and falling. I’m wet from head to toe; I’m covered in mud and miserable. My clothing sticks to my skin, and my feet are bare. I have the impression that the sucking mud beneath me stole my boots days or miles ago. It’s no use, anyway. I push onward, too tired to cry, wanting only to stop and rest.

  But I can’t. When I stop, I start to sink. I keep moving. There’s no stars above me but the flowers. There’s no wind.

  I walk, and I walk, and I push my way through the stalks. They grow so thick I can’t see more than a couple feet in any direction. Some of them, when they grow in deeper water, have long roots that tangle around my legs. There’s nothing living in the swamp but me and the stars-in-the-marsh and the occasional cormorant that I glimpse as it paddles past me through the stalks—it doesn’t struggle like I do, of course.

  I drag myself onward, and every morning I wake up more exhausted and drained than when I went to bed. And then I drag myself onward out of bed, and I drag myself to Sterre’s offices or the Rojkstraat, and I drag myself through the day.

  I’m so tired. I can’t go on. This has to stop. Something has to change.163

  * * *

  163. I wish you’d been able to talk to me. I wish you’d been smarter about this. I tried to tell you! How many times did I try? At the beginning, when you first saw me, you were thinking of asking me for help. Was it pride that kept you from doing it, or sheer cowardice? You could have changed things. You could have changed at any time. But you held yourself back, waiting and waiting as the point of no return rushed ever closer. If you’d been honest, if you’d had a little less pride, you wouldn’t have had to suffer through all this. You could have stopped—well, you probably couldn’t have stopped it outright. Might as well try to stop the tide. But you could have averted it, or you could have just . . . left. You didn’t owe Sterre anything. That was all just the story in your head fucking you up.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Another day as translator. There was a small riot outside Sterre’s headquarters; some people had found out that she still had twelve stars-in-the-marsh roots left, and they were trying to fight over them. Not very effectively, since there were three or four different languages spoken, so most of the insults went over everyone else’s heads. Sterre sent me outside to sort them out—it was very much like that test at Stroekshall, where all the translators came and stood around me shouting, trying to muddle me up in chaos and confusion. This was just the same—people tugging on my sleeves, catching my hands, trying to tell me they’d pay so much for just one root. I suppose I was a little distracted, but I kept up pretty well.

  I just kept telling everyone else how much the others wanted to pay for the roots, because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do. Someone would say “Fifteen guilders!” and I’d translate that into the Spraacht, Tashaz, Araşti, Vintish, and Avaren, and someone else would say, “Shipwreck that, I’ll pay twenty!”164

  I guess it was a better thing than letting them come to blows in the street? Nobody got hurt this way.

  And eventually everybody else drifted away and there were just two people left, and somehow, somehow they’d argued each other up to seventy guilders per root and the two of them had begrudgingly agreed to split the twelve roots between them.

  Sterre was thrilled. Seventy guilders apiece! She hugged me as if I’d done something, as if I’d told them one of my stories.

  “All I did was translate,” I tried to tell her. It was pointless.

  “Nonsense!” she cried. “My good mann, don’t be so modest! That was excellent! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  “Translation? But there’s lots of people at Stroekshall who could do that.”

  She cupped my face between her hands, which I didn’t particularly like. I endured. I didn’t want to be rude. “I hadn’t even planned on holding an auction until the next shipment came, but you! Look at you! You walked right out there and took the reins like it was nothing! You brought them to heel without a blink! I should have known—I should have accelerated my strategy the moment you walked in the door—you’re fanning the flames like nothing I’ve ever seen!”

  “I mean,” I said. “That’s my job. Getting people to pay attention. And knowing how to talk to people.”165

  “My dear heerchen, I’m going to have to expand your responsibilities again. You’re too good to be wasted on street hawking. Any idiot could do that. You, dear, you were destined for greater things.”166

  “No more storytelling on the street?” I said, just to be certain I understood what she meant.

  “Never again, heerchen! I have more important things for you now!” She hugged me again and sighed blissfully. “Every time I think I’ve got a handle on your capabilities, you go and surprise me again. First the stories, now this. You and me, my dear, we’re going to make Heyrland the capital of the world.”

  “Um,” I said. “How?”167

  “Well, if the stars-in-the-marsh keep selling like that—if you keep selling them like that, the way you just did, then when the storms are over . . . We’ll go on an expedition, you and I. We’ll take a voyage and travel about to find something new and exotic, something no one’s ever heard of, and then we’ll bring it back here.168 I can’t see that people would care about the flowers next year; they’ll likely be sick of the stench of them, ha-ha!”

  “A voyage?” My gut had twisted the moment she said it. I didn’t want to go with her. I didn’t want to go traveling, or hunting for new things no one had ever heard of. It was too much like Chanting. “I’d rather not, if it’s all the same to you. . . .”169

  “Oh, what’s this about? Seasickness? It’s really only bad for the first few days and then your stomach settles. Trust me, you’ll have a lovely time.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “You’re not afraid of the sea, are you?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve been on voyages before.” I shook my head. “Never mind. I’m sorry. It’s still so early; we don’t have to make any decisions about this now. Forget I said anything.”

  “Hmph.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “All right. For now.” Still peering at me, she went off back into her office, and stopped right on the threshold. “Chant. I really thought that it’d be another few months until they were ready for an auction. Why do you think they fought like that?”

  I looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been a merchant my entire life. I’ve never seen anything like
the reaction to these flowers. But today people nearly came to blows over them—why is that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know why people want what they want.” I barely know what I want these days. “But just now . . . they got frantic because there were only a few left, I think.”

  “Hm,” she said.

  “That seems obvious. Is it?”170

  “It’s good to say obvious things out loud sometimes,” Sterre said in a strange voice. “It makes you think about them in a different way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I import chickens, there’s a selection of things to worry about. I worry about having too many, because then I can’t sell them and I’ve lost money. I worry about having too few chickens, because then I’ve lost an opportunity for more money. The best thing for me, or so I’ve always thought, is to guess as accurately as possible exactly how many chickens will be required, no more, no less.” She put her head to one side. “I was always so focused on getting the exact right number of chickens that it never really occurred to me that having too few chickens might actually . . . create future opportunities.” I stared at her, waiting for her to finish her thought. She only looked thoughtful, and then sly. “I think I’m actually going to halve the next shipment, instead of doubling it.”171

  I felt another tickle at the back of my brain, but I brushed it aside. “I’m sure you know best,” I said, because she probably did.

  “I do,” she replied, coming back to herself suddenly. She pointed at me. “Which is why I won’t hear you turning down a place on the expedition. We’ll go in the fall, if all goes well. After the summer storms have passed.”