A Choir of Lies

by Alexandra Rowland

  It might work for the Nuryevens, but it wouldn’t for me. Mistress Chant was right again—I didn’t write about it, but she made a comment when I was at her inn the other day. She said I’d never settle for a love less than something of legend, that I’d build a shrine for my love and expect him to part the seas for me, until he was crushed to dust by the weight of my expectations. And she was right. She’s always right.351

  “You’re no better than Sterre, you know.” Silence. I sat there trembling. “Really, you’re no better than my master was either.”

  “What?”

  I flung back the covers, feeling around on the floor for my clothes and pulling them on.

  The mattress shifted behind me as Orfeo sat up again. “Are you—? Where are you going?”

  “Not to Pezia, apparently.” Tears were stinging at the corners of my eyes.

  The soft faint gold of Orfeo’s witchlight bloomed from behind me, enough to see that I’d put on my pants inside out. “Wait,” Orfeo said. “You’ve misunderstood. Ylfing, stop. Just for a second, stop!”

  “What have I misunderstood? You want me to marry you so that you can drink and go dancing and gamble all you want?”

  “I mean, yes, partly, but there’s a lot more to it than—”

  “So I swear myself to someone who doesn’t love me and might never love me, and go to work for his family for his benefit? I’m supposed to carry you for the rest of our lives so that you don’t have to do anything unpleasant?”

  “For our benefit, surely. Don’t pretend like you’re not getting anything out of this.”

  “Nothing I care about,” I snapped, turning sharply to face him. “I would have done it because I cared about you, and I thought you cared about me. I would have done it if we were in love.” And the witchlight now let me see the way he looked a little sick, the way his eyes darted towards the door. “Thinking of running off without your drawers?”

  “Not at all,” he lied. “Listen, I told you—I told you that I intended to give you everything you want. I meant it. I can be in love with you if that’s what you want.”

  I pulled on my shirt, not bothering with the buttons. “Oh yes? How?”

  “I’ll—I’ll have flowers sent to you at the office, and I’ll buy you nice clothes—”

  “With the money I earn?”

  “And I’ll take you to most parties, and—I don’t know what else you want! I don’t know what else to do! You can’t be mad at me for that. You said yourself you didn’t know what you wanted.”

  “Are you going to have sex with only me, no one else?”

  He froze, but only briefly. “If that’s what you want. I keep my promises.” He was lying.

  I climbed out of bed. “I’m not marrying you.”

  “Ylfing, wait, stop.” He was panicking again, getting frantic, seeing his one last chance slipping through his fingers. I strode towards the door and he dove after me, catching me by the wrist. “Please, please don’t go. It’s late, we’re both tired, and it’s just a spat. Everyone has spats.”

  “I’m not marrying you.”

  “Five minutes ago you would have! You were almost there; you were about to decide to!”

  “I don’t like this anymore.” I pulled my wrist away.

  “I was honest with you; be honest with me about this one thing.”

  I looked at him—naked and wild-eyed and terrified, beside himself with it. “Yes,” I said. “I would have followed you to Pezia. I would have followed you anywhere. It’s kind of what I do with people I care about.”

  I stared hard at him for a long few heartbeats, then reached for the doorknob.

  “Stay,” Orfeo said, in a wretched voice. “Marry me.”

  I felt something, then, strange—it was like a pressure, but it wasn’t physical. It was like . . . Like a suggestion of the feeling you get when someone wraps their arms around you, presses their palms between your shoulder blades, pulls you forward into a welcome kiss, and—

  “Orfeo, are you nudging me?” I asked blankly.352

  The sensation stopped immediately and REDACTED X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

  X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

  X X X X X X X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

  X X X X X XX X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

  X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

  X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 353

  Decided it wasn’t nothing after all. Went to Simoneto’s room. Asked him about it. He woke up everyone. It’s being handled. 354

  * * *

  350. Unhealthy, Chant! Don’t tell that kind of thing to a boy! He might get the impression that he doesn’t need to give a shit or keep making an effort once he’s got you as a sure thing.

  351. I shall sing the praises of the gods for gifting me with this miracle. Also, Orfeo’s trash. I’ve always thought so.

  352. Oh, fucking hell. Are you serious? Orfeo Acampora tried to nudge you?

  353. Huh. Okay. There’s about fifteen different questions that immediately spring to mind, but I suppose the most obvious ones are “What the fuck?” and “Stopped immediately and what? What happened, what did he do? What did you do?”

  354. Well, shit. “Being handled” is awfully vague, but considering they’re the wealthiest and most powerful family in Lermo (and among the top five families in all Pezia), I can only imagine how little they’d want people to know that one of their scions used the Pezian curse against another person. I wonder if they disowned him outright, or if they’ve only dragged him home to keep him under private house arrest for a few decades.

  Shame, really. I would have tracked him down and castrated him for you.

  I’m having to remind myself that you were well enough to write all this down after the fact, and had the mental acuity and awareness to notice him doing it in the first place, and then the intuition to smell out that he was lying when he told you it wasn’t worth being concerned about or writing down. Well done, you. Good Chantly survival instincts, there: When in doubt, run your mouth to someone. Always get a second opinion.

  FIFTY-EIGHT355

  Dreams.356 Still every night, but now when I wake they feel . . . close. Like part of me is still in them, still dreaming, like the dream is laid out behind me and even in the waking world I could just turn into it, wheel around like a cormorant on the wing, and dive back below the surface, straight into it.

  The figure has moved, now. They sit closer to me, still silent. The boat moves through the marsh, and the flowers die around us. As they succumb, the putrid scent eases. As each flower dies, a new star appears in the heavens, more every night. The Eye of Shuggwa (called also the Woman’s Clay Pot, or the Mirror of Heaven, or a hundred other names; but Chants call it this) is bright and clear now, and I can begin to pick out a few other constellations—the Plowshare, the Cat and Mouse, Ardi’s Gold Ring, the Lamp, the Dragon.

  I rarely look at the figure anymore, but they watch me, I think, though I can’t see their face. Sometimes I think they’re smiling.357

  They look so dark and ominous. They should be frightening, or at the very least unsettling, but I don’t feel that. I don’t feel unsafe. They wouldn’t have saved me from drowning if they wanted to hurt me.

  In the dreams, I don’t do anything but look and wait. Neither of us speaks, either—I watch the flowers die, or I look at the figure in the stern of the boat, or at the bird. I look up at the stars, or into the water where the stars are reflected.

  It’s strange. It’s all knotted up in this thing I’ve been struggling with, who I am and whether I should be a Chant and how to do Good. I think the dreams will stop when I’ve figured everything out. It’s funny how your sleeping mind works sometimes. It’s always gnawing on whatever’s bothering you—it’s funny how much it can sneak up on you and take over. It comes up wi
th all kinds of wild fictions to help you make sense of the world.

  That’s the sort of strange thing minds do when you’re not paying close attention to them. The stress of everything—of avoiding REDACTED,358 of dealing with his family trying desperately to buy my silence,359 of watching the flowers teeter on the edge of death while the city takes no notice of the end rushing up on them—it’s overwhelming me, and I haven’t been sleeping well. I lie awake in my attic, worrying all night, trying not to toss and turn for fear of disturbing Simoneto in the room below, now that he’s taken it over.

  * * *

  355. Wait. The previous section was number fifty-one. Am I missing parts of this? Did you misplace some pages? Except the rest of this was arranged so carefully. . . . Your numbering has been so tidy and careful up to this point, and the pages were packaged so neatly. You wouldn’t have lost them, not when the rest of it is here like this. And I’ve been careful too, except for that section I tossed in the fire, early on. So I haven’t lost them.

  Which can only mean that you removed them yourself. On purpose. You removed six chapters, and blacked out the rest of the writing on the page you had to leave in.

  What in the name of all the gods happened that night? How was it handled?

  356. No! Don’t go back to this; don’t distract from the issue! Don’t distract yourself, Ylfing Chant! (Ignore that.) You’re just going to stonewall me on this? You’re not going to give away anything?

  Damn your eyes, Chant, you’re doing it again—the same thing you were doing when I first found you. But this is your pattern, isn’t it? You can’t cope with betrayal, and that’s what the nudging was, wasn’t it? If you won’t tell me, then I’ll have to imagine it myself, or deduce it. So what have you given me to work with? Six missing chapters, and a few paragraphs redacted, after an abrupt end. It should have been a bittersweet recounting of separating with your lover—that’s what you wanted it to be, wasn’t it? The whole preceding part, was that even true? Or did you edit it as well, to make it tidier and more comfortable, less heartbreaking? Did you end there because you couldn’t wrench the story away from truth?

  Or was it all true, and you stopped where you did because you decided that was the only truth you wanted to keep? There are many truths—all Chants know this. Are you choosing one in particular to be yours, the way I told you to choose a different story about your master?

  What do I know for certain? You excised six chapters and a few paragraphs. So you did write something more. You wrote something that you didn’t want anyone to see, or perhaps that you didn’t want me to see. Or . . . perhaps something that you wanted to erase from existence entirely. What was it you said in those first pages? Writing things down makes them real? Makes them a paper copy of a mind? I’m getting closer now, aren’t I? There was something in those chapters that you wanted not just to hide but to unmake.

  I’m sitting here quietly and wondering, suddenly, if I’ll find Orfeo’s name mentioned again even once through the rest of these pages.

  357. And if it’s not the Orfeo thing, it’s this. I can’t stand this. I can’t understand. Why? Why would he appear to you? We’re so far from anywhere he might still carry a whisper of power, so why . . . ? Is it your belief in connections? Is it something else? Why?

  358. Knew it.

  359. Oh, shit. They found out, somehow, that he’d nudged you, then. Or you told them outright. Trying to buy your silence—so they’re afraid you’ll tell someone, and they’re afraid of what would happen to them or their reputation if you did. From what I know of Pezians, they’ll be dealing with Orfeo privately, keeping it a family matter.

  FIFTY-NINE

  It has been five days since I’ve been to Sterre’s offices. I’ve been out in the city, telling the story of the disease, imagining myself singing a countercharm against a flood.

  I was wrong before, when I said they didn’t listen to me. They do listen; of course they do. But they don’t believe, and they don’t act. It is too terrible to believe in. But they listen. At first quietly confused, laughing it off. Later, with anger beginning like the bubbles at the bottom of a pot of water before it simmers.

  But no action. Just silence, anger, resentment. Easier to dismiss me, even though they know me, even though they’d seen me at the Rojkstraat and at Stroekshall.

  Funny how I’ve gotten exactly what I wanted, at exactly the time I don’t want it anymore. I was longing for this, for them to ignore me, and now that I have it, I long for nothing more than that moment of influence that I had at the auction when I held the city rapt and beckoned them closer, inviting them to listen, to be swayed, to want what I offered, daring them to try to look away from me.

  I went to Sterre again. I came into the offices and ignored the stares of the clerks as I walked through the long room, dodging and weaving in between the desks as I went, and I opened Sterre’s office door.

  “I’ve been talking to people,” I said, before she could speak. “They won’t give up the flowers, and the disease has spread. They know. I’ve seeded the story across the city, and it’s beginning to spread too.” It wasn’t—not really. Those who thought themselves clever dismissed it as ridiculous rumors; everyone else was too fearful to speak of it—the same way they only speak the word “shipwreck” as a vile curse, for fear of bringing that misfortune upon them. The way the people of the ancient Chants in Arthwend spoke softly, walked softly, dressed blandly, and covered their heads so as not to draw Shuggwa’s Eye. I don’t know why that, of all things, was the metaphor I picked, but it’s accurate.

  Sterre sat back and rubbed her hands over her face. She looked as tired as I felt—bags under her eyes, and at least a day or two of salt-and-pepper stubble on her cheeks and chin. Her fine lace neckcloth was wrinkled and stained with sweat where it touched her skin. “Shit,” she said. I’d expected her to rage at me again, to throw me out, but . . . She was defeated. She was out of options and out of time. “It’s done, then. It’s over.” She laughed, sharp. “I might as well run. Right?”

  “No. You won’t do that, and you shouldn’t do that.”

  She got up, dragged her chair over to the window, and sat down again, looking out at the canal that backed the building. “You said . . . the other day. You said I shouldn’t call you Chant anymore.”

  I settled myself in the other chair. “I did say that. My name is Ylfing.”

  “Ylfing. I’ll call you that, then. I know something about changing names,” she said wryly. “I changed mine once. There’s still a few tiresome people who call me by the old one, foreign acquaintances I knew in my youth who haven’t seen me in a while and who come from places where there are, allegedly, just mannen and vrouwen. Statistically speaking, that’s wildly unlikely, but . . .” She shrugged. “No matter. Ought I offer congratulations on your change?”

  “This isn’t a change. It’s an un-change. It’s always been my name. Chant was—”

  “Just a title,” she murmured. “Yes, you mentioned.” She paused. “Can I ask . . . why?”

  “Why did I stop using my name?”

  “No. Why are you going back to it?”

  A big question. I could talk for days to tell her why. “It felt right,” I said at last. “I don’t feel like me when people call me Chant. I wanted to feel like myself again. I’m finding that it’s easier for me to be sincere when I’m not lying about something that important. It’s easier for me to do good.” I gave her a look that I learned from my old master. “I have a story to tell you. Do you have time?”

  “Are mobs going to arrive on my doorstep in the next hour?”

  I leaned forward.

  SIXTY

  The Land That Sank beneath the Waves360

  (As I Told It to Sterre)

  A very long time ago and half the world away, there was a great and golden kingdom on a small continent in the middle of the southern reaches of the Unending Ocean. Their kingdom stretched from shore to shore, from the tallest mountains into the lowest swam
p.

  Or almost that far. There were tribes in the swamps that the kingdom had not absorbed, folk who had their own ways about them, their own stories, their own god: Shuggwa. A shadow god, a trickster god, a god whose Eye you should not draw, else misfortune and calamity befall you and those you loved. Unless, of course, you were a Chant. The Chants were Shuggwa’s favored ones, and they called and called to him, drawing his Eye away so all the others could live in fearful, tiptoeing peace. The Chants lit great fires at night, danced and sang, and dressed in bright clothes and jewelry, tied bells around their ankles and wore clattering strings of beads in their hair. They did all this to protect the people of their villages, to shield them from harm and misfortune, and they carried in their heads the wisdom and memories of generations, passed down in whispers from one Chant to the next.

  Then one day, the great and golden kingdom angered the gods, and the water came. (Here, Sterre stopped and looked at me, suddenly still, right on the cusp of haunted horror, and I felt a curl of pleasure, of certainty. The Heyrlandtsche know what it is to do battle against the sea.)361

  The waves rushed across the land, a cataclysmic wall of water that washed aside everything in its path. The kingdom drowned, every mann and vrouw and niets, every vroleisch, tzelve, and loestijr.362 All the children and all the animals. The land sank and was lost.

  But the Chant-people had their little flat-bottomed marsh boats, only big enough for three or four people each, and as the waters rose and swallowed up the land, they gathered up what few possessions and supplies they had and lashed all these boats together with ropes at the direction of their wise Chants. The Chants guided them, saved them. Every little village of the swamp found another village, and another, until all the Chant-people from all the villages were tied together into a great floating pontoon that shifted and flexed and rolled with the rise and fall of the waves. A single boat alone would have been capsized as the first wave hit, but when tied together with hundreds of others, when they became one big boat; they were too wide and too strong to be lost.