A Conspiracy of Truths

by Alexandra Rowland

  “Only what’s in here.” I jabbed a finger at my forehead. “It doesn’t seem to be valuable to anyone but me.”

  “Hah, so said Vanya the Smith.”

  “Who?”

  “Vanya the Smith. Vanya Skyforger?”

  I shook my head. “Folk hero?”

  “Sort of. Aren’t you supposed to know all the stories there are?”

  “I never claimed that. I only know a lot of them,” I grumbled. “Only as many as I’ve heard in my whole life, or that my master heard in hers.” I wrapped the horse blanket tighter around my shoulders. “I’d like to hear it. I was starting to think you people didn’t have any stories.”

  THE FOURTH TALE:

  Vanya the Smith and the Thirty Iron Swans

  Right. So. Vanya the Smith was working in his shop one day. Slow day. Slow week. It was the middle of winter, and there wasn’t anyone who wanted to trek all the way through the drifts to get their things repaired or to buy tools. So there’s Vanya, right, amusing himself by practicing some tricky smith things—I don’t know the names of them, I’m not a smith—making little toys out of iron and steel, making pretty weapons and such. He had to keep his forge hot, you see. I think that’s important. Maybe it was a magic forge.

  Anyway, so he starts making these animals out of wrought iron. He makes an iron mouse, but it’s not right, so he melts it down and starts over. Makes an iron cat, but it’s not right either. Melts it. Makes an iron dog, melts that, too. He keeps going. Persistent guy, Vanya.

  So then he makes an iron swan—a big one, a swan-size one. And when he’s finished, it comes alive and starts flapping, right into his rain barrel, and he jumps back and there it is, floating on the top of the water. Every time it flutters its wings, they chime, because each feather is made of metal.

  Well, Vanya thinks this is amazing, so he makes another, and another—I guess he must have had a lot of iron lying around—and basically he fills up his whole yard with these iron swans. Well, what good is an iron swan? thinks Vanya. Not much use to anyone, but he likes them real well, and they’re quiet except for that metally chiming noise they make. He’s a smith, he likes metal, he thinks it’s a nice sound. Anyway, they’re alive and he feels bad about trying to grab one and get it melted down.

  So they stick around his smithy for a while—they wander down to the pond and swim around, they make nests out of scrap metal on his roof and stuff, but they don’t cause any trouble, and he goes about his own business.

  So eventually there’s a little warm spell, and everyone who needs something from Vanya comes up to see him, and they’re all astonished to see these iron swans sitting around all over the place. “Vanya,” they say, “what are all these swans?”

  And Vanya says, “Oh, just things I made. I think they’re pretty.”

  So a young man thinks one would be a nice gift for his spouses, and he tries to find out how much Vanya wants for them, but Vanya refuses to sell them, and he insists that they’re of no use to anyone but him. Gods know why. Doesn’t make any sense to make a thing and not sell it to someone who wants to buy it, but that’s how the story is.

  So everyone goes away, and they tell all their friends about the iron swans at Vanya’s place, and when the next warm spell comes, an even bigger crowd goes over there, and some people want to buy the swans, but Vanya says no, and all those people go home and complain about it.

  Then the Earl of Order in the village hears about the swans, and he doesn’t even wait for the blizzards to stop—he treks out there in the snow and the wind and knocks on Vanya’s door, wants to give him all this coin for one of the swans. Vanya says no, says they’re not worth anything to anyone but him.

  So the Earl of Order goes home and he gets all his patrolmen, and they go back out and beat Vanya up and take all the swans.

  “Is that it?” I asked, when she was done.

  “What do you mean, is that it? Of course that’s it. It’s a good story.”

  I put my head in my hands. “Your grandfathers and their fathers and their fathers would be ashamed to know that their descendant had fallen so far.” It occurred to me that Consanza must have grown up very comfortably, considering the vague, dismissive way she’d talked about Vanya’s smithing. Anyone less fortunate would have seen a blacksmith working at some point, but I got the feeling that Consanza never had.

  “Well, if you don’t like it, you can just say so. There’s no call to be insulting.”

  “Two and a half thousand years of myth and storytelling tradition in Arjuneh and this errant daughter just ran off some little fable like it was town gossip,” I groaned.

  Consanza took out her pipe and chomped on the end of it. “That’s just the way it was told to me. You’re being very rude.”

  “It’s a story about a man who was too much of an idiot to see that other people valued what he had for some quality that he didn’t even know about.”

  “At least you get it.”

  “It’s hard not to get it,” I muttered, “when you all but bashed me in the face with the moral of it. Poor Vanya.”

  “Well, I can’t just go around changing it to be different or better based on what you think, can I?”

  “Are there other stories about Vanya?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What’s his pattern? What’s he always do in stories?”

  “Makes interesting new stuff, doesn’t think it’s any good, doesn’t let anyone else do anything with it but look. Magical things, things that come alive. He once made a plow, but it turned out to be evil—or he thought it was evil, anyway.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then someone comes along and says something or does something that should prove to him that he made a good thing, but he’s never convinced.”

  “There’s a story like that your grandfather’s father would have told in Arjuneh. ‘Priya, Majnun, and the Wondrous Blue Panther.’ ”

  “Well, you can keep it to yourself,” she sniffed. “I don’t find myself much in the mood to listen to you right now.”

  “Fine. Did you find out about me sending a letter to my apprentice?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “Maybe I’ll do it if I can figure out a better way to ask about it.”

  “Look, it wasn’t—” I stopped. Huffed. She was taking it far too personally, and it wasn’t even her story. Not one she’d come up with. What call did she have to get so offended? “Fine. Listen—the purpose of that story was to prove a point to me, yes? To show that maybe I have something the Primes want even if I think that everything I have on offer is worthless to them. You made that point. I got the point. I could teach you how to make the point better, but if that’s the way Nuryevens tell stories, then that’s the way Nuryevens tell stories, and even if it goes against everything I consider best practice, I still don’t have any right to make a judgment call on it. I was . . .” I harrumphed. “It was unfamiliar and it made me miss familiar things.”

  “I’m leaving,” Consanza said.

  “Will you come again tomorrow?”

  “I’ll come again for your next hearing.”

  The room was colder after she left, and I was quietly grateful for the horse blanket. The cold seemed like it had made my joints into rocks.

  A glimmer of regret dawned in me—I had been too harsh with her after all, and the story really hadn’t been as bad as all that. I had held her to Chant standards, not layman’s standards, because she’d understood about telling stories. Because . . .

  She has this way about her, the same gift as Ylfing but backwards. Ylfing looks at anyone and sees the best thing about them, sees their kindness, their loves, whatever little whisper of divine grace they have within them. Consanza sees . . . not the worst thing, I don’t think, but the wretched parts, the petty parts, the little jealousies and grudges. She’s more like me than Ylfing is—more like me than I would admit to just anyone. I think that’s why we clash as we do. We see a mirror of ourselves in each other, and ne
ither of us can come up with a story about ourselves to disguise it. It’s uncomfortable and upsetting to have yourself stripped naked down to the bedrock of your soul with one hard glance from someone as unsympathetic as yourself.

  Ylfing embraces the whole world, loves unreservedly, gives his entire heart away with the blind faith that he’ll get something equal in return. Consanza and I give nothing of ourselves away, and yet . . . as much as I annoy her, and as much as she annoys me, neither of us has quite concluded that there’s nothing in humanity worth redeeming. She’s an advocate, after all. It’s right there in the title: she speaks for people who cannot speak for themselves. She tells their stories to save their necks, or their souls, or however you want to look at it.

  And so do I.

  I know exactly why I can’t bring myself to be kind to her. I have no illusions about that: to find her likable, I’d have to find myself likable, and I know I’m not, and I don’t care to make myself so.

  That’s that.

  As it happened, Consanza came again before the hearing. To tell me, in fact, that she didn’t know when the hearing would be.

  “Order and Justice are pushing to try you as soon as possible, but Anfisa Zofiyat is claiming previous engagements, and Casimir Vanyos isn’t always available. It’s quite hard to get all five Primes together in one room at the same time. It’s rare that they need the whole panel in person for something like this. But there you are,” she said. “It just keeps getting more and more interesting, doesn’t it?”

  “If I even live that long!” My teeth were chattering that day. The dull chill of autumn had dipped into the first bite of winter the night before. “Can’t you do something about this?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “What do you expect me to do?”

  “Anything! More blankets, a fire. Do they want me to die here?”

  “Oh please, it’s not that bad.”

  Our breath clouded faintly in the air between us. I glared at her. She had a cloak and her woolen robes.

  “They’ll light fires when it gets properly cold,” she said.

  “In Pattern they gave me a fire! Can’t you have me sent back there?”

  “I’m not going to intentionally ruin my chances with Justice by doing something so foolish!”

  “Then take a message to Anfisa Zofiyat. Ask her to come see me, and tell her I’ve thought of something she must know, and when she’s here, I’ll ask her to do something about—”

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort. Do you want to see me arrested for illegal collusion? Please!”

  Needless to say, that visit didn’t go well. Consanza stormed out again not too much longer after that.

  They would have heated the cell blocks a little, eventually, just enough to keep it above freezing, but the Nuryevens have a higher tolerance for cold than I do, and I thought I might die of exposure even before they thought about putting on their mittens.

  I wrapped the blanket around me as well as I could and forced my aching bones to work and move me around my little cell until the blood started pumping. I devised, finally, a cunning plan. It wasn’t quite witchcraft, but it was as close as I had available to me.

  Eventually, the guard walked past. I had seen him earlier when he came on shift. He had a tendency to keep moving through his patrol and to make rude comments to me whenever he looked into my cell.

  Sure enough, he walked by, looked in, and saw me shivering in the middle of the cell with my blanket around my shoulders.

  “You freeze to death yet, grandfather?” he said.

  I leaped forward, thrust my arms between the bars, and seized him by the front of his tunic. I began in a snarl: “A very long time ago and half the world away—”

  THE FIFTH TALE:

  Death Under a Blue Heaven

  —I was walking through a familiar market in the smallest hours of the night when Death came upon me.

  I had met Death before. She and I were old friends, and I had been fleeing her ever since. I spoke to her that night, and she told me six secrets, holding me close just as I am holding you now, staring into my soul with her frost-rimed eyes, her breath rattling in her chest. These secrets bound me into silence until I completed a task for her, and I knew there is only one task Death ever asks for.

  But all she commanded me to do was to warn my friend that she was going to come for him in his home in three days, that she would come for him when he walked next under a blue heaven, and that she would come in the form of something long and brown and slithery.

  She released me. I ran from her. I fled like a child. I went to my friend’s house as she had ordered me. I told my friend everything that had happened. The front of my tunic was stained and smudged with grave dirt, and when I breathed, I felt a rattling in my chest just the same as hers.

  My friend went pale. His hands shook, his knees knocked. He asked for my advice. I told him three things: that he must never travel by daylight, for if the heavens were not blue, then she could not come to him. I told him to wear thick boots, to protect against snakes. And that he should leave the city immediately, for if he wasn’t at home, then her prophecy would come to naught.

  My friend left that very night, vowing to travel only in darkness.

  And yet he died three days later—he had gone to the house of his father, where he had grown up, his first home. He had worn thick, new, heavy boots that weighed him down, made him slow. He had left the house in the twilight to visit a wine merchant, and on his way home, he took a shortcut through an alley and passed under a blue awning, where a pair of thieves set upon him and throttled him with a hempen rope.

  I ask you: Did I kill my friend?

  Now, the only reason I got all that out was because the guard froze in terror at the first words I spoke, and I could see, Oh gods, a blackwitch, in his eyes, as clear as words on a page. He’d probably never had a prisoner attack him like this before, and I talked quick before he could figure out what to do, and by that point I’d gotten him all tangled up in it. As soon as I finished, he squirmed free and scrambled out of reach, wide-eyed. He made a gesture of warding at me. I retreated a step too and looked coolly at him.

  “You saw Death?” he asked.

  Blackwitch, I saw in his eyes again. “No,” I said, innocent. “It was just a story. Did you like it?”

  “Gods, no.” He shook himself and straightened his clothing. “I should have you beaten for assaulting me.”

  “I just wanted to get your attention. You guards won’t speak to me when I ask you questions. Didn’t do any harm, now, did I?” A little smarmy, perhaps, but he was a thoroughly smarmed lad himself, so he should be able to take it as well as give it.

  “I’m going to report this to the warden,” he said, pointing at me for emphasis. “You’ll be punished.”

  “I seem to have frightened you.”

  “I’m not frightened!”

  “Eerie stories aren’t to everyone’s taste, I suppose.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Do you know any?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” I said, feigning great disappointment. “Well, of course, since they’re not to your taste, why would you remember any? What about other ones? Do you know any about Vanya the Smith? My advocate told me a rather good one about some iron swans.”

  “No,” he said again, more firmly.

  I sat down on my bench and huddled into my horse blanket. “I’m sorry for startling you,” I said, with the greatest of all possible sincerity. “It’d be a lot of paperwork for you, probably, to report such a silly thing I did. I was bored, is all. I won’t do it again if you accept my apology.”

  The mention of paperwork set his resolve off balance. “Fine,” he muttered. “It’s fine. But don’t do it again.”

  “Actually, I was wondering . . . What’s your job like? I see you walking around the halls, and I thought it must be very boring for you, same as it is for me.”

  “It’s a job.”

  “Not a very
exciting one, though, eh?”

  He shifted from foot to foot. “No.”

  “Hmm. Shame. It’s not exactly a thrill to sit in here in the cold by myself all day either. I’m an old man, you know. How do you keep yourself entertained? Besides shooting terribly clever verbal jabs at elderly prisoners, that is,” I added with a wry smile.

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked.

  I sighed. “Just making conversation. I like getting to know the people around me. When I was at the Tower of Pattern, I was guarded by—by none other than a Weaver.”

  Aha, there—that got him. You can always see it. It’s in the way they suddenly seem to take notice of you even if they were already looking right at you. “No, you weren’t.”

  “I was,” I assured him. “And whatever you’ve heard about them . . . That’s not even half of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well . . . If you really want to know . . . Do you really want to know?”

  Yes, said his face, and Absolutely not.

  “If you bring me a cloak or another blanket, I’ll tell you anything you want to know about them.”

  His face clouded with anger. “No,” he snapped. “I’m not allowed to give you anything, even if I wanted to.” He stomped off.

  After fifteen minutes or so had passed, he returned with a bundle in his arms. “You really have things to say about the Weavers in Pattern?”

  “I do, lad.” I eyed the fabric—dull, dusty, faded stripes of burnt orange and red. He shook it out and wedged it through the bars, tossing it into my lap. I huddled into it. I licked my lips. I looked shiftily up and down the corridor, and I gestured him to step closer. “Do you know, they’re all marked?”