A Conspiracy of Truths

by Alexandra Rowland

  “Who’s Sappo?” Ivo asked.

  “A man with two very stupid older brothers,” said Ylfing. “They’re greedy and rude, and always getting into trouble, and Sappo always comes up with a clever way to get them out of it.”

  “Ah. Yes,” said Ivo with great satisfaction. “I have two older brothers.”

  “See!” Ylfing said to me. “People are the same everywhere. That’s why we have a job.”

  “We have a job because people are different everywhere.”

  “But that’s not the story we tell them! We tell them about one another so they know: ‘Ah yes, on the other side of the world, people live just the same as we do.’ ”

  I put my head in my hands. “I can’t die yet,” I groaned.

  “Ivo,” Consanza said suddenly, “this is shaping up to be a long argument if we let them go at it. Ylfing keeps talking about how fine your handwriting is; would you mind scribbling a bit?”

  “You’ve been talking about me?” Ivo asked him. Ylfing turned bright red and muttered something I didn’t quite catch, and Ivo grinned. “Sure I will, advocate. Do you have paper?”

  “Chant does. Chant, stop groaning and get out your paper for Ivo.”

  As it turned out, the lad did have a very nice hand, a clean, round one with neatly sloped slants and delicate, spindly ascenders.

  The admiration of Ivo’s admittedly lovely handwriting effectively distracted Ylfing from arguing with me, and the conversation turned to other things for a time, though the weight of my sentence hung heavy over us.

  Consanza eventually packed up the dishes into one of the baskets, while Ylfing put all the leftover food into the second basket and left it right next to the bars of my cell. She nodded to me as she prepared to leave. “I’ll file an appeal tomorrow.”

  “And if it fails?”

  “If it fails, then you die in one month.”

  “How?”

  “That won’t be determined for a little while yet. Could be anything.” She shrugged. “If two appeals fail, I can always file one to demand a more merciful death. Poison, if you like, or the ax. Something gentle or something quick.”

  “You’re simply brimming with generosity.”

  “Wish me luck with my family tonight,” she said with a heavy sigh, hauling up the basket of dishes.

  “Good luck winning the appeals,” I said dryly. “I don’t want you to have to tell them either.”

  Ivo and Ylfing lingered for a while after that. I hounded Ivo to tell me about himself, his life. He’d grown up in the far western edge of the country, he said, near the mountains. “My parents were coal miners, all of them,” he said. “I would be too, but I was lucky—we had a school.”

  “Lucky? I was under the impression that there was some kind of law about it.”

  Ivo snorted. “Oh, there is. Fat load of good that does.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because they’re paid for out of the treasury, which is run by Coin. And every year the Coin Prime makes a big fuss about what a terrible state the schools are in, and isn’t it a shame, those are our children, our future. Then they say they’re raising taxes so they can do something about it. But somehow, amazingly, nothing ever changes. They open five new schools in the cities, and close fifteen old ones in the country. So yes, I was lucky—I had a school right down the street from my house. Some of my friends had to walk twenty, thirty, forty miles, and people would let them sleep on their hearths, or in the barns. I was lucky.” He took a breath then, as if he were going to continue, but then he shook his head.

  “Why did you come to Vsila?”

  “Same reason everyone does,” he said in a flat voice. “I wanted to live. There’s no living out there, just surviving. Scraping what you can from the land and giving most of it up anyway. It’s better in the city. Sort of.” Ylfing was looking back and forth between the two of us, puzzled. “It’s better as long as you keep your head down and your mouth shut.”

  “Well,” I said, “you’re young and you have a good job—”

  He barked a laugh. “I’m a civil servant. A scribe.”

  “It puts you in a good tactical position,” I said. “You meet people, don’t you? Lots of people. And you learn as much as the law students do. You could be an advocate yourself in a few years, or all manner of other things. And then you could start trying to—”

  “If you’re going to say ‘change things,’ ” he began sharply, but Ylfing made a startled noise and Ivo paused before he spoke again, and continued more mildly. “If you were planning on saying that, please don’t.”

  “All right,” I said. I think I was as startled as Ylfing was. “It just sounded like that was something that mattered to you.”

  “It does matter to him,” Ylfing piped up. “Don’t mind Chant, Ivo, he always thinks he knows best and that nobody else gets good ideas before he does.”

  “Hmph!” I said.

  Ylfing smiled brilliantly at me. “Ivo has good ideas too, you know. I said he ought to run for office someday, but he told me about—”

  “I’m sure Chant doesn’t want to hear about all that,” Ivo said suddenly. “It’s getting late, isn’t it? We should go. It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”

  “Oh,” Ylfing said. “I’ll tell you about it another time, Chant,” he said, while Ivo pulled him to his feet and started piling layers of clothing onto both of them—things from Ivo’s own wardrobe, I assumed. They were well-worn; not ragged, but clearly years from new. We said our good-byes and good nights, and Ylfing hesitated just before they turned away.

  “Am I really wrong, Chant?” he asked. “About . . . what we were talking about. About people being the same everywhere.”

  “You really are, my boy,” I said. “What’s so great about sameness? Difference is what makes the world interesting. If people were really the same everywhere, we wouldn’t have a job. We could just stay in one place, knowing people are the same everywhere. We wouldn’t have any stories to tell, because people in the stories would all be the same. And,” I added, “no one would ever come up with any new ideas—no new ways to farm, or to make war or music or love, no new way to design a ship or a hammer or a boot.”

  “Is it possible that you’re both right?” Ivo asked; he wasn’t bothering to hide how impatient he was to leave.

  “Maybe,” Ylfing said, at the same moment I said, “No.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Saying that everyone universally understands a love story is all well and good, but you can’t just leave it at that. It doesn’t matter that they all understand it, because the important part, the part that matters, is the details of their experience of it: how they understand it, and what it means to them when you tell it to them.” Ylfing didn’t look convinced. I went on: “Any fool in the world can tell you, ‘Yes, that’s a love story, everyone knows that,’ but what matters is whether they think that story is a tragedy, or a cautionary tale, or—here. I’ve told you about Hariq and Amina, haven’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Ylfing, and then, turning to Ivo, “Typical star-crossed lovers, their families forbid them from seeing each other, but they disobey and run off in the night and get married, and they come to a tragic end. It’s very sad.” Ivo nodded.

  “Congratulations on sucking all the feeling and soul out of that story, Ylfing.” I looked at the ceiling and prayed to the gods that they would keep me from death while this half-trained idiot was loose in the world. “But all right, we’ll take it. You’re illustrating my point for me. You tell that story to an idiot from Hrefnesholt and he remarks on how sad it is. You go to Map Sut and they snort and say, ‘They got what was coming to them, they shouldn’t have betrayed their families like that.’ Why is that? Why would they say that? If you ask them whether it’s a love story, they’ll certainly say yes, and they’ll understand why Hariq and Amina came to no good end. But in Hrefnesholt, they sympathize with the lovers, and in Map Sut, they sympathize with the families of the lovers. People are not the same
everywhere. They are astoundingly, elaborately, gloriously different.”

  Ylfing nodded begrudgingly and glanced at Ivo out of the corner of his eye. “So . . . Do you want to hear it?” he asked, adorably shy.

  Ivo looked down at himself, already gloved and cloaked and scarfed and behatted, and he looked at me, and when Ylfing entirely failed to notice his hesitation, he said, “Yes, all right.” I made Ylfing tell it; he needed the practice.

  THE EIGHTH TALE:

  The Tragedy of Hariq aj-Niher and Amina aj-Mehmeren

  A very long time ago and half the world away, there was a city made of golden stone, high on a plateau that overlooked the desert. At the city’s feet lay a great lake of sweet fresh water, the Glass Sea, and at its back stood a tall mountain. These people were worshippers of the sun and the moons, and they called them the Bright One, the White One, and the Stately One.

  (This was all fine, but his delivery was a little flat and over-rehearsed.)

  There were three temples in the city, each of which received the patronage of a great noble family. Twice a year, at midsummer and midwinter, the three families would send a child of their house to sit in vigil by the treasure of each temple: the eternal fire of the Bright One, the great silver disk of the White One, and the black celestial stone of the Stately One.

  (He hesitated a little over the last two, likely trying to remember which went with which, but I don’t think Ivo noticed.)

  The doors of the three temples faced one another across a triangular courtyard, and a child of each patron house would sit on the steps twice a year, often all by themselves, and they would guard the temples vigilantly from dusk until dawn. The three houses were all competing with one another, and so the temples were too.

  One of the daughters of House Mehmeren was named Amina, and she was sent to sit vigil at the temple one midwinter night. There was a great feast beforehand, and celebrations all through the city, and Amina was washed and combed and groomed to within an inch of her life, and put in the grand regalia of her house and temple: the white-and-silver cloak of the White One, soft white leather shoes and gloves, and a diadem of silver and diamonds, laced through with fresh jasmine so that wherever she walked, sweet scents followed her.

  (Ylfing loves unnecessary detail. Can’t resist it. The only thing that matters is the cloak. He added in the rest.)

  She was put on a snow-white horse, and in a great parade of all her family and her family’s friends and the common folk who lived within their district, she was taken to the temple and put on the steps. There were musicians playing all around her, and girls casting rose petals and jasmine in the air until the pavement was thick with them. (See what I mean?)

  As she mounted the temple steps and looked across the court, she saw the heirs of the other houses taking their places as well—the Bright One’s heir in gold and the Stately One’s heir in black and gray. At any other time of the year, great crowds from each house gathering like that would have turned into a rioting mob, but just twice a year, the families managed to studiously ignore one another for the sake of their worship.

  As the sun sank, the crowds dispersed, and Amina made herself comfortable on the steps. She wandered in and out of the temple to keep herself warm, to do her duty by checking on the silver disk of the White One, a thirty-foot-wide circle of hammered silver, suspended from the ceiling of the temple by two thick chains. The night grew colder, and she bundled her cloak around her and drank the coffee that her family had smuggled behind the temple door, so that she’d be able to stay awake the whole night. She did so surreptitiously, just as her older cousins had firmly instructed—it would not have done for the other heirs to see that she needed help to keep her vigil.

  (He has a tendency to linger rather, drawing a story out—which is no bad thing, I suppose. Refinement will come with time, and Ivo was clearly sufficiently taken with Ylfing that he was willing to listen no matter how unpolished and undisciplined Ylfing was. So it didn’t matter.)

  Around midnight, the White One was at her zenith and the Stately One had just risen above the rooftops in the east. Amina was struck with an odd whimsy, and she descended the marble steps of her temple and crossed the court to the fountain in the middle. She thought about approaching one of the other temples but hesitated. If she went to the Bright One first, then the Stately One would surely take offense and there would be trouble between their families tomorrow. And if she went to the Stately One first, then the Bright One would do just the same thing.

  (Now, if I had been telling this, I would have left all that out. One doesn’t need to explain it. Feuding families are not so uncommon that one has to spell it out for one’s audience.)

  Instead she sat on the edge of the fountain, facing the other two temples, and waved at them. They were both watching her—the Stately One’s heir had been pacing back and forth across the black granite steps, and the Bright One’s heir had been huddled up close to the braziers that burned on either side of the tall golden doors.

  The Stately One’s heir started forward first. When the Bright One’s heir saw this, he was quick to follow after. They both arrived by the fountain at the same moment, eying each other and Amina with suspicion.

  “Happy Midwinter,” Amina said to them politely.

  “Happy Midwinter,” they echoed. The Stately One’s heir, dressed rather severely in a high-collared black robe edged in fur and a solid band of iron for a crown, crossed his arms and glanced again at the Bright One’s heir. The Bright One was the source of fire and warmth and life, and so it seemed that his heir was, apparently, supposed to have no need of clothing appropriate to the season. The Bright One’s heir wore the same costume for Midsummer or Midwinter—a knee-length, sleeveless toga made of cloth of gold, sandals, and a golden crown hung with tinkling bells.

  The Bright One’s heir hugged himself and rubbed his arms briskly.

  “What are your names?” Amina asked.

  “Hariq aj-Niher,” said the heir of the Stately One.

  “Piras aj-Behet,” said the heir of the Bright One, his teeth beginning to chatter.

  “Don’t they give you warm clothes?” Amina asked.

  “The Bright One’s warmth touches us all,” Piras replied. His lips were beginning to turn blue.

  “Would you like to borrow my cloak for a minute? I’m warm enough—I’m wearing two pairs of trousers under this big skirt.” She lifted up her hem a little to show them. “And three pairs of socks.”

  “I’m fine,” said Piras.

  “Perhaps you might invite us over to the temple of the Bright One so we might all be touched by its warmth,” Hariq said. “I didn’t have quite the foresight to wear multiple pairs of trousers, or more than one pair of socks.”

  “I don’t know you,” Piras snapped. “And I’m supposed to be guarding the eternal flame. If it goes out—if you put it out—then I’ll be in trouble.”

  “But surely the Bright One would see that I was the one to do it and he’d curse me, wouldn’t he? Or give a sign so everyone would know that I was at fault and you were innocent? And anyway, why would I want to put out the only fire on a cold night in the first place?”

  “If Piras takes my cloak and we all sit by the fire, we’ll all be the same amount of warm,” Amina added. “That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “It is Midwinter, after all,” Hariq added. “We’re all at peace today.”

  “Fine,” Piras said. “Give me your cloak, you. You didn’t say your name, either.”

  “Amina aj-Mehmeren,” she said, undoing the round silver clasp and swinging the cloak off her shoulders and around Piras’s.

  He pulled it around him immediately. “Oh Bright One, it’s warm.”

  “Um,” said Amina, “If we’re sharing the fire . . . I have some coffee.”

  “Coffee!” Hariq said, lighting up. “Go fetch it! I have some cakes.”

  “I don’t have anything,” Piras grumbled, turning around and walking back to the Bright One’s temple.r />
  Amina and Hariq scuttled off and a few minutes later, they were all huddled around one of the braziers on the front porch of the Bright One’s temple, passing around Amina’s carafe of coffee and Hariq’s sticky honey-cakes, all folded up in a bundled napkin.

  “Why’d you wave us down?” Hariq asked, once they were sufficiently fed and coffee’d.

  “I was bored. There are still hours left of the night to go.”

  Hariq nodded. “Midsummer is easier. It’s a comfortable temperature, and the night is shorter then, of course. I just brought a book along last time.”

  (That’s the other thing Ylfing does—he thinks about people a lot, and he’s always trying to sneak extra crumbs here and there into characters to make them more relatably human. It simply doesn’t occur to him to wonder whether his audience cares about how Hariq entertains himself on vigils, because of course Ylfing cares. Remind me to tell you about the time he made up a story about Nerelen, the Bramandese god of wine and a famous cad, falling in love with—you guessed it—a beautiful shepherd boy. I swear it, I was too confounded to know whether I should be outraged or proud.)

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Amina. “This is the first time I’ve stood vigil.”

  “I’ve been volunteering to do Midsummer the last few years—thought it was time I should try out Midwinter. Is it your first time too, Piras? I’ve never spoken to the Bright One’s heir before, and usually it’s too dark and too far across the court to see who is sitting vigil.”

  “I did Midsummer once, a few years ago. Certainly wouldn’t have volunteered to do Midwinter.”

  “Why’d you get sent? In my family, it’s always a volunteer.”

  “Got in trouble,” Piras muttered. “Dad thought I should do penance or something. To build discipline.”

  “Well, it certainly takes discipline to sit vigil, particularly on a midwinter’s night for the Bright One, it seems,” Hariq said agreeably. “And Amina? Did you volunteer, or is this punishment?”

  “Neither. My family always sends someone different to the White One every Midwinter, someone who’s never done it before—we try to, anyway. For Midsummer, we don’t mind repeats. I heard that the Midwinter before I was born, all my cousins were sick except one, and he was only two years old. He stood vigil officially, but of course my aunt, his mother, had to stay with him.”