A Conspiracy of Truths

by Alexandra Rowland

But there was a new national crisis brewing, and everyone was about to be far too busy to think about the wretched little spy in Vihra’s prison. The crisis was that Taishineya Tarmos had flung together a company of about fifty mercenaries somewhere in Ezozza and had hired the fastest possible ship to carry them back. Luck smiled upon her, which only increased her fervor for the cause . . . a cause that had been bolstered by a secret sign, presented brilliantly by the stonecutter who had carried the message to her.

  Fifty might not seem like much, and they wouldn’t have been much at all, if Taishineya hadn’t begun to show her cunning. It was a simple merchant ship from Tash, that’s all the port authorities thought that it was, and that’s how they marked it down in their records. A merchant ship carrying twenty-five passengers, all allegedly family members of the Captain, who wanted to explore the city and make some investigations into mercantile opportunities in Vsila.

  In point of fact, the twenty-six passengers and twenty-five of the thirty-odd crew made their way in ones and twos towards the bank: the hub of finances and commerce in the city and the home of the mint, where all the legitimate money in the realm came from.

  Fifty men and women walked into the building and calmly, methodically began killing people. In the chaos, they drove out the crowds, they locked the door, they swung the bars down. The bank had a walled forecourt with a fountain, as it had once been the domicile of a prince or someone, years and years ago when Vsila was one town in a nation of warring city-states. It was well fortified. They locked the gates, they locked the doors, they killed all the Order representatives in the building who had stayed to fight, and Taishineya Tarmos unveiled herself before the rest. She pointed out the officers of Coin who she recognized, ones who had been mostly loyal to her, and sweetly offered them their lives to live if they’d swear fealty to her as the true and only Queen of Nuryevet.

  Unsurprisingly, they did so without hesitation. I mean, I would have done the same, do you doubt me? Would you have done any differently, offered the choice between death and fealty?

  She was called the Queen of Thieves in the street, when the rest of the city realized what had happened—not just the sardonic epithet they gave her during tax season now, but something sharper and . . . well, more literal. Vihra Kylliat sent Order guards to storm the bank, but Taishineya’s Fifty Thieves, as they were soon called, picked them off with crossbows and slingshots. Vihra had that siege she’d always wanted to try. I don’t think she found it to her taste.

  Of course, no one bothered to tell me any of this.

  The next morning I waited to be taken to my death. I waited through the afternoon. I waited through the evening.

  Perhaps, I thought, they meant to kill me in the dark, so I would never see the sun again, so that no one would be around to make a fuss about me.

  I waited and waited, and then I heard Vihra Kylliat coming down the hall.

  The cell door opened. She dragged her chair in. The door closed. She sat down.

  I stared at her—what was this? What was happening? Did she want to have a chat before she killed me?

  She looked fucking miserable, and also fucking drunk. She reeked of menovka.

  “So,” she said. “You may notice that you’re still alive.”

  I just sat there, trembling like a rabbit.

  “I suppose,” she said, with an exhausted kind of sarcasm, “that you’ve already heard all the news.”

  I cleared my throat. “News?”

  She leveled her gaze at me. We looked at each other. “Hmm,” she said. “Shocking.”

  “I haven’t heard any news.”

  “That’s what’s shocking.” She let her breath out long and slow. “Suppose we skip all the pleasantries and you just tell me about my general.”

  “Pleasantries like . . . why I’m not dead? Or what the shocking-I-haven’t-heard-it news is?” I was more interested in the latter than the former, I must admit: you can lead a Chant to the gallows, but you can’t make him stop gossiping.

  “Yes, exactly like those,” she said flatly. “Get on with it.”

  “It seems to me like something happened and it’s bothering you,” I said carefully. “There are lots of stories about the General of Jade and Iron. She had a very long career. Perhaps if I knew what was going on, I could tell you something about her that you’d find helpful—”

  “Taishineya came back with mercenaries and took over the bank,” she said flatly. “You’re not dead because we’ve all been distracted today.”

  “I beg your pardon,” I choked out. “She what?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. This means nothing for you. She’ll be dead by morning. We’ll pry her out of there like . . .” She clenched her fist. “Like cracking opening a clam and scraping out the meat. You’d be dead by now, but we’ve all been too busy with that mess to even remember you were here, and I didn’t feel much like reminding anybody about executing you.” She smirked. “Wasn’t my idea to go ahead with it, so why should I make sure other people keep their appointments?”

  “I see,” I said, and babbled something about Ger Zha that would illustrate the benefits of patience and prudence and avoiding impulsive action. Slow, I willed at her. Go slow. Give Taishineya time. All she needs is a few days. I hoped, anyway. She needed me, however briefly, if she wanted to win.

  If I hadn’t been so shaken, if I hadn’t spent the day sick with fear, I would have had to struggle to hide my delight—she’d come back. She’d listened. My relief could not be quenched even when Vihra mentioned that the prison would be closed to visitors again—all spare personnel were assigned to resolving “Taishineya’s little stunt,” as Vihra called it, and no one was going to be available for nursemaiding folks about the place.

  Taishineya Tarmos had already broken the rules of fair combat, so no one would think any less of Vihra Kylliat if she did too. Not that she was breaking any, of course, because a woman and fifty mercenaries hardly count as an army, do they? Vihra Kylliat just had to make sure that no one could get in or out of the bank, because without food or water, how long would they last?

  Well, that was a problem. The bank had a kitchen for its staff, with a significant amount of food in it, because no one had been allowed to leave the building during business hours. They’d had to either bring their own lunch or eat what was provided by the bank. Made it harder for thieves.

  So they had food, and they had the fountain in the courtyard and a pump, not to mention a reliable supply of snow. Water aplenty, and enough food for several days at least.

  Vihra could have ended things quickly if she’d been willing to do what was necessary—swarming the bank with overwhelming numbers or tearing it down to its foundations, but there were problems: The streets were cramped, so it didn’t matter how many soldiers Vihra Kylliat sent, because only about a hundred of them could be useful at any given time. There wasn’t room to maneuver a battering ram, and with the ground frozen, it was nearly impossible to tear up the cobblestones and undermine the walls.

  Order’s whole approach to this was a sort of incredulous, “It’s fifty people in a bank, how hard can it possibly be to take it?”

  Surprisingly hard, as Vihra Kylliat soon found out—the siege mentality was not one that her soldiers were accustomed to, and no one liked having to stand the night shift, particularly in the hardest part of winter, which was what we were coming up to.

  During the daytime, they stood a solid guard. But the night shift? Well, soldiers are lazy, and the Bank District had something like two dozen coffeehouses.

  The rank and file worked out that as long as a senior officer wasn’t around (and you can bet that senior officers were never around past ten o’clock at night), and as long as the infantry on watch made sure no one came out of the bank, they could go on break in shifts of fifteen minutes—half of them would trot off for a cup of coffee or a bite at one of the coffeehouses, thaw their fingers and toes out, and then off they’d go and shake hands as they passed the other half, who
would take their turn. Never have you met a more caffeinated group of bright-eyed young soldiers, nor ones who stayed so warm in the coldest winter in living memory.

  And yes, the coffeehouses stayed open all night. They were legally required to close their doors at nine, because of the curfew, you know, but the people who would have arrested anyone for violating curfew were Order, and Order was the only clientele that they were actually serving, so there you have it. I believe the coffeehouse owners made a damn mint off those boys and girls, but that was before everything really started going to shit.

  And it went to shit because, you see, Nuryevens have these wonderful coins, and the great thing about coins is that they’re imaginary.

  You laugh, but it’s true. If I take out some bit of silver and I say, “This is worth one good horse,” then you have to, you know, consent to be part of my hallucination. And then we have to get a bunch of other people on board with it, until we are all collectively hallucinating that this little bit of metal is worth one good horse, or three goats, or a really terrible horse and a decent pig, or however many bushels of wheat. . . . You get the picture? Coins are imaginary. The metal that makes them up is real, but the magic that makes them coins instead of metal with pictures on? That’s all in our heads.

  And it’s a damn painful thing to wake up to, you know. It’s damn painful to have your illusions shattered. No one actually realized it at the time, but while Vihra was besieging the bank? The bank was besieging the entire city.

  No one gave Taishineya Tarmos enough credit, I say. I couldn’t stand her then and I can’t stand her now, but I tell you what—that woman had more cunning in her littlest fingernail than an entire basket of snakes.

  She drew all the attention she could to the bank, drew Order’s forces away from the prison, and so there was very little resistance when the kidnappers came for me.

  It was a very swift operation, much more smoothly executed than the botched affair that Anfisa’s agents had attempted some weeks prior. But what did I tell you? A small group, late at night, one target, in and out and away. Done.

  My cell was pitch dark when they opened the door, and I was lying awake, wrapped in my threadbare clothes and shivering so hard I thought my bones would break from it. I couldn’t even see the door open, just heard the squeak, and I froze. I thought it was Vihra Kylliat, come to be drunk at me again, but then I saw that there was no light. She would have brought a light with her, I thought, so perhaps it was someone come to kill me.

  The door creaked open. Four figures came in, as silent as cats, and—do you remember being a very small child, and lying awake at night? Do you remember staring so hard into the darkness that you swore you saw something move, that your mind screamed at you that something had moved? I saw these figures, and my mind screamed, Blackwitches! Blackwitches! I thought the ones we’d killed must have risen and returned to finish me off.

  They were nearly impossible to see in the dark. And it’s not my eyes, by the way. My eyes are as good as ever they were. I didn’t even have time to shout for help—they pounced on me, muffled me, gagged me, tied me up, and dragged me out, and I thought, This is it. This is where it ends. And at the same instant, I thought to myself, Unless they’re from Taishineya. Are they? Are they?

  There was a lamp at the end of the corridor—the single low flame gave just enough light to see the bodies of two guards lying on the floor, but we passed by too quickly for me to tell whether they were dead or simply unconscious.

  What I did see, however, was that the people holding me wore knee-length charcoal-gray coats, with scarves wound around their heads and over the bottom half of their faces.

  Weavers. Just like before. My heart stopped in my chest. Pattern might have been disbanded, but the Weavers were still about.

  Their faces were darkened with ash, to blend in with their scarves and the shadows. There was nothing shiny or reflective anywhere on them—even the dull luster of their fingernails had been buffed off. You know why they wear gray instead of black? It’s because sometimes, if there’s a tiny bit of light, black is darker than the dark.

  One of them stayed to lock my cell door behind us, and I saw that they had to replace the padlock. They took the old one off the door and pocketed it, but not before I saw that it was broken in pieces, covered in a hundred years’ worth of rust.

  Blackwitch. I could feel that foulness now that I was paying attention, but it was faint—not distant, but weak, like tea before it’s finished brewing. It was just enough to make me feel queasy, to prickle at the back of my neck. I think now that that blackwitch must have been . . . younger? Newer? I hear it’s supposed to get worse as time goes on. At the beginning, I’m told, they’re almost like normal people.

  These Weavers were clearly more experienced than the previous ones had been, and they must have been trained in a group. They spoke only in hand signs to one another, and even then we barely hesitated. I was bound too tight to move anything but my feet. There was a Weaver holding each of my arms, and one several yards ahead of us, and one several yards behind. My ears strained and strained to hear which one of them was breathing with a death’s-rattle in their chest.

  We saw no one. I didn’t even hear prisoners at that point. Grey Ward was as silent as an abandoned mine. I only knew that we had made it outside when the cold smacked me in the face. I hadn’t realized how warm my cell had been by comparison—the insulation of the walls and the heat from other bodies had made the difference. My feet, wrapped only in rags to protect them from the cold stone floors, crunched now across crisp-topped snow. The snow was cold enough to be dry, a small mercy, but the rags were no protection at all, and my feet were stabbing with pain in moments. Within another minute or two, they were numb, and the Weavers had to haul me along bodily so that I didn’t trip and fall on my face.

  There was a wagon waiting in a back alley, and I was shoved into it with the two Weavers holding on to me. The third jumped into the driver’s seat and flicked the reins, and we began to move. The fourth Weaver, the one at our backs, had vanished. Melted away into the snow and shadows.

  I couldn’t move even to curl up within my cloak, so I lay on my back, between the two Weavers (also lying flat), and stared up at the sky.

  I hadn’t seen it in months, not since the first time that Pattern came to take me away. It was a crystal-clear night, not a cloud in all the sky. The moon you call Aghton-qer was the tiniest slipper of a crescent, and Tem-qer, I think, was new. The only light was starlight.

  I thought, honestly, that I was going to die. Weavers and blackwitches? I thought it must be another attempt to avenge Anfisa Zofiyat. This, at least, was far more competent than the last. I looked up at the stars and accepted it. Heh. I saw the Broken Wagon at its zenith, and I thought it was funny I should die with those stars watching over me, as they’ve always sent me a little bit of luck in the past. And then a bag was shoved over my head and I was trapped in the dark again. At some point, they pulled me out and dragged me again.

  Turns out the Broken Wagon was sending me a bit of luck that night too. The Weavers took me to Taishineya Tarmos. See, when Pattern had been disbanded, the Weavers were at loose ends, angrier at Vihra Kylliat than they were at anyone else. And when Taishineya came and took the bank? Well! She took them, too. Paid them.

  With the bag over my head, I had no idea how we got into the bank. For all I know, we may have just walked right in the front doors. Sometimes you have a sense of things, even when you can’t see—you notice that the echoes change depending on how the walls surround you, or you feel a shift in the movement and quality of the air. The Weavers were so quiet, and the night was so cold and still, that I honestly could not get any clues—for all I know, they could have taken me through tunnels or flown me over the walls.

  Then, warmth. A breath later, the bag came off and my eyes were dazzled with light. They untied me and took the gag out of my mouth, and someone pushed me towards a beautiful velvet couch.

  I can
’t tell you what it was like to sink down onto those cushions, to run my hands over the fabric. I couldn’t quite seem to grasp that it was real—the softness of the velvet, the give of the cushions, even the color. That rich purple was almost edible, ripe summer blackberries bursting with sweet juice.

  Do you know that your eyes hunger for beautiful things? You can, as it turns out, actually starve yourself of it. Try it. Spend months locked in dim, dingy plaster cells and then look at a purple velvet couch with gilt trimmings.

  I almost cried, I’m not too proud to admit it. I was entranced with that damn couch for so long that I didn’t notice that someone else had come into the room until she cleared her throat. I looked up, and there was Taishineya Tarmos, resplendent and dripping with jewels, diamonds dazzling at her throat and her wrists, pearls gleaming in her hair and on her fingers, purple sapphires hanging from her ears.

  “Surprised to see me?” she said. She must have thought that’s what my gawping was. I wasn’t attracted to her, mind you—she was young enough to be my granddaughter or great-granddaughter, for gods’ sake, and I thought she was an unbearable twit, even if she was a cunning fox of an unbearable twit.

  But you remember what I just said about your eyes being starved for beautiful things? You know how wonderful it is to be really hungry and have a piece of soft fresh bread, still warm, with sweet butter and a bit of honey? Or a bowl of thick stew? It’s satisfying; it hits you where you need it. That’s what looking at that fucking velvet couch was like.

  Looking at Taishineya Tarmos was like . . . like drinking an entire jar of honey in two gulps. She should have been lovely, but it was too much all at once and it hurt to look at her, somehow, and when I flinched and closed my eyes, I felt faintly ill. That’s how I think a mortal would feel if they looked at a goddess—like she was beautiful, but it was too much to bear without feeling sick and disgusting. Oversweet. A cake made entirely of frosting.