A Choir of Lies

by Alexandra Rowland

  But they pay me. There’s that, at least.

  The stars-in-the-marsh are very popular. There’s almost always a crowd of people around our table, placing orders for the roots. Of course we don’t have the actual product out there in the open; I get the impression that they think it’s vulgar. People pay for the things they want, and then everything is delivered to their houses in neat little parcels. That is, that’s how the comfortably wealthy people do it. Poor people buy and carry just like anywhere else, and their markets are even less remarkable than the Rojkstraat.44 And very wealthy people, people like Sterre, they don’t go to markets at all—the merchants, or the merchants’ representatives call at the manors to offer their wares, or the rich folk host private salons.

  Sometimes I’m required for those as well. Sterre hosts a small gathering of society figures, fifteen or twenty of them, in a fine parlor of her own house, or in someone’s garden, and it’s more of a party than a market. More about making an appearance and strengthening connections with people, rather than buying and selling. I hate those even more, because people talk to me there in a way that they don’t at the Rojkstraat—they want to know something about me, or they tell me how talented I am. Sometimes they flirt with me. At the Rojkstraat, they listen in silence and then move on, or they talk to Teo and pay him for the bulbs. It’s better that way. They barely look at me.

  And they don’t ask my name, not like Sterre’s rich friends at the salons. There, they say, “And who are you, young man?” And I have to say, “Call me Chant,” again and again. And again. And every time, it feels like I’m lying to them. I used to make friends so easily, when I had my name. I used to feel connected to people. I used to care.

  Who am I? Who have I become?

  When did I forget how to love the whole world? When I was seventeen, when I was Ylfing,45 I would have thrown myself at Heyrland with my arms outstretched. I would have made six new friends every time I left my room. When I was seventeen, I could have spent an hour in an alley and found ten things about it that were special, or at least interesting.

  And who am I now? Just Chant, not Ylfing. And a Chant is tired and jaded.46 A Chant has seen everything the world has to see, and found it tiresome.47 Or has at least found the people in it tiresome.

  Another thing—to go back to the comparison of Rojkstraat versus salons—the Rojkstraat people throw coins at my feet, and the rich folk never do. Not that I spend my money on anything but food; I’m still doing chores in exchange for the right to sleep in the attic with the dust and the spiders, and one small window that looks out over the innyard and the canal.

  I suppose I’m spending money on ink and paper now, too. Telling stories compulsively to no one, alone in a dark, dusty, miserable room.48 Because I can’t stop. Because I can’t forget how much comfort and happiness I used to find in stories, and there’s no one telling them to me anymore—it’s as weak and pathetic as hugging myself for lack of anyone else doing it.

  There’s one other thing I’ve spent money on. I bought one of the roots. Teo said it would grow in a pot, if I watered it enough. I don’t know why I did it. I had the money for it, and I wasn’t spending it on anything else. I don’t even particularly like the idea of it—it’s just an empty pot of earth now, but when it sprouts I’ll have to look at it, and when it blooms I’ll have to endure the smell of it, and every time I see it, I’ll think of my master-Chant telling me the stories about it, about Kaskinen.49 Until then, it’s just a pot of empty soil sitting in front of the window, where it can get some light, and every day I go down to the rain barrel outside the kitchen and bring up a bowl of water to pour over it.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have even planted the flower. Maybe I should just have the pot of empty soil and carry that with me wherever I go, like I carry the absence of my name. But there was something about it that felt compelling. Something about the idea of—oh. When I became a Chant, part of it was symbolically sinking my homeland beneath the waves. Cutting off my bonds to my old self and my old life, giving up my name.

  I think planting the flower was so important because it’s the opposite of that, in a way. It’s just one little thing, and it won’t make much of a difference to anyone but me, but there it is: growing something, instead of throwing it away. I suppose we’ll have to see if it helps me at all. Between the flower and these writings, I’m going to have to come to some kind of conclusion. I wonder if I’ll be someone new by the time it blooms. I wonder if I’ll be able to be Ylfing again.

  * * *

  43. What in the world is wrong with you? The Rojkstraat is one of the biggest open-air markets in this hemisphere, and it’s only because the Heyrlandtsche are so exquisitely well organized that it seems smaller. Do you know how many people go to the Rojkstraat every day? Thousands. There are crowds, but it’s never crowded, and the sheer volume and variety of goods rivals anything you might find even in Araşt—I can go to the Rojkstraat and buy a pound of Zebid coffee and Arjuni cardamom and turmeric, or a gallon of Nuryeven menovka and Vintish galardine, Cormerran wool and Genzhun silk and Avaren linen and Ammatan seawich, or Oissic olive oil, horses from Umakh or Qeteren . . . I could go on. And that’s only the things you can buy; that doesn’t even touch on all the musicians available for hire, the street illusionists, the fire-eaters, the six different varieties of fortune-tellers, the priests on the street corners declaiming the words of Kas or Sannesi or Mindu, the coffee shops and tea gardens and public houses where dozens of merchants haggle out contracts and gamble with each other on the fate of their ships to ensure that they don’t lose all their capital should the unthinkable occur. It’s a world-class market, and you dare to say that it’s “not special.” I would ask whether you are blind, but that would be an insult to blind people, who could still experience the Rojkstraat in the sounds and the smells, in the cobblestones under their feet, in the feel of cloth under their fingertips, in the jostle of the crowd around them, in the warmth of the sun on their faces, in the taste of a hundred different kinds of street food from dozens of nations of the world. No, you’re not blind. You’re not even an idiot, because there are soft-witted people who delight in the Rojkstraat too—I have seen them! No, you are something evil: You’re someone who let himself become numb.

  44. I just sighed so loudly that Arenza heard from all the way across the room and asked if I was all right.

  45. Please stop.

  46. Go fuck yourself.

  47. That’s not a Chant problem. That’s a you problem.

  48. That’s a sin too. As bad as telling stories to the wind. You’re wasting them, writing them down like this. Words on a page are dead things, like the corpses of butterflies.

  49. Why choose to torture yourself like that? Forget about him. He is nothing to you now, or he ought to be nothing.

  FIFTEEN

  I tell the stars-in-the-marsh stories eight, nine, ten times a day now. Sterre knows her business. She knows what people want, and she knows how to sell it to them. It seems like every day there’s more and more demand for these ugly, wretched things. Sterre has a few blooming in her garden, and I’ve seen them at the salons. They smell like rancid meat, but when twilight falls . . . they do look like stars. Like starlight. As long as you don’t breathe, it’s easy to see how beautiful they are. The glimmer of white-blue light is strongest in the center of the flower, and when you stand at a distance as the breeze sways their stalks, they seem to twinkle.

  We’re very close to selling out of this last shipment, and Sterre’s been scheming about how to keep the money flowing until the next ones come in. She’s worried that the fashion will turn before the next ships arrive.

  None of that is my concern. I just sit on the blanket, and I tell the story again and again, as if I were a clockwork automaton, and when I go to sleep at night, I dream of them, night after night—I dream of being lost in the wetlands, surrounded by the stars-in-the-marsh, their stalks soaring taller than I am as I slosh through the deep muck up to my thighs, up to
my hips or my chest, every step a struggle. The smell is stale, thick, oppressive. I can’t breathe, but I can’t stop moving either. I can suffocate in the air, or I can slip beneath the surface and drown. And I keep moving, looking for something and hoping that someone is looking for me. No matter where I turn or which direction I struggle through thick, mucky water, all I see are the woody stalks and the low knots of leaves and the dark sky above me. No moons, no stars but the flowers, shimmering blue-white, giving me just enough light to see that there’s nothing to see, there’s no end in sight.50

  And as I wrote before, I wake up choking—not every night, but lots of nights.

  I don’t think I can go on like this.

  * * *

  50. Oh come now, even you aren’t so obtuse as to miss what this dream is trying to tell you. I’m sure you noticed it eventually. If not, I’ll give you a hint: You knew what you were doing was wrong. Stop it.

  SIXTEEN

  I’ve been staring at this page long enough for my candle to burn down a full inch. Gods, look at my handwriting—look how shaky and unlovely it is.51 I’m going to have to copy this out on fresh sheets.

  But this . . . this, I have to write down. And I don’t think I can just talk about it in summary like I’ve been doing. I think if I don’t write it all down, I’ll convince myself it was a waking dream. But it happened.

  It happened. I know it. She was real.52

  I went to the Rojkstraat today, just like every day. I sat—no. Slower, Chant. Tell it right, if you’re going to tell it.53

  I went to the Rojkstraat today, just like every day. Today was Watersday. Busy, but not crammed with people as it would have been on Firesday or Stonesday.

  Today I . . . saw something. Someone. They were at the other end of the Rojkstraat from me and Teo and our arrangement. I didn’t even notice anything unusual until Teo grumbled about it—

  No. Slow down. Tell it right. You know how to do this, Chant.54

  I sat on my blanket in the shade of the awning and folded my legs tailor-style. Teo hadn’t brought a cushion for me today. He forgets, most of the time. I make do on the bumpy, uneven cobblestones, and I don’t complain.

  I declaimed the stars-in-the-marsh story twice, and then I got up to stretch my legs. Teo handed me a jug of cold tea—he prefers it to water, I’ve noticed. I drank deep, wiped my mouth, and handed the jug back to him. He took it, glaring across the Rojkstraat, hardly paying me any mind at all. “You might as well sit and rest your voice, Chant,” he growled. “No use competing for attention with the new, fresh thing.”

  “What fresh thing?” I asked.

  He jerked his chin to indicate. I looked over, and then I noticed that the crowds were slowly drawing away from our end of the market, towards the other.

  “What is it?”

  “Who knows?” He sat back in his chair and crossed his big, thick arms. “But it’ll ruin our morning’s business; I can already see that plain.”

  I felt a glimmer of—something. Maybe just habit: a Chant’s job is to go and look at things and listen to them. “Shall I go find out?” I said.

  Teo shrugged. “If you like. No use for both of us to just sit here, not when everyone’s off gawking.” So I went over. It was strange—I hadn’t walked the breadth of the Rojkstraat very often. I hadn’t felt immersed in it.

  At the other end of the Rojkstraat there was a big crowd of people—big for a Watersday, anyway, maybe eighty or so. And at the center of it, there was a boxy cart, something like a traveler’s cart, or a tinker’s, though there were no horses to be seen. It was painted blackberry-purple with yellow-and-gold trim,55 and there was a little set of steps leading out the back end, and one entire side had been folded out and set on legs to make a little stage. And there was a woman sitting on the stage with her legs crossed tailor-style, just the same as I’d been when I sat at the booth with Teo. She was perhaps forty,56 with iron-black hair shot with gray plaited in one long rope, long enough that the tail end of it fell on the stage in loops around her hips. Her clothing was a strange mix of fashions—a bizarre garment57 that looked like a Xerec-style crossed-front vest on the top, but with long tails in front and back, like a Vintish waistcoat, which would reach to her knees were she standing; a pair of baggy calf-length trousers, something like the short pants worn by rice farmers in Map Sut and Genzhu. Her arms and feet were bare and golden-brown. All her clothes, like the cart, were in shades of purple, and she wore bright gold bangles at her wrists and ankles, and six gold earrings in each ear, and her clothes were sewn with little metal sequins all over so she glittered like anything. Her dark eyes were marked heavily with kohl.58 Her hands rested on her knees, her back very straight, and she looked steadily out at the crowd. There was an unlit candle in a holder in front of her.

  I found myself pushing closer, towards the front of the crowd, and then I noticed, belatedly, that there were two young people sitting on the ground below the stage, playing music. A girl with a goblet-drum across her lap, and a younger boy with a long, thin stringed instrument (which, if I had to name, I might tentatively identify as a langeleik) across his.

  “Attend, attend,” cried the girl with the drum. “Attend a sight you’ll never see again! From far and wide have we wandered, and seen all there is to see! My mistress knows the secrets of the world, and every story ever told! You’ll tell your children tales of this day! You’ll never see our like again!”

  The woman on the stage leaned forward and cupped her hands around the candle. She breathed softly on it, and when she took her hands away, there was a flame. Scant applause like scattered grain ran through the crowd—some folk must have thought she was another illusionist, or perhaps a performance-mage.

  Every story ever told, the girl had said. I felt my gut twisting. I felt sick. I didn’t want to hear any stories. I turned away.

  “Make my cobblestones ring with copper and silver and gold,” said the woman on the stage, “and I’ll make your heart ring in harmony.”

  I felt all the breath go out of me. I felt something in me cry: Stay, stay, stay.59

  And I thought, She has a presence, that one. Master Chant would have told me to listen to her. He would have told me to watch. She has tricks worthy of study.

  And I thought, I wonder how she does that with her voice, so she sounds like she’s standing right beside you.

  “My name,” she said, “is Mistress Chant.”

  Oh, I thought.

  * * *

  51. Yeah, it’s really bad here. I can barely read this. It’s giving me a headache.

  52. I’m going to scream. Who? Who was real? And does it involve the flowers at all? I expect not! Either skip this and get to the point, or at least make it a good story if I have to suffer through it!

  53. Only what I’ve been telling you the entire time!

  54. That definitely remains to be seen.

  55. Oh! It’s me! You’re talking about me! Good gods, were you really so unsettled? Your handwriting here is still awful.

  56. Forty-six, close enough.

  57. It’s not bizarre, it’s comfortable. I designed it myself and had it made! I don’t see how you have the call to be criticizing anyone’s clothing anyway—you go around in threadbare homespun.

  58. All this detail! Were you perhaps jealous? No one’s stopping you from wearing pretty clothes, Chant, or from wearing kohl or jewelry if the whimsy strikes you. Whatever happened to those togs that Sterre made you wear for the auction?

  59. I confess, it is rather fascinating to see all this from your perspective. I saw you that day too—I saw a pretty young man with strikingly tired eyes come through the crowd, and he looked at me and my cart and my apprentices, and then he turned away. That’s what made me notice you. Hardly anyone turns away like that. One in a hundred people. If they’re not interested, they never even approach. But you approached, and then you were about to leave—and that, I noticed.

  SEVENTEEN

  I turned back. I set my eyes on h
er and I didn’t look away for the next hour. I don’t even remember blinking. I cast my copper with the rest of the crowd and made her cobblestones ring.

  I don’t know if she made my heart sing back, as she’d promised. It was thundering too loud in my chest to hear anything else. She told stories until the candle burned down—stories both familiar and strange, stories I gulped down like a fish gulps water. She told “Priya, Majnun, and the Wondrous Blue Panther,” and “The Twelve Tasks of Tyrran,” and one about a skeletal horse that challenged travelers to singing contests, and one about a girl who went into the Sea of Sun to make a deal with a sand demon, and then she told some real stories about recent occurrences: about the coffee harvest in Zebida, about the birth of the new crown princess in Araşt, about an earthquake in Dvecce. She told us about the king of Inacha, whose kingdom lies across the tops of five thousand square miles of mountains and karst peaks that rise like pillars from the earth, and about the web of bridges that lace his kingdom together, and the great windmills they’ve constructed to pump water up from the ravines below, and the way they therefore worship the wind as the source of all life.

  I could only stand and listen, my heart and ears straining towards her like a thirsty ghost struggling across an acacia-thorn fence, gulping down her stories until I realized that I was doing just what I hated my audiences doing. I forced myself to look down, to fix my eyes on my worn-out shoes, the cobblestones beneath my feet. And yet I couldn’t help but steal glances, now and then—desperate, helpless sips instead of the frantic gulps.