A Choir of Lies

by Alexandra Rowland

  So I told them stories about that. I told them about the Vintish mercenaries and about Peregrine Lee because those too are about cooperation and community. We learn who we are from stories. I was reminding them who they were, and they were pleased to be reminded. They were pleased to hear stories that fit in with what they already knew to be true.

  94. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.

  95. You were certainly upset about this, weren’t you? Don’t you think it was childish to have such a tantrum about it like this? You were so cold and still at the salon; I barely even noticed you when I was performing.

  96. I’m raising my eyebrow at this. You’re one to talk.

  97. Because sometimes the effect matters. Sometimes you want them to feel with precision, and music is the way to do that. Words are fluid and shifting and soft. Words can be misunderstood. Music strikes at the heart of you and expresses what can’t be said in words.

  98. I beg your pardon? That’s a strong opinion for a heretic and a blasphemer! This is a level of hypocrisy I genuinely wasn’t expecting.

  99. Want to bet?

  100. Oh, thank goodness. Dodged an arrow there, didn’t we? How ridiculous it is that I should feel so grateful and relieved that you displayed a minor piece of decency in not writing that down.

  101. Bracing myself. Come on, brother-Chant, you managed not to fuck up with the previous one . . .

  102. . . . And I sag with relief! Two for two! Though to be honest, I’d prefer you didn’t even write these few sentences either, but I’ll take any port in a storm. This is the lesser of two evils.

  103. Apt description. I concur.

  104. Hm, oddly, I don’t find myself objecting to a secondhand-shop summary like this one. Again, the less of three evils, I suppose. Or perhaps I’m merely becoming resistant to your particular brand of heresy.

  105. Yes, I was, a little. I wanted to test your range. But you were set on speech over song, and that was fine. I’d wanted to talk to you like this, to trade stories like this—I was content to do so on your terms, if that’s what it took.

  106. That is not a story for rich folks’ parties. That is not a tale for just anyone to hear. And it’s certainly not something you ought to be putting down on paper. Out of all the stories in the world, that one is the only one that’s truly ours. It deserves to be treasured and cherished particularly, not bandied about in front of an audience so you can win a friendly little contest.

  107. That’s a little hyperbolic. No one minded that we took up all the attention of the room. We were doing our jobs, after all.

  108. There, see! Exactly! Even you knew.

  109. Raising my eyebrows at this.

  110. There’s no point in arguing with people like Mevrol de Waeyer. It would have been a waste of breath.

  111. Rolling my eyes here. Though I suppose someone like Mevrol de Waeyer doesn’t get to where she is without an ironbound thirst for competition, so we can’t really blame her for being . . . like that.

  112. You give me no credit at all, do you? As I recall, at that point I was mostly confused by you.

  113. No, brother-Chant, you snapped. Like an animal trapped in a cage.

  114. It is so tiresome to be constantly villainized like this. I’m not the careless, thoughtless person here, you are.

  115. Go fuck yourself.

  116. Wrong! You I don’t Except that Fucking upstart! Well, now you have me fuming, and I will begrudgingly concede the point.

  117. I didn’t say “shabby”; I said “plain.”

  118. Usually shoes. Usually.

  119. It is ridiculous. The ancient Chants were splendid to look at—the stories my line tells say that their clothes glittered with ornament, that they painted their faces, that they wore bells and bright colors and jewelry, all to catch Shuggwa’s Eye. And your line? Faded rags from the secondhand shops! Which Chant in your ancestry was it that set aside our primary function?

  120. Ah, how innocent I was! Ah, for the days I really thought you were a simple fraud instead of a heretic!

  121. Just came back here from a couple hundred pages farther on to check whether I remembered this part right and . . . Well, shit. I’m going to have to flip through and find all the other times you mentioned this feeling and see if my theory holds water. If it does . . . Gods and fishes, Chant.

  122. I was narrowing my eyes because I was annoyed with your tone. Calm down; stop thinking yourself so ingenious.

  123. No. I refuse you. I reject you. I renounce and abjure you. A Chant would have had more care. A Chant would have thought about what he was doing.

  124. It’s fine. I got my answers eventually, didn’t I? I wonder if you’ll deign to write that part down.

  125. I look forward to reading the part where we argue about that—if you even admit that it happened, that is, since I so obviously won.

  126. It was galardine, for gods’ sake, not brandy. I don’t really expect someone your age to have a discerning and developed palate, but come on.

  127. Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that, kid. By all means, take silver and gold from people who thought your stories good. Take payment in food or beer or shelter or services. But you know how I feel about this.

  128. Her Chant, she calls you, like you belong to her, like she owns you.

  129. What the hell did you need money for, anyway? You dress like a pauper, you’re thin and bony, you don’t seem to care for drinking or gambling or bed companions, and you were earning room and board at the inn with chores. So where was it all going?

  130. I hope to all the gods I can name that you didn’t take it. She shouldn’t be permitted to think a Chant can be bought like this. At least, not for such a scanty price. I’ve advised kings, and she thinks to pay me little more than what a laundress makes.

  131. Surprise! Now I’m glad I stuck around, purely for the satisfaction of having tortured you for so long.

  132. No, but it is your fault that you’re choosing to stay ignorant and useless. If you hadn’t been so proud and haughty, I would have taught you everything you needed to know.

  133. Ah, true. She doesn’t, does she? You’re right—she doesn’t pick at you like I do. She doesn’t challenge you. She lets you wallow. She doesn’t push you to grow or change. All you have to do is mindlessly obey. You’d found a comfortable equilibrium here, hadn’t you? She fit a yoke to you and got you in your traces, and you were ready to pull the load along without ever once looking back to see what it was made of.

  And then I had to come along and spoil it, didn’t I? That’s why you were so furious here and in the garden, all blazing eyes and clenched jaw. I asked you all the right questions to throw you off your balance, and you dug in your heels and clung to whatever shitty story you could tell yourself to keep things warm and safe and comfortable and easy, rather than anything that would have made you strong and invulnerable, like I told you later. Hmph! When you wrote, “Chants are liars,” you really were just talking about yourself, weren’t you?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sterre didn’t speak to me again until we were in her carriage, on the way back to the eastern quarter of the city, where her offices and apartments were located. “You know,” she said, “I hope you didn’t feel stung by my offer to your colleague. I’ve been meaning to give you a raise. You’re more useful than I had originally anticipated, and I was going to make the offer whenever I found another Chant to hire.”

  She didn’t know that there were any other Chants nearby to hire, so that was a lie. “That’s generous of you, ma’am,” I said. I didn’t care about the money. What’s a few extra stuivers worth to me? I’m fed and clothed, and there’s a roof over my head. I have a warm place to sleep. What use do I have for coins?134 But I thought of how holier-than-thou Mistress Chant had been, and of how it would infuriate her if she only could have overheard this conversation, and I said, “I’ll gladly accept whatever you offer.”

  “Sixteen stuivers a week, then.”

  I co
uld have asked for more, and she would have given it to me. I probably could have asked for twenty-five, but I was angry. I am angry. I’m not all those things that Mistress Chant accused me of, and just because I get paid for work that I would have been doing anyway doesn’t mean that I’m selling myself. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing. She just thinks that because her master-Chant gave her some strange opinions. I don’t think Chants are holy people,135 at least not anymore, because I’ve met holy people: monks and martyrs and hermits. There’s something about all of them that’s not quite of-this-world, and Chants and stories are the most of-this-world thing that I know.136

  So she’s wrong. Mistress Chant is wrong. I’m a proper Chant. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s a lot more grand and gimmicky than Chanting should be.137 You don’t need a fancy cart138 or musical accompaniment by two apprentices. You don’t need a candle139 or nice clothes.140

  That’s what my master was doing: Stripping it down to the basics. Discarding everything but the core, important thing.141 Maybe his master taught him that too.

  You know, I don’t care if I meet her again or not. If I do, I won’t be afraid of her next time. I’m as real as she is, and she calls me brother-Chant, like I’m an equal to her. Because I am. I am! She’s already admitted it. So next time, I won’t let her push me around. Next time I’ll argue with her properly.142

  I worked to get where I am. Whether or not it was the right choice, whether or not I’m broken and full of regret, that’s irrelevant—I could give up Chanting next week, and it doesn’t change the fact that I’m a Chant now. I could give it up next week and it won’t change the fact that I was a Chant; I earned it fair and square. So I say again, and I’ll say it as many times as I have to: she can go get shipwrecked for all I care, or she can go into the desert or to hell, her and her cart and her smug opinions.

  . . .

  Shit. Something I scrawled up above caught my eye and I’ve been staring at it for a long, long time.

  I could give up Chanting next week.143

  I had such a good petty outrage going, and then I had to go and write that and ruin it. Is that what I’ve been refusing to think about this whole time? Do I want that?144 Have I been keeping secrets from myself this whole time?

  I could give it up. There’s nothing stopping me. I could take my name back. I could be me again if I wanted to. I could do anything I wanted to, and all I’d have to do is break some oaths and walk away from something important.145

  I have to stop writing now, or I’m going to start crying and ruin the ink.

  * * *

  134. What use indeed!

  135. Entirely, literally wrong. Chants were priests and intermediaries to Shuggwa in the height of his power! They were chosen by him, and they were safe from all his mischief and misfortune. My line never ceased in our devotion.

  136. Seriously? That’s your argument? You have a feeling, so therefore you’re right? “I feel normal and worldly, so therefore all Chants are worldly.” And what’s this nonsense about stories being prosaic? You ought to be ashamed of yourself—where are you getting these wild conclusions from? Thin air? Have more discipline.

  137. Gimmicky? Oh, you mangy whelp, it’s a good thing you’ve already left town, or I’d thrash you from here to Novensok.

  138. What else are you going to do? Walk? Carts make travel easier; that’s what they’re for.

  139. You do if you’re doing it right! Chants are connected to fire. Stories live by hearths and campfires, and we ought to respect that. The candle is a symbol. Symbols are important.

  140. I’m going to scream. Yes, you do need nice clothes. At least, you do if you’re going to show devotion to Shuggwa. The whole point of Chants is to occupy his attention, and you do that with stories and songs, and loud speech, and rude fucking words, and bright clothing or jewelry so as to catch his Eye. The nice clothes aren’t a vanity, they’re a necessity.

  141. As far as I can tell, he was discarding everything including the core, important thing.

  142. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

  143. You could! You should! Do it! You don’t deserve to go on that narcissistic little quest you came up with. You don’t deserve to stand where they stood. If I’d kept talking to you after you handed me these pages, I’d wager you would have said something about finding yourself, wouldn’t you?

  144. I don’t know, but I sure want it.

  145. Oh come now, chin up! You’ve already done all those things every single day since you sank your homeland beneath the waves! Surely you’ve got loads of practice at it by now.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Two more of Sterre’s ships arrived today, and that’s all there will be for the next few months. The solstice is coming in two weeks, and with it the summer king-tide, and then the stormy season is going to close the ports, for the most part. Some people, desperate people with more brains than sense, make a run for it, trying to outsail the storms and make it to safe harbor in time, but it’s wiser to stay put. The small hurricanes that blow in from the sea drive ships aground and batter the buildings, sometimes tearing shutters and roofs off and always flinging debris around everywhere. Mevrouw Basisi told me that if we get a bad storm, I’m to come out of the attic and sleep in the kitchen, well away from the fire—if the wind is bad, it can come down through the chimney and blow embers and ashes around the kitchen. She told me not to worry overmuch about it—the canal systems mean that if the waters rise to flooding, at least they drain away quickly too, and everyone has little boats and coracles to paddle around in the canals, so the water isn’t that much more of an issue.

  Oh—I haven’t talked about Basisi before, have I? She’s a Heyrlandtsche and N’gakan vrouw and she owns the inn with her spouse, Nicasen Eenyart. She’s short, heavyset, very strong, and very serious. A canny businesswoman, too. I don’t know Nicasen; they’ve never come to the inn. They and Basisi live a few streets away, in a proper townhouse. Basisi handles all the day-to-day running of the inn, and Nicasen handles the accounts. I gather that they have some trouble leaving the house, but I’m not sure why.

  Anyway, Basisi is already moving her dry goods out of the cellar and into one of the guest rooms on the second floor—that was one of the tasks I’ve been helping her with these last few days, in the spare hours I have in the morning before heading to Sterre’s offices or the Rojkstraat, or in the evening when I return. The strange Pezian flirt turned up again this evening and got underfoot while we were working, crowing to Basisi about how delighted he’d be to help out. He trailed after us and did carry a couple things, but mostly he just stood around trying to sweet-talk her, even though she’s married and was having none of it. He kept giving me these looks, too, like he wanted to turn on me next, but I was busy and making quick trips up and down the stairs. I didn’t much care to help him practice his obvious quest of learning how not to inflict himself upon people.146

  When we paused for dinner, he followed us into the inn’s kitchen without being invited, which I thought was rude. Basisi was having a grand time yelling at him, but if she’d really wanted him gone, she would have hauled him over one shoulder like the sacks of potatoes in the basement and dumped him in the common room with his family, the other Pezians. She’s a very straightforward sort of person.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded of him after the third time he’d compared her smile to dawn breaking over the spires of the Palazzo della Colombe in Astimo.

  “Why wouldn’t I be here?” he asked cheerfully. We hadn’t offered him any food, but he didn’t seem to mind. He sat with us at the little table that was wedged into the back corner of the bustling kitchen and folded his hands neatly on his knee. “I’m enjoying my evening with the two loveliest creatures in the city.”

  “I guess you can’t be accused of having a type,” I murmured, and Basisi snorted—she is the polar opposite of me in every physical respect.

  Saying anything was probably a mistake, because the Pezian
turned his limpid eyes on me. “Do you wish me to be quiet?”

  “We wish you to be good company, if you’re going to be company at all,” Basisi replied sharply. I tipped my head towards her to indicate my agreement and kept eating.

  “I can be good company,” he said. “I’ve been told I’m very agreeable.”

  “You’d be more agreeable if you talked less.”

  He smiled. “No one else is saying anything,” he pointed out.

  Basisi nudged me with her elbow. “Say something. Quiet this young fool.”

  “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “See?” said the Pezian cheerfully.

  She nudged me again. “Talking is your profession, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” the Pezian said, turning his bright eyes on me again. “Is that why that loestijr the other day made you tell us that story about Oyemo and the thirst-starved ghost?”

  I made a noncommittal noise and scraped up the last of my soup, wishing I’d lingered longer over it.

  “Still hungry?” Basisi asked. “You’ve been working hard.”

  “No.” But there was an idea, a chance to escape the chatty Pezian. “I’ll get back to work now.”

  Basisi waved dismissively. “Hauling sacks and boxes through the kitchen during the dinner rush? I think not. We’re done for the night.”

  “I’ll go down and sort things to make it easier tomorrow, then.”

  She shrugged in reply and pointed her spoon at the Pezian. “Go help, if you’re going to help.”