A Choir of Lies

by Alexandra Rowland

  I shrugged. “You keep demanding answers from me, and I have none. All I know is patterns. I’ve made something of a study of them, you see, the way Lanh Chau does with music, the way he’ll do one day with food, whenever that bolt of lightning strikes him.”

  He stood abruptly, shuffled his papers together into a stack, rolling them up and wrapping them in several blank sheets, presumably to keep them dry. He tucked them into his coat, and I folded my hands and watched.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I’m trying, all right? I know you don’t believe it, but I am.”

  Adolescent histrionics. I took no notice of them. “Well, have a good evening. Do come back again if you have any real questions. Maybe one of these days you might ask after me, instead of talking about yourself the whole time.”

  There. That’s better.

  The other reason he’ll never settle down and get married is because he runs away the second shit gets hard. No one ever taught him how to argue constructively. No, he’ll stick with Chanting.

  FIFTY

  Today I went to the coffeehouse on the Rojkstraat, which was sleepy and smoky as usual. To my great luck, I happened to see Crispin sitting at a table in the back. I went up to him immediately and said, “Sir, we met the other day. You know me as Chant. I’ve been selling those flowers for Sterre de Waeyer.”

  “Oh, yes. Good morning,” he said.

  “I wanted to talk about the variant flower you spoke of before.”

  He smirked and poured me a cup of coffee from his carafe. “I’m afraid it’s too late,” he said. “I’ve already signed a contract with Mevrouw Valck. She’s buying it, to be delivered as soon as the bulb can be moved.”

  “You have to cancel the contract,” I said. “You won’t be able to fulfill it. The flower isn’t a variant; it’s sick.”

  He set his cup down with a clatter. “Sick,” he said.

  “It’s a disease that strikes the stars-in-the-marsh. First, the color shifts and the petals mutate. Then speckles of black grow over it: first the leaves, then the stalk, and the flower. Then it dies back.” I bit my lip. “It spreads like a plague. Through the water. So your other flowers . . .”

  He stared at me for a moment, then laughed. “Well, this is a clever strategy, but unfortunately it’s one I’ve seen before. Listen—maybe try it on someone else. I don’t blame you at all,” he added quickly, raising a hand to quell my objection. “I’m not at all upset with you for trying. An enterprising youth like yourself has to take every advantage he can. I was just the same when I was your age. And really,” he said encouragingly, “you almost had me. You were so close! Just keep practicing, and I bet you’ll be able to convince someone else. Now, did you want feedback, or . . . ?”

  “It’s not a ruse, sir; I’m not trying to trick you. Your flowers are dying. If the others aren’t showing the signs already, they will soon. You might as well pull them up by their roots and burn them.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon, no.”

  “I’m not lying to you. Don’t try to sell them on! You’re already ruined.” You have to speak to Heyrlandtsche in a particular way. “There is a great storm coming. Reef your sails or risk shipwreck.”

  “I appreciate the warning. If you’ll excuse me.”

  So it didn’t work. I went to a few of the houses of Sterre’s other clients, people I was faintly acquainted with. I told them what I’d told Crispin.

  Nobody listened to me. I’ve gone to everyone I can, pounded on their doors, begged to see their flowers. They—or more often their servants—refuse me entry and shut the door in my face.

  But it’s too late anyway: of the one or two people who remembered me from the salons and allowed me to see their gardens, each of them has at least one star-in-the-marsh that is exhibiting signs of the sickness. I’ve tried to tell them, but no one listens to me—they all laugh and wonder what incredible new plot Sterre has cooked up now.

  The so-called variation is lovely, I’ll grant them that—some of them are as yellow as lemons, some of them a glistening white-gold. The mutation of the petals is delicate and lacy, and of those which are far enough gone, the black spots spread across the centers of the petals like freckles across the bridge of someone’s nose.

  I don’t have the right story. It’s not strong enough to turn the tide against everything else I’ve been telling them for months, again and again and again. No, not a tide—I sang a flood into being, drop by drop, and now I am but one voice trying to repair the dike. It will take months again to make any progress against this thing I’ve built, and I don’t have months.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Something happened and it wasn’t a big deal.

  There. That’s the hardest part done—actually starting, putting words down instead of staring at a blank sheet of paper and feeling . . . I don’t know. Feeling feelings.

  If it wasn’t a big deal, why do I want to spend the time and ink to scrutinize it? Orfeo said it was nothing, and he’d know better than I do. So why do I care? I should just forget about it, like he said. Nobody got hurt, not really. Just a little heart-bruised, but that’s what happens when your hopes are disappointed. It happens every day, to everyone. It’s not something to be having a crisis over.

  I’m not having a crisis. Am I? Orfeo said I shouldn’t. I’m fine, and he said it was nothing. He said it wasn’t even worth writing about.

  I think I’m going to write about it anyway. I’m only wasting my own time, after all.

  It started in the dark with Orfeo, just as we were about to drift off to sleep. “So,” he said. “I haven’t wanted to bring it up, but . . .”

  I held my breath.

  “We’re leaving. The worst of the storms have passed, and my uncle wants to be getting back. My cousins too. We’re all getting homesick.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Have you given any thought . . .” His arms tightened around me briefly, then loosened abruptly, deliberately, like he was trying not to cling to me, like he was trying not to cage me, just in case I didn’t want to be caged. “Come back with me. Come back to Pezia. I’ll introduce you to my family. They’d like you—Uncle Simo already does.”

  “I don’t know . . .” I said, thinking of the flowers, thinking of the flood and the dike.

  Orfeo drew me closer, rubbing his nose against my neck and jaw. “You’d like Pezia,” he said, low and beguiling. “And Lermo is a beautiful city, all wide streets and fountains, trees everywhere, ivy growing over all the buildings, orange groves—we have one at the country house. And at the city house, there’s a covered walk around a courtyard, a cloister, all overgrown with wisteria. They bloom in the spring—I’ve never seen anything so pretty, except for you.”

  I laughed. “Are plants the main attraction, then?”

  “You like plants, so yes.”

  “Do I?”

  “Don’t you? You’re always on about those flowers. You have one in your room—you’d have to like plants to put up with the smell.”

  “I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “Well, there’s other things. There’s parties every night, if you know enough people or where to go, and dancing, and beautiful clothes—we could afford them. The family would give us a stipend, and I told you they’d give you a job, so there would be your salary too. We could buy all the clothes we wanted, and a new pair of dancing slippers every day, and—”

  I laughed again. “I definitely don’t like dancing enough to do it every day.”

  “Shit. Food, then. Everyone likes food.” I let the silence draw out just long enough for him to scold, “Ylfing,” before I burst into giggles.

  “All right, sure, yes. Nearly everyone likes food, including even me. Sometimes.”

  Orfeo huffed and grumbled into my hair, “Being difficult.”

  “Sorry, sorry. I’m cooperating.”

  “Better food in Pezia, that’s all I was going to say.” He gru
mbled again and kissed my temple. “Other things too. All the things you like. If something’s lacking, I’ll . . . unlack it. Come back with us. You know you want to.”

  I turned and kissed him, leaned my forehead against his. “There’s something here I need to fix, before I go anywhere. I can’t leave quite yet.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “I could stay here with you until it’s done.”

  That, of all things, made my heart skip a beat. But . . . “No,” I said. “Your family—you’re making so much progress on repairing things with them. Staying here is the rake thing to do; you have to show them you’re reliable and sensible now, and make the reliable, sensible choice. Go back with them.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nicer if I was here?”

  “Yes, but . . . It’s best if you go.”

  “I just don’t want you to think that I’ve left you when I leave you. I want to keep you.” He paused. “We could be married before I leave.”

  Tempting, actually—I didn’t want to feel like he’d left me when he left either. I’ve had enough of being abandoned by a roadside for one life. But still . . . “That’s even more of a rake thing to do, Orfeo. How would that conversation go with your family?”

  “ ‘I met someone in Heyrland, you’ll think he’s wonderful, just ask Uncle Simo.’ ”

  “And then they ask when they’ll get to meet me, and you have to say, ‘Well, he’s not here, and actually, you don’t get a choice about having him around once he arrives. You have to take him, even if you end up hating him.’ Reliable, sensible choices, Orfeo. Uncle Simo said I was a good influence on you, didn’t he? Listen: they have a story about Orfeo in their heads that’s been in the telling for twenty years. You can’t change a story like that overnight.”

  He was silent for so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep, and I began to think about getting up to go to the attic to stare at the flower and wonder what the hell I was going to do. “If,” he said suddenly.

  “If?”

  “If I’d said something else, would you have said something else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t know what things you liked. I don’t have any idea what things you like. If I’d known, just now, would you have agreed to leave with us?” He was more nervous than I’d ever heard him, even that time in Sterre’s garden when he was beside himself with confusion, swamped and uncertain.

  I kissed him again. “I barely know what I like; I wouldn’t expect you to know.”

  “You like me, don’t you?”

  “Very much. You should have led with that! Pezia has Orfeo in it.” I closed my eyes and nestled farther into his arms. “It doesn’t really matter if you don’t know what I like,” I said. “You love me.”350 That was the moment it all started going wrong. Because as soon as I said that, he went tense and still.

  “Orfeo? What did I say?”

  “Nothing,” he said, and I noticed, distantly, that he was using his rake voice, smooth and soothing and so much less genuine than he’d been a moment ago, even when he was trying to beguile me. He didn’t sound like himself.

  “Something,” I insisted. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Too late—I’m already worried. What is it?”

  “Just something stupid.” He cleared his throat, and shifted, and began kissing my neck in that way he knows I like, and slipped his hand under the covers, stroking my side, my hip. “Let me help you get to sleep, gorgeous.”

  I grabbed his wrist. “A Chant’s job is to find things out—my master and I once walked fifty miles through a thunderstorm in the mountains just to find a woman rumored to have a talking cow. This, in comparison, is nothing, because you’re already here in front of me. You’re going to tell me this stupid thing. Don’t lie and say it’s nothing, because I can smell that it isn’t.”

  “I don’t want to upset you.”

  “I’m going to be upset anyway if I have to go to sleep thinking that I’ve offended you somehow. That ship has left the harbor. So what is it?”

  “Did she have a talking cow? That woman?” he said, using his rake voice to sound interested.

  “I’ll tell you later. Why are you dodging the question? Do you think I—oh.” I paused. “I only said I liked you very much, didn’t I? Is that it?” He was silent, still tense. “You’re upset because I haven’t said I love you?” He got, if anything, tenser. “Oh, Orfeo. I’m sorry. Of course I do, sweetheart. Of course I do. How could I not?”

  “That’s—not,” he began, strangled. “That’s not. Fuck.”

  “What?”

  “I . . . had not. Um. Realized. That’s. Something that you might have . . . wanted.” He took a deep, slow breath. “You know what? I’m being stupid. It’s nothing, really. I did say you could have anything you wanted. You want that, you can have—it.” He choked a little there. “I’ll take care of it; leave it to me.”

  “Now you sound like you’re panicking.” It was making me panic a little too, my heartbeat getting faster. “You didn’t realize I’d want . . . to love you? For you to love me?”

  “Yes,” he said awkwardly.

  “But you want to marry me. Right? I didn’t misunderstand that, did I? I come back to Pezia, I meet your family, they love me, you marry me, everyone’s happy forever. That’s the plan, right?”

  “Yes, absolutely, yes.”

  “But you’re not in love with me,” I said blankly.

  There was a long silence. “Not . . . per se. Currently. I can work on it!”

  I sat up, staring into the darkness across the room, empty and confused.

  “Now you’re upset,” he said. “I knew you’d be upset. I told you it was stupid.”

  “No . . . No, I think I’m the one being stupid.” I should have laughed it off, maybe, lain back down and gone to sleep and decided that it wasn’t important. There are plenty of places in the world where people marry for reasons besides love, where their families or a matchmaker choose someone for them. It works out there, sometimes better than it works with love matches. Families usually want the best for their children, after all. They want their children to be happy.

  And there were all the people I knew in Nuryevet, who married for reasons besides love—for business purposes, or just to join households and have a life together with someone they could count on. Love isn’t required—I’ve seen people build strong and happy marriages on friendship. I’ve seen them build their foundations merely on the promise to guard each other’s backs.

  I shouldn’t have said anything else. I should have agreed that it was Orfeo’s problem to worry about his own feelings. I shouldn’t have expected—assumed—

  But Pezians have love songs, and dances like amoroso that are about or for lovers. And he wanted to marry me. I just thought . . . “Do you like me?” I asked.

  “Well . . . yes? Yes,” he said, more confidently. I put a hand to my chest, feeling like I’d just been hit with the bewildering thump of a crossbow quarrel. “I like talking to you, and I enjoy your stories. And I very much like sex with you. And stories during sex: that was hot; you could do that again,” he offered. “And besides, Uncle Simo loves you.”

  “Yes, but I’m not marrying Uncle Simo,” I said testily. “You always say that, you know. You always say how much your family will love me—”

  He sat up. “But that’s the point.”

  “—I just feel like an idiot for thinking that included you. Wait, what’s the point?”

  “That they’d love you.” I didn’t answer, just turned towards him in the dark, even though I couldn’t see him. “You know, because you’re so talented, and you know so many things, and—I mean, that auction, Ylfing. If I always say it, it’s because it’s true. You’re too smart to be wasting your time with people like de Waeyer. She doesn’t appreciate you. In Pezia, you’ll be able to have your pick of whatever job you want with the family.”

  He’d said that a thousand times before, but
this time I heard something in it—a faint, distant sort of thing, like a drip of water into a tin bowl in the next room. I breathed, took a moment to remember all the Chantly wiles I’d learned over the years, picking them up like rusty, unfavorite tools. “That’s true . . .” I said. “It would be nice to have that.”

  “Right?” he said.

  “I suppose you and I could carry on just as we have been.” I felt like I was feeling my way by touch, testing each floorboard delicately with my feet before shifting my weight onto it.

  “Yes.” He sounded relieved.

  “I probably should have talked to you about expectations and things, like in that first conversation we had. I suppose I jumped to conclusions.”

  “It’s all right. I forgive you.” He laughed softly. “Shit, I feel like I just ran a mile.”

  I feel like I’ve been shot in the chest, I thought, and I’m about to find out if I’m right to. “So what would you do in the family?”

  “Oh, I expect they’ll get off my back if I’m married.” He laughed again and fell back into the pillows. “Especially if I’m married to you. I’ll be able to leverage that for years. ‘What do you mean I’m not pulling my weight? I brought you Ylfing, didn’t I?’ ”

  I forced myself to laugh convincingly. “That would be a significant contribution, wouldn’t it?”

  “Gods, yes. You’ll be brilliant.”

  “And what will you be?”

  “Happy. I’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”

  There, there it was. “Really? Nothing?”

  “They’d never disown me, because then they’d have to disown you too. They wouldn’t cut off your allowance. I—we—could do anything we liked.” He sounded dreamy.

  “Yeah, anything at all,” I said, matching his tone. “And that’d be worth a loveless marriage.”

  “That’d be worth any marriage,” he chuckled.