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A Conspiracy of Truths

by Rowland, Alexandra

A Conspiracy of Truths cover
  • ISBN: 9781534412804
  • ISBN10: 1534412808

A Conspiracy of Truths

by Rowland, Alexandra

  • List Price: $25.99
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
  • Publish date: 10/23/2018
  • ISBN: 9781534412804
  • ISBN10: 1534412808
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Description: A Conspiracy of Truths THE SEVENTH TALE: The Glass-Merchant''s Wares . . . there was a woman who owned a little shop where she sold glassware. Beautiful, fine work by the best artisans in all the city, little fantasies of crystal. She also had some poorer work, which she kept for people who weren''t quite high enough in society to be able to afford the very best, but who were clawing their way up as fiercely as they could, who wanted to seem like they were doing a better job than they were. It was a rather boring trade for the woman--she had inherited the business from her father, and she had not much use for or interest in glass, except for the money that it brought in and the reputation it granted her, but the shop was known throughout the city for its exquisite wares. One day a lord of the city came in. He needed to buy an entire new suite of wineglasses, for a clumsy servant, dusting the shelf, had knocked it loose and the whole glittering collection had fallen and shattered into the smallest fragments. (I paused for the faintest moment here to see if Taishineya would have a reaction--a bark of laughter, perhaps, or the declaration that she hoped the lord had dismissed the servant immediately, but she just sat there and looked . . . innocently blank. At the time, I thought she looked like she was obviously feigning inquisitiveness, but in hindsight she might have been feigning the feigning of inquisitiveness.) The lord was hosting a great banquet that very night to celebrate the engagement of his eldest son to a young woman of much renown--he needed to go home with the glasses that very afternoon. The glass merchant nodded calmly, but her heart had gone still in her chest. She simply did not have that many wineglasses in stock, certainly not of the quality that this lord was looking for. But she had a clever idea, and she had a lot of poorly made wineglasses, enough to supply the lord twice over. "Well, my lord . . . Usually I wouldn''t suggest something like this, but since your whole collection has been destroyed . . . It just seems like true serendipity that this would happen to you, today of all days," she said. "Why?" said the lord. The glass merchant shooed her assistant out of the shop, locked the front door, and beckoned the lord close. "I''ve just received a shipment of wares so rare that only a very few people in this entire city have ever seen them before." The lord''s interest was piqued. "Show me these wares." "I shall have to go into the storeroom and count the glasses to make sure I have enough . . . but I think I might. It will be very close." The lord nodded eagerly, and the merchant vanished into her back room, where she counted the wineglasses, ran a dust cloth over them, and composed herself. She brought back one, covered in a piece of fine white silk, and she set it on a velvet cloth on the counter, peering out behind the lord at the street, as if to make sure no one was looking in. "I don''t display them, my lord," she said, "for fear of thieves. These are rare indeed. Made by the blind monks from the abbey of Silverbed Lake, on the top of the mountain Eibe in far-off Vilarac." "Goodness," said the lord, marveling, "if they''re blind, how do they blow glass?" ("Yes," said Taishineya Tarmos, her head a little on one side.) "My lord has cleverly spotted the source of their rarity," said the merchant, with great pride. "I expected nothing less. It is said that the gods guide their hands, my lord, although they may have some small assistance from novices who still have their sight. They use an ancient method, handed down in secret from generation to generation, which no one outside the abbey has ever learned or been able to replicate. Owning these glasses is like owning a relic from a thousand years ago. They are, to make a gross understatement, priceless. I had planned to sell them one by one to some of the best collectors of fine glassware in the city--" and she named several of the lord''s peers and superiors, all of whom were noted for their good taste. "I didn''t think the opportunity would come along to be able to preserve the set in its perfect entirety. It would have been a right shame to sell it in bits and pieces--like separating members of a family and shipping them off alone to each of the corners of the world." The lord urged her to show him the glass, and so she whirled the silk cloth off it with a flourish and let her breath catch in her throat, as if she were overcome. "Behold, my lord: Vilarac Unseen glass." The glass was thick and heavy, and the bowl was set just slightly off center on the stem, but she had polished it clean and put it in a patch of sunshine, where it reflected light into the lord''s eyes and dazzled him so that he could not quite see it clearly. And then she whirled the cloth back over it, looking with great concern out of the shop window behind him. "Pardon, my lord, I thought I saw an urchin peering in." "Never mind the urchin. Did you say you had enough of those?" "My lord, I have merely one more than you asked for," she said solemnly. "And what price are you putting on these priceless glasses?" The merchant named a number, and the lord paled slightly and adjusted his neckcloth. "Perhaps," said he, "we might look at a few others that you have on offer?" "Certainly, my lord, I would be happy to show you. I understand that perhaps the Unseen glasses may be too much for you. . . . I see now they could be considered rather ostentatious for something like an engagement." She led the lord to a shelf holding one of her finest pieces, a tall flute with a stem shaped like a seahorse, decorated with rubies for eyes. "But surely you wouldn''t want something this gaudy and garish." "Surely," the lord said, uncertain. She nodded and tossed the glass over her shoulder, and it shattered. (Taishineya blinked.) "And surely you wouldn''t want anything this shoddily made," she said, picking up a simple cup of glass as thin as gossamer, through which the light broke into rainbows. "It''s trash, really. I never should have bought it from that charlatan, that reprobate." And with that, not waiting for his reply, she smashed it on the ground also. "Not to worry, my lord, we shall find you something that perfectly suits your needs. Not this one, though, I''ve sold this to thirty families in town," and she smashed yet another glass. "And my lord surely doesn''t want glassware that simply everyone has, do you?" "Perhaps I''ll take another look at the Unseen glasses," he said nervously. "Ah, certainly," she said, without missing a beat. And he saw by the delicate, careful way she handled them that this was the real treasure. He bought all of them, even the extra, and the glass merchant immediately packed up and left town, with enough money to comfortably retire on. But she needn''t have done so--the lord spoke grandly to all his guests of the history and quality of the pieces, and they were all terribly jealous. So everyone lived happily ever after. Then I said, "Madam, what was the difference between the shoddy glass and the fine glass?" "Quality of craftsmanship. The lord should have known she was swindling him." "Then why didn''t he?" "He was a fool," she said with a delicate shrug. "Who is permitted to vote in this country?" "Any adult citizen." "And how many of them do you suppose are fools?" There was a long pause between us. "Oh," she said at last. "The quality of craftsmanship wasn''t the important distinction. The difference was that the Unseen glasses had a history. They had a story. And humans value stories above all else, whether they know it or not. I travel through a land gripped in famine, where food should be the most valuable thing, correct? But I can stand up in front of a starving crowd and sing for them, and whisk them away from their hunger for a moment, and I''ll have at least a crust of bread when I''m done. Enough to get by on. "Another story, a shorter one: There was once a king who hated the neighboring kingdom. They had a dispute over which of them owned a mountain on their shared border--a mountain filled with silver. So the king told a story to his people that taught them that they were the ones the gods truly favored. He made their suffering noble. He made their little successes into heroic victories. And then they followed him into war and obliterated themselves and most of the opposing army. For a story someone once told them." Taishineya Tarmos nodded and pushed the small animal off her lap. Smoothed her skirts again. "I have a lot to think about," she said. Her voice was clearer than it had been the entire time before. I hadn''t realized how much of a falsetto she''d been adopting. "Will you have my message carried?" After a few heartbeats, she nodded. "You sang for your crust of bread. It was good advice. I will see that it is done." Days later Vasili walked up to my cell and unlocked the door before I could even put down my book. "You have a visitor." "Who?" "Young man by the name of Ill-thing or something." "Ylfing!" "Right, that''s it." "He''s here!" "In the visiting room, apparently. Get
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