1
" They swore up and down that Nuryevet was no different than any other place, that it was normal. They had gone out for their want, both of them, to tell me how lucky they were, how lucky they were that they got to choose the person that exploited the office for gain, to have money rung from them like they were dishrags. There were other choices available, lots of others, but such a thing had never occurred to them. They knew in their bones that they were lucky with what they had. Yes, Nuryevet was already sickly when I arrived. "
― Alexandra Rowland , A Conspiracy of Truths (A Conspiracy of Truths, #1)
5
" Nuryevet wasn't a real thing--it was a story that people told one another. An idea they constructed in fantasy and then in stone and mortar, in lines of ink in labyrinthine law books, in cities and roads. It was a map, if you will, drawn on a one-to-one scale and laid out over the whole landscape like so much smothering cloth. So when I say there was nothing in Nuryevet worth saving, that's what I mean: the story wasn't worth saving, and none of its monstrous whelps were either--the government, their methods, the idea that they could feed their poor to the story like cattle to a sea monster so the wealthy could eat its leavings. "
― Alexandra Rowland , A Conspiracy of Truths (A Conspiracy of Truths, #1)
11
" Sometimes as a Chant you can sense the shape of the things that people are carrying around in their hearts. A Chant spends so much of their life learning about how groups of people are in one place or another that they naturally come into a familiarity with the way individual people are. And the way that Consanza was? There was something big and tangled and complicated under her surface, something to do with Arjuneh, and her grandparents, and her daughter. There are many stories that aren’t mine to tell. And, more important, there are some that aren’t even mine to hear. Consanza carried a story in her heart that I would never have a hope of reaching, or even understanding if I did reach it, not in the way it deserved to be understood. But it was there and I could see the outlines of it, like the shadow of whale below a boat. If she wanted me to talk to Inga, then I would. And I did. But I can’t tell you about what we said. That’s not a story for you to hear. "
― Alexandra Rowland , A Conspiracy of Truths (A Conspiracy of Truths, #1)
14
" I’m Ylfing. I care about people, and I’ve been afraid because caring got me hurt, made me miss things that were right in front of me. Easier to just draw away, easier to run from it. But I care. I care and care and care, whether or not the person I care for deserves it. Everyone deserves understanding, at the very least. My greatest strength has always been in looking at someone and finding an inherent spark of goodness in them. This is not to redeem them. Some people are beyond redemption. But even they yearn to be understood, just as everyone does, just as I do. So I look into their hearts and find the jewel among the slop. Except the slop too has value and weight and importance. It completes a person. People soften when they’re around me. At least, they used to when I was young and small and cute. Perhaps they still do—I’ll have to watch for it. I never did anything in particular to merit that softening, besides being soft myself, and kind, and loving. I just reached out to them with my heart and made a connection.
And maybe that’s the key to all of it. Connections. "
― Alexandra Rowland
20
" And I’m thinking of marrying a couple friends of mine, see.”
I had to pause for a moment there.
“Plural friends?”
“Yeah, good business match it would be.We’ve been close since we were kids.
“Perhaps my Nuryeven isn’t as good as I thought. When you say marry, you mean joining your households together and producing hiers, yes?”
It wasn’t that the concept was alien to me, it’s just that I hadn’t expected such an arrangement to be commonplace in Nuryevet. Well, no, I’ll be honest, iots that I hadn’t spent even a blink of time thinking about their practices, and if you’d asked me at that time I probably would have told you that all Nuryevens lumber along like they're made of stone. Not a drop of hot blood in their bodies and no interest whatsoever in romance, and that they acquired children by filing paperwork in quintuplicate and being assigned one by an advocate.
My new friend Ilias said, “Iy that’s right, though I don't think that Anya and Micket will care to manage it themselves. Heirs are cheap though. You can scrape together half a dozen of them right off the street. So longs you've got flxible standards”
I shook my head, “Is this a common thing in these parts?”
“Ey? Oh, iy, common enough. I’ve seen marriages with more partners than that.” He pulled his chair to face me fully.
“The Oomack only ever have two partner marriages, did you know that? And it's not about business. They don't even seem to care about their assets at all!”
“Well, no, the Oomack marry for love and sex.”
“Is that right? That seems messy. Lots of feelings involved if you combine sex and business.”
Ilias had certain opinions, shall we say which may have not been representative of the general Nuryeven philosophy. Marriage here is a great amalgamation of every kind legal partnership. They get married when they are going into business together. They get married when they want to own property jointly. They get married when they're in love. Some of these arrangements do involve a physical element or the biological production of heirs, as they do elsewhere. Some, as Ilia mentioned before, simply involve formally adopting half a dozen heirs off the street. Some are a mere legal formality. Like many things in Nuryevet , you can do as you please so long as you’ve got your paperwork in order. I didn’t quite understand all this at the time. It took me a while to glean the intricacies of it, or rather, the lack of intricacies. At the time, I only asked Ilia if he had a separate lover.
“Not right now. I hire a private contractor for that.”
“A prostitute you mean??”
“No, a contractor. Prostitutes are, well you’re foreign, you wouldn't know. We don't have those here. Prostitutes just stand on the street and don't have a license or pay taxes, right? They juits have sex with whoever in an ally.”
“Oh… some of them, in some places. In other places.” I waved vaguely, “ higher status.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning they’re more expensive. Meaning they do other things besides the act. In some places they're priests and priestesses. In some places they're popular society figures with property and businesses, patrons of the arts and so forth.”
“Here you hire one of them like you’d hire a doctor or a tailor or someone to build a house for you, and you wouldn’t graba just anybody off the street for that would you. They show you their l;icence and you sign a contract together and so on. It's a good system.”
“What about those who don't have a licence?”
“Arrested! Just like a doctor practicing without a license would be. "
― Alexandra Rowland , A Conspiracy of Truths (A Conspiracy of Truths, #1)
