The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1)(13)

“Did you make this mess?”

“Your Majesty, yes, I did. Forgive me.”

I honestly thought In-yo might simply snort and tell him not to do it again, but instead her eyes narrowed. She glanced at him, glanced at me, and then she pointed at Sukai.

“You will help her clean all of this up. And before you play your tricks, why don’t you make sure that people will welcome them?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you for your mercy.”

She did snort at that, and she went back into her quarters to look over dozens of star maps with Phuong. He was an especially skilled artist, and his maps were always perfectly scaled, perfectly up-to-date.

Sukai looked at me warily from the ground.

“May I come up?”

“She said you could, didn’t she?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you said I could.”

I waved him up impatiently, and then he startled me by taking the broom out of my hands.

“Here, sit on the rail, all right?”

I wouldn’t. I went to sit with my back to the sliding door instead, but he was just as happy with that.

He swept up the peony petals, and as he did so, he danced with the broom, spinning it in his hands like a beautiful woman. As he did, he hummed a tune that was so jaunty that I couldn’t help but tap my fingers on the porch, and then he grinned at me and started to sing about an angry rabbit who would not be amused no matter how funny a joke was.

“Or maybe you don’t know what a funny joke is, did you think of that?”

He winked at me, as if I had given him the most splendid opening, and he started to tell me jokes, such terrible, terrible jokes, everything from the old one about the rabbit in the moon, to ones about the giant who pissed out the sea, to the dragon who became so drunk its thrashing spelled out the dirtiest joke in the world.

At first, I tried to keep my lips squeezed tight, because I do not think that kind of thing ought to be encouraged, but then my mouth started to tremble, and the laughter, never so much a presence in my life, bubbled up out of me, and I started to laugh.

Of course it encouraged him, and he started to tell even more ridiculous jokes, ones that made no sense at all, but I couldn’t stop laughing, even to catch my breath.

When he finally stopped, my ribs hurt, In-yo and Phuong came out to see what was the matter, and all I could do was try to tell them why the idea of an elephant walking a tightrope wire was so very funny.

“Well, I am glad that someone is having a good time,” she said, but there was a slight smile on her face as she said it.

*

Almost Brilliant cocked her head to one side, looking at Rabbit.

“I do not forget anything, you know.”

Rabbit nodded.

“I know. But this cannot be counted like boxes of spice and star charts.”

The hoopoe pecked idly at the grains of rice the old woman had brought her, as if buying herself some time to think.

“This will not be a secret. I will likely tell Chih when we are alone, and of course anyone who asks, as well as my chicks whenever I should have them.”

Rabbit sighed, spreading her hands out as if she did not necessarily understand herself.

“That is fine. But let them ask, and perhaps let them be kind when they do so. Some things are easier to explain to the birds and the beasts of the forests than to even the most sympathetic of clerics. He was unimportant, the least of In-yo’s spies and couriers, but—”

Almost Brilliant fluttered her wings in the dying light.

“I understand. I will remember Sukai for you, and so will my children and their children as well.”

“Thank you.”





Chapter Nine


Canister of marked flat sticks. Horn, silver, and wood. The horn canister is bound with strips of fine inlaid silver. The sticks inside are carved with runes from the north.

Three bound sticks. Wood and leather. The sticks come from the canister, pulled apart from the set and bound with a thin leather cord.



Of course Thriving Fortune was haunted; most places in Anh were. The country had been Ahnfi hundreds of years ago, and before that Cang, and before that, lost except to the clerics of the Singing Hills, it was Pan’er, whose capital was drowned by the waves of an angry sea god.

Ghosts were part and parcel of life in Anh, more worrisome than rats, less worrisome than the warrior-locusts that swarmed out every twelve years. Chih did not fear ghosts, but, they thought, as they cataloged the possessions of the deceased empress, they might be afraid of becoming one in this lonely compound on the shores of Lake Scarlet.

Thriving Fortune had a certain kind of irresistible gravity. The more they studied the life in exile of Empress In-yo, the more they looked, the more they wanted to look. More often than not, they could feel Rabbit watching them from some corner or doorway, waiting patiently as they pulled out more and more of the story that she had lived.

That morning, they uncovered a carved box tucked behind a basket for laundry, and when they brought it to Rabbit, the old woman chuckled with a kind of malice.

“Oh yes. Those are called Lucky Sticks in the capital. They are of northern origin, written in T’lin runes. Unfashionable, of course, until In-yo sat the lion throne. I do not suppose you have ever seen them before?”

“No. When I go to record the eclipse, this will be my first time in the capital.”