The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1)(16)

“Well, less hers than yours.”

I felt a deep red blush come up on my cheeks and, unused to the sensation, I tried to rub it off.

“You are being foolish. And here, give me the basket.”

I came up with two wrinkled mushrooms, dark and smelling of good earth. I showed Sukai how to pull them up without disturbing the loam, ensuring they would continue to grow the next year. He looked at them dubiously.

“These look terrible.”

“You may give me your share if you like, though I’d guess you’d change your tune once we fry them in sesame oil.”

“Now, I didn’t say that. I merely said they look too ugly to be as delicious as the empress was saying.”

“Sometimes . . . sometimes the ugliest things can be the most delicious.”

I looked at him sideways as I said it, blushing even darker, and he stared at me.

“Did— Was that a compliment? Did you try to pay me a compliment? Have you never paid one before?”

“No!”

He laughed so loudly that if mushrooms could run, we never would have found another one. We filled the basket with the small wrinkled mushrooms that In-yo liked so much as well as an orange and red-lobed one that smelled impressively like chicken.

Sukai proved to be a little hopeless at mushrooms and more than a little hopeless at directions. He came so close to wandering off down the mountain that, finally, I took his hand to lead him all the way back.

Just because I didn’t want to lose the mushrooms, of course.

That night, while the other two ladies slept, the three of us fried the mushrooms over a small brazier set up on the porch. It had been overly warm all month, and the lake glowed like a baleful eye, eerily beautiful.

“How do you live with it watching you?” asked Sukai, forgetting that he was with royalty.

In-yo, who seemed to forget that fact whenever it was convenient for her, shrugged.

“As you live with anything, I suspect. You bear it, or you end it. So far, we have proved equal to bearing it.”

With my mouth stuffed full of mushroom, I didn’t say that you could also find a beauty in it, a kind of peace even in something that was at first so very unsettling. I’d cried the first time I saw the luminescence of the lake. Now most nights, I slept on the porch, bathed in its red glow. If it was a monster of some kind, it was a monster that watched over me, and, at the very least, it had not devoured me yet.

I didn’t say it that night, but I did tell Sukai about it eventually. By then he had lost his fear of the lake entirely, and I had lost my last reservations of him.

*

Chih didn’t realize that Rabbit had actually left Thriving Fortune until they saw her return, coming up the paved path and brushing dirt off her hands. There were blots of ink all over her fingers, and her expression was oddly solemn.

“What have you been doing, grandmother, if I might ask?”

“You might ask, certainly. I have been burying some writing of mine.”

Chih cocked their head to one side.

“You must know that there’s nothing that is more anathema to Almost Brilliant and me.”

“Which is why I waited until you and the neixin were occupied in the storage rooms, yes.”

Chih waited, and Rabbit sighed.

“Time is the thing. I want time to get the words right. To do proper honor to those who died. I don’t want them to be ashamed when others speak about them. But I know that there is only so much time left, and it will never be perfect.”

Tentatively, Chih reached out their hand to Rabbit, who took it blindly.

“The abbey at Singing Hills would say that if a record cannot be perfect, it should at least be present. Better for it to exist than for it to be perfect and only in your mind.”

Rabbit was silent long enough that Chih thought they would not get a response, and then she nodded.

“You are right, I suppose. Tomorrow. I will compose my thoughts tonight, and tomorrow I will tell you more.”





Chapter Ten


Tin shrine token, badger with one paw raised.

Wooden shrine token, cherry inscribed with the aphorism “Submission but only to the truth.”

Pilgrimage Itinerary. Fine rag paper and ink. The itinerary lists twenty-four shrines throughout the empire of Anh, each with a check mark next to it.



The two dozen shrine tokens scattered across the low table where they worked made Chih think of toys or sewing notions. They were the simplest of souvenirs, sold by the clerics at each stop as minor blessings to make a little more money for a new roof or a statue. In Singing Hills, they sold a little perfumed wax figure of a perched hoopoe, and Chih noticed that there was no such token in with the rest.

There was something almost sinister about the tokens and the itinerary, and after Chih recorded them, they put their brush down. There was a weight to the tokens that went beyond what they were. Thriving Fortune itself seemed to be a place made of stories and plots, conspiracies and fury.

Finally, they scooped a handful of the tokens and went looking for Rabbit.

They found her at last on the beach. As Chih watched, she bent to scoop up a rock, inspecting it closely before throwing it towards the water. She tried twice, making a face both times before shrugging.

“Sukai could send them skipping across the surface, four, even five or six times. I have never gotten the trick of it.”