The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1)(2)

“Grandmother, I’m here to—”

“Shush, girl, it’s happening.”

Above was the rapidly darkening sky. All around them was the darkness of the birch barrens, and spread out before them was Lake Scarlet, like a mirror reflecting nothing but night. At first, Chih thought it was their imagination, nothing more than a mirage that came after staring at something too hard, but then they realized that it was real. There was a faint glow coming from the water itself, something like the very last gleam of a dying hearth fire.

“What—”

“Shh. Watch. Just watch.”

Chih held their breath as the soft red glow brightened, sweeping across the lake like the sparks of New Year fireworks. It was brilliant, too hard to look at so very closely, and it flooded the water, enough so they could make out individual trees on the beach, the black silhouette of the night birds on the water, and the seamed face of the woman standing next to them, creased in pleasure.

“I was hoping it would go tonight. It’s still a little cold yet, but it has come even earlier in some years.”

Chih stood side by side with the woman, staring out over the pyrotechnic display before them. Just a short while after the red lights came up to their full brightness, they started to dim again. Chih counted in their head. When they had reached one hundred, there was only a faint reddish glow to the water.

The old woman sighed happily as she turned the lamp back up.

“Every time, it is like the first, and I have not seen it in sixty years. Come inside; it’s still too cold for my brittle bones.”

Chih was old enough to know that no one was harmless, and still young enough to obey instantly that tone of command from an older woman. They followed her into the residence, where she lit several paper lamps. There was a damp chill to the small room they sat in, but the light helped a little. They sat together on the leather cushions around the empty hearth, and the old woman looked a little closer at Chih, taking in their shaved head, belled string, and indigo robes.

“Oh, I see I was mistaken. Not a girl at all, but a cleric.”

Chih smiled.

“It’s an easy mistake, grandmother, but yes. I am Cleric Chih from the Singing Hills abbey. This little feathery menace is Almost Brilliant.”

Almost Brilliant whooped in indignation at being so described and showed off her manners by alighting in front of their hostess and tocking the boards in front of her twice with her narrow beak.

“Most honored to make your acquaintance, matriarch,” Almost Brilliant said in her grumbling gravelly voice.

“And I yours, Mistress Almost Brilliant. If your cleric is from the Singing Hills, you must be a neixin, are you not?”

Almost Brilliant’s feathers fluffed out in pride. “Yes, matriarch. I am descended from the line of Ever Victorious and Always Kind. Our memories go all the way back to the Xun Dynasty.”

“What a pleasure. They killed so many of your kind during the reign of Emperor Sung. I was not sure I would ever see another.”

“The Singing Hills aviary was torched, but our Divine at the time sent three pairs of nesting couples to their relatives across the Hu River,” said Chih. “Among them were Almost Brilliant’s great-grandparents. If you know about neixin, grandmother, you must know how they need to have a place and a name for everything.”

“And I imagine you do as well, don’t you, cleric? Very well. My family name is Sun, but I have always been called Rabbit.” She grinned, showing two teeth that were indeed longer than the ones around them.

“Children used to tease me about it when I was young, but I am very old now, and I have never lost a single tooth.”

Almost Brilliant whistled in satisfaction, and Chih grinned.

“Welcome to your place in history, grandmother. Do you live nearby? I didn’t think anyone was likely to beat me to Lake Scarlet when the word came down about the declassification.”

“I have family that run an inn along the road. It’s funny. The locals think the area is cursed from the red glow of the lake, but I’ve always thought it beautiful. Like bonfires and fireworks. But now that you are here, and Almost Brilliant as well, I am pleased that the true history of Lake Scarlet will be told.”

Chih smiled at Rabbit’s words. She sounded a little like the former Divine, who had always encouraged their acolytes to speak to the florists and the bakers as much as to the warlords and magistrates. Accuracy above all things. You will never remember the great if you do not remember the small.

“I am due in the capital for the eclipse next month and the new empress’s first Dragon Court, but I was at Kailin when the word came down that all of the sites put under imperial lock during Empress In-yo’s reign were being declassified. I was so close to Lake Scarlet that I couldn’t resist.”

Rabbit laughed in a friendly way.

“Couldn’t resist being the first to unearth Thriving Fortune’s secrets, either, could you, Cleric Chih?”

“I won’t deny that ambition has its part to play in my stopping, but I have never heard the name Thriving Fortune before, grandmother.”

“You wouldn’t. It is what the female attendants of Empress In-yo called it when they first came here from the capital. It was a joke, you see. They were all of the court, and it was a bitter thing indeed for them to be sent into the wilderness with a barbarian empress.”