The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1)(6)

“That’s too fine for the likes of you,” Almost Brilliant sniffed, but she did not turn away when Chih peeled two of the fruit and set them on the ground next to her. As the hoopoe ate, Chih went to find Rabbit, who was brewing a cup of herbal tea.

“Oh, why, I’ve not seen that in years. We thought it lost.”

Her mouth was soft as she turned the mammoth over in her hands. It was the symbol of the northern people as the lion was the symbol of the empire of Anh. All their life, Chih had seen the mammoth and the lion together. The twinned beasts stared out from the carvings and crests with a kind of weary patience. They had seen empires rise and fall, they seemed to say, and they would see this one do the same.

Rabbit turned the mammoth upside down to show Chih what they had missed, a tiny maker’s mark stamped on one round foot. Chih squinted to read it, peripherally aware of Almost Brilliant fluttering into the room and nesting overhead in the rafters.

“The characters for . . . elegant woman and . . . civet cat?”

“Yes. It is the professional chop of Yan Lian, the great artist. She went to live as a nun at the Phan Kwai abbey, but she was once quite the favorite in the capital.”

*

The women’s quarters were decked in fertile black and lucky red. The court physician had confirmed that the empress was with child. The court women wondered how In-yo could tell, so stocky and round, but they walked more carefully around her. Those who bear children hold the keys to life and death, and their ill wishes are to be feared.

After the announcement, the empress seemed to grow obsessed with fortune-telling of all kinds. She summoned fortune-tellers from town, from the borders, from faraway Ning and warlike Zhu. She entertained men who threw stones, women who dealt cards, even a person who was neither who had a horse that could tap out a number associated with the great holy book of the veiled peoples of the south.

I was just returned from escorting a mystic from the west back to the gates when a messenger arrived just ahead of me.

“The Emperor of Pine and Steel would honor you for housing the future prince.”

He presented her with a package wrapped in silk, and she frowned when it came to light. It was a tablet of gold, soft enough to mark with a fingernail, heavy enough to thump against her chest if she wore it suspended from the gold chain it had come with.

I saw a brief flicker of dislike pass over her face even as she thanked the emperor through the messenger. I turned to go as well, but she stopped me.

“Tell me, would you wear this?”

I mouthed the usual protestations, that I would be found for a thief and executed if such a thing ever sat on my filthy neck, but she shook her head.

“Tell me the truth.”

“No, I do not like chains around my neck.”

“Neither do I. Now tell me, girl, who is the finest artist you know?”

I should have said Chang Hai or someone like that, someone well-known at court for their flowers and their carefully sculpted peaches. Instead, I was so startled that I told her the truth.

When she answered the imperial summons, Yan Lian seemed to me as tall as a tree and as wild as the boar that roamed the forests near the capital. Her hair was cropped close to her head like a nun’s, but she’d cut strange patterns into it, like sheared velvet, and her eyes were as narrow as her smile was wide. She wore men’s clothes in those days, and she swaggered into the women’s quarters as if everything in the world could be hers if she simply reached out and took it.

Yan Lian weighed the golden tablet in her hand, and she spilled the chain through her fingers like water. She nodded when she could mark it with her fingernail, and turned back to the empress.

“I can make you something beautiful with this gold, but surely, Empress, you know that nothing comes for free.”

The wild artist put a special emphasis on the word free. I couldn’t know it then, and the empress certainly didn’t, but Yan Lian used the accent they use down in the water and flower districts, where every sensual pleasure commands a price and nothing is more embarrassing than getting a kiss for free, as if it were charity.

The empress may not have known what Yan Lian was implying, but she heard something in the other woman’s voice and smiled.

“Come sit with me in my chambers. We have many designs to discuss. You, girl. What’s your name?”

“Rabbit, great empress.”

“Well, then, Rabbit, come here and sit in front of the door to my quarters. Stay there and keep any eavesdroppers well away. I should not like to see my designs copied.”

I assume that at some point they spoke of designs. At least the little gold mammoth is caparisoned the way the imperial mammoths are for war. I do not remember designs, though. I remember laughing, and sighing, maybe some crying, or perhaps it was only moans that grew more desperate as the night went on. I remember one indignant cry of pain that dissolved into giggles, and the slide of skin on silk and skin on wood. Some of my friends from the kitchens sneaked me some rice and pickles before scampering away. I ate the food gratefully, but I barely tasted it, intent instead on listening to the empress and the artist at their work.

When dawn came, and I was just beginning to nod at my post, the door slid open. It was indecorous of me, but I glanced back into the empress’s chambers to see her sprawled on her back, half-covered with a stained robe, her dark hair an inky spill around her head. She snored slightly, but it was a satisfied sound, and Yan Lian shook her head. There was a vivid red bite on her shoulder that she thumbed absently before she pulled her robe up to cover it.