The Empress of Salt and Fortune (The Singing Hills Cycle #1)(8)

*

Chih waited to make sure that Rabbit was done, and then they nodded.

“I think I understand this, grandmother.”

“Do you, cleric from the Singing Hills? Because I am not sure I wish to.”

Rabbit was still, almost shaking with an emotion that had lived underground for a long time.

Gently, slightly nervously, Chih rested their hand on the woman’s shoulder. They were faintly surprised to find Rabbit to be truly flesh and blood, and not the cold, misty dampness of a revenant.

“It is trash, and where I come from, we burn trash.”

Rabbit looked startled, and then she nodded.

“Yes. We do that here as well.”

That night, the smoke from their fire curled up into the wide sky, like the incense from a temple sacrifice. When they went to sleep, Chih dreamed of a woman in a beautiful tunic made of seal fur, iron threaded through her black hair. From the ice gates of the north, she looked south, unblinking, waiting for her daughter to return home.





Chapter Six


A day later, Rabbit came and laid a single vivid green leaf in Chih’s hand. For a moment, Chih was startled to see a green leaf so far out of season, but then they saw that it had been dipped in wax, preserved for a season, a year, fifty years, or more with its bright color.

“Grandmother, what is this?”

“She asked me to get it for her as she lay on the palanquin that carried her west, which her people and ours have always said was the direction of death and endings. She’d listened to my stories, and she asked me if I would go with her into exile. As she said, at least someone would be able to go home again.”

Rabbit paused.

“Of course because she was who she is, because she said that, I never wanted to go home at all. They were the people who gave me away to make up for the lack of five caskets of orange dye. I came to Thriving Fortune with her.”

“Do you remember much of that journey, grandmother?”

“She was weak. So weak after what the doctors had done to her to prevent there ever being another heir to contest the rule of the first. But when she could, she rode with the curtains of her palanquin open, her face turned not west towards death or east towards civilization, but instead to the north.”

“To home.”

“Perhaps.”





Chapter Seven


Box of cumin. Wood, copper, and spice.

Box of dried coriander. Wood, copper, and spice.

Box of black salt. Wood, copper, and spice.



“Cleric, when you were a child, did you ever play eagle-eye with your parents?”

Chih had grown somewhat accustomed to Rabbit’s silent approaches. They were less supernatural, Chih decided, than imbued with a lifetime of habit gained of perfect service in a place where anything less could be punished by death.

“I don’t believe so, grandmother. What is that?”

“It was something they did in the servants’ quarters to teach us to see not only sharply, but well. They would fill a box full of small items, and then cover it. For one brief moment, they would unveil the items, and then cover them again. For every item you could remember, you’d get a sweet.”

“We played something similar at the abbey for much the same purpose. Why do you bring that up now, grandmother?”

Rabbit pointed to the boxes of spices Chih had found at the rear of the pantry, half-covered with a gaily dyed cloth and unremarkable in every way. Since the north had come south, black salt was almost as common as white now, and considered far more beautiful.

“Because one of these boxes is no kin to any of the others.”

*

Four years.

Four years we lived at Thriving Fortune with a revolving cadre of beautiful spies from the city. In-yo stayed in the empress’s chambers closest to the lake waters, and I slept in the closet off the kitchen. The ladies who were sent to us from the Palace of Gleaming Light were out of favor, I believe. Less fashionable, less lovely, perhaps simply less lucky.

They came here with smiles and vows to serve, and they were always playing eagle-eye, watching for the slightest hint of treason, the slightest hint of impropriety that they could report back to court, winning a place in a vaunted company of betrayers and murderers.

Some stayed a season, and some stayed for almost a year, but eventually, the Minister of the Left would arrive on his blood bay stallion, dressed in his favorite red and gold silk robe, embroidered with the figure of the noble kirin. He came to collect the previous ladies and to bring the new lot.

“It is far too much of a temptation for ladies to grow overfamiliar with their empress, especially in this desolate place,” he explained in his calm and matter-of-fact voice.

“It does not do to have them grow to love me or to be too loyal to me, either,” said In-yo.

She hadn’t bothered to change out of her dressing robe to greet the Minister of the Left. He saw it as a sign of her uncouth slovenliness. I knew it to be a sign of her contempt. He smiled a smile as thin as a zither string.

“As you will, great and beautiful lady.”

The new ladies, girls, really, giggled at his compliment, and they tumbled over themselves swearing to serve the empress faithfully and well. In-yo ignored then, and I did as well. If the Minister of the Left had ever thought that the empress would lower herself to befriend a simple servant girl, he would have found me guilty of all the overfamiliarity he pretended to worry about. I’d stopped learning the ladies’ names sometime after the second year.