The Brides of High Hill (The Singing Hills Cycle, 5)Audio CD

Chapter One

Cleric Thien was telling them that it always started with a story.

“What does?” Chih asked. In their dream, they were deeply frustrated and impatient, almost angry. Cleric Thien, as composed in dreams as they had been in life, only continued making their obeisance to Gentleman Bell, kissing his coin and pricking their finger to drip a minuscule amount of blood into the offering bowl.

“Everything,” they said without turning around. “The world starts with a story. So do dynasties and eras and wars. So does love, and so does revenge. Everything starts with a story.”

“But what does that mean?”

On Cleric Thien’s shoulder, their neixin and beloved companion, Myriad Virtues, spoke.

“Ask Almost Brilliant,” Myriad Virtues advised. “You should ask Almost Brilliant.”

The neixin, memory spirits shaped like talking hoopoe birds, remembered every story they had ever been told and every sight they had ever seen. Myriad Virtues was Cleric Thien’s neixin just as Almost Brilliant was Chih’s, as much a mark of Singing Hills abbey as their indigo robes or their shaved head. Chih touched their shoulder, suddenly more aware of Almost Brilliant’s absence than they had been.

“I will, of course I will, but—”

Myriad Virtues was still speaking, or at least, her beak was opening and closing, but Chih couldn’t hear her. They tried to get closer, but their limbs were too heavy, and when they tried to move them, they found themself awake.

“Of all the indulgences my precious baby daughter might want, of all the jewels we would buy her and all the books she could read and all the delicious pheasant and rabbit she could eat, she decides that above all things, she must have a cleric!” exclaimed Madame Pham from her corner of the covered ox-cart.

“Ma, please,” said Pham Nhung, her voice soft. “We are so far from home, and doesn’t their face remind you of Cleric Ly? They look so gentle, and they were so kind to me when I spilled my books all over the road. They helped me pick up every one. I am so grateful they said that they would accompany us to my wedding negotiations to bless me and to keep away the wicked spirits. Can’t you be grateful too?”

Chih sat up groggily, trying to rub away the last of their dream. Sleeping this late in the day didn’t suit them, and they swallowed a few times to freshen their mouth.

“Of course I will help,” they said. “Though I’m sure I told you that Singing Hills has more to do with history than it does with exorcisms.”

Madame Pham gave Chih a stern look down her long nose. Like her daughter’s, her face was narrow and pale like a grain of rice, but where her daughter had large, wet eyes, hers were squinted with pride and distrust.

“There, you see. We should turn back and get you a better cleric, perhaps someone from the temple of the Lady of a Thousand Hands or the Twins of Jun-li. This one just tells stories.”

“I like stories,” said Nhung, and she took Chih’s hand in hers, smiling shyly.

“That’s good, I have a lot,” Chih said, momentarily enchanted by Nhung’s smile. She smiled close-lipped with one side higher than the other, and it was the prettiest thing Chih had ever seen.

The ox-cart swayed, and Nhung momentarily fell against Chih’s side. Her silk robes puffed with the scent of rosewood, and underneath that, Chih, blushing, could smell her skin and her sweat, a little rank after several days’ travel. Nhung straightened, pressing her fingers modestly to her cheeks, and Chih sat up straight as well, bearing up under Madame Pham’s suspicious eye.

“I tell stories, and I record them as well,” Chih said. “That will be a nice thing for your daughter’s wedding, won’t it, to have it entered into the records at Singing Hills? If Almost Brilliant were here—”

“Such a shame she could not accompany you on this trip,” said Nhung. “I wanted very much to meet her. She sounds adorable.”

“She might not like to hear you say that,” said Chih, “but between the two of us, she really is.”

Suddenly Chih missed their companion intensely, and they started to say so, but Master Pham rode up alongside the wagon, pulling even with the rolled-up blind to look in. He was as narrow as his wife and daughter, a little uneasy on his horse, and very stern in the face.

“Are you all well?” he asked, peering in as though he were checking on the state of his hens in the coop. “Little Nhung, have you washed your face and filed your nails for your husband? Are you wearing your best robes?”

“Ba, of course I am ready,” Nhung said with what sounded like long patience. “I have waited all my life to become a bride.”

Her father looked as if he might have liked to say more, but his horse snorted, throwing its head back threateningly, and he turned to get it under control as Nhung turned back to Chih.

“My mother has taught me how to run a household, and I believe I am capable, but the reality is so very different, isn’t it? I hope I will be a good wife.”

“And I hope your husband is worthy of it,” Chih said. They had heard many stories throughout their career on the road, and they knew too many where the husbands were nothing of the sort.

“Worthy, unworthy!” cried Madame Pham. “Who gets to speak of worthiness when your father’s ship foundered off the coast of the Verdant Islands, when my rotten brother took your grandparents’ estate and gambled it away. Worthy is wealthy, cleric, wealthy enough to keep my precious daughter comfortable all her days.”

Chih nodded politely, but they were still grateful to see that Nhung looked faintly rebellious. She didn’t look like she would be surprised at the worthiness or lack thereof of her husband, and it would help if she was not startled either way.

The drovers called out, and Nhung sat up straight.

“Doi Cao,” she said, her nerves ringing like bells in her voice. “Oh, but it’s Doi Cao.”

Faster than Chih would have suspected, she pushed open the cart’s rear gate, throwing her legs out the door before dropping to the ground.

“Come with me,” she implored Chih. “Come with me to see my new home!”

Leaving their bag and studiously avoiding Madame Pham’s dire eye, Chih slipped out after her, landing more clumsily than Nhung had from the moving ox-cart. Across the southern part of the empire, ox-carts were the most comfortable and reliable way to travel, but they were exceedingly slow. Nhung and Chih soon outpaced them, coming up on the walls of Doi Cao.

In the capital city of Anh, where the Empress of Wheat and Flood ruled from the mammoth and lion throne, western Ji was considered contested territory, while western Ji considered itself uncontestedly independent. Together, these two things led to a history marked with violence and conflict, evident from the curtain wall around the estate. The wall, as Chih could see when they and Nhung drew near, was a grim and gray thing, likely as thick as a child was tall.

“Oh, but it’s ugly,” Nhung said with disappointment. “Doi Cao is meant to be so beautiful, a dream from the Ku Dynasty, but look at how ugly this is.”

“What a good thing it is that the wall isn’t from the Ku Dynasty,” said Chih, pleased to be of service. “I’ve seen walls like that before—they were made to stand up against mammoths during the early reign of the Empress of Salt and Fortune. They were put up hastily, so they are not very attractive, but often they were built to protect things of surpassing loveliness.”

Nhung gave Chih a startlingly sly look, that little upturn at the corner of her mouth kicking higher.

“Surpassing loveliness, cleric?”

Chih almost tripped over nothing at all, but then Nhung turned back to the walls, a pensive look on her face.

“If our negotiations go well, this will be my home. I’ll live here. Perhaps I will be happy here.”

“It is to be most sincerely hoped for, Mistress Nhung,” said Chih, who was feeling as if they should be more circumspect.

“Come on. I want to get a little closer. We can double back to the ox-cart so that I may be introduced to my perhaps-husband in a more decorous fashion, but you can only greet your new home once, can’t you?”