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

Chapter One

“Something wants to eat you,” called Almost Brilliant from her perch in a nearby tree, “and I shall not be sorry if it does.”

Chiming bells. Chih rolled to their feet, glancing around the perimeter and squinting at the jangling string of bells that surrounded the small campsite. For a moment, they were back at the abbey in Singing Hills, late for another round of prayers, chores, and lessons, but Singing Hills did not smell of ghosts and damp pine boughs. Singing Hills did not make the hairs on Chih’s arms rise up in alarm or their heart lurch with panic.

The bells were still again.

“Whatever it is, it’s passed. It’s safe to come down.”

The hoopoe chirped something that managed to convey both suspicion and exasperation in a two-tone call, but she came down to settle on Chih’s head, shifting uneasily.

“The protections must still be up. We are very close to Lake Scarlet now.”

“We wouldn’t even have gotten this far if they were.” Chih considered for a moment, and then they stepped into their sandals and ducked under the belled string.

Almost Brilliant fluttered up in alarm before coming down to land on Chih’s shoulder this time.

“Cleric Chih, get back to your campsite! You are going to get killed, and then I will have to tell the Divine how terribly irresponsible you were.”

“Be sure to make a good account of it,” Chih said absently. “Hush now; I think I can see what made that racket.”

The hoopoe made a disgruntled rustling noise, but she dug her claws more firmly into Chih’s shoulder. Despite their bravado, the neixin’s feathery weight on their shoulder was a comfort, and Chih reached up to stroke her crest gently before walking between the pines.

They knew that there was no road there. They had crossed the white pine copse earlier that day, and though they could see the remnants of a road underneath the overgrown bracken and fallen boughs, it wouldn’t have let a dogcart through. Chih suspected that the road had once connected Lake Scarlet to the royal highway, in the days before the lake had been taken off every map and effectively disappeared by a highly dedicated and skilled imperial sorcerer.

There was no road there during the day, but obviously at night, things were different. The road ran as broad as a barge through the trees, and ranged on either side were faded ghosts, the former guardians of Lake Scarlet. Even a few months ago, Chih knew, the ghosts would have fallen on any living thing that crossed their path, tearing them to pieces and then crying because they were still so hungry.

Now, though, they had eyes for nothing but the palanquin coming down the ghost road from the east, the direction of Lake Scarlet. It was borne by six veiled men. Their feet did not quite touch the ground. In the moonlight, it was all silvered, but Chih could tell that by all rights, it should be swathed in imperial red and gold, the mammoth and lion of the empire embroidered in lavish detail on the curtains.

There was only one woman in the world who had the right to show the mammoth and the lion, and she was to be crowned in her first Dragon Court in the capital.

Well, thought Chih, curling their hand around Almost Brilliant for comfort, only one living woman.

Chih bowed as low as the ghosts around them as the palanquin went by, wishing with all their might that the late empress would open the drapes and show her face. Would it be the wrinkled woman swathed in thick silks Chih had once glimpsed as a child on Houksen, or would it be a far younger woman, the Empress of Salt and Fortune as she had first come to Anh, before the end of the eternal summer and before the mammoth had trampled the lion?

When Chih straightened, ghosts and road and empress were gone, leaving nothing behind but Chih’s own pounding heart.

“Did you see that?” they asked Almost Brilliant, who had finally stopped shivering.

“Yes,” said the hoopoe, her normally shrill tone subdued. “That was worth being terrified that you were going to die in a truly terrible fashion.”

Chih laughed, smoothing a finger over Almost Brilliant’s crest, and starting the short walk back to their campsite.

“Come on. We can get a few more hours of sleep before we need to pack up and start walking again.”

It took another two days’ walk through the birch barrens before they came to the narrow beach of Lake Scarlet at dusk. The lake itself was almost perfectly circular, formed from the death of a falling star, and farther down the beach Chih saw the low green-tiled roof of the former empress’s compound. To their surprise, there was a lantern lit on the porch built over the water.

“Don’t tell me it’s looters already?”

As they watched, however, an old woman came walking out of the house with a smart step, and when she reached the railing, she stared out over the water and at the indigo sky above, where the stars were stepping forward. Chih was just wondering what to do when the old woman caught sight of them.

“Come over! You can see the lake better from here!”

Almost Brilliant kept her own counsel, so Chih picked their way along the rocky shore of the beach, coming up the shallow steps to the porch just as the last salmon light was leaving the sky. The old woman gestured for them to come closer.

“Come, you’re just in time.”

She indicated that Chih was meant to help themself from the small dish of sesame crackers on the railing, but she herself looked distracted, gazing over the black water and holding one cracker in her hand. After a few moments, she turned down the lantern wick until it emitted only a sullen glow.

“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.