The Empress of Salt and Fortune

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The Empress of Salt and Fortune Page 6

by Nghi Vo


  She paused, looking at Chih shrewdly.

  “But you do not want travel stories.”

  “I want to know all of it, and I think it might begin with travel stories. If you speak, grandmother, I will listen.”

  Rabbit sighed, and Chih thought of the fairies that could do anything, if only they were asked with exactly the right words. Rabbit sat down on the beach, and after a moment, Chih sat down with them. During the day, the waters were a translucent flint green, as beautiful and unremarkable as any other lake. It took nightfall to show the truth.

  * * *

  In-yo’s pilgrimage was a thing that took us nearly two years to arrange. It was perhaps the most Anh thing she had ever done, and while I am sure that there were people in the capital who were relieved that the foreign empress was falling in line, the Minister of the Left did not agree.

  He appeared at Thriving Fortune one autumn day, as unannounced as it was possible for a man like that to travel. He made no pretense of being on some errand but instead appeared with his house guard and not so subtly demanded an audience.

  “It is well done of you to walk in the footsteps of the most holy among us, but perhaps it might be better considered of you to remain at home.”

  In-yo gazed at him beyond the beaded curtain that separated her seat on the elevated platform from the rest of the audience hall. She was, that day, the very picture of an Anh empress in exile, but I could tell that the Minister of the Left disliked it as much as he had any other greeting that she had given him.

  “And why should I remain at home? Are the roads too dangerous for my palanquin to travel? Is there unrest in the capital?”

  “Of course not. The emperor rules over the land of Anh with the will of the great gods themselves, and there is no such disorder in his house.”

  “Then why should I not visit the holy places of my adopted homeland, as Empress Lan-ti and Empress Dunian have done before me?”

  She named two ancestresses of the current emperor, women renowned for their piety and docile natures, and the Minister of the Left’s mouth thinned with displeasure.

  “My empress, begging your pardon, but they both were born of Anh nobility. The empire sees you differently than they saw those empresses.”

  In-yo was silent behind her screen. Seated in my obscure corner of the hall, I could see a tiny twitch of movement, her hand tightening on the bulky silky robes that I had dressed her in that morning.

  “Anh is my home now, Minister. If the people tear me to bits, then I suppose I was wrong to trust this land and the protection of the emperor.”

  The Minister of the Left could not argue with her. He could bully, he could imply, and he could outright lie, but in the end, she was the empress, a step away from divinity, and he was only a man. I could see him toying with the idea of simply posting his guard around Thriving Fortune, wondering what it would cost him, whether he could sustain it for only the vague suspicions he had of the foreign empress.

  In the end, I suppose he reckoned that his attentions were better spent elsewhere, and after a few more suggestions that she might find the road too wearisome or risky, he rose to leave. As he did, however, he glanced over to the side, where the household staff knelt in attendance, and he saw Sukai.

  “I know you, don’t I, fortune-teller?”

  “You do, my lord. I have read for the empress many times over the past few years.”

  “I see. And of course, you will not be accompanying the empress on this mission?”

  “I am, my lord. The empress has said that she would like my insight when we reach the skies of the west.”

  The Minister turned back to In-yo.

  “This is the man you send north to your barbaric oracles there, isn’t he?”

  “He is,” she said, contriving to sound bored and impatient at once.

  “There is something of a fashion for the northern arts in the capital right now. I wonder if I could borrow your man to come and entertain some of the women in my household.”

  In-yo shrugged.

  “If you like. You have my itinerary, and you may send him along when you are done with him.”

  Sukai had no choice but to leave with the Minister’s guard, and after they were off the property, In-yo turned to me with a sorrowful look in her eyes.

  “You could have kept him with us,” I said that night, brushing out her thick, wavy hair. I kept my voice softer than a whisper, so soft that the waver in it was ironed out almost completely.

  “I could have, but it might have cost me something else. I am sorry.”

  When I stay up at night, sometimes I think she must have reckoned the cost cheap. She was able to go on pilgrimage, where we took in the scenery, had our fortunes told by some of the greatest fortune-tellers in the empire, and incidentally assessed the strength of the empire’s weather mages, fortifications, and troops as well as their loyalty, and all it cost her was one fortune-teller.

  I suppose it should have cost her my regard and my love as well. It might have, but as I moved to put the brush away, her hand came up to cover mine. She did not promise to make it up to me, because there was no such possibility, and she did not say that everything would be all right, because it never would be.

  I had cast my lot in with In-yo long ago, however, maybe from the time she told me one of us should go home if we could. Her home was in the north, and mine rode east with the Minister of the Left, so we would have to do as best we could with each other.

  It was a grand procession as we moved south and west from Thriving Fortune. An empress’s pilgrimage is no small endeavor. Attendants, guards, support staff, and baggage bearers were all part of that long, slow train, and, of course, there were the enormous cages of doves.

  That was another Anh tradition, of course. The empress would release doves along the way, delighting the populace with the flight of dozens of white birds. We did not have Sukai with us, who knew all the back roads of the country, but we did have Mai, who was a dove keeper’s daughter. Into the great and cooing flock, she entered her own birds, bred to do one thing and one thing only. At every shrine along the way, one of her clever birds took to the air with the others released, and then it winged its way north, a message in code wrapped around its thin leg.

  The first part of the trip, In-yo was in a temper. She sent away the drovers for the least infraction, and dismissed the cooks and attendants out of hand. They knew the royal treasury would pay them a severance fee, so they went quietly enough, and we had to hire more people along the way. The royal pilgrimage looked quite ragtag after a while, but we pressed onward, even as it seemed the drovers could barely steer the oxen and the cooks couldn’t do more than burn mash.

  Phuong’s heart gave out when we crossed the lake where his wife had turned into a kingfisher. We stopped for half the day to bury him in his finest robes and with his pouch of ivory tablets in his hand. All year, he had run back and forth across the countryside for us, his dignity allowing him entry into the most elite celebrations and his age making him no threat to the young wives who wanted their fortunes read and perhaps had a little taste for treason. When we’d shed our tears and moved on, I glanced over my shoulder to see a kingfisher come to sit on his cairn.

  At the shrine of Matulan the turtle god, Mai dragged me off to eat roast pork with her among the gravestones while In-yo was busy pretending to listen to the abbot speak of patience and piety. I didn’t want to be among the tombs of Matulan’s worshipers, but Mai was right at home, seating me in front of one post while taking another for herself.

  “We’re all alone here but for the dead. There’s no need to be afraid,” she said, passing me the leaf packet filled with pork in a sticky honey sauce. I nibbled at the charred parts, my favorites, and I watched red fireflies dance among the stones.

  “I’m not afraid,” I said. “Whatever happens now, fear is behind us, isn’t it?”

  Mai laughed at my bravado.

  “Such a brave Rabbit! It is a shame about your
man, but at least your baby will be courageous as a lion, thanks to the pair of you.”

  Her words struck me like a hammer blow. She was surprised that I didn’t know. The women of her old acting troupe had all kept track of their monthly cycles with ruthless precision to prevent exactly this sort of surprise.

  “But that’s good, yes? A surprise for him if he comes back, a consolation if he does not.”

  I struck out at her blindly and furiously, and she let me box at her with increasingly feeble blows before finally tucking her shoulder under my arm and helping me back to my bed in the encampment.

  “Save that anger,” Mai said with a sigh. “Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.”

  In-yo was surprised when I crept into her arms that night, but she wrapped herself around me like a blanket.

  “Is there going to be a place for all of us in your world?” I whispered to her, still mindful of the wakeful ears around us.

  She kissed the top of my head comfortingly, and I told her my secret. She listened calmly, and she wiped my eyes when I cried. It came to me that she held me tighter after that, more protectively, and I might have thought that even then her mind was skipping forward to what came next, if only she hadn’t spoken to me the next day. As we rode on the palanquin, she asked Mai to play us a merry tune from the back of her ox. When she thought our words would be sufficiently drowned out, she turned to me.

  “So, what do you want for your child? Or do you want a child at all?”

  I didn’t know. I had spoken bravely to Mai the night before, but inside I was sick with fear. In-yo listened to my stuttering response, and then she took my hand, making me look right in her eyes.

  “I have taken everything from you. It is the nature of royalty, I am afraid, what we are bred for and what we are taught. I will not take more unless you tell me it’s all right. Do you understand?”

  I did. We rode onward, Mai releasing her birds at every stop along the journey, playing music for me when I grew tired or nauseated, sneaking out at night to bring us treats from the towns we passed.

  She’s still alive now, you know. Not long ago in the capital, I saw her in a festival crowd. She was completely unchanged, and she winked at me, one eye real, the other painted on her eyelid, before she disappeared into the crush. Maybe she was a fox girl after all, come to bedevil an empire when it was at its most fragile, or perhaps she only has a daughter.

  The Minister of the Left remembered what In-yo had said about sending Sukai along when he was done with him. We were almost home, just finishing up at the shrine of the Brothers Lai, when a messenger appeared, stone-faced and with a large lidded leather bucket sealed with wax.

  Mai dragged me away from that scene, and In-yo was the one who broke the seal and looked in. She sent the messenger away with a curse, and she and Mai came to sit with me.

  I felt so very old. At less than twenty-five, before everything that came after, I had no idea how long life was. I sat with an empress on one side and a red-haired actress on the other, feeling their touch on my shoulders, my hair, and my face, their bodies close to mine.

  As we sat on the bank above the river, the bells of the Brothers Lai softly chiming the sunset, I felt a chilly wind ruffle my hair. When I glanced up, it struck me that the leaves were browning at the edges, withering a little even as I looked.

  * * *

  “Well, cleric?”

  “Grandmother?”

  “What are you going to do with what you have learned here? You know where this ends, and if you don’t, I will not think much of the teachings of the clerics of the Singing Hills.”

  It was Almost Brilliant who answered, whistling a few hollow notes even as she went to splash her feathers through the waves that lapped up towards their feet.

  “Do you think this kind of information is new in Singing Hills’s records? It is not. The information in our archives could topple every throne in the world.”

  Chih spoke more slowly.

  “I think the real question is why you told it to us. You loved Empress In-yo.”

  “With all my heart. Sometimes I loved her more, and sometimes I loved her less, but yes.”

  “This information could tarnish her memory beyond repair, unseat everything that she spent her life working for. And you are telling it to me, painful as it is for you. Why?”

  “In-yo is gone now. So are Phuong, my parents, and Sukai. My allegiance lies with the dead, and no matter what the clerics say, the dead care for very little.”

  “And the new empress, who is even now preparing for her first Dragon Court?”

  Rabbit smiled. “Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves. I am not worried for her in the least.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Painting of the rabbit in the moon. Silk, paint, and wood. Against an indigo background, a rabbit curves inside the silver moon.

  Painting of the fox mother leaving her children. Silk, paint, and wood. As in the old story, a woman with a foxtail cries over her children as she prepares to leave them forever.

  Hanging box containing a robe. Silk, silk cord, metallic thread, and wood. The red and gold robe, embroidered with a large kirin along one side, has been folded carefully and preserved inside the box. The box is plain with a loop of silk cord fastened to one end, meant to be hung or carried.

  Chih looked at the robe, and then turned to Rabbit, who was sitting next to them expectantly.

  “You have mentioned this robe before. The Minister of the Left wore it.”

  “He did. In-yo came from people with conquest in their blood just as much as the people of Anh have. All of us believe in trophies.”

  “Tell me the rest of it, grandmother?”

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  By the time we returned to Thriving Fortune, we could see our breath hanging in the cold air. The leaves had fallen from the trees, and the sun would not come out beyond her robe of clouds for shame.

  Mai and I had never felt winter before, and it was terrifying and exhilarating at once. It felt as if the world was dying around us even as the air grew crisper and sharper than anything we had ever known.

  With every step we took into the cooling world, In-yo’s hair grew blacker and her eyes brighter. She woke up in the morning and breathed in great lungfuls of the cold air until she was almost drunk with it. She looked north, and her eyes shone with a viciously bright light.

  One morning we came out of the inn to a dusting of snow on the ground and more falling down. It was the first snow in the Anh empire in almost sixty years, and as the people around us murmured with fear, In-yo started to laugh.

  We returned to Thriving Fortune to find the Minister of the Left waiting for us with all his household guard. We arrived at dusk, when the dying light gave his pale features a bloody cast. I thought of what In-yo had not allowed me to see in that sealed leather bucket, and I thought I would be sick.

  From atop her palanquin, In-yo watched him as he ordered her surrounded. She was calm, the calmest person there.

  “Well, Minister?”

  “We have word of events taking place along the border that necessitate returning you to the capital for your own safety, Your Majesty. I and my household troops will escort you there.”

  In-yo looked around with exaggerated curiosity.

  “What events are these that you speak of, Minister?”

  “Do not play the innocent, Your Majesty. You know very well. And now you will come with me.”

  I realized that even then, the Minister of the Left thought he was in control. Even with the mammoth cavalry of the north crossing the Ko-anam Fords, even with troops following the mammoths at the Li-an pass, and assassins killing off the nobles who would not be swayed, he thought that the empire of Anh as it was would be preserved. After all, he had the trump, the most beloved daughter of the northern people, and even savage as they were, they would balk at seeing her hung from the walls of the Palace of Gleaming Light.<
br />
  His men moved closer, spears held at the ready, ignoring the rustle that ran through the procession. What are drovers and cooks and baggage handlers to soldiers, after all?

  Of course we were no longer traveling with drovers and cooks and baggage handlers at all. In-yo had replaced the procession with her own soldiers, come south to meet us, and suddenly it was the Minister and his men who were surrounded.

  In-yo tilted her head slightly at him as his men threw down their weapons.

  “I am, in fact, going to the capital very soon, but you will not be accompanying me.”

  If there was room in my heart for anything but a vicious hatred for the Minister of the Left, I might have been impressed by how calm he was. He watched his men surrender and move away from him, and he must have known that whatever happened to the Anh empire, it was the end for him. He wavered for a moment, and then he stood up straight.

  “I trust you will allow me to take the noble path of a defeated enemy.”

  She never looked away from him, but when she spoke, it was so soft that only I could hear.

  “Well, Rabbit?”

  I jumped like my namesake, and it seemed as if time stretched out like thread from a reel. It was her gift to me, the best she could do. She could not give me Sukai’s life but, at the very least, she could give me the death of the Minister of the Left.

  She was still even as the guards, the drovers, the attendants, and even the second-most important man in the empire waited. Not for her, though they did not know it, but for me.

  It was a terrible gift, but in it I could see her heart, broken when she left the north and then reforged and made hard by the capital of Anh and the waters of Lake Scarlet. It was all she had, and she was giving it to me.

  “Let him kill himself,” I said finally. “As long as he is dead, that is all that matters to me.”

  That’s something I think peasants understand better than nobles. For them, the way down matters, whether you are skewered by a dozen guardsmen or thrown in a silk sack to drown or allowed to remove your robe and walk down to the shores of the lake before you gut yourself. Peasants understand that dead is dead.

 

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