by Nghi Vo
I did not want to watch him die. In-yo and Mai did, and they had the guards dispose of the mess while I stayed in Thriving Fortune. It already looked and felt different. Our days there were numbered.
There was a great deal to do after that, and I do not think that In-yo slept more than four hours each night. She burned with a dry and fervent heat as the fortunes she cast over the last four years began to come true. There were reports to take and counter-insurrectionists to fight, and more than one assassination attempt to deal with.
One night, though, two nuns appeared from a southern order, and In-yo took me aside.
“He had no people that he ever told us about, and it is past time for him to be sent on his way. Will you come?”
Of course I would. There was already a small graveyard to the north of the house. An old maid was buried there, and she had recently been joined by two assassins. Now a burly silent man from the north dug a deep and narrow grave for Sukai, and as the nuns chanted sutras meant to guide him to what came next, we lowered his remnants into the ground.
I watched with dry eyes as they filled his grave, and then stones were placed over it to keep the beasts away. Mai carved a gravestone for him, marked with a sukai bird because she did not know how to write. It was fitting in a way, and you can go to see it yourself if you like.
I went into labor four weeks after we returned to Thriving Fortune. I began at dusk, and In-yo barred everyone from the chambers except herself and Mai. They hung a rope from the rafters that I pulled on when the pain was too great, and at dawn, with me delirious and half-insensible, a girl was born.
“Are you sure?” asked In-yo, and I nodded.
She and Mai cleaned me and the child, and while I slept, In-yo carried the baby out into the world, her daughter born of a miracle.
There is a story on the books, of the emperor of Anh coming to In-yo in a dream and pressing a seed into her belly. It is the story that the people of Anh like a great deal, about the great virility of their rulers and how they reach out in their sleep or in death, and it isn’t as if the history books aren’t full of such things.
With a little princess in her arms, and the mammoth guard of the north at her back, In-yo returned to the capital, and what happens next is a matter of record. She took the city with a minimum of bloodshed, and Emperor Sung killed himself or perhaps was killed by nobles who did not wish to see the dynasty humiliated. The crown prince was spirited away, the prince in exile until his own keepers killed him some years later. In-yo dealt as fairly as she could, was ruthless when she had to be, and the day after the eclipse of 359, which historians call the end of the Su Dynasty, she was crowned the Empress of Salt and Fortune, ruler of Anh and sister of the north.
The north took the south, and now, sixty years later, here we all are.
The story is over. Do you understand?
* * *
“I think I do now, Dowager Empress.”
Slowly Chih knelt in front of Rabbit, pressing their forehead against the dusty wood.
“Oh, stop that now at once,” Rabbit said. “If you know anything, you know why you must not do that.”
Chih sat up again, nodding.
“I wanted to show you that I do understand. Honor is due to you as the mother of the Empress of Wheat and Flood, and honor is due to you as the friend of the Empress of Salt and Fortune.”
“Look to your records, cleric. Honor is a light that brings trouble. Shadows are safer by far.”
Chih dreamed that night of a young woman in servants’ clothing walking through the dim halls of Thriving Fortune. As she went, she tidied the already tidy house, straightening a vase here, letting out a moth there. She looked around the compound with a sense of affection and nostalgia, but as she went outside and around to the north side of the house, her step quickened.
There was a young man waiting for her, leaning against a pile of rocks and tapping his foot in mock impatience. He was tall with gangling limbs and a face slightly out of true.
“Well, there you are, Rabbit. I thought rabbits were meant to be fast, but look at how slow you are.”
“Huh, like you’re worth hurrying for? Don’t flatter yourself. I was having a fine time in the capital.”
In Chih’s dream, the moon had set, leaving the star path traversed by the dead bright in the sky. The two of them looked up at it for a moment, and then they started to laugh, shaking their heads at the strangeness of the world, pain long behind them.
“Well, shall we?” asked the young man, and Rabbit shrugged.
“I hope the cleric locks up the house tightly after they go, but that’s a small thing. Let’s go.”
They started to walk, rising as they did so, and from the porch over the lake, Chih watched them fade into two stars that shone just above the horizon.
Chapter Twelve
The next day, Chih woke to a triplet of rice balls on the sleeping mat next to them. They ate as they walked through the house, and as they’d guessed, Rabbit was nowhere to be found, not in the sleeping chambers or on the porch or in the small graveyard to the north.
Chih spent the morning circling the property, allowing Almost Brilliant to commit to memory what they could not to brush and paper, and finally, as their dream directed, they closed the doors and shutters of the house tightly before they walked back towards the road.
As they went, Almost Brilliant came to sit on their shoulder, pecking at their earlobe in a friendly way for a while before speaking.
“Well, that’s done now. This could make your career for you.”
“I suppose it could.”
“You don’t seem excited.”
“I know what ambition feels like. This feels different. Like a weight around my shoulders, or a stone carried over my heart.”
Almost Brilliant whistled, unconcerned.
“That must be duty, then. The Divine will be most pleased, Cleric Chih.”
Chih shook their head. They walked east towards the capital, where in just nine days’ time, the new empress would convene her first Dragon Court. She would defend her claim to the throne of Anh before all comers. Chih thought that even from the crowd, they would see in her face the trace of a migratory bird, a rabbit, and the empress from the north, fierce enough to fight wolves.
Acknowledgments
Thank you first to Ruoxi Chen, my superstar editor. She was the first person to ever lay eyes on this story, and she loved it so much she made me love it better.
Thank you to Diana Fox, my agent, for so many things!
Thank you to the team at Tor.com Publishing, without whom this manuscript would be a pile of printer paper I stapled together and left on the bus for people to find. Lauren Hougen, Mordicai Knode, Caroline Perny, Amanda Melfi, Christine Foltzer, and Irene Gallo, you are awesome!
Thank you to Alyssa Winans, artist extraordinaire, for understanding this story so well and putting that understanding into the cover. I don’t think there’s anything in all the world like seeing your very first book cover and knowing that the artist really got what you were trying to say.
Thank you to Ami Bedi, Cris Chingwa, Victoria Coy, Leah Kolman, Amy Lepke, and Meredy Shipp.
As for Shane Hochstetler, Carolyn Mulroney, and Grace Palmer: you guys know what you did. You’ve fed me, watched over me, worried about me, and generally made sure I didn’t tip over into a ditch somewhere before my story got told. Thank you.
Writers spend a lot of time alone. If we’re lucky, we like being alone, and if we’re even luckier, we have people who love us through it all. As I write this, I can’t even tell you how lucky I feel.
About the Author
Courtesy of the author
NGHI VO lives on the shores of Lake Michigan. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, PodCastle, and Lightspeed, and her short story “Neither Witch nor Fairy” made the 2014 Tiptree Award Honor List. Nghi mostly writes about food, death, and family but sometimes detours into blood, love, and rhetoric. She
believes in the ritual of lipstick, the power of stories, and the right to change your mind.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright Page
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE EMPRESS OF SALT AND FORTUNE
Copyright © 2020 by Nghi Vo
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Alyssa Winans
Cover design by Christine Foltzer
Edited by Ruoxi Chen
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
ISBN 978-1-250-75029-7 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-250-75030-3 (trade paperback)
First Edition: March 2020
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