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

by Nghi Vo

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.

Sometimes the things we see do not make sense until many years have gone by. Sometimes it takes generations.

“How do you live with it watching you?” asked Sukai, forgetting that he was with royalty. In-yo, who seemed to forget that fact whenever it was convenient for her, shrugged. “As you live with anything, I suspect. You bear it, or you end it. So far, we have proved equal to bearing it.”

With my mouth stuffed full of mushroom, I didn’t say that you could also find a beauty in it, a kind of peace even in something that was at first so very unsettling. I’d cried the first time I saw the luminescence of the lake.

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.

“Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves.”

“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.”