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

by Nghi Vo

Chapter One

I wrote The Empress of Salt and Fortune because I saw that Tor.com Publishing had a call out for unagented novellas, and I realized that a novella only had to be about 20,000 words long. I'd finished writing my first novel about six months before, the forthcoming Siren Queen, and I realized with some delight, 'wait, I can totally write 20,000 words!' Empress was written in about a month, but the concept, the tale of the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another told through a catalog of objects, was an idea I'd had for a while. I tried to make it a poem only to realize very quickly that I'm not a poet, and I even wondered about making it a fake museum catalog complete with photographs, but in the end, I'm glad it's what it ended up being—a complete story that nevertheless hints at so many other stories to come.

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.

This novella has everything to do with the dead: the dead lost, the dead loved, and the dead by the wider world forgotten. These are the first dead people we meet, and it was important to me that they be nameless, rendered useful through some indifferent court sorcerer's work decades ago. This is all we get of them, and they are far less glamorous than the ghost who shows up just a few paragraphs later, the one who has a name, a family line, and a title (the title of this novella, as a matter of fact).

My family name is Sun, but I have always been called Rabbit.”

One thing I was set on is that we never learn Rabbit's given, legal name. Rabbit is a diminutive nickname, one that makes sense and that the other characters in the novella used. However, if you read between the lines, you'll find that it's not the only name they use. Rabbit talks about names quite a bit later—pseudonyms and milk names and codenames. This is the first indication that she's telling us a story on her own terms, one where she deliberately picks and chooses who is named and what they are called.

Instead, she had come with only an honor guard that was barred from the inner palace, and so she walked down the long hallway to the court of the emperor all alone.

Here's our first glimpse of In-yo, who starts as a foreign bride and battles her way to something much grander. It's our first look at a living In-yo, the youngest we see her, and we know how she ends, because Chih saw it earlier: an empress with the right to show the mammoth and the lion, symbols of two nations formerly at war. However, she begins the story stripped of her honor guard, walking in the memory and shadow of her warlike mother, and very, very alone.

The dice tumbled across the board, coming up fish, ship, and moon.

The game that is played in this chapter is a version of the Vietnamese game bầu cua tôm cá, “gourd, crab, shrimp, fish,” which is played during Tet. I played this game and won some decent cash for an 80s kid, by which I mean, I won like three bucks in shiny new quarters. Good times. I considered just using the game I knew, but I thought that court ladies would want something they saw as more elegant and artistic, and so Moon, Lady, Ship was born.

She summoned fortune-tellers from town, from the borders, from faraway Ning and warlike Zhu. She entertained men who threw stones, women who dealt cards, even a person who was neither who had a horse that could tap out a number associated with the great holy book of the veiled peoples of the south.

While the Empire of Anh is patriarchal and while many people living within it have no need to consider themselves beyond the binary, there is space accorded for people who are not men or women. Chih is the most obvious example—they are both personally and professionally non-binary. The clerics of their order legally give up their birth gender in the hopes of perceiving their world more clearly and to allow them access to spaces that might be restricted to them. Chih themself is also simply non-binary, and even without being a cleric would be uninterested in being referred to as male or female.

“I’ve had magistrates and bandits, courtesans and opera singers, but rabbit-toothed girl, I have never had anyone like that.”

Yan Lian, the artist who spends one memorable night with In-yo, makes for her the symbol of the power of the north from a literal golden chain. I'm not a subtle writer. In-yo is also a woman who loves women, and on that point, I didn't want to be even a little subtle.

“It is trash, and where I come from, we burn trash.”

The birch bark scroll wrapped up with a dead queen's hair and a jacana feather is based on what I remember about Heian-era poetry, both in its elegant allusions and its dedication to aesthetics. Of course, if you're a foreigner like In-yo is, you only have a series of random objects and the lingering feeling that you are missing something. The emperor likely considered it a blunt and elegant message while In-yo thought it trash. Rabbit's ruling, which will be backed up in history by Chih's account, calls it both.

Years later, In-yo tried to find Kazu, looking with both the chroniclers and the executioners, who kept their own secret records.

There are many instances of brutality in The Empress of Salt and Fortune, both explicit and implicit, but this is one of the ones that gets me. Kazu never thought about history or empire. She loved In-yo and Rabbit, and they loved her, and they never find out what happened to her.

“And now I have to sweep up all this mess! That was awful; don’t do that again!”

This is the second time in Rabbit's story where someone asks her something. Sukai asks her what she thought of his trick, and previously, In-yo asks her if she wants to go live at Thriving Fortune, close to where she grew up. It's key that the two most important people to Rabbit are the ones who think to ask.

One drunken evening, many years on, In-yo would say that the war was won by silenced and nameless women, and it would be hard to argue with her.

There's a lot to say about this line, but hopefully, I'm saying it with the rest of the novella. One thing I want to make clear, however, is that In-yo is responsible for some of those silenced and nameless women as well. It's not an accident that in the same paragraph we have Kazu coupled with the disappeared daughter of a powerful man. I love In-yo as I have loved few of my characters, and if I love her, I'm responsible for understanding that she bears the force and the brutality of empires.

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

Rabbit is entirely right, and here In-yo agrees, calmly and without hesitation, because whatever her faults In-yo does not flinch from who and what she is. She is absolutely responsible for the results of this decision, and she's probably right that it was necessary. This could have been a pivot point in the novella for Rabbit. Rabbit has information that would destroy In-yo, and yet she never considers whether to use it as a decision to be made. It's harder to see decisions like these, the ones that are ingrained in us through love or terror, but they're still choices we must own.

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

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is about—among other things—empire and power, and you cannot talk about either without talking about reproductive rights. Here's In-yo giving Rabbit a choice again. Given what happened to In-yo after she gave birth to her own child and the decisions she has made, it would have been unforgivable if she hadn't offered Rabbit this choice, especially with what she has in mind. Even if Rabbit, who's restrained by her own precarious situation and how much she loves In-yo, probably would have forgiven her, I know I wouldn't have.

That’s something I think peasants understand better than nobles.

If The Empress of Salt and Fortune were a movie, this scene would be the climax (at least, it would be if the budget didn't allow me to have actual mammoths marching on the capital). It's In-yo finally emerging from the shadows to show her abusers her strength and the power of the north. For Rabbit, it's an awkward moment and a decision she doesn't care about. For her, dead is dead, and a dead minister doesn't give her living fortune-teller. She's got more important things to think about.

“Huh, like you’re worth hurrying for? Don’t flatter yourself. I was having a fine time in the capital.”

She did, too. She had a lot of trouble, a lot of weirdness, and a lot of fun.

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.

And that's it, that's all I wrote. It's the end of the story, but Chih and Almost Brilliant would argue that stories don't really end—they just stop for a while. I think that we put ourselves into the stories we tell. You can't separate a story from the teller, and The Empress of Salt and Fortune is very much a piece of me wandering around the world and generally available in ebook format and print. I hope you liked it. My new book, THE CHOSEN AND THE BEAUTIFUL, will be out on 6/1. I hope you enjoy it! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55169019-the-chosen-and-the-beautiful