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

by Nghi Vo

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.