The Empress of Salt and Fortune

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a 2020 fantasy novella by Nghi Vo. Awarded the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novella and the 2021 Crawford Award, it was widely acclaimed for its complex narrative structure, as well as for its emphasis on LGBTQ+ and female perspectives. The novella follows Chih, a nonbinary cleric on a mission to discover and record the secrets of Thriving Fortune, a former residence of the recently deceased Empress In-Yo. At Thriving Fortune, Chih meets Rabbit, a close friend of In-Yo’s, who tells them the story of how In-Yo overthrew her husband, the Emperor of Pine and Steel, to become the ruler of the Empire of Anh. The Empress of Salt and Fortune is Vo’s debut novella and is the first of the standalone novellas in her series The Singing Hills Cycle. It was followed in 2021 by Vo’s debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful.

This guide refers to the 2020 paperback edition, published by Tor Publishing Group.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, death by suicide, physical abuse, gender discrimination, racism, religious discrimination, and substance use.

Plot Summary

Cleric Chih and their talking hoopoe, Almost Brilliant, arrive at Thriving Fortune, the former residence of Empress In-Yo during her years of exile. There, Chih encounters Rabbit, an acquaintance of the late empress, and asks her if she would be willing to share any stories about In-Yo to be recorded. Rabbit doesn’t agree to Chih’s request outright, but she begins to share her memories of In-Yo gradually as Chih records an inventory of all the imperial artifacts they find in storage at Thriving Fortune. Each story that she tells corresponds to one of the objects that Chih finds.

Despite initially claiming not to have been particularly close with In-Yo, Rabbit reveals that she met the empress while working as an indentured servant in the Palace of Gleaming Light. As a princess from the northern kingdom, who was married to the Emperor of Pine and Steel to solidify the Empire of Anh’s control over the north, In-Yo was initially met with xenophobic hostility from the other court ladies. Rabbit observed, however, that the young empress was more adept at navigating court politics than the other women seemed to recognize. When In-Yo demonstrated her love of fortune-tellers, calling numerous mystics to the palace to predict her future, the people of Anh mocked her for her superstition.

After giving birth to a prince, In-Yo was sterilized and sent into exile by order of the emperor, who considered her to have fulfilled her sole purpose. She requested that Rabbit accompany her in exile, and the two women were escorted to Thriving Fortune. They were not left to their own devices, however. Instead, the Minister of the Left (one of the emperor’s officials) brought court ladies to Thriving Fortune under the pretense of providing In-Yo with company. In truth, however, the ladies were sent to spy on In-Yo because the emperor hoped to catch her committing crimes.

In the fourth year of their exile, an accessory wife named Kazu arrived in one of the Minister’s envoys and was the first lady to genuinely befriend Rabbit and In-Yo. A former inn worker, she taught them the popular dice game Lo-Ha, which doubled as a fortune-telling device. In-Yo picked up the game quickly and asked Kazu to recommend fortune-tellers from the capital who might be able to interpret the Lo-Ha dice for her. When In-Yo received her annual gift of salt from family members in the north, the salt wasn’t white, as usual, but black. 

The narrative returns to the present, where Chih inspects the box and realizes that the black salt is, in fact, white salt darkened using iron. They infer that the iron was a secret code that indicated to In-Yo the north’s readiness for war against the emperor.

Using fortune-tellers, In-Yo was able to build a covert information network aimed at overthrowing the Emperor of Pine and Steel. The two most important fortune-tellers in this network, Mai and Sukai, came to Thriving Fortune with espionage reports for In-Yo disguised as astrology charts and other fortunes. Sukai took a liking to Rabbit immediately. The two became lovers, and eventually, Rabbit became pregnant.

Once In-Yo felt ready to set her plan to usurp the emperor into motion, she arranged to go on a pilgrimage to the various temples throughout Anh. Although the Minister of the Left found this suspicious, he did not have probable cause to prevent In-Yo from going. Instead, he took Sukai captive. The pilgrimage allowed In-Yo to ensure that the intelligence she had received through the information network was correct and to surround herself with northern soldiers who were disguised as servants. When they arrived back at Thriving Fortune, the Minister of the Left was waiting to arrest her, but In-Yo’s disguised guard quickly overpowered him.

Knowing that the Minister had ordered Sukai’s death while they were on the pilgrimage, In-Yo asked Rabbit whether he should be killed or allowed the courtesy of death by suicide (as was considered honorable). Rabbit said that he should be allowed death by suicide and went inside the house so that she wouldn’t have to see it happen. Later, as a war raged outside, she gave birth to a baby girl. With Rabbit’s permission, In-Yo presented the baby as her own miraculous birth, and Rabbit’s daughter was raised as In-Yo’s heir.

When Rabbit finishes her story, Chih hails her as the “Dowager Empress,” but Rabbit remains dismissive of this honorific. That night, Chih dreams of Rabbit’s ghost going to meet Sukai’s near his grave. Sukai asks her if they should go, and Rabbit says that she hopes that the cleric will lock up the house. They then both ascend to the stars. The next morning, Chih discovers that Rabbit has disappeared from Thriving Fortune. They lock up the house and travel to the capital to witness the coronation of the new empress.