The empress of salt and fortune (2020)

Cleric Chih listens to a former servant and records the history held in apparently ordinary objects. The novella gives religious vocation a quieter social role: attending carefully to lives that an imperial account might leave out. Its main story concerns an empress and her handmaiden, while Chih's patient practice determines how it reaches us. Choose it for service through listening rather than elaborate doctrine. The Singing Hills novellas can be read independently.