Imperial Lady

17

Day yielded to day as the tribe drew closer and closer to spring pastures. The huge flocks of sheep thrived, and as the days grew warmer, the shaggy horses lost patches from their heavy coats. Even the swaying Bactrian camels pulled their loads without savaging their handlers; their doubled humps, which had sunk during the winter, a sign of dearth and hunger in the land, began to rise once again as the grasslands grew brighter and they neared spring pastures.

Spring pastures were many days’ rides, a vast distance even as the Hsiung-nu counted it. But a day’s ride was no regimented matter of up at dawn and so much land covered, regardless of time or cost to beasts and riders. Nor did the Hsiung-nu travel every day; they might pause in one specially suitable place, a site known for generations, where the water or the hunting was especially good.

It was no easy life, riding or driving a wagon or flocks across grasslands that seemed to stretch on to the very edges of the world. When the wind blew and the sun shone on the trappings of the riders, the red trimmings of garments, the shining, fat-smeared faces of children who were once again growing plump, and the bronze of the huge cauldrons that were lashed to the camels’ pack saddles, it was a good life, exhausting, absorbing, and richly colored. Compared with the pastel, static life of the Son of Heaven’s Inner Courts—well, Silver Snow could not begin to compare the two. If the air here seared her lungs with its coldness or the violence of the wind, at least there was enough of it for her to breathe.

Absorbed in this new life, she had even stopped longing for her northern home, with its faded dreams and its cautious poverty, except when, under her husband’s benign, nodding supervision, she dispatched letters by one or two Hsiung-nu warriors who relished the exploit of a mere two or three weeks’ dash to a frontier outpost of the Han, where he would test the truce long enough to convince the garrison to accept and forward the carefully sealed silk strips that bore the honors of a princess of Ch’ang-an and a queen of the Hsiung-nu. Some of the older officers, she suspected, might even remember her father and Li Ling; and might pass on the letters out of ancient loyalties.

Two things remained to disquiet her: Vughturoi spoke to her shortly, if at all, as if he enacted the role of a disgraced man abasing himself before a queen; and Sable’s brother Basich hafl not returned from delivering the urgent, secret letter that she had entrusted to him. She feared that it had fallen into her enemy’s hands. Of all her letters, that one held the most power to help her or cast her down.

However, Silver Snow’s life was busy, too busy for cares that might prove, in the end, to be illusions. When the sun shone brightly, and the air quivered in the throat, wilder and even more sweet than the strange wine that, some travelers said, the people of Turfan brewed out of grapes instead of rice, she could even manage to forget such worries in the exhilaration of what lay around her.

Of all of the things that Silver Snow had never expected, this abundant, exuberant life was foremost. Each day brought her new sights and sounds that occupied her fully. Each night brought the stars close, and, when the camp finally settled itself, the grasslands were so quiet that each stamp of a hoof, each cry of a child, each gust of wind could receive its full tribute of attention and concern. By nights, Willow would dash out and bring in reports of movement in the land: the Yueh-chih toward the west, the Fu Yu northward, on a course toward spring grazing that paralleled their own.

Tadiqan still rode among the Fu Yu, Silver Snow thought. His absence added to her contentment. “The spirits send that he wander lost,” Willow muttered once when, weary from the anguish of the change, she lay panting on her robes in the grayness before dawn. Silver Snow had wiped her brow, covered her, and bid her hush before she sought her own sleeping furs and silks; yet she had to admit to herself that she would be well satisfied if Strong Tongue’s brutal son never found his way back to his mother’s tenthold.

She had no such luck, however. The next day, a whistling shriek, followed by the buzz of a flight of arrows that skewered a fat sheep and a whoop of triumph, heralded Tadiqan and his men, triumphant from their dealings with the Fu Yu. That night, the shan-yu held a bigger feast than usual, and his eldest son reclined at his right hand, his mother beaming at the prince’s shoulder, leaning over him to whisper counsel.

That night, the shan-yu appeared to be more feeble than Silver Snow had ever seen him.

“Willow!” hissed the girl, much against her custom, which kept her maid well out of the sight of Strong Tongue and her son. “In the chest that Li Ling gave you. Fetch the cordial in the jade bottle.” She pointed with her chin at the shan-yu, who leaned upon Tadiqan’s arm even more heavily than he had leaned, on that much happier evening, upon Vughturoi’s. Why, he was actually drooping, near to collapse.

“Fetch it or foxglove . . . quickly!” she whispered, and Willow fled, to reappear with a jade tray, a tiny flask, and two tiny white jade cups brimful of an elixir that smelled strong and sweet. Silver Snow herself rose and took one of the cups to her husband. Because she saw no alternative, she offered the other to Tadiqan, who glanced at his mother, then spurned it with an impatient gesture.

“You drink it, lady,” said the elder prince, as if this might be some test.

As she had been schooled, Silver Snow demurred politely. From the corner of her eye, she saw Strong Tongue gesture imperatively at her son.

“I said, drink it!” snapped Tadiqan.

“Forgive this foolish one her folly, prince of warriors,” Silver Snow said in her softest, most rippling voice. She had hard work translating the formal apologies demanded by the language of her birth into the much more rugged tongue of the Hsiung-nu. “She but meant to let you benefit from the properties of this drink, which contains naught but healthful herbs and wine.” She raised the cup as if to pledge him and drained it; the shan-yu copied her, even to the care with which he replaced the fine jade upon the little tray.

“My son, you must not snap at my senior wife in such a way,” chided the shan-yu. There was more resonance in his voice, and blood rose in his withered cheeks. Imperiously he pointed to the carpet at Silver Snow’s feet. As Tadiqan abased himself before Silver Snow, the old chieftan beamed equally at his young wife and his huge, glowering son.

Bemused by Tadiqan’s sudden attack, Silver Snow plaited the fabric of her sleeve. Just as a spell of finding and success lay on Tadiqan’s arrows, a spell of homecoming seemed to bind him to Strong Tongue.

Did such a spell now bind Khujanga to his son? And did spells even stronger and more sinister bind him to Strong Tongue?

If so, then perhaps the cordial had weakened them. At least, it would be wonderful to think so, much as Silver Snow doubted it. Shortly thereafter, Strong Tongue beckoned to her son, and the shan-yu turned to speak to some of the older warriors.

A shadow at Silver Snow’s shoulder made her whip around with a speed no doubt facilitated by the elixir that she had drunk.

“Do you wonder, lady, how my elder brother returned home?” Her astonishment that Vughturoi would speak to her after so long a silence drew her out of her haze. She murmured something about “powers of Erlik.”

“Now you speak like a true daughter of the grasslands.” The younger prince smiled. “It is said ...” he dropped his voice, “that in this, as in much else, my brother has the aid of his dam. But it is said, and more truthfully, that we of the Hsiung-nu know our way across the plains that are home to us as a city-dweller knows the way across the small prison that he calls his house. We do not go astray, nor do our arrows.”

Was that warning or encouragement? Silver Snow could not tell. One thing she knew, however: the powers of the Hsiung-nu were not the beneficent healing magics that Willow, taming her fox nature, had learned, nor yet were they the scholarly powers of Li Ling. Those skills were somewhat familiar to her, and the ones adept in them meant her well. These magics, however, were as deadly as they were unpredictable; and the most skillful of their adepts was her deadly enemy.

As soon as it was prudent or possible, Silver Snow withdrew.

When she returned to her tent, Willow eyed her narrowly.

“I thought you might have run free,” Silver Snow told her maid, surprised that her words came out almost as an accusation.

With surprising mildness, the lame girl shook her head and bent to the task of undressing her mistress. As she helped Silver Snow to unbind her long hair, she laid a narrow hand on her brow.

“You seem fevered, Elder Sister. May I brew you a potion? I still have willow twigs, to ease headache and reduce fever,” Willow offered.

“No!” Silver Snow snapped, then flushed. “No,” she repeated more gently. “It was the heat in the great tent. I simply need to rest.”

“So?” Willow raised her level brows without further comment. Only she pulled her mirror from its usual hiding place and showed Silver Snow the taut, pale face of the woman pictured therein.

“It was too hot,” Silver Snow said again. “And Strong Tongue strewed some of her noisome herbs upon the fire. Did you not smell them? Then you must be nose-blind. Just let me sleep.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded sullen. Willow assisted Silver Snow to lie down. Much to her surprise, the maid did not slip from the tent, to change shape and dance the night away with the brothers-in-fur. Even as Silver Snow heard yapping, Willow went to the flap of the tent and paused there, and the yapping faded into the distance . . . and into the mists of a troubled, haunted sleep.

The mists swirled about her, then solidified. Once again, she stood at the opening of the shan-yu' s great tent. She felt very much alone, very cold. Vughturoi . . . Willow . . . Sable . . . Bronze Mirror . . . where were all of her friends and advocates? As she opened her lips to call for them, the wind blew her words away.

Pnce again, the mist swirled. Now she saw her father, younger and not nearly as halt, moving with a stealth that was totally alien to her knowledge of him, creeping toward the horse herds, seizing a sturdy beast with sound wind, and fleeing as far as he might, sleeping in the saddle, just as the Hsiung-nu themselves did.

But he had abandoned a son, a young son. As clearly as if he lay swathed beside her, Silver Snow saw the boy, saw his puzzled, sad eyes. Even as she watched, he shrugged, as if dismissing the loss of a father, the betrayal of a whole life. What must it have been like, Silver Snow wondered as she slept, to have trusted and respected ... a captured enemy? What would it have been like then to lose him?

She whimpered in her sleep. Pounding throughout the dream until it overpowered even the grief she shared with that stranger-lad came the beat of a spirit drum, summoning her, summoning both of them to where their enemy waited with a sharp knife and a cruel laugh.

Silver Snow woke screaming, and it required all of Willow’s skill to soothe her.

She was tired all the next day, far weaker than her wont. Strong Tongue looked sleek and satisfied, like a Hsiung-nu child fed on fatty mutton to the bursting point... at least, she looked satisfied until Khujanga spied Silver Snow drooping in the saddle, ordered that her chariot be brought, and himself escorted her to it with tender concern.

“She does not bear; she does not tend flocks or beat felt; she neither hunts nor cooks,” Sable reported that Strong Tongue snorted . . . well out of the shan-yu 's earshot. “Such fear for a useless, jeweled weakling.”

Children clung to Sable—Basich’s children as well as her own. “Let them ride with me,” Silver Snow asked, and the children whooped with delight.

Children’s pleasure; a day’s respite—that much she could give to Sable, who had ever been true to her. Her brother’s return, however—that she could not promise. Not even Willow could bring her news of Basich; the brothers-in-fur were silent, too silent, on the subject.

A night’s rest restored her, and the next day Silver Snow called for her bow. The whoops of approbation from Vugh-turoi’s men convinced her that she acted prudently in doing thus. She killed several wildfowl before the hunting party turned back.

Willow rode forward to take Silver Snow’s kill from her before anyone else might intervene. Her eyes met her mistress’ with perfect understanding.

“Pluck them and draw them, Willow,” ordered Silver Snow. “Perhaps Sable and Bronze Mirror would aid you. Tonight, husband”—for the first time, she used the title without having to be coaxed—“this one most humbly begs that you will eat in her tents.”

Once again, the warriors cheered this sign of closeness between shan-yu and his queen. Nor was Tadiqan present to glower. To Silver Snow’s astonishment, it was Vughturoi who did that.

And, that night, the shan-yu 's almost childlike greed as he ate a delicately spiced dish of his youngest, fairest wife’s hunting and cookery won back any favor that one day’s illness might possibly have cost her.

After that, by the shan-yu s will, however, they must return to the great tent, where they were greeted with loud, ribald cheers. Before the noisy, nightly gathering in the shan - yu's tent broke up, the old man had decreed a great hunt, which his loyal son Vughturoi would lead.

Was Silver Snow the only person in the tent who heard the sharp snap of broken bone as Tadiqan tightened his fist on the joint of meat that he held?

“Let us take the little queen who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu!” shouted a warrior, boisterous with too much mare’s milk. “Let her also be named the queen who brings game to our bows!”

That brought a yell of approval, at which Strong Tongue glared. Vughturoi turned instantly away, and Silver Snow went scarlet, relieved that her flush would go unnoticed in the shadow and the firelight. The smoke that rose through the ceiling vents made her chest tight, and she put up one hand to press her heart. It was no role of lady nor queen to have her name and titles shouted out into her lord’s tent; she was as much ashamed as she was anything else. Would the shan-yu be angry and turn on her as quickly as he had smiled?

But no, Khujanga smiled. Leaning forward, he patted her hand just as Li Ling had often done. “I cannot spare you, little Queen,” he told her. Though his breath was strong with mare’s milk, it came with more regularity and force than it had for weeks. Even as Silver Snow watched, he looked at the cup of mare’s milk that he held—the goblet formed of the skull of his enemy—then grimaced, and laid it aside. Silver Snow’s smile was unfeigned.

“Good hunting, Elder Sister!” Willow said, after she had undressed her mistess, by way of good-night greeting. She stretched indecorously, with a suppleness that accorded ill with her lame leg. “And clever thinking. ”

Silver Snow raised herself on one elbow. “Which hunt, Willow mine,” she asked. “And which thoughts?”

“It was clever to hunt and to succeed, more clever yet to cook for the old man,” Willow said. “That cup of his,” she grimaced. “It is not well to drink from something so bound up with cruelty.” She limped over to the small chest that was hers, opened it, and brought out her carefully hoarded bags of herbs and simples, many of them the parting gift of Li Ling.

Silver Snow glanced at her maid. Willow scowled at her and shook her head, as if astonished at how slow her mistress was at grasping what, for Willow, seemed to be essentials. Then Silver Snow shivered, though her bedrobes were very warm and closely swathed about her. Her very upbringing— which had instilled reverence for father, Son of Heaven, all of those who were rightfully set in authority over her—made her almost unable to comprehend that Willow, brought up in the amoral worlds of slave markets, furtive sorceries, and shape-changing, found self-evident.

Today, Vughturoi had ridden with the hunt, within easy call of the shan-yu. Today, the shan-yu had not eaten Strong Tongue’s cooking, and he was the stronger for it.

Would the shaman deliberately use her crafts against her own husband and the leader of her tribe? There were, Silver Snow knew, herbs that could give a canny, unscrupulous person power over the man who ate them. A quick, unpleasant vision of Strong Tongue oppressed Silver Snow’s consciousness. She had only to think of the haughtiness in the older woman’s tiny eyes to know that she was quite capable of drugging Khujanga into agreement with her will. Until Silver Snow herself had appeared and had supplanted one enchantment with another, more primal, magic—and Khujanga had fought, weakening himself further.

Strong Tongue would have to know that too, Silver Snow thought.

Perhaps she does. Perhaps she wearies of the struggle, came a voice within Silver Snow’s thoughts. Strong Tongue, balked of the power for which she had schemed so very long, was neither a pleasant nor a patient foe. Vughturoi had ridden with the host, and Tadiqan had been absent. Had matters been otherwise, Silver Snow realized, she might well have been a widow now ... a widow who was forced to become a wife. Why, even at this moment, she might be forced to lie beside . . .

Appalled by her new, and darkest, suspicion, she gagged, but waved Willow away when the maid crouched by her head.

“Put your head down,” ordered the maid, in a voice Silver Snow could not think of refusing. “Now, breathe deeply. I feared that the truth might affect you thus.”

Silver Snow took deep, steady breaths until the dizziness and sickness faded. She pulled her robes up about her shoulders, grateful for the way that they eased her body of the cold sweat that seemed to sheath it.

“The shan-yu is stronger tonight,” she stated. “If, after just one meal, he was stronger ...”

“Why then, Elder Sister, we . . . you . . . must cook for him from now on. Cosset him as if he were your only grandson, and,suffering from a flux. I shall ensure that not only will his food be worth the tasting, but that it shall contain nothing more that will harm him.”

“And if Strong Tongue charges us with sorcery?” asked Silver Snow.

“Then,” hissed Willow, “let her look to her own. Ahhh, Elder Sister, could I but slip into her tent, I would wager that I should find such things that would earn her speedy and painful death!”

Thereafter, Silver Snow and her maid cooked for the shan-yu. Intrigued by the delicate dishes and subtle spices, he beamed upon his wife and her handmaid and ate heartily. Nor did Silver Snow think that it was her imagination that, in the days that followed, he walked more steadily, spoke without the quaver that had entered his voice in recent weeks, especially after meals, and was even able to mount unassisted. In this new flush of health, his heart warmed once again to Vughturoi, who seemed content, each evening, to sit and watch his father, whose eyes were fixed—as Silver Snow was well aware—upon her.

She played and sang, all too well aware that now she played for her life. For the first time, she found herself echoing the wish of Sable and Bronze Mirror that she bear a son. Had the shan-yu been a younger man, she thought, there would have been no question. By now, almost certainly, she would have been carrying a child. Yet, had the shan-yu been a younger man, he— and she—would not be in this danger from Strong Tongue.

One night, much afraid, Silver Snow sorted through Willow’s chests of simples. The shan-yu was ancient; yet, it was true, old men had wed and begotten (or had acknowledged fatherhood) thousands of times. Silver Snow fingered herbs that aided conception, that strengthened the body, that dulled the will. Perhaps the shan-yu could be slightly drugged, then enticed . . . and she would have her heir, her safety.

For as long as Strong Tongue and Tadiqan let him live! It was no strange thing for a child of the grasslands to die during his first three years; though, should he survive them, thereafter it might take a flight of arrows to kill him. The birth of a boychild postponed nothing. And then there was the matter of conceiving such a child. An older woman, more experienced or less scrupulous, might use such methods to secure the heir that she needed. How could Silver Snow, who had never known a man, implement a plan that required the wiles and skills of an accomplished courtesan?

If it were not the shan-yu who must be the father . . .

She shook her head, and though only the firelight was present to witness went scarlet with shame that she had entertained such a thought even for a moment. That thought led not just to death but to dishonor. Carefully Silver Snow laid the herbs aside and locked the chest in which they were stored. She bent to check her bowstring and judged it sound. Then she opened another chest and burrowed into it until she found the knife that she sought and hid it on her person.

She vowed to herself that she would never stir without it.

“Lady,” Willow woke her in the gray chill before dawn. The maid’s face was pale and drawn, her russet hair leached of all color in the half light, and her lame leg dragged more than it usually did.

Silver Snow let her fingers loosen from the jade hilt of the dagger that she kept beneath her pallet. “You have been running all night,” she accused, smiling, though she tried to make her voice sound severe. “I suppose that that means that you will be worthless all day today. Strong Tongue will say that you should be beaten.”

Willow’s characteristic hiss of irritation silenced her mistress. “This one has proved her worth time and time again. And never more than now. Look you, elder sister, at what my kin-in-fur have brought me.”

Awkwardly she crouched beside Silver Snow and dangled a tiling that she held where her mistress could see it.

“What is that foul thing?” Silver Snow cried, and flung up a hand to ward off Willow’s trophy. “Do they bring you carrion now? I never knew that fox and kite were kin before.”

» “Look you.” Willow’s voice was softer but more inexorable than Silver Snow had ever known it to be. Some of Strong Tongue’s power of command seemed to lie beneath it: in this moment, Willow was shaman, not serving maid.

Silver Snow looked. What Willow held appeared to be a tangle of leather straps, much chewed and fouled with old, dried blood. For a moment, her hand trembled, then she disciplined it to such stillness that she might have been a statue.

“It looks like harness leathers,” Silver Snow mused. “But . . . there is a medallion there, still fastened to the strap. Wait!” she breathed. “This is a bridle, and that medallion, those cheekpieces ...”

The design incised on the bronze was unmistakable: a squat, fat woman, or goddess, or some such creature. She had last seen that piece of harness on one of Basich’s horses.

Silver Snow sat up, her sleeping furs dropping to her waist. “Where got you this?” she demanded.

She pushed past it, snatched up her robes where Willow had laid them at the foot of her bed, and began to dress before Willow could assist her.

“The brothers-in-fur waited,” Willow said, “until the white tiger fed, then brought this hither.”

Silver Snow remembered a cold, clear night, its silence broken only by frightened breathing, the occasional footstep, and the thumping of a huge, hostile heart that she had heard when the white tiger stalked her tent and as she stalked the white tiger. Basich had not been as fortunate. Sable would wail; and how was Silver Snow to comfort her? How could she demand redress? Did she even have proof that Sable’s brother was dead?

And what became of your letter, or of some reply? came the quiet, fearsome voice that constantly chided Silver Snow for choosing the personal over the political. Angrily she shook her head. This was not Ch’in; this was the grasslands—and statecraft was as much a matter of personal ties as it was of law or custom.

“Did they ...” her voice faltered. “Did your kin on the plains discover any traces of the man, as well as his horse?” Willow shook her head, but her eyes under their level brows were mournful. Seeing how Silver Snow’s eyes followed her grisly prize, she wrapped it in a square of silk and hid it from sight in the chest where she stored instruments for divining. Did Silver Snow imagine it, or did Willow’s hand linger on the chest after she closed it?

“He might have lived, might yet have sacrificed his horse and escaped.” Neither she nor Willow could put much faith in that, however. The grasslands were immeasurably broad. A man who might be wounded, who would be weary and mortally afraid of the white tiger, a man, above all else, who had ridden lifelong, how should such a man in Basich’s case ever find the tribe again?

“Perhaps,” Willow said slowly. “Perhaps.”

“Willow, you should warn your kin to watch for him.” Silver Snow glanced quickly at her maid. She seemed grieved by Basich’s disappearance.

Willow smiled. “They know to watch for me, and they will ward him; I have told them that he was kind to me. Believe me, Elder Sister, they hate and fear the white tiger just as we do. Let us learn who sends it against us, and we shall speedily see a hunt even greater than those of this shan-yu of yours!”