Imperial Lady

20

Surrounded by her ladies and her guards, the queen who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu sat by the shan-yu s empty chair and awaited his return. That, thought Silver Snow, was one way of thinking of it. But there was another way, one that she far preferred: exiled far from her home, she had made another home for herself; and now she sat among men and women who had become her friends, awaiting the return of her husband Vughturoi.

Summer had passed too rapidly, like amber beads on a silken strand; she only wished now that she could have preserved them as amber preserves the seed or the insect or the bubble of air trapped within it. Only now were the grasslands turning crimson with the approach of autumn, but that summer, the first of her true marriage, seemed to have assumed a kind of memorability: like the ancient doings of the Emperor or her father’s tales. Always before, Silver Snow had felt herself to be like the northland’s snows for which she had been named: silent, still, and passive; content to wait, to obey. And above all, to be cold, so very cold that not all of the wine or the furs in the world could warm her into glowing life.

She thought now that she had been a beautiful statue, nothing more, until Vughturoi had set his hand upon her. His touch, his smile, had overpowered that coldness, that mannered shyness. The vital, glowing creature who now awaited her husband’s return and whom, daily, she saw in Willow’s mirror was as far from the frosts of winter as she could be, though she bore a wintry name. Recently, however, that was not all that she was thought to bear.

Silver Snow smiled gently upon her maid Willow, where she sat beside Sable, plump and sweating in the rich embroideries that befitted even a minor wife of the shan-yu. Both women nodded and whispered together, and Willow approached with a fan. Such great friends they were, united first by service to her, then by sorrow, and now by their assurance that their mistress and elder sister bore beneath her heart a child who would unite both of their peoples.

Only today, Willow had cast the yarrow stalks and promised her that the child would be a boy, a son to secure her line, her power over her people and the shan-yu , if she needed additional power over him. Silver Snow had never considered what it would be like to know that she carried a child. She had expected to feel fear or wild excitement, not this serene cer-taflity. Who would have thought that one would learn such joy of a husband, let alone such a husband?

Of course, she would have conceived quickly by Vughturoi: how not? Despite how crowded the shan-yu 's great tent was, Silver Snow shut her eyes, remembering her husband’s quick ardor, his care of her, and his strength. She had spent half of the summer’s days, she thought, dazzled by the nights. She could set a proper value on the hushed giggles and whispers of the concubines in the Imperial Court: they were as green rice compared with the harvest, the harvest that she now bore.

As the mother of a son—of a prince—she need never defer to anyone in the grasslands. Except, of course, her lord; and she had learned rapidly that she pleased him best, obeyed him most faithfully, by being herself. Downcast eyes and bows made him irritable, uneasy, eager to leave the constraints of her tent for the free air of the grasslands.

But if she rode out or tended the sick, played her music or laughed with the bright-eyed Hsiung-nu children, he would come to her side whenever he could. Once again she played and sang almost every night before a shan-yu , but this time her songs were happy. Though such speech came hard to him, Vughturoi had made her understand: he did not want a silk-robed puppet but the courageous lady who had worn pearls and kingfisher feathers before the Son of Heaven to accuse a thief, the lady who had fought the white tiger and won him his throne. And, much to her surprise, she had wanted him. It was a mating unlike the marriages that she had seen, in what seemed now to be another life, on her journey to Ch’ang-an, marriages made by ladies who had pitied her and considered themselves people to be envied. She was content. Or she should have been.

I miss my husband, Silver Snow admitted. It was one thing to call him Vughturoi in the dark privacy of the nights, but she blushed to speak it, even in her thoughts, during the daylight. She had had that thought every day since he had ridden out toward the Han fort on the border of the grasslands. He had wanted, he told her, to speak with the garrison’s commander—who was actually, Silver Snow had learned from Li Ling, the son of an officer who had served with her father and had survived the long march back after the general had surrendered—about a proposal that his father had dictated to Silver Snow shortly before his death, a renewal of his suggestion that the Hsiung-nu defend all under heaven from Dunhuang east to the Yellow River.

Silver Snow remembered the last, private reply to that proposal that she had received; she thought that she could hear Li Ling’s very tones in it: “It is now over a century since the Great Wall was rebuilt by Wu Ti. It is not by any means a mere mud rampart. Up hill and down, it follows the natural configuration of the ground, is honeycombed with secret passages, and bristles with fortified points. Is all this vast labor to be allowed to go to rack and ruin?”

To Khujanga, however, the Son of Heaven had replied courteously enough that the Great Wall had been built to keep the Empire in, not to shut the peoples of the west out. Yet, Khujanga had not let the matter drop; and neither would his son. His sons, Silver Snow recalled. Strangely enough, Tadiqan had liked that proposal.

Perhaps Li Ling’s refusal had been inspired. After all, what if Tadiqan had become shan-yu? Certainly he had prostrated himself before his younger brother and vowed obedience. Yet he made no secret of his detestation of the Middle Kingdom and his desire to plunder it. And his oath to his brother had not stopped him from maintaining his usual retinue of warriors and a circle of older men who were easily made disgruntled as they suspected that, under Vughturoi’s rule, power might pass from them to younger men and to the shan-yu 's outland wife, whom, they saw, Vughturoi intended to treat as consort rather than a mark of Ch’in favor and a charming toy.

Despite such malcontents, Vughturoi had also sent out scouts, he had said, to keep an eye on the Fu Yu, who were quiescent, watching him in this first season of his rule. Nor had the heir of the Yueh-chih yet tried to fulfill his vow of having Vughturoi’s skull as the bowl of a goblet. Still, that left Silver Snow at least nominally responsible for the camp and herds; just bearing those responsibilities respectably strained every resource of patience, tact, and craft that she had possessed, and a few that she hadn’t known herself to own.

One morning, however, she had fainted; and the women of the camp had narrowed eyes (Silver Snow would privately have sworn that their eyes could narrow no more) at her spec-ulatively and had gone into serious conclave with Sable. Thereafter, her lot had been somewhat less difficult, at least with some of them and with their men. Others, however . . . she could lie in an unmarked tomb and those others would still resent her presence in their lands.

No, it was not a good time for Vughturoi to have left, even though he had no choice, or so he told his people. However, there was, Silver Snow knew, another reason why Vughturoi had ridden toward that fortress, a little journey that would last from full moon to full moon and to the dark of the moon thereafter: to bring back the letters from Li Ling or her father, or even from the Son of Heaven. She had written them after Khujanga’s death, informing them that she had followed the custom of the Hsiung-nu and married his successor, praying their forgiveness for having done so without beseeching their consent. There had simply been no time for it. Vughturoi had to claim his father’s place, and when he claimed her, she had had no thought of nay saying him.

I shall have to write them again, she thought. How horrified the court would be! She thought, however, that Li Ling would understand. And her father? Well he had known that when she departed for Ch’ang-an, theirs had been a final parting. She blinked at the dust motes that danced in the slanting sunbeams and turned the carpets to rubies set in gold and copper and mused on auspicious names for a first son and prince.

Against a task as important as that, Strong Tongue’s hostility seemed no more than heat lightning on the horizon. Without her son—and, oh, how she could understand Strong Tongue’s instincts to protect her own flesh and blood now— the shaman seemed shrunken, subdued. At the same time that her husband had ridden out, Tadiqan had decided to ride off on the ever-present need to inspect and number the herds. He had, of course, begged leave of her; but his “begging,” as they both knew, was the merest formality. Silver Snow could not have stopped him had she wished. She could, however, send with him men who were loyal to Vughturoi and who would escort him most vigilantly: and so she did. She hoped that she had done all aright.

When Vughturoi returned to his tents . . . oh, should she tell him as soon as he returned, or should she wait until they were alone? Silver Snow’s soft, anticipatory laugh drew a nostalgic smile from Sable and speculative, hopeful looks from many of the Hsiung-nu. She met their gazes blandly.

She would order the Yueh-chih skull goblet to be hidden, she decided; it was not a thing that a mother-to-be needed to look upon. Perhaps she would tell Strong Tongue to hide away her spirit drum too, that is, if she could not coax Vughturoi to do so. And, if Tadiqan or Strong Tongue said aught to unsettle her . . . just let them! she thought, smiling. She had come into her power now.

What sounded like thunder at the horizon brought her up from her seat, one hand at the small of her back, the other flashing to her lips. See what comes, she mouthed to her women; and Sable, who, by rights, should have had maids of her own to do her bidding, leapt up and ran to the opening of the tent.

“It is our lord!” she cried even as the shrieks and hoofbeats of Hsiung-nu greeting assaulted their ears. Silver Snow flushed and flung out a hand that Willow, greatly daring, leaned forward to take.

“Elder Sister, a bearing woman must not rise so quickly!” she warned. Nevertheless she aided Silver Snow to hasten to the door of the tent.

Dear Willow! If she sorrowed for the loss of Basich and what she might have had with him, no one would have known it from the tenderness with which she guarded Silver Snow frmn hazard.

“Here, Elder Sister, lean on me,” she said, even as Silver Snow laughed and pretended to push her aside. It was not that she was sickly, but that, as queen, she must move with dignity, she informed her maid who managed—just barely—not to give the short, barking laugh that sounded so like a fox.

Like a dance of war, the Hsiung-nu, partnered by their horses, raced into the camp. How fast they rode and how beautifully! Let the people in Ch’ang-an see the Hsiung-nu ride, no matter how ferociously they fought; just let them see that; and they would no longer call their neighbors to the west barbarians, Silver Snow thought.

Vughturoi swung down from his horse, his eyes seeking out Silver Snow and warming with satisfaction at the sight of her: his wife, standing before his tent, helping to ward his people.

She bowed deeply. Then, when no strong hands pressed her shoulders urging her to rise, she glanced up. Vughturoi was watching her carefully, and in his hand were letters: a bundle of wooden strips from her father, thrifty as ever; two sealed rolls of silk from the court.

The rigid courtesies to which she had been raised forbade her, in this moment, to speak until the shan-yu spoke to her; never had she come closer to violating its prohibitions. Then Vughturoi’s hands were on her shoulders, and “Wife,” his deep voice rumbled in her ears.

“Welcome, oh thrice welcome,” she whispered, little more than shaping her lips soundlessly about the words before she bowed again and greeted him properly. He watched her spec-ulatively, as if gauging her strength, then held out the rolls and wooden strips much as he might hand a stripling a sword.

“Be my brave lady,” he ordered more brusquely than he had ever spoken with her, and gestured at her to open her letters. Right out here? Before she had attended to the needs of her husband and his warriors or heard their news? Bowing before the tube that held the letter from the Son of Heaven, she broke it open and began to read.

In the next moment, the world slid sideways. Only Willow’s strong hands held her up. As they released her, she reeled. The sunlight was too bright; the colors that had gladdened her eyes moments ago now seemed to be garish, alien— and who were all of these strangers? None of them, save Willow, were from the Middle Kingdom. None of them would understand.

Yuan Ti, the Son of Heaven, was dead.

Once again she forced herself to glance down at the silk message with its hateful, fateful ideograms. There they were, unmistakable: the characters of the Son of Heaven’s name and the symbol for death. Numb, she read a few more columns. As she expected, she was instructed to follow the customs of the Hsiung-nu and marry Khujanga’s successor.

The letter jolted and danced before her. She was moving, she realized; Vughturoi was guiding her to her tent, Willow beside him, scolding to herself like an enraged fox or a woman of the Hsiung-nu at the stupidity that exposed a woman who bore a child to such a shock.

That is not how I wished him to learn of his son, she thought at her maid. Despite the heat, Silver Snow was trembling violently. Gratefully she accepted the robe that Vughturoi draped over her shoulders and watched as Willow brought out cups. What right did her tent have to look so peaceful, so much as it always did when the Son of Heaven was dead? All this time: how could it have happened and she not known? She could all but hear the laments of ritual mourning, the artistic frenzies of grief that some of the court ladies must have performed. Odd: she could not remember their names; and, at one time, the favor of this so-important, glittering creature or that had been so vital to her well-being. She suspected, however, that some members of the court might mourn sincerely. Her letter from Li Ling no doubt contained expressions of a grief as heart-felt as it was proper, and her father, no doubt, would mourn as a general and a man restored to favor should mourn his ruler. She must try to model herself upon their examples.

By now, the Son of Heaven’s tomb must be near completion, laden with statues of horses, camels, a court wrought in terra cotta and precious metals with as much skill as the finest artisans of Ch’ang-an could summon. Perhaps he lay already in his coffin of many layers, rich with paint and gems.

Did he wear the suit of jade armor that had been her father’s gift? Silver Snow spared a thought for the other suit, the lady’s burial armor, that she had brought with her to the grasslands with the treasures that were her dowry and the Son of Heaven’s too-tardy love gift. The thought made her blink back tears.

Customs warred in her spinning head. She reached for the jade hilt of her tiny knife and drew it to slash her clothing. She must have white robes; she must fast; she must seclude herself and give Yuan Ti, her adoptive father, proper respects. Already she was behind-hand in proper observances. The knife shook in her hand as she thought on that term. Proper observances . . . seeing his father stretched out dead before him, Vughturoi had gashed his face, mourning with blood, not tears. And now, Silver Snow was a woman of the Hsiung-nu.

Trembling, she raised her knife, and Vughturoi dashed it from her hands.

“You are a bearing woman,” he shouted at her, “and I command you that you will not fast, you will not harm yourself! You, Willow! See that you guard your lady, from herself, if need be. If you do not, you shall answer to me.”

He had never shouted at her before, never shown her the fury that Ch’in fears attributed to the Hsiung-nu. Though she had been too stunned to weep as she read the news of the Son of Heaven’s death, Vughturoi’s angry words drew tears from her, and she sank limply onto the nearest pile of cushions, weeping like a weakling of the Inner Courts of the Palace.

Her husband was at her feet in an instant, holding her hands, drawing her wholly into his arms, cajoling her in low, soothing tones as if she were a mare in foal , Silver Snow thought with a horrible pang of inappropriate mirth. The Hsiung-nu were gentle with their horses; despite a summer’s proof to the contrary, she had not suspected that that gentleness might extend to her, too.

“I did not want you to cut yourself, or to grieve so that you harmed our child,” he told her. Had that been fear that she had seen in his eyes, then? Once scolded, the women whom she had known in Ch’ang-an, that garden of Lilacs and Peonies and Peach Blossoms, would have languished and sulked, demanded gifts of jewels or furs before they turned brighter faces to their lords; but that was not Silver Snow’s way. It would baffle and frustrate Vughturoi, not control him (which was not her goal) or comfort him.

“I had hoped,” she told him, “to have told you about our son at a more auspicious moment.”

Shcwould ask Willow to cast the yarrow stalks and, above all else, she would even write to Li Ling and ask him to consult a Taoist sorcerer about this child’s future. He must not share the sorrow of the Son of Heaven’s death.

“Whatever the moment,” Vughturoi said, with a grass-lander’s indifference to the propriety of finding auspicious moments, “he is welcome. An heir for the Hsiung-nu!” His exultation all but stirred the silk and felt panels of her tent’s walls. Then he dropped his voice again and held her closely.

“Do not weep, lady,” he murmured. “Is it that I forbade you to mourn? Mourn you shall, if you must; but you must not hurt yourself or our son. You must eat, and walk in the fresh air; and above all, you must not cut yourself. You are too fair. Leave that for men like me. Promise me that, lady.”

She nodded, unable to resist. Docile as a child, she drank what Willow offered her, then let the maid undress her and, though it was but midday, put her to bed. For a time Vughturoi sat beside her, muttering to himself as he tried to puzzle out the characters of the one letter that she had opened.

Yuan Ti was dead. What would that mean for the Empire’s peace with the Hsiung-nu? Silver Snow tried hard to recall the face and opinions of the new Son of Heaven, but failed: he was just another of the parade of capped and richly robed officials who replied to his predecessor practically like a chorus of yeasayers. It was only men like Li Ling and her father who had the courage to speak against what an Emperor wished to hear. Her friend, and her father: they too had written letters, letters that, no doubt, contained advice and sage discussions of court intrigue and policy, letters she had left unread too long. She must rouse herself, must read them to her husband. She tried to sit up, to reach for the letters, but “not now,” Vughturoi told her, and made her lie down again.

Willow had sedated her, she thought indignantly. She had time for one reproachful glance at her maid before her eyelids closed and the light vanished.

Subtle drumming at the threshold of Silver Snow’s awareness brought her out of deep sleep up into darkness. She tried twice to turn over before her body, still in the thrall of whatever herbs with which Willow had dosed her, obeyed. Her hand, languidly outflung, encountered only furs. What time of night was it? She could not expect Vughturoi to spend the entire night at her side, not when he had been absent from the camp for so long; perhaps he rode now or feasted, holding council with the warriors whom he had left to guard his home, trying to reconcile himself with the old men who saw in his elder brother a hope of return to the violent old days before peace with Ch’in.

The drumming grew louder, pulsing sluggishly as the rhythms in her blood pulsed.

“Willow?” Silver Snow called. She knew that she ought to be shocked at how feeble her voice sounded. “Willow?” This time she had more breath behind the call, but it was so plaintive! That was right; if her husband had spent any part of the night with her, Willow would have taken herself elsewhere. Silver Snow was quite alone, except for that treacherous . . . no, the drumming was not treacherous; why had she ever thought so?

It was soothing, pulsing now as her heart beat, allaying the alarm with which she had waked. If she lay back, perhaps its gentle rhythm would ease her back to sleep: this time a healing, true sleep free of Willow’s noisome herbs.

But no, the drum cadence picked up, filling Silver Snow with a febrile energy that, somehow, she sensed came from outside herself. She rose, pulling garments loosely about her in the closeness of the tent, and went outside.

It was the dark of the moon. Faint and far distant, as if it lay across the desert, she could see the shan-yu's great tent glowing from the fires that burnt within. The drumbeat picked up once again, inciting Silver Snow to walk. Perhaps she should go there, she thought. Yes, that would be best. Vughturoi would see that she was ill, would summon Sable and Willow to tend her and remain with her—or he would remain with her himself.

So convinced was she that she was hastening, padding on bare feet, toward her husband and his warriors that she was not fully aware that her path led in a different direction altogether—toward the dark bulk of the shaman’s tent, from which the drumming came. She gasped as its flap opened, though by no human hand that she could perceive in the darkness, and tried to stop.

Within sat Strong Tongue, stroking her spirit drum by the fire, bending over it with the same concentration that Silver Snow had always brought to her lute. Her head down, a smile of satisfaction glowing red in the light of the small brazier at her feet, the elder woman did not see her prey approach.

No! Silver Snow cried silently. But the same compulsion that forced her to walk toward Strong Tongue’s tent, up to that entrance that gaped and glowed in the firelight, had seized her tongue.

Cold washed over her. If Strong Tongue had indeed summoned her for her sorceries, Silver Snow could very easily die tonight; and who would know? She might have waked alone, abandoned by her faithful women, and—hard as it was to believe—staggered from her tent in search of succor, to be found by Strong Tongue. Who knows? The shaman might even pin the blame for her death upon Willow, who had sought only to gjye Silver Snow privacy. Let her return to her mistress from Sable’s tent (or from a night roving free in the deep grasses), and she would face charges of the blackest sorcery.

She owed Willow better than that, poor Willow who had served her all her life, whose cheerfulness had taught her strength in adversity, and whose quiet mourning after the death of Basich had shown her more of dignity than all of the eunuchs in the Son of Heaven’s court. If she had learned to love from anyone, it was from Willow.

As if aware that her victim was hesitating, Strong Tongue stepped up the beat on her spirit drum. It grew harder and harder to resist. Just let it happen , thought Silver Snow. She remembered how, that night at a riverside camp before she had ever set foot on the grasslands, Jade Butterfly was lured toward the river, how passively she seemed to consent to her own destruction. Strong Tongue would do anything to protect her son, even risk her own life.

I too have a son to protect , thought Silver Snow. The thought swept over her like a torrent of cold water, and she found herself able to swerve one step, then two in the clutter outside the shaman’s tent. Ten more steps, though, and she would be inside. Nine . . . eight . . . sudden pain lanced up Silver Snow’s bare foot. The pain broke the spell that had forced her to obey Strong Tongue’s summons. With a presence of mind that she had only been able to summon once or twice in her life, she bit her lip against a gasp of pain, and turned her stumble into an opportunity to snatch up whatever it was she had trodden on.

She held an arrow, its head curiously fashioned, its fletch-ing bearing the mark characteristic of Tadiqan. Even as she stared at it, the night wind rose, drawing a faint whistling from the arrow’s head. So, it was one of the terrible whistling arrows which, when Tadiqan fired, served as a signal for his loyal warriors to loose their own arrows at his chosen target— which could very well be her or her husband or any other enemy that Tadiqan might choose to kill, if he thought himself powerful enough to do so.

He had been quiescent for too long, he and Strong Tongue. Silver Snow knew that she had been right to regret leaving the two of them alive. She would tell Vughturoi . . .

“Come here, girl.”

Strong Tongue stood at the opening of her tent, drum under one arm, silver and bone cup outheld in her free hand. Whatever it held steamed slightly, and Silver Snow no more wished to drink it than she wished to enter that tent.

She had no strength to waste on words, on defiance, or on anything but flight. She whirled to flee, but she felt herself moving so slowly. Warmth trickled from her wounded foot. Had that arrow been poisoned as well as bespelled?

“Come, girl.” Again the command. Strong Tongue advanced, as arrogant in her power, which was strong now at the dark of the moon, as Silver Snow had ever seen her. “Tadiqan will arrive before dawn. Though I cannot understand why he wants you, he may as well have his pleasure of you before I make an end. Come in and await him.”

I too have a son's interests to protect! The thought fired Silver Snow’s blood, gave her the strength to stand her ground just a moment longer while her foot bled into the dust. But it was hopeless, she began to fear. Blood had strength; Strong Tongue would know how to use the blood she shed to call her back.

A large fox ... a vixen . . . snarled and leapt at the shaman, who staggered back, then recovered in time to kick it strongly. It yelped in pain, and its yelp echoed across the camp. Yet once again it charged Strong Tongue, and this time it was not alone. Two other, larger, foxes joined it in harrying the shaman. The vixen broke its hold on her booted ankle long enough to bark sharply.

Silver Snow did not need to see Willow in her human guise to know that the fox’s barks had to mean, “Run, Elder Sister.” Grabbing up her skirts, she fled from Strong Tongue’s tent, whether toward her own or to the great tent did not matter.

Abruptly she blundered into the solid bulk of someone walking rapidly, and she screamed.

* “You, lady! I left you sleeping,” Vughturoi accused. “And yet, here you wander ...”

Bright light shocked her and she stiffened in his grip as the light neared her. Vughturoi squinted to make out its bearer, but as the torch dipped with each step, Silver Snow sighed with relief. It was Willow, limping across the trail of bloody footprints that Silver Snow had left, scattering something with her free hand. Her limp was so painful, so pronounced, that Strong Tongue’s kick must surely have left her with broken ribs.

“Blood has power,” Willow muttered to herself. “I must prevent Strong Tongue from using that power against my sister.”

“Get away from her, witch!” snarled Vughturoi. His face twisted in the sudden, inexplicable fury that made the Hsiung-nu feared wherever they rode. He thrust Silver Snow behind him and drew his knife on her maid.