Imperial Lady

21

Appalled by Vughturoi’s rage and the gravity of the charge, Willow recoiled. Her lame leg gave out, and she staggered. Heedless of the pain of her gashed foot, Silver Snow flung herself from behind her husband to catch Willow before she fell: mistress and maid clung together, a tiny island of Ch’in in a sea of grass, eyes wide with shock, pain, and fear.

Vughturoi leaned forward and seized the torch from Willow before it fell from her weakened grasp; there had been no rain for many days, and all of the Hsiung-nu feared fire on the grassland. The flame cast a demon’s mask of light and shadow on his harsh features, making him appear doubly fearsome.

What was the punishment for sorcery? One thing the Hsiung-nu had in common with those of Ch’in: a hatred of magic used for their despite. And another: both people had developed highly inventive and painful methods of punishment.

Eyes wild, Willow stared at Silver Snow. Then, even as the maid leaned upon her, she shook her head slightly, as if enjoining silence upon her.

What manner of woman are you, Silver Snow? she demanded of herself. For all these years, Willow has guarded you, tended you, loved you; and will you abandon her because your new lord calls her a witch?

Had she boasted to herself just that noon that she had found happiness? What good was it if it came at the price of betraying an old and dear companion’s trust?

“You accuse the wrong woman, husband” Silver Snow’s voice was as sharp as the arrow on which she had stepped. “Bring charges of sorcery against Strong Tongue, if you dare. She is the one who bespelled me when I was weak and ill.”

“I drugged you,” Willow said faintly.

“You gave me herbs to make me sleep—and not for the first time,” Silver Snow waved that objection aside. Fury as hot as her husband’s flooded her, burning away the cold of her earlier ensorcellment. Even the pain in her foot seemed to have receded. “You are blind, my husband, blind to nourish vipers in your camp yet threaten my oldest friend!”

“Do you deny that she has powers denied to ordinary men or women?”

She had only to say “yes” and be safe, a gentle, cherished creature too innocent to sense the presence of magic in her own household. Yet, she had been asked to repudiate Willow before, and had never done so—and she remembered her father, surrendering to this man’s father to preserve the lives of his soldiers.

Her father’s surrender had been right and proper; hers would be the blackest treason.

“Nothing Willow does is a secret to me,” she snapped. “Who aided me with that foolish girl at the riverbank? And who do you think helped us— us, husband—fight the white tiger? I tell you, if you send her away, if you punish her, you must also punish me, the mother of your only heir.”

Because Vughturoi had claimed to despise the silent, passive obedience of Han ladies, Silver Snow had shown spirit before. Still, what was that but a form of obedience, of doing his will? For the first time, she sought to oppose him to uphold . . . not my will, but what is right, she thought firmly. This , not cringing and manipulative trickery, was the obedience and service that wife owed husband, or subject owed ruler: to uphold what was right even in the face of anger in order to protect the best interests of the one who must be served.

“Test me,” cried Willow. “Test me to the death. I shall die vowing that I have done nothing, ever, in all my years of service to harm my elder sister!” Her voice was thick with tears and anger, and she spoke directly to the shan-yu as might a shaman or a prisoner who had nothing to lose.

Vughturoi watched his angry lady as she eased Willow to the ground, as grateful for its support as her maid. She hated herself for the way the hot, ready tears ran down her face, though these were tears of rage, not of weakness.

“Lady,” he spoke softly, but in that moment, his voice was that of the shan-yu, not the indulgent lord, “your word is your bond and an honor to our tents, but I must have proof before I move against a shaman and a prince.”

“Then take this!” Silver Snow demanded, and thrust the whistling arrow at Vughturoi. “Look at this arrow and tell me that my Willow keeps such for her bow—or that she uses a bow at all!”

“She need not,” Vughturoi said. “Not when she is mistress of herbs, spells, yes, and shape-change too.”

He gestured both women to rise. Unsteadily, they obeyed. “Hold this,” he ordered Willow, and thrust the torch back at her.

Silver Snow gasped, warmth flowing back into her hands and feet, despite a loss of blood that was turning her giddy.

“One of those vile whistling arrows that Tadiqan has trained his men to obey, like beasts to a command,” Vughturoi muttered. “Lady, where got you this?”

“I stepped on it,” Silver Snow told him. “Outside Strong Tongue’s tent as she stood watching. The pain broke the demon’s hold that she had on me, and I could flee.”

The night sky and the tents were tilting slightly. She put out a hand and found it enfolded in a familiar grip.

“Then that is the only time that such an arrow has done me service.” Again, Silver Snow felt herself falling.

“You cannot even stand!” Vughturoi’s voice trailed away into words that Silver Snow was certain must be curses.

“You,” he ordered Willow. “Take my little queen back to her tent and tend her well. Check that wound for poison!” Already he was turning to go back to the great tent, his stride long and decisive for a man who had spent most of his life in the saddle. “Yes, and there is this, too. Know that I accused you wrongly and that I will make it up to you.”

Silver Snow looked up into Willow’s face, which mirrored her own amazement. With just those few words, Vughturoi had accused, tried, and acquitted the maid, and now he thought to make amends. She bit her lip against laughter and saw Willow shake her head. Not for the first time, however, the maid was quicker than she herself.

“Favorite of heaven!” she cried at the shan-yu 's retreating back.

Vughturoi spun round, surprised at the tone of command in Willow’s voice. She held up the torch to illumine the blood-splotched path of Silver Snow’s flight.

“Most noble shan-yu. ” Now that Willow had his attention, she spoke in a less imperious voice. “As the most sacred under heaven doubtless knows, blood holds great power; and that is the blood of your lady and the mother of your son. Grant that I protect her against . . . someone using that power to her despite.”

Vughturoi nodded. “Sable!” he called the name of his minor wife, then shouted for his warriors.

“When Sable comes,” he told Silver Snow, “let her take you back. You have done enough for tonight. And you—” he spoke directly, “work what magics you deem fit.”

“What will you do?” Silver Snow called after him.

Vughturoi shook his head. “What I should have done before, but I feared to shatter the unity of the clan. Now I realize that that unity was simply paint on ... on wood that has rotted,” he sought after and found an image from his days in Ch’ang-an. “Thus, now I shall bring fire to it—if I can. Give me your good wishes, lady, and I shall be the stronger.”

Again, the remnant of the courtly speech that he had learned in the Middle Kingdom.

“You have always had that.” Silver Snow smiled at him. “As well you know.”

Willow held up a free hand, gestured in a sign of blessing that Silver Snow had never seen. To her surprise, Vughturoi nodded thanks. “Shaman,” he said, according her Strong Tongue’s title.

Willow’s magics known now, she did not abase herself before the shan-yu any more than Strong Tongue had ordinarily done in the days of her favor. Days which, apparently, were to be ended at this very moment.

Vughturoi glanced down at his hand, which still held Tadiqan’s arrow. With an exclamation of loathing, he flung it from him.

Silver Snow shook her head, then regretted both the gesture and her lord’s rashness. “Fetch me that,” she asked Willow in a voice that was growing hoarse and feeble now. “He may need it for proof. I shall keep it safely hidden among my own arrows.”

She shut her eyes wearily and opened them only as Sable cried out in dismay and knelt at her side. All around them now were angry men, stamping and muttering in response to Vughturoi’s words. Some held torches, which gleamed on their weapons and their harness in the darkness and streamed out almost horizontally after the men who ran toward their horses or those who hastened toward Strong Tongue’s dwelling. From time to time, flickers shed light on the bronze hair and stooped back of Willow as she bent to scoop earth over Silver Snow’s bloodstained footprints.

Then Sable was easing her onto her feet and back toward her own tent. Weakened by loss of blood and her own passions, Silver Snow let her awareness drift. How strange, she thought, to find oneself in the midst of what anyone in the Middle Kingdom would have called savages, to know oneself the woman of the chief among them, and to feel more safe and more alive than she had ever hoped to feel.

“I must write to . . she murmured.

“Elder Sister?” Sable asked, easing Silver Snow down onto the furs of her bedding. “This will hurt,” she warned, pouring wine upon Silver Snow’s slashed foot.

It was the worst pain that she had ever felt in her life, but she bit her lips against it. Childbirth, when it came, would be worse; and she must not disgrace herself and her husband.

“Sleep now,” Sable urged her after she bandaged the cleansed wound.

Silver Snow shook her head. “I am queen,” she said. “He will need me with him. Help me up and robe me as a queen.”

The warriors were shouting outside. Silver Snow could feel the beat of many hoofs as horsemen left camp. She nodded. Had she been the ruler, she would have sent her most trusted officers to apprehend Tadiqan.

When Sable offered her a choice of robes, she waved both away. “Before I dress, fetch me silk, brush, and ink,” she told her. “No, I am not feverish, but I have thought of a way to help our lord, a way that he himself would not lower himself to take. And find me a man who will bear a message to the garrison.”

Lowering himself was what a Hsiung-nu might call it, but Silver Snow, before she did aught else, would write to the garrison commander whose father had served her own and beg him to send troops out on patrol. If they looked like allies massing against rebellious Hsiung-nu, so much the better. Vughturoi would never ask for help where he had meant to bestow it, but she was determined, all the same, that he should benefit from it.

Sable’s face, already dark with concern for Silver Snow (who had to be mad, she clearly thought, if, at this moment, she called for writing material), went even more somber. Had her brother lived, he would have been the queen’s chosen messenger. Still, there was no time to regret; and it was not the way of the Hsiung-nu.

Silver Snow’s hand shook as she picked up the brush. Did you shake so when you fought the bandits or the white tiger ; girl? she asked herself. And is a brush not a weapon, just like bow or blade? You are a general's daughter and a warrior's wife. Write, then; and no more of this frailty!

Despite Silver Snow’s impatience, the moon had grown to a faint, fragile crescent in the sky before Sable, Silver Snow’s thrice-vigilant guard, would permit her to try to rise. Before she actually was able to walk, however, the moon had grown more plump, and now assumed the shape of a slice of tempting, pale melon.

Shaking off Sable’s offer of a supporting arm, Silver Snow leaned on her bow as, robed as befitted a queen, she limped out of her tent. She met Willow coming toward her and greeted her warmly She had not seen the maid much in the days since her injury. Lacking the services of Strong Tongue, Vughturoi had pressed Willow into use as a seeress and, incidentally, as a guard for the shaman whom she was replacing.

The two women fell into step and walked haltingly toward the shan-yu 's tent. Why, our gaits match, thought Silver Snow. Yet Willow walked without a crutch; while her foot ached each time she set it to earth.

“It will mend, Elder Sister,” Willow, who knew her mind far too well to need to ask questions, told her. “Soon you will walk without pain and without a limp. I promise you, you will chase a little Hsiung-nu prince and not even grow short of breath.”

“How fares my lord today?” Silver Snow asked Willow.

The maid raised level brows in a surprise that she intended to be humorous. “Does he not tell you?”

Silver Snow shook her head. “He has said very little, preferring—or so he told me—to rest and for me to rest.”

What Silver Snow knew and would not tell Willow was Vughturoi’s reaction to her letter to the commander of the Ch’in garrison. “Once again, lady, you dare what I must not do! Though I may not ask for help, and do not need it, I shall be glad to see a troop of Ch’in soldiers, provided they speedily return to their own place.”

At that point, Silver Snow understood that she had interfered as much as she dared and turned her efforts to easing the shan-yu 's concerns. That he had been proven wrong had been a blow to his confidence; among the Hsiung-nu, such a blow could turn into a death blow. None of that, however, was something that she could tell Willow.

Perhaps, as a shaman, she sensed it already and, in her own loving way, took steps to heal him too.

Limping in step with her maid, Silver Snow entered the shan-yu' s great tent. Heat, noise, colors, and the scent of mare’s milk and seething meat struck her like a blow, and she stepped back involuntarily, just as she had the first time she had met Khujanga. Her healing foot came down on a pebble, and she suppressed a desire to flinch or cry out.

She had her reward in the next moment, as Vughturoi’s eyes lit at the sight of her, and he gestured for her to approach. He could not seat her in his own place nor rise for her; nor did she expect such immoderate attentions. Still, he saw that she sat beside him, that she was well and speedily served, and that the"messengers, both of Vughturoi’s own following and from other clans, who rode in and prostrated themselves before him paid her proper homage, too. Just as important, he insisted that the men from the other clans, when they hesitated to disclose their information before a woman of the Han, speak before her.

She sat quietly, eyes downcast in the assumption of modesty that gave her time to deliberate. So. Tadiqan’s friends among the Fu Yu had ambushed his guards and allowed him to ride free! In that case, he must be on his way back to the people whom he hoped to make his own.

Hoofbeats rose almost to a frenzy outside the tent, and a horse screamed, then grunted in exhaustion. Vughturoi’s guards leapt to watchfulness, weapons drawn, as a single rider staggered in. He was coated with yellow and black dust, and his eyes were red from sleeplessness. For the first time in her time among the Hsiung-nu, Silver Snow saw a man who looked like the picture that fear and ignorance had painted of her adopted people. Yet this man was perhaps the most trusted messenger that Vughturoi had with Basich gone.

He flung himself down, more a collapse than a prostration, before the shan-yu , and gasped out news of a column advancing westward from the Ch’in garrison.

“What of the Fu Yu?” demanded Vughturoi. His hand grasped the shaft of a spear and suddenly tensed.

Seeing that, the man went utterly still, and Silver Snow reminded herself of a story of the pale barbarians of the Hu, who dwelt so far to the west. Their ruler, it was said, would execute the bearer of bad news rather than reward him as a source of intelligence.

“It does not matter,” Vughturoi mused to those advisors who sat closest to him, “what the Yueh-chih pretender wants. Tadiqan wants this place, these tents; he will not destroy what he seeks to rule. Let us confront them all, however, with what they regard most highly.”

He gestured at a servant. “Bring in my father’s trophy, the skull of the Yueh-chih’s chieftain.” Then he turned to his warriors. “Three of you, fetch me Strong Tongue.”

Warriors as they were, fearless as they were reputed to be, the men looked uneasy. None of them wanted to confront the imprisoned shaman, the mother of a traitor-prince. Vughturoi had not gained the loyalty of his men by ignoring such signals. He nodded, paused, and, finally, looked down from his cushions at Willow where she knelt slightly behind her mistress. “The tribe’s new wise woman shall accompany you—if she will. See that Strong Tongue has what she needs to make a journey.”

So it would be exile? thought Silver Snow. Unwise, unwise, to leave the likes of Strong Tongue and her son alive; yet it made sense. Vughturoi, too, feared to slay a shaman.

Strong Tongue glowered as she walked before her guard into the great tent. She folded her arms over her broad bosom and almost contrived to make them appear to be a guard of honor for her, in her robes of hides and rare snakeskins and bits of glinting crystal. By contrast, Willow appeared to be insignificant; but in her hands lay Strong Tongue’s spirit drum. Most noticeable about Strong Tongue, however, was that a strip of hide had been tied over her mouth so that she could not use what gave her her name to curse the guards.

“Well done,” approved Vughturoi quietly. At a subtle hand gesture, Willow took up a place nearer to him than to Strong Tongue, who flicked one contemptuous gaze about the great tent.

“We shall await your son,” Vughturoi told her. “I have not forgotten, however, that he is my father’s son as well as your own. Thus, when he rides in, since his oath has proved to be worthless, he shall have two choices: death in battle or exile from the clan he has betrayed. Your choice shall be tied to his.”

Strong Tongue’s jaws worked and the veins in her temples bulged as she fought the gag.

“Restrain her!” snapped Vughturoi, and her unfortunate watchmen obeyed.

More hoofbeats and a cry from one of the outlying guards t(dd those in the great tent that a troop of Hsiung-nu approached: Tadiqan’s men (those whom he had not slain for opposing him), Vughturoi’s own guards, who had been sent to fetch him, and even a few of the Yueh-chih.

“I will meet them from horseback,” said the shan-yu. “Bid the warriors be ready.”

Painstakingly Silver Snow levered herself up. How she hated this accursed injury, which made her body a traitor to her will!

“You shall not ride, lady.” Vughturoi paused by Silver Snow and gently assisted her to her feet. “This is not a hunt that we await.” His eyes turned speculative, and Silver Snow held her breath.

“Do not send me away,” she pleaded. “What refuge for me can there be on the grasslands? I am safest with you.”

Her husband nodded and, though he was tense before what might turn into a battle, he smiled at her.

Indeed, Silver Snow thought, as she hobbled, leaning on her bow, after the men, there was no refuge for her. More than any other place, this was the death country of which Sun Tzu had written. Yet, for women, all battles were death country, not the games of land and honor that many men thought them. She hazarded a glance at Strong Tongue, who walked with vast disdain among her guards, who had but moderate success in slowing their pace to accommodate Willow. Her limp made her as out of place in that band as Silver Snow herself; but her pale, set face and flaming eyes told her mistress that Willow, for one, was done with hiding, done with meekness. Like a fox whose lair and kits had been menaced, she was enraged, and her rage was all the more lasting for its very quietness. In her hands she still bore Strong Tongue’s drum. And that too was proper; whoever had been sacrificed to craft that drum must also be a witness here.

None of the women had illusions that this would be a peaceful meeting. It was only the men who hoped. The women tried to prepare against catastrophe. Many would ride behind Silver Snow, armed with bows or the deadly lances of the Hsiung-nu. The eldest of the Hsiung-nu children would be with them.

“Wait, oh wait!” Silver Snow whispered to Sable. On an impulse that she could not explain, she snatched up the skull cup that she so hated, shrouding it in a square of silk that she pulled from her voluminous sleeve. Then she hastened to join the other women.

Sable it was who brought up Silver Snow’s horse; no warrior could be spared. She mounted with relief. On horseback, she was not lame. With a nod of satisfaction, she checked her bowstring, her supply of arrows, and the knife that she kept as a final weapon.

Slowly, without the usual fanfare of shrieks and spectacular riding, the mounted Hsiung-nu warriors assembled outside the camp and waited. Overhead, the sun climbed higher in the sky, straining toward zenith. The wind, as it blew across the drying grasses, tinged now with the colors of autumn, made the land appear to ripple. Silver Snow hoped that it would not run with blood before sundown.

“Sound the drum!” Vughturoi cried.

To Silver Snow’s shock, he spoke to Willow. Transformed in that moment from waiting woman or wisewoman to warrior, she struck the spirit drum, and the air seemed to shiver with the drumbeat. That was well, too; the man or boy whom Strong Tongue had slain should have his share of the judgment that Vughturoi hoped to make today. For the first time that Silver Snow had ever heard it, there was no evil in the drumbeat as it summoned the clan’s enemies.

As if it indeed had caused them to appear, Tadiqan and his men rode toward the camp slowly. They too rode silently, a menace whose very quietness made it all the more purposeful. Some were familiar to her; she recognized many faces and horses. Others, though, wore the trappings and arms of the Fu Yu or even the Yueh-chih, chief among them a young man whose eyes immediately sought out Vughturoi. Her glance fell at the wrapped bunch she bore on her saddle. She had been right; like the drum, that cup, which had been the source of such pain and such conflict, must be present.

So many opposed Vughturoi! Dismay stabbed at Silver Snow almost as sharply as the arrow on which she had stepped, but she suppressed it, lest her son absorb her fear before his birth.

Vughturoi drew a deep breath. Then his voice rang out over the grasslands.

“Let Tadiqan, who was once my brother, ride forth.”