Imperial Lady

19

Elder Sister, Elder Sister!” Willow flung herself down beside Silver Snow. “Are you hurt?”

“Never mind that!” Silver Snow gasped. All the menace that Strong Tongue had loaded into that single word daughter restored her to herself in a way that no compassion, no tenderness, might have. Once again, she and Willow crouched in a shabby wagon, afraid of the bandits who bore the mark of the crimson eyebrows, afraid but determined to die rather than to be violated. Once again, she faced down a corrupt eunuch before the Son of Heaven.

She had been hailed as the queen who brought peace to the Hsiung-nu. What did it matter if the shan-yu to whom she was wed lay dead? She was still queen of the Hsiung-nu, and by all that she valued, she would have her say in who would be her next lord.

“Vughturoi,” she ordered Willow. “We have to fetch him.” The first prince to return and to view his father’s body would inherit his title: that was the law. So, it would be a race, Silver Snow knew, between Strong Tongue’s powers and whatever magic that Willow might summon. Or any fortune that she herself might merit.

To her surprise, Willow did not creep into a corner and enter the agonizing spasms of the change from maid to fox.

Instead, she lurched past a crowd of Hsiung-nu, matching shove with shove, staggering but somehow managing to stay upright, until she stood shaking in the twilight. A chattering, yapping sound came from her lips and was answered from all sides. For a moment longer, Willow stood so. Then she dropped to her knees and with one outstretched, shaking hand smoothed the fur of the huge fox that had emerged, seemingly from nowhere, at her feet. It—no, he—nuzzled her hand, barked once more, then vanished into the night.

Then, slowly, Willow started down the slight slope on which the great tent had been pitched toward where Basich lay. Roused by the shouts and the uproar in the great tent, he had seized his own weapons and now hurried, as best he might, limping, as Willow did, upslope toward her. He seized her by one arm, and ushered her, protesting, back into the tent.

Silver Snow went over to the body of the old shan-yu. She herself had tried earlier to turn him over, and succeeded but partially; now his eyes stared up at the roof of the tent, and his arms were flung wide. He was an old man; he had been a good man in his way, and a friend to Ch’in; and he had been kind to her. It was neither proper nor dutiful to let him lie there asprawl, lacking the dignity of mourning and attendance. She knelt and held her hand over the glazed eyes from which all cunning and all humor had fled forever until they stayed shut after she took her hand away. Then, with a corner of her sleeve, she wiped the grime and dried spittle from his face, tried to array the sparse beard on his chin, and to ease the dreadful, contorted expression on his face.

Then it was that a drum began its insistent pound . . . pound . . . pound. Strong Tongue had wasted no time in repairing that damnable spirit drum of hers.

And whose was the skin that she used this time? Silver Snow shuddered.

Always before, Khujanga had risen to her defense when she was in danger. Any hope that she might have had that he had but swooned was fully dead now. Her eyes filmed over, and tears fell onto her hands as they worked, straightening out the twisted limbs, easing the shan-yu ’s body into a posture that was more seemly.

Drops of blood sank into the dusty carpet beside him. Silver Snow let out a tiny scream as Basich dropped down beside her. Raw scores on his face showed that he mourned his dead leader according to the custom of the Hsiung-nu, who drew their knives and gashed their cheeks to display their grief. They wept, not with tears, but with blood.

“Permit me, lady.” His voice was husky, and he averted his face as he stooped, picked up Khujanga’s body, and bore it to the rugs before his usual seat where he laid the old man out in state. He glanced upon the grisly cup and grimaced.

Silver Snow drew up a cushion at the dead shan-yu s side, just as she had often done when he was alive. She felt no fear, no abhorrence of the dead.

“She”—he gestured with his chin at Willow—“says that she has done what she might to fetch my prince. I too shall ride ...”

“Ride?” Silver Snow asked. “You can barely walk!”

His blood-smeared face gleamed with sorrow and a kind of cold pride. “You forget, lady. I am Hsiung-nu, and we ride almost before we walk. My mare’s back is better than a bed to me. I shall fetch back the prince to ward us.” He let out a wordless shout, and staggered from the tent.

Silver Snow’s women came and crouched down beside her. Ringing them were the oldest men of the tribe, those too old to fight. The younger warriors, those who had not ridden out with Vughturoi or Tadiqan, watched, their eyes avid, curious. All bore bleeding gashes across their cheeks; all carried blades or bows; and all had their private allegiances—whether to the shan-yu who was dead, to the elder prince, or to Vughturoi, Silver Snow forced herself not to guess.

What if I ordered, “Kill me that witch?” she thought.

As clearly as if she knelt at her father’s feet, his face floated into her thoughts. She must not give orders that would not be immediately obeyed—or that she could not herself enforce.

She was but queen to a dead shan-yu, and she bore no child; the time to obey her would be the time when the Hsiung-nu could determine whether she would have the power with their new ruler that she had enjoyed with the old.

Yet, Strong Tongue tried to poison me. She as much as admitted it to ... my husband.

No one but Khujanga had seen it, however. And, like it or not, Strong Tongue was the familiar power; she was the tribe’s shaman, and they feared her. No, they would not storm her tent and kill her . . . would they?

She had lived long enough among the Hsiung-nu to judge that the attempt was worth trying. Vughturoi, the sweet, treacherous thought crept into her mind, Vughturoi would expect her to defend herself as she had ever done.

“The best man among you,” Silver Snow said calmly, “brings me Strong Tongue’s head.”

It was no man but a boy who rose, his face alight. Ducking an awkward but profound bow at Silver Snow, he seized a spear and raced from the great tent to the place where, Silver Snow knew, Strong Tongue had ordered her own quarters pitched.

She heard his scream in the same moment that a flare of light, like oil poured on a fire at midnight, burst up with a roar and a stench of burning flesh. Two more boys leapt up, rage warring with terror on their faces, but Silver Snow held up her hand.

“No,” she whispered. “I will hazard no more of you.”

As she had in the Cold Palace, Silver Snow sat and waited as the night wore on, as the drum beats from Strong Tongue’s tent grew louder and more insistent. Chanting rose, then subsided, to rise more hoarsely. The Hsiung-nu watched, as motionless as Khujanga, but far less calm.

And Silver Snow knelt there, deprived even of the comfort of Willow’s presence. At some time during the night, she had disappeared. At this very moment, was a fox with a limp pushing through the grasses toward the Hsiung-nu prince? Perhaps he might hear it, might reach casually for the spear or the bow of which he had such deadly mastery . . . “No!” Silver Snow wrapped arms about herself and rocked back and forth as if she keened in grief over her husband’s body. Sable rose and brought a fur-trimmed cloak. Summer night though it was, Silver Snow was grateful for the cloak’s warmth.

She glanced up at the Hsiung-nu woman who had been first among her people to approach Silver Snow with warmth rather than deference and curiosity. Tonight, she might suffer for that loyalty. It all depended on who won a double race: a summons by magic and a mad ride back to the tents of the royal clan. Even though Tadiqan had ridden among the Fu Yu, he might well have been on his way back; and the herds that Vughturoi inspected ranged over vast areas of grassland.

Darkness waned to gray, and all of the fires in the tents died. Gradually, the drumbeats and chants that had risen from Strong Tongue’s tent faded into silence. At dawn, Willow returned, walking very slowly as if her lame leg hurt even more than usual. With infinite care, she settled herself behind her mistress. When Silver Snow turned to greet her, she answered only with a sigh and a wan smile of gratitude for a proffered cushion.

Dawn brightened into a clear morning. The sun as it climbed toward zenith shone almost white; the day would be hot. It might be, Silver Snow thought, as she knelt beside the rigid body of her dead lord, that neither prince would arrive in time to view his father’s body, which would not keep for long in the heat. Already the sunken features were discoloring; soon the body would swell. Silver Snow sniffed, but could smell nothing beyond ashes, sweat, and tension.

She allowed her furred cloak to slip from her shoulders. Willow, as if grateful for a task that was easy to perform, folded it and laid it aside.

A shadow blocked the sunlight at the entrance to the tent. Slowly, ponderously, Strong Tongue walked through the crowd of staring Hsiung-nu as if they did not exist, stopping only when she stood before the body of the shan-yu. A murmuring arose behind her, and the men and women in the tent appeared to divide as long stalks of grass bent in different courses before the high wind that heralds a vicious storm. Already some of the warriors eyed one another speculatively, wondering on whose side they would fight should Tadiqan and Vughturoi come to blows.

Not deigning to look either at her late lord or at Silver Snow, Strong Tongue knelt too. Bound by a common anxiety, they waited. From time to time, water was brought, and they sipped it. Beyond that, there were no white robes, no hired mourners, no elaborate preparations, yet. The warriors gashed their faces, the women waited. The next shan-yu would give whatever orders would be needed.

Hoofbeats rang out, and half the people in the tent surged to their feet. Silver Snow balled her hands into fists and drove her nails into her palms. The colors of the rugs and hangings spun and blurred, and the folds and billows of the tent seemed to heave up and down, threatening to send her toppling onto her face. Even Strong Tongue, despite that weathered skin of hers, turned gray with apprehension.

.But it was one of the boys who hurled himself from the back of his horse into the tent, where he flung himself down— with superb tact, Silver Snow could not help but observe—at a distance precisely between her and her enemy.

“They come, great ladies!” he gasped, his voice cracking with the attempt to sound like a man, though his weapons and the open cuts on his face were his only signs yet of manhood.

“They, child?” Silver Snow asked.

“Which one comes, boy?” demanded Strong Tongue at the same moment.

“Both princes, mighty queens.” The boy glanced from woman to woman, abased himself to both of them indiscriminately, and fled, evidently preferring the threat of actual war to proximity between two silently warring queens.

“I shall greet the new shan-yu declared Strong Tongue, who surged to her feet as if she had not a doubt in the world that Tadiqan her son would arrive first.

How can I bear to watch this race? Silver Snow demanded of herself.

How do I dare not to? She answered herself a moment later, and thought hard of her father’s last battle with the Hsiung-nu. She too would face her fate without flinching, even if it was to fling herself upon the mercy of her sharp little blade. She rose, straightened a back that had gone stiff from a night and a day spent watching beside the dead shan-yu, and walked outside with conscious grace.

Three riders, not two, raced toward the camp. From the east, rode Tadiqan, bow strung at his back, his usual troop trying desperately to catch up to him. At the sight of her son, Strong Tongue stiffened. Her stern face seemed to catch the light of the sun, and she raised her spirit drum, patched, Silver Snow noted, with a strip of darker hide. Quickly she beat out an insistent, imperious rhythm on the drum, and the pace of Tadiqan’s horse quickened. Even from where she stood, Silver Snow could see how low the beast’s head drooped. It stumbled, but a fast, brutal move by its rider forced it to continue.

Silver Snow glanced at Willow, who nodded and slipped away. A fox, or a number of foxes might frighten that troop of horsemen—or serve as easy, casual prey, should they be too slow in going to ground. Then she turned to look at the rider from the west. It was Vughturoi; had he been twice the distance away, even then Silver Snow thought that she would have recognized him. He was accompanied by only one rider, who lay, rather than sat, in the saddle, his arms flung about his mount’s shaggy neck lest he fall.

“Brother,” whispered Sable from where she stood behind Silver Snow.

Vughturoi was lighter than Tadiqan, less of a burden for his horse to bear; and the animal seemed to be fresher. Silver Snow’s eyes filled with tears, and she blinked to dispel them. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Tadiqan’s horse swerve, then stumble. With superb, brutal skill, the prince controlled it and forced it to a pace that was half gallop, half stagger. Again it swerved, as if to avoid something—a fox, perhaps?—in its path, and again it fell. This time, Tadiqan’s skill availed only to let him roll free of the falling horse. He came up running, a sport at which the Hsiung-nu, who were master horsemen, were totally unskilled.

Silver Snow let out a laugh of relief.

“Think you so, daughter}'¹'' Strong Tongue snapped at her. “My son may be no runner, but he is an archer unmatched among the Hsiung-nu.”

Indeed, Tadiqan had strung his bow, was reaching for an arrow; and Silver Snow remembered. Tadiqan had in his quiver some wondrous arrows that shrieked and whistled as they flew. That sound was the command for all of his men to draw and shoot at their master’s target. Should he aim at Vughturoi or his horse, the younger prince was doomed.

“Get down!” Silver Snow’s control broke, and she screamed that. Now it was Strong Tongue’s turn to laugh scornfully, then fall silent as she watched.

A whistle broke that silence, and Silver Snow pressed one hand to her mouth. With the other, she edged her dagger free of its sheath. A cheer rose from Vughturoi’s friends in the camp as their prince made his horse curvet sharply, missing the deadly flight of arrows that followed his half-brother’s shot. That dodge was a fortunate one, Silver Snow thought. How could he continue to evade arrows as swift and as le-thally aimed? He could not, especially not at the pace that he was traveling. He must either dismount or hide; and then Tadiqan would reach the tents first.

Strong Tongue muttered something, and beat a new rhythm on her deadly little drum. The Hsiung-nu gasped in horror and fear, and Silver Snow followed their appalled gazes. A wall of flame, the fear of every grasslander, had sprung up between the camp and Prince Vughturoi. It danced and crackled; about it, the air seemed to be thicker, curdled from the heat of the blaze.

Vughturoi’s horse screamed and reared, panicked, as were all of its kind, by its nearness to fire.

“That fire will burn out of control, sweep across the plains, and wipe out the herds. Even the few beasts that will survive will starve,” Silver Snow shouted at Strong Tongue. “How can you doom the very people whom you want your son to rule?”

Strong Tongue turned to sneer at Silver Snow without ceasing the deadly, insistent rhythm of drumbeats. “Fool,” she said. “That is not real fire, nor will it burn out of my control. It will cease when a living creature touches it. Of course,” she added, “that creature will speedily cease to walk among the living; but we cannot be greedy, now, can we?”

Whatever creature touched that blaze would douse it, and Vughturoi rode in the lead. He would touch the flame and die! Silver Snow lifted up her long skirts and prepared to run down the slope toward the fire, but a fox with glossy fur and a slight limp ran between her and her chosen path, then took that path itself.

Willow, get back! At least Silver Snow preserved enough judgment not to shriek that, though, at the time, she thought that a shriek of rage and despair would assuage her better than a silver cup of icy water at high noon.

A deep, man’s voice echoed that cry: Basich, from his precarious seat on horseback. Even as he saw his lord gallop closer and closer to what appeared to be a wall of true fire, he flogged his horse into one last burst of energy that outstripped that of Prince Vughturoi’s flagging mount and cut across his path. Rather than ride him down, the prince swerved, and Basich drove his horse ever closer and closer toward the wall of fire.

His horse screamed and fought him as they neared the flame. Surely he would not ride the poor beast into the flames, Silver Snow hoped. At the last moment, when it looked as if man and beast would be consumed in the high wall of flames, Basich flung himself from his horse’s back into the fire.

He had time to scream once. The fire rose, then burnt down to nothing, leaving not even a path of charred grass to show where it had passed. His horse ran free, in a wide, wild circle across the plain.

Forsaking the stoic silence that was Hsiung-nu custom, Sable let out a wail of grief. Her knees buckled, and she fell.

“Quick, take her away!” commanded Silver Snow and was obeyed quickly, as queens are obeyed. There would be no marriage arranged now between Willow and Basich; no man to provide for a widowed sister’s children; and a warrior’s children left orphaned. I shall take them under my protection, thought Silver Snow, and knew that thought for one of hope.

In the next instant, she shuddered. What if, even now, Tadiqan shot one of those deadly, screaming arrows of his and struck his younger brother in the back? A shriek of greeting, almost indistinguishable from terror, rose, and Vughturoi’s own guard rode into sight, chasing after the master who had so far outstripped them. Let Tadiqan fire now, and, if he lived, he would rule only over a clan stripped of its warriors.

» He cast his bow down and trudged, head lowered, toward the tents. Twice he almost fell as beasts erupted from hiding in the tall grass to nip at his legs, then flee before he could kick at them or draw weapon.

Up the incline on which the shan-yu 's great tent was pitched rode Vughturoi. At the sight of him, Silver Snow’s knees threatened to go unstrung, as had poor Sable’s, but she forced herself to keep her head high, though her long hair tumbled down her back and had not been combed for a day and a night.

She turned and walked back to her place beside the dead shan-yu. Let Vughturoi find her at his father’s side, as was fitting: Khujanga had been a great ruler and should not be left to lie unaccompanied. Her lips and hands were shaking, and her breath came too fast. She told herself that what she felt was gratitude at her delivery, either from death at her own hand or from degradation at Tadiqan’s more lustful ones.

A murmur of greeting, rather than the usual exuberance of the Hsiung-nu, and the thunder of hundreds of hoofbeats and footsteps heralded Vughturoi’s approach. Covered with dust and travel stains, he walked toward his father’s body, drew his knife, and slashed his cheeks in Hsiung-nu grief. Then he prostrated himself before Khujanga one last time.

When he rose, tears had partially washed away the blood that he had shed. Silver Snow had not known that Hsiung-nu could weep. His wearied eyes met Silver Snow’s briefly and seemed to warm at the sight of her. Immediately she flushed, then went cold. Once again the rugs and hangings seemed to melt into one another, a too-bright, almost-sickening blur of gaudy hues. She flung out a hand to save herself from falling.

“Tend to your lady,” Vughturoi commanded, and Silver Snow felt herself enfolded in a familiar, affectionate embrace: Willow! The maid helped her to rise, and steadied her. Silver Snow wanted only to sleep now, then, perhaps, to wash before she faced what she knew she must now see. Yet clamor outside the tent made her steel herself for what would come next.

“My brother, that laggard, has arrived,” Prince Vughturoi, now the shan-yu , observed. “Let him and his mother approach.”

He turned toward the shan-yu's throne and saw the skull cup resting atop it. “Someone take that thing away and house it safely!” he commanded, and sat down in the seat that was now rightfully his.

When two of his guard hesitated, clearly afraid of what mischief Strong Tongue and her son might yet work, Vughturoi clapped his hands. “Bring them before us!” For the first time he spoke as befitted a ruler, and his warriors hastened to force a path down which Strong Tongue and her son could walk until they faced him.

“Well?” demanded Vughturoi.

Tadiqan flung up his chin, clearly prepared to fight to the death his younger brother’s claim upon his father’s power, until Strong Tongue held up a hand.

“What is it you would have?” she spoke with her old authority as shaman.

“Obedience,” said the shan-yu. He pointed to the carpet on which the shaman stood.

Whispers went up, whispers that Silver Snow could hear, urging him to dispatch his brother and his treacherous dam. In that moment, she too was sorely tempted to speak for Strong Tongue’s death.

“Let His Sacred Majesty think of how much trouble would be spared,” came one whisper, louder than most, from an elder warrior who had long served Khujanga.

“Aye,” muttered Vughturoi. “Yet we have no proof, and our brother’s warriors are too many to be angered or driven away, lest we lose half of our fighting force.”

Again he gestured at the carpets. “Down!” he commanded. “Or our command shall be what it should be, not what it must. To kneel before your shan-yu is a small price to pay for your lives!”

Once again Tadiqan made as if to balk. Once he prostrated himself before his brother, the thing was done, inevitable: any rebellion thereafter would be impiety as well as treason. But Strong Tongue’s hand on his arm forced him first to kneel, then to go to his belly, just as the shaman did.

“Better by far to kill a snake than warm it at your hearth,” murmured Willow. “Come, Elder Sister, and let me care for you.”

Abruptly that suggestion sounded like the most wonderful thing that Silver Snow had ever heard. Even as Vughturoi gave orders for the hearthfires to be rekindled and funeral preparations to be put in hand for his father, she and her maid slipped from the great tent to her own place.

She had bathed, eaten sparingly, and waited, Willow attending her, combing the dust and snarls from her hair until it hung loose down her back like floss-silk. Then she had scented Silver Snow as if for her wedding, and wrapped her in delicate silks that were the hues of peach and apricot. The girl had ever been sparing of words, but tonight her mute patience cut Silver Snow as sharply as Vughturoi’s blade had slashed his face in mourning. Tactfully she sought some way of drawing confidences from her maid, and found none. Thus, she borrowed a tactic from the Hsiung-nu and spoke plainly.

“Sable grieves,” she said flatly. “I thought, earlier today, that the two of you might well have become sisters in truth, that I would have spoken with my lord ...”

But now they both are dead , the old lord who wed me; the young one who might have welcomed you.

Willow shook her head with weary patience. “It was a dream, no more, like the fumes in a fourth cup of wine, Elder Sister. I allowed myself to dream: no more but that.”

“Why should it have been no more?” asked Silver Snow. “And why can it not still be, with ano—”

“Why can it not still be?” cried Willow, interrupting her mistress for the first time in all the years that they had been together. “Can you look at me, look at the leg that would have meant my death had your father not pitied me, and truly ask that?”

Silver Snow shut her eyes, shaking her head in sorrow. “I see only Willow, who is as my sister. And the Hsiung-nu go mounted. There is no lameness when one rides.”

“Elder Sister,” Willow spoke very softly but with utter sternness. “Do you truly think that I would risk bringing into the world a child as blighted as I myself? Do you truly think I could bear to see such a child cast out to die or used as I was? Being weak, I dreamed for a space; and I have paid. Let be.” Silver Snow reached out, took her maid’s hand, and sat thus, silently, as if the two of them scouted by means only of their ears. From time to time she heard a shout of accclaim rise in the great tent. The shouting died away, the feasting with it as the Hsiung-nu sought their own tents, weary after the death-watch and the race of the princes to their father’s side. Still she waited, but Vughturoi did not come.

What would she do if he did not come to her? Nothing in her training had equipped her to seek him out boldly in his own quarters, to confront him with the boldness of Hsiung-nu women. No: she was a lady of Ch’in as well as a queen of the Hsiung-nu; as a lady of Ch’in, she would wait to be summoned or to be visited.

The light slanting into her tent waned, and then it was night. The energy that had sustained her began to fade, and she thought of seeking her bed. Stubbornly, however, she waited. After what seemed to be an eternal period of time, she smiled at a sudden remembrance. Perhaps she would not have to wait or seek out her new lord if he hesitated to claim what was his.

“Bring my lute,” Silver Snow ordered Willow. Putting aside her own melancholy, Willow rose quickly. Silver Snow smiled at the maid’s look of delighted, complicit craft.

How many years ago it seemed that she had mourned in disgrace during her exile to the Cold Palace and had written a song upon leaves that, cast upon the wind, brought her a friend and a new hope. Once again that song must serve. Smiling a little wistfully, Silver Snow plucked the strings of hejr lute and sang:

Ah! There were the footsteps outside her tent, just as she had heard them almost every night of her long wedding journey to the domain of the Hsiung-nu. This night, however, they did not cease outside her tent, but came boldly into its entrance . . . and waited.

“Lady?” Vughturoi might be shan-yu now, but his voice questioned rather than demanded.

Silver Snow walked toward the entrance of the tent.

“This one,” she began, “begs the shan-yu to enter; His Sacred Majesty has no need to question where he may command.”

As Vughturoi entered the tent, she dropped into the prostration that was his due.

“No, lady!” he ordered. “You were queen before ever I was master here. Rise!”

Stubbornly, disobediently, Silver Snow kept her face pressed against the jewel-bright rugs of her domain, gifts from this man’s father, until she felt rough hands upon her shoulders, drawing her upright, standing her upon her feet once more.

“May this one offer you wine?” she murmured.

“Look at me, lady,” Vughturoi ordered.

Thus commanded, of course, she had no choice but to obey. She looked up, meeting his eyes, and felt that same shock of warmth, almost of homecoming that she had known—and suffered shame therefrom—once or twice before when she looked upon him.

“You,” he pointed at Willow. “Out!”

Willow limped out, turning to smile almost impudently at her mistress; and then Silver Snow was quite alone with the prince whom she had summoned to rule over the Hsiung-nu and to be her chosen lord.

“I was riding among our herds,” said the shan-yu, “when a fox yapped at my horse and would not flee. Such is not the nature of the fox kind. Yet I remembered that such a beast had helped us fight the white tiger, and I turned my path aside to join it. Shortly thereafter, I met Basich . . . my . . . my friend.” Vughturoi’s voice almost broke.

Before she knew it, Silver Snow held out her hands to him, offering a comfort that she had not realized that even a warrior lord of the Hsiung-nu might need. He dropped his hands from her shoulders to catch hers.

“He told me of my father’s death, and that you had . . . you had sent for me. So I came, obedient,” he added with a wry grin that made him wince in protest against the pain of his slashed face, “to the queen who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu. Once again you have done so.”

“I have done nothing,” said Silver Snow, “save my duty, I hope.”

He was looking at her, frankly admiring the way that the thin, pale silks clung in this heat to the delicate curves of her body. She shivered, sought for composure, but failed to achieve it. Had she had a heavy overgarment to catch up and throw about herself, even in this heat, she would have done so.

“You are all silence and obedience,” blurted the shan-yu, “and you look as if one gust of wind would carry you back to the Sky which, surely, must have created someone like you. Yet I have seen you confront an Emperor, rescue a lady, and hunt the white tiger. You do not appear to be strong: you bow; you obey; you bend everywhere . . . and nowhere at all. And you summoned me to your side.”

“The people,” said Silver Snow. “Your people, who are nftw mine . . . need a strong ruler.”

“Just now, too, you summoned me with your music as if it were a spell. But you would not speak to me before my father’s body, before my people. Lady, was there, could there be another reason why you called for me?” His words tripped over one another as if he hoped that her answer might be “yes.” His hands tightened, then released, careful of the fragility of the hands within his grasp.

This, Silver Snow knew, was the time for the pretty speeches about spring longings over which the concubines in Ch’ang-an had sighed and giggled. Those speeches seemed to belong to a vanished, long-ago world; she was as incapable of making them as she was of breaking a wild horse. Silently she turned and went to the chest in which, months ago, she had hidden the scent bag that she had worked in silks and fine, soft sable pelts. She walked back over toward Vughturoi, offering him the bag as it rested across her outstretched palms.

He clasped it and the hands that held it in his own scarred fingers. “Remember, I saw such tokens in Ch’ang-an,” he told her.

She cast down her eyes and waited.

“Basich,” Vughturoi said suddenly, with what Silver Snow privately thought was supreme irrelevance. “He leaves his sister with no protector, his children and hers with no provider. I shall take Sable into my tents as a lesser wife.”

His words, Silver Snow decided, were not irrelevant after all; but they were supremely unwelcome.

She must have grimaced in distaste because laughter rumbled in Vughturoi’s voice. “Sable will wait, if she wants a son from me, though. For I shall put no other woman before my queen, who shall ever be my chief wife and bear my eldest son. Do you understand me, lady?”

She nodded, trembling as if with cold, though she felt most wonderfully warmed and comforted. Vughturoi’s eager gaze no longer seemed so frightening. Though it held a knowledge she lacked, she knew that that would not be for long.

“Then say it!” he commanded.

Why did he not simply embrace her and have done with it? Silver Snow thought. The answer was not as simple: though his own people’s law gave him the right to claim her, he chose to respect her, to wait until she chose to yield. He would not want to wait too long, she sensed. Yet it was hard, hard, to know how to give herself.

For a long moment she stared at Vughturoi. Certainly he was not Han, nor was he simply Hsiung-nu: he was himself. That thought carried her over the moment of her surrender.

Silver Snow smiled. “I think,” she spoke carefully, considering every word, “that we have always understood one another reasonably well.”

Vughturoi stepped forward and raised a hand to touch her chin, turning her face up to look into it. He was grieved, wearier by far than she, Silver Snow realized suddenly. She could give him the assurance that, clearly, he sought from her, and let him rest in comfort, or she could continue to play the modest, die-away games of the ladies of Ch’ang-an: she, who had forced herself to courage by remembering that she was queen of the Hsiung-nu.

She smiled and saw his grief and confusion turn to a kind of elation. Boldly now, she met his eyes. Where he was concerned, she was done forever with downcast looks. Gladness swept over her and she shivered the way she did when the wind brushed the grasslands, turning the long blades silver in the spring.

“The shan-yu Khujanga,” she told her new lord, “was more father than mate to me. I shall miss him. But I had no husband, and I had no son. Now, however . . .”

“Now you shall have both,” promised Vughturoi, and drew her against him, holding her close. His arms were very strong, yet she knew that if she wished to break away from him, at least for now, he would grant her freedom. For a time, perhaps; but not forever. And it was not her wish to escape his hold, which was not that of a stranger or an outlander. Vughturoi had been her first advocate, the first of the Hsiung-nu to prefer her to any other princess and a caravan of silks and gefltns. He had been her first friend, her protector on the long, long journey West.

And she had made the scent bag for him. Greatly daring, Silver Snow glanced up. Vughturoi was looking at her again, as he had the night that she had run from the tents, wearing only nightrobes, her hair loose. The silks she wore now felt too hot, yet their caress made her flush and shiver with a kind of secret delight. It was a shared secret, she realized from the glow in Vughturoi’s eyes. Because it abashed her to watch him any longer, she let herself lean against the man who claimed her for his wife, listening to the beat of a heart that, unlike the throb of Strong Tongue’s drum, did not threaten her but promised instead strength and abiding loyalty for all the days to come . . . days that they would share.