Imperial Lady (Central Asia Series Book 1)

by Andre Norton

  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 mistress, 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 thing 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!”

  CHAPTER 18

  Spring yielded to summer on the grasslands, which grew greener and more lush; ewes dropped their lambs, and the flocks prospered; the great herds of horses grew sleek once again, and even the camels thrived, their doubled humps ever swelling, a sign of ample food and water. The Hsiung-nu rode as pleased hearts and minds across the immensity of the plains that stretched out so far below the impossibly huge, impossibly distant horizon where shadowy mountains reared up until their snow-crested peaks were indistinguishable from the clouds that clustered there, but nowhere else in the sky.

  Against such vastness, even a clan the size of the royal clan with its huge herds seemed no more than a trail of ants, following its leader across a piece of jade. Silver Snow’s eyes became accustomed to the sun and to the vastness of the land; she could barely remember the times when an ordinary day’s ride had left her exhausted and sore. Day after day, the Hsiung-nu rode, but they drew no closer to the mountains where, by now, snow was melting from the living ice and flowing down to the fields, making them green and rich.

  They were like ants, Silver Snow thought, walking across not a piece of jade, but across a drum. The game was to pass by in silence, lest the drum rumble and expose them to discovery. All that spring and well into summer, she had the sensation that she had had years ago in the North before a storm: the sky might be clear and the winds mild, but hints of thunder flickered along her nerves the way that the grass bent before the breath of the wind.

  Spring was fair, summer fairer still. Very often the warriors rode out to tend the herds, leaving the tents themselves in the charge of the oldest men and the women. Yet, if Vughturoi was absent, so too was Tadiqan. That was a fair trade, and the way that the shan-yu Khujanga had welcomed his younger son made it fairer still in Silver Snow’s eyes. Always, she took care to keep her eyes down, a contrast to the Hsiung-nu women, who looked where and at whom they would, and even to her earlier behavior, before she realized why she had wrought a scent bag of fine Hsiung-nu sables and elegant Ch’in perfumes, now buried far beneath her heaviest robes.

  For hours at a time, Silver Snow might ride, work, and live in contentment, to be jolted back to awareness of jeopardy by a glower or an accusation of neglect from Strong Tongue, who had many adherents among the elder women who ruled the great tents. Still, if Strong Tongue had her partisans, so did Silver Snow, and she was happy when she realized that their number waxed day after day.

  She had all but forgotten that she had never received a reply to that first message she had sent out in such urgency and fear with Basich. Gradually she came to accept that if Basich had not perished under the claws and fangs of the white tiger, he must have died of exposure and the letter been lost. That acceptance helped her to comfort Sable, who boasted of her hardihood, that she could not grieve over what was fated to be, yet who mourned all the more passionately for her inability to lament publicly. Quite often Willow sat with her, easing her grief by her silent calm, in the fashion that wild beasts tend one another by their presence alone.

  Was Silver Snow alone in perceiving summer to be a time of calm between storms that rose like the brief, ferocious rain squalls that pounded down from the heights? Such storms brought water to the fields, and thus were welcome; yet, if the

  fields were dry, such storms also brought lightning and the threat of fires that the wind would drive howling across the grasslands, as hungry, free, and violent as the Hsiung-nu themselves, but disastrously more fleet.

  For the first time, Silver Snow truly understood how sacred fire was to the Hsiung-nu. In the winter, fire had to be guarded because it cooked their meals and warmed their yurts; in the summer, it must be restrained lest it devour them. Silver Snow heard tales of the Hu far to the west, who thought of fire as a demon. Barbarians they might be, but understanding
the Hsiung-nu’s fear of flame in the grasslands, she could sympathize with their belief.

  Still, Khujanga thrived. Strong Tongue’s full hostility seemed to have subsided, yet Silver Snow retained that sensation of a drumhead about to sound out the cadence of a huge pulse, or of a beast—say, a white tiger—crouching to await its tiny prey’s first unwary movement.

  Sunlight more richly golden and opulent than the lung, or dragon, embroidery on an Emperor’s robes slanted down on the royal clan’s camp. It thrust its gleaming talons into the shan-yu’s great tent, drawing new splendor from the tumble of rugs and cushions within, and reducing the hearthfire, smoldering imprisoned in its brazier, to seem like no more than a few sullen sparks. Because the day had been so fair, Silver Snow had commanded some of her women to drag rugs and cushions to the flap of the tent, that she and the shan-yu might gaze out over the land as they waited for the evening meal.

  Voices raised from within the great tent told her that Willow had entered, to take over Silver Snow’s share of the cooking and, just incidentally, to ensure that Strong Tongue had no opportunity to add harmful herbs and leaves to the meal. From behind the tent came the faint piping of a bamboo flute, played, no doubt, by some child free, just for the moment, from the tasks that children on the grasslands learned to perform almost as soon as they could walk or ride. The wind caught up the song, and it blended, poignant, bittersweet, with the strings of Silver Snow’s lute, and her soft, high voice.

  The old shan-yu smiled. For the moment, Silver Snow’s heart was high within her. The old man beside her was called husband, not father; yet, in easing these past months, was she not performing obedient service, as befitted a woman raised in the reverend traditions of Confucius?

  The wind blew a descant to her song and brought her the smells of her new home: pungent horses, the dust of the plains, and the tantalizing scents of cooking meat, seasoned with condiments that came from her own supplies.