“Take off your outer coat,” hissed Lilac, that odd, fearful quaver in her voice.
Following the elder woman’s example, Silver Snow let the heavy sheepskin robes fall from her shoulders. Willow bent to retrieve them, but “leave them, girl!” ordered the eunuch, and led them farther inside the pavilion.
There, a finely carved draughts-board and a tray of delicacies lay forgotten on a low table at his side. An artist’s paints and silks were neatly arranged where they might easily be picked up; and the Minister of Selection, the Son of Heaven’s Administrator of the Inner Courts, Mao Yen-shou, reclined on a silk-cushioned low seat.
“Bow deeply,” whispered Lilac, who had already dropped down in the first head-knocking kowtow that Silver Snow had ever actually seen performed. Quickly she imitated Lilac, but not before her quick, appraising glance had taken in this man too.
He was a veritable eunuch among eunuchs. Where the eunuchs who had met and conducted her from her cart had been plump and sleek, this man resembled a ripe plum, even to the sheen of the silken embroideries of his garments. His flesh was pale and better kept than Silver Snow’s own; and his eyes, made even more narrow by cheeks as round as white melons, gleamed like jet, and flickered with intelligent speculation: the quick, appraising eye of the artist—or the courtier.
They glistened as they gazed at Silver Snow, who found herself rising from her humble posture to meet them, much as a bird stares into the eyes of a hungry serpent. He nodded once and pursed red lips, as if aware that the young woman who knelt before him was something other than the docile bud that she tried so hard to appear to be.
He extended one beautifully kept hand to a box that lay on the floor at his feet. Impossible, Silver Snow thought, that a man’s hand would be that small, that well-tended, or that free of scars. Though Mao Yen-shou was an artist, not even a smudge of paint or ink defiled the white cleanliness of hands that, clearly, had never felt honest labor of any sort.
“Let us see this lady’s dowry,” Mao Yen-shou spoke for the first time. Silver Snow felt herself grow hot at the insult he set upon her. No welcome; no greeting. Simply “let us see your dowry.” He would not even use his own soft hands, she thought, to inspect the gifts that her father had starved himself to provide.
Yet what a cultivated voice the artist had! High-pitched, beautifully modulated, it was as beyond courtesy as it was beyond ugliness: unthinkable, its accents seemed to imply, that such a voice, or its possessor, could do aught that was incorrect or unfair, or even subject to criticism by lesser mortals—such as a very young, very frightened, and very innocent young woman.
“And this lady is . . . ?” the voice asked, its self-conscious musicality pretending to conceal a yawn. He knows my name! Silver Snow was sure of it. Her fingers curled beneath her hanging sleeves, so much narrower, she realized now, than Lady Lilac’s or those fluttering from the shoulders of the ladies who had stared and whispered as she passed. Surely even the serving girls who had helped to unload her parcels wore finer robes than she had donned for this most important meeting.
“Lady Silver Snow,” replied the younger eunuch, com-plicit amusement in his voice, which attempted to mimic the melody of his master’s speech.
“Ah yes,” yawned Mao Yen-shou. “Old Chao Kuang’s daughter. The traitor.”
Tears of anger and humiliation welled into her eyes, and she dropped her head, unwilling to betray her sorrow; but not before she saw the triumph in the eunuch’s eyes. He had tried to goad her, and he had succeeded. She blinked furiously and determined that she would not be caught in such a snare again.
“Well, let us see if the North can provide the Son of Heaven with his due. Open the chests. Greetings, Lilac,” he added as an afterthought.
Lilac rose from her own prostration and began, her voice shaken from the hauteur that had so affronted Silver Snow, to babble greetings and thanks.
“You may go. I am certain that you will be glad to see your own courtyard again . . . and what it now contains.”
Lilac left the room with a speed of which Silver Snow would personally thought the woman incapable.
“You, lady You may be seated. Fetch cushions for this . . . lady,” ordered Mao Yen-shou. “And perhaps rice wine. No? No wine? Bring almond cakes too. And litchi. You must try lijtchi now that you have come to Ch’ang-an.”
The cushions were more luxurious than any that she had ever dreamed of, much less touched. Silver Snow perforce accepted rice wine, but merely touched her lips to the rim of her bowl when it came. She shook her head at the cakes, which Mao Yen-shou ate with relish, but with never a crumb falling upon his sable collar or satined belly. At his insistence, she tasted litchi, and when she wrinkled her nose at its unfamiliar taste, Mao Yen-shou laughed uproariously, and clapped his hands for a servant to take the fruit from her.
“Take a cake instead,” he ordered, and watched until, reluctantly, she did. “You are an original, lady; that let me tell you!” he said, leaning forward with a rustle of straining fabric.
If that silk splits, Silver Snow thought in fascination, I can take my sash, go to one of those trees in the courtyard, and hang myself from the nearest branch. She forced herself to look away.
“Most Estimable Administrator, the silk and gold appear all to be in order,” said the younger eunuch.
“Splendid, splendid,” approved Mao Yen-shou. He snatched up a peach, took a quick, dripping bite from it, and then tossed it to the other. “Tell them we want more cakes, then sit with me.”
“Now, little lady from the North. Well for you that your father is as obtusely honest as I thought. He has stinted you in nothing except, perhaps, the matter of dress.” Mao Yen-shou gestured contemptuously at the silvery, antique brocade that Silver Snow had thought so lovely only a month ago when she found it in her mother’s chests. “Most likely, after half a lifetime and a marriage on the steppes, he forgets how important such things are to ladies. But we can contrive, I tell you; we can contrive.”
A plump hand went swiftly from the empty tray of sweets to a chest of gold, deft fingers gliding across the heavy, gleaming metal.
Like a fish jumping in a pool, fear leapt across the surface of Silver Snow’s thoughts, then submerged. The gold and tribute silk were for the Son of Heaven; surely the Emperor’s minister would not think of misappropriating them.
Mao Yen-shou laughed. “An honest child!” he commended her, and she flushed, finding that his praise made her feel more helpless and more unschooled than had his rudeness. At least that had let her use anger to protect herself. “Doubtless, where other maids learn flute and drum, old Chao Kuang insisted that his daughter study only the Analects. Come with me to the window, child, and see on what your dowry will be spent.”
Having no choice, Silver Snow followed the Administrator across the room, the last almond cake that she had taken sticking to her hand. As she passed Willow, however, she let it fall into the girl’s lap. Quickly, the serving girl snapped it up, and Mao Yen-shou laughed.
“I was not supposed to see that, was I, lady? But come: I shall show you something more worth looking at. ”
He led her to the window and pointed to the Inner Courts of which he was the master. Even in the winter, servants set out silken flowers and the women’s orchestra played from a boat that floated in a lake in the center of one impossibly huge court. Individual pavilions glittered with gold and jade and polished wood; gem-bright were the joining of the paving-stones, but not as bright as the ladies who fluttered by in their gauzy jackets and skirts or long, flowing robes.
Mao Yen-shou sighed. “It has been too long since these courts rang with music and laughter. I have created beauty here, beauty as a fit setting for beauty. But the Son of Heaven rarely walks herein; too many ladies, says he. He still misses the Bright Companion.” In a move as quick as it was unexpected, he turned away from the window and the beauty of the Inner Courts, and walked back into the room. Whatever Silver Snow had expected, she had not expected such an important official to be so mercurial.