“No use standing there in the draft all day, lady. Come back to your seat.” To her surprise, he waited until she seated herself on the cushions. Then he picked up a brush.
“The Son of Heaven has told me that he will not have five hiyidred ladies paraded before the Dragon Throne. No: he has commissioned me to paint the likeness of each lady.” He fell silent, and the silence continued so long that Silver Snow knew that he wanted some reply from her. She had seen a cat stalking mice more than once; was she now the mouse in some strange game?
“An honor,” Silver Snow commented demurely.
The eunuch cast down his eyes in a fine imitation of her own mock-modesty, then smiled. “A heavy burden for one no longer young. So many ladies; all young; all fair. How should I favor one above the other? And yet, art is such a matter of chance. One slip of the brush, and the loveliest lady can be rendered plain; a touch of paint here, and see, the palest girl glows like a peony. And all lies within my hands to flatter or to blight. Lady, you are not in the common way It would take a great artist to accent your good points ...”
“And you are such a one?” she asked. Color flamed in her cheeks; surely she was not the pallid maid whom he spoke of having to beautify. “Alas,” she said with some asperity, “this girl is but a poor maid, and a modest one. How should she dare to have one such as the Son of Heaven esteem her own insignificant looks as more than they are?”
She raised her eyebrows at the eunuch and saw him flush with anger. Behind her and to the side, she heard Willow shift on her knees, making ready in case her mistress should need her.
“You have remarked on how poor the North is, and spoken of my lord and father’s misfortunes.” Once again, iron edged her words. “We are very honest in the North, but we are poor. Too poor to give such great artists their deserts.”
“But if you were to wish such artists well, lady ...” Mao Yen-shou smiled. He was enjoying his little game, Silver Snow thought indignantly. He knew she had no money to bribe him, but he enjoyed her struggles and her embarrassment. “It is not true, as some say, that we of the Inner Courts cannot love; and we are loyal to those who wish us well. To those who do not ...”
She thought of the official who had spoken to her of well-wishers and how he had prophesied that she was too blunt-spoken to be in a position to benefit any man by her good wishes. How true his words were.
Silver Snow’s eyes blazed; and this time, she let the eunuch see it. “I have no gifts to give, and no prospects, sir,” she told Mao Yen-shou. “And even if I had ...”
“Is that your last word, lady?” asked the artist. “Bring in the other chests!” he called.
Four men staggered into the room, each pair carrying the chests that Silver Snow had last seen in her father’s room, the chests that held two suits of jade armor, the gifts intended to make an old lord’s peace with his Emperor.
“You say that you have no gifts, no wealth. Lady, what are these?” demanded Mao Yen-shou.
7
Though Silver Snow had met poverty, betrayal, and battle without flinching, this ambush in the midst of luxury left her speechless. She opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. Her hands, concealed in the fraying sleeves of her robe, balled into tiny fists, then, deliberately, loosened. They were as cold as ever they had been in the long days and nights of her journey.
Slowly and with an immense settling of flesh about him, Mao Yen-shou lowered himself to his knees beside one of the chests.
“Stupid one!” he told the younger eunuch. “Am I to labor like a fieldworker? Open this at once!”
“Open the chest!” His companion clapped his hands at Willow who rose painfully, cast a despairing glance at Silver Snow, and then lifted the lid of the larger chest to expose the funeral armor of jade plates, gleaming in the light. Simple and severe in the style of a much earlier age, nevertheless, the armor had its own splendor, which fitted well in this room of high pillars and inlaid walls.
“You have no gifts to give, lady?” repeated Mao Yen-shou. He ran one hand over the faceplates of the armor, almost purring with pleasure at the jade’s cold smoothness. “My servants found these . . . what do you call these trinkets . . . hidden amid your baggage.”
At last, Silver Snow recovered her powers of speech. “That is an heirloom of this one’s house,” she said, her voice calm despite the rage and fear that made her heart feel as if it might burst through her breast. “This one’s father commanded that it be presented to the Son of Heaven ...”
“On what might be considered your wedding night? How sentimental, and how dutiful,” said the eunuch. “But before you can celebrate that happy occasion, you must first win the Son of Heaven’s attention. And his attention must be won through me.”
“I told you,” snapped Silver Snow, abandoning the careful proprieties of formal speech, “the armor is my father’s gift to the Son of Heaven. I myself have no gifts to give. Can you not believe that? Look at me. Do I glitter with gems? Are my robes in the fashion of the court? We are poor in the North. But . . .”
Willow hissed, but Silver Snow was too angry to pay heed to her. “I tell you, Master Artist, had I gifts to give, I would not give them to such a one who seeks to exact them by trickery and threats.”
Despite his immense bulk, Mao Yen-shou rose so quickly that Silver Snow was left kneeling on the floor. He towered over her, attempting to intimidate by his very height.
“Noble words, lady, for one who should not dare to boast. A gift, you call this; an heirloom. How if I say otherwise?” “What else can be said?” demanded Silver Snow.
“Elder Sister,” hissed Willow, “hush, I beg you!”
Willow! Silver Snow felt herself chill with concern, but not for herself. For the first time in her life, she regretted her inability to take refuge in tears or swoons, then despised herself for the weakness. She had Willow to protect! She gestured, and the maid scuttled back into the corner in which she had hidden herself. Silver Snow only hoped that Willow— with her unnaturally black hair and her limp, so grotesque in this magnificent room—would pass unnoticed; but Mao Yen-Shou was as skilled an artist as he was greedy. He could not help but notice her.
“Lady,” said the eunuch, menace chill in that supple, exquisite voice of his, “do you persist in your claim that these suits of funerary armor are an heirloom?”
“My father says,” Silver Snow knew that she was faltering, but fought hopelessly on, “that they have always belonged to his house and that they are fit only for a Son of Heaven and his First Wife.”
“Would you swear, then, that they were never used?”
“On my Ancestors!” Silver Snow’s indignant voice echoed in the room.
“Then how—Wang Lu, be you my witness to this—do you explain these Mao Yen-shou swooped down and opened his hand beneath Silver Snow’s nose.
There on his palm lay three teeth, broken and yellowed as if with age.
Silver Snow glanced up, confused at the sight of the teeth and the triumph that gleamed on the artist’s florid, sweaty face.
“Lady, lady, if these suits had never been used, as you swear, how would I have found these teeth in one of them?” Mao Yen-shou was actor, then, as well as artist; the disgust and horror on his face, the revulsion in his voice were so well-crafted that, for a mad instant, Silver Snow was all but convinced that she indeed was a violator of her Ancestors’ tombs.