“Very interesting,” he said calmly. “Your maid. Is she from—” he paused, then spoke the name of a region of the Middle Kingdom so obscure that Silver Snow remembered hearing it pronounced but once or twice.
Willow, entering with the hot wine, heard him and froze on the threshold, the delicate winecups and flask trembling on the tray that she bore.
“Well, girl, are you?”
Willow dropped to her knees awkwardly, favoring her lame leg. “Yes,” she whispered. Her hands trembled as she set out the wine on the low table.
“Then I take it that you are an herbalist? I too have interests in that direction . . . and in alchemy. ” He flashed mistress and maid a quick, warning look.
Alchemy. Some men said that the study revealed secrets of the Tao that otherwise would be locked away from humankind; others, more fearful and more numerous, held that those secrets were, indeed, proscribed to man. From the study of alchemy to accusations of witchcraft, Silver Snow thought, was but a tiny step, no more than a lady in a new gown and shoes might take crossing a high-arched bridge.
“Be honest with me, as I have been honest with you,” said Li Ling. “Lady, you are my old companion’s youngest child. I mean you only well in your solitude. As for my . . . studies”— he paused delicately—“they, along with music, calligraphy, and poetry”—he bowed at her, a subtle compliment to her verse—“are compensations for what I have lost. I have no heir nor am likely to now. What else can they do but kill me?”
“Mao Yen-shou threatened me with the penalty for grave-robbing.” The words, still painful after all of these months, slipped out with a speed and bitterness that made Silver Snow gasp, wishing that she unsay them. This man—impossible to think of him as one of the posturing, flabby effeminates who surrounded Mao Yen-shou!—his lordly manner and his keen wit drew the entire sorry tale from her before he had finished his first cup of wine, though, in courtesy, she truly should have waited until he had refreshed himself before she spoke.
When the tale was finished, Silver Snow sat quietly. For the first time in months, the tension that had knotted in her belly and tightened her spine after the Administrator of the Inner Court’s theft of the jade armor dissipated. Telling Ling Li had brought its own healing, just as lancing a boil relieved pain and swelling.
“You are indeed your father’s child,” said the old alchemist. “It was not just alchemy for which I was punished. I was your father’s advocate as well as his friend. Do you know, I was there when he was captured? Ah, that was a mighty battle. We would have pursued the Hsiung-nu, but I had no support to follow. Your father set out the crossbowmen. Their aim was so deadly that even the shan-yu himself was forced to dismount and fight on foot. And the Hsiung-nu, without their horses, are but half alive.
“As I said, we followed. Perhaps we were immodest, maddened by the thought of victory. Your father pursued the Hsiung-nu into a narrow valley, determined to wipe them out. That was when they rolled rocks down to block the valley. Thus, your father was trapped within with his men; I without.
“First, your father’s men ran out of arrows. In their haste to escape the valley, they abandoned their supply carts ... a fatal error. Soon they were brought to fighting with axles torn from the carts, with short swords; very quickly, their numbers were reduced. Even had your father been minded to flee, he could not have done so.
“Once the sun went down, your father took desperate measures. He ordered his men to put away the banners and the flags that they had marched behind with such pride. He burned the treasure that the army carried, ordered his troops to disperse, and himself set off with ten men. Two of those died before he surrendered himself to the Hsiung-nu to save the lives of the other eight—and, lady, you would not fear death in the Middle Kingdom had you but seen death as the Hsiung-nu deal it. The bows, the whistling arrows, the knives, cunningly . . . no!
“Your father surrendered to save his troops. And yet, of all those brave soldiers, only four hundred ever escaped.
“I returned to Ch’ang-an, of course, to resign my commission and confess my failure to save my friend, who, I wanted to assure the Son of Heaven, had acquitted himself with courage and dignity. However, I found myself plunged from defeat into scandal and intrigue. Your father’s name and Ancestors were blackened as traitors. I pleaded; all the spirits of my own house know how I pleaded. The fact,” he added with a glance at her, “that you are alive for me to repeat this story is proof of how well I pled. Yet, when the great fears of witchcraft arose, as they do every few years, my defense of a man who now rode with the Hsiung-nu was remembered; and my name and manhood paid the forfeit of my loyalty.
“After such a life, lady, can you truly fear that I would ever mean harm to you and yours?”
Silver Snow shook her head, moved past speech.
“Then let me be your friend. You are in exile from your home. I, too, am in a kind of exile; I miss the honor that once I had. That unfortunate day of the presentation of the pictures, when the Son of Heaven summoned me, was the first time for many sorrowful years. Your father would want you to study, and there is much that I can teach. Will you accept me as a friend?”
Her eyes bright with admiration at the story of her father’s valor, Silver Snow did not answer for a moment. For a few precious moments, Li Ling’s story had freed Silver Snow from the confinement of the Cold Palace, released her from the constraints of the Inner Courts, set her free to wander, in her imagination, the lands that she had gazed at for all of her girlhood. There too the freedom that she sought was walled away from her. Though her father had had the freedom of the steppes, yet he too had not been free. She sighed deeply.
Sorrow and disappointment flickered on Li Ling’s face, and he began to rise.
She held out a hand, daring to restrain him. If he left, she would never again have company, and, once again, she would retreat into the hateful cocoon of the Shadowed One. She would rather die than do that—or would she? Li Ling had not. Her father had not.
Neither would she.
She raised her eyes and realized that she had kept the scholar waiting too long for his answer. Both of them were prisoners, suffering shame and loneliness. She would not start this new friendship with more hurt. She smiled, nodded, and poured him some more rice wine.
“Wonderful!” cried Li Ling. “Your lessons—and yours too, little changeling—will begin immediately.” And this time his smile included Willow.
9
All that summer, laughter and music, not leaves inscribed with grieving verse, floated over the wall of the Cold Palace as Silver Snow, Willow, and Li Ling—three exiles from what might well have been rich, satisfying lives— shared their talents and memories.
“The most estimable Li Ling has deigned to seek this unworthy one out,” wrote Silver Snow, her brushstrokes sure and delicate, “and has taught her many things. He presents his duty to you and humbly asks that this one remember him to you . . .”
She could write with a tranquil heart to her father now and, thanks to Li Ling, be certain of the delivery of her letter. In fact, she could almost smile when she looked back at the torments of rebellion and regret that she had suffered during her entry to the Inner Courts and her banishment to the Cold Palace. The court, which she had hoped would be the instrument of her freedom and her father’s pardon, had turned out to be a snare; the Cold Palace, which had seemed like worse exile to her than the western frontier might have been for that absurd Lady Lilac, now brought her quiet, learning, even peace and freedom of a sort.
True, her physical being was restricted to the pavilions, and they were no better kept, no warmer, than they had been the previous winter. They were, however, no worse than the courtyards of her lost northern home; and now they contained a treasure that meant more to her than any warmth of brazier or luxury of gem and screen. Above them, her mind ranged afar, as if she finally had crossed the Purple Barrier and now rode free upon grassland and steppe.