The eunuch shook his head, smiling. “Yet, like you, I think that you will be. Especially if it can be contrived that the worthy Mao Yen-shou can be summoned elsewhere.”
He glanced aside at Willow. “And you, child?”
Willow bowed, expressing in the dip of her head her complete willingness to follow Silver Snow wherever she walked or rode. Among the Hsiung-nu, Silver Snow recalled, there were some women who possessed powers more than those granted to normal beings. Perhaps Willow, crippled leg or not, might not be as out of place among them as she was in the Inner Courts of Ch’ang-an where the only things for which a woman might gain notice were physical beauty and grace.
Once again, Li Ling sat in the Cold Palace, drinking rice wine in a rare celebration. Now, he had roused from his usual, disciplined quiet as he described how Mao Yen-shou’s chief assistant had brought out the portraits, bowed, and had to be hauled upright, so much weight had he gained in the past year.
“And then the Son of Heaven looked through the pictures, rapidly, as if he well knew what he wished to see. When he came to your picture, ‘That one!’ he waved at it. And may she bring the Hsiung-nu luck, with her black mole.’
“Do you know,” Li Ling added, “you might just do that too?”
“She will,” whispered Willow.
Silver Snow darted a quick glance at her. For a moment, Willow had gone utterly pale, and her eyes stared not at her friend and mistress but through them. Then she shivered and seemed to wake from whatever trance she had entered.
“What did you say, Willow?” Li Ling pressed her gently.
“I, noble lord?” asked Willow. “How should I speak before I am invited to? I said nothing.”
“The Hsiung-nu believe that you may be auspicious,” Li Ling explained.
Their—what must Silver Snow call them?—priests?— though, surely, the Hsiung-nu could have nothing that civilized—had sacrificed a sheep, scrutinized its scapular bones, and decreed that the Lady Silver Snow, beloved “daughter” of the Emperor, was an auspicious choice of wife for Khujanga, shan-yu of the hordes.
In her new status as cherished child of the Son of Heaven, Silver Snow was not suffered to remain in the Cold Palace. Servants, as obsequious now in their eagerness to please as they had previously been arrogant, moved her few belongings and brought new, rich clothing and lavish screens into the vast, well-lit chamber to which she had been assigned. It might, she thought, be the last time that she ever lived beneath a fixed roof, for they said that the Hsiung-nu hated such confinement, living in felt tents that could be taken down and put up as they moved from winter quarters to summer pastures.
To her amusement, visitors came to bow to her like a flock of butterflies about a particularly splendid flower. She was in favor; and they constructed their lives upon serving whoever was in favor. Besides, she suspected, they wanted to study her and perhaps to gloat if she showed signs of terror or flinching.
“It is like the weak,” Willow remarked sardonically, after the flock had fluttered itself out of the courtyard, “ever to savor the misfortunes of their betters.”
“Hush, Willow.” Silver Snow had forced herself not even to smile at that sally, though she had to admit that it was true.
Even Lady Lilac—whom Silver Snow knew had disliked her and whom she hoped had forgotten her (and far, far better thus!)—came, weeping over her former charge, trying to gain her confidence.
“Lady,” the girl broke in on one of her more overwrought laments, “you know how vulgarly hardy I am, how ill-suited to the Inner Courts. My father lived quite well among the Hsiung-nu as a prisoner, and so, I think, can I. I shall be the precious consort of the shan-yu himself; I cannot think that they will mistreat me.”
That tiny barb, she thought later, might be unworthy of hef, but it had been quite irresistible.
As the day when Silver Snow must leave the Inner Courts, step into the specially built traveling chariot, and ride out from one of the western gates of Ch’ang-an, drew closer, she found herself regarding the journey as an adventure. Not so, however, the ladies who had been ordered to attend her. (To Lilac’s immense relief, she was not among them.) Already, they wailed as if they went to their own funerals.
Would they survive the journey? Although the Hsiung-yu prince who would conduct his father’s bride to the grasslands had vowed that they would be turned back at the border, would he keep his word? Time and again they wept over those questions, despite Silver Snow’s assurances that she would ride on alone with the Hsiung-nu and whatever ladies they had brought to meet her. She would, after all, have Willow at her back. (As always, the ladies pursed their painted lips when she mentioned her club-footed maid.) She could not think of such a journey, such a total alteration of the fabric of her life, without her faithful Willow.
Finally the day came when Silver Snow sat dressed in robes so rich and so heavy that she hardly dared to move, awaiting her summons to the throne room. In that same room where she had once spied upon her own disgrace, Silver Snow must, in her role as dutiful child to the Son of Heaven, bid farewell to her “father” whom she had journeyed from the North to see, but had never met.
She glanced into the mirror that Willow held for her.
“Ah, that eunuch, that Mao Yen-shou, will burst from sheer mortification, Elder Sister!” The maid smiled, and her teeth were very white and sharp. “How is it that he could not prevent this meeting?”
“Li Ling may have been stripped of his armies,” Silver Snow replied, “but he is still a far better general than the Master of the Inner Courts.”
“Ah, lady, the instant that the Son of Heaven sees you, he will know that you are not the homely creature of that fat thiefs portrait.”
“Perhaps the artist thinks that the Emperor will not look beyond the painting to the woman. After all, the headdress that I shall be wearing is very heavy.”
“Then it is for you to make him look!” stated Willow.
“For what purpose, child? I leave Ch’ang-an as I left my father’s house: never to return.”
“For revenge!” Willow almost spat.
But Silver Snow shook her head. “I have no need of revenge,” she said.
“You shall have it!” Willow cried. “The Son of Heaven will fear that you are too plain for even the Hsiung-nu to accept as a bride. Let him just look upon you, and behold what he will see!”
Once again, Willow offered the mirror to Silver Snow. In it, she saw several kinds of truth. One such truth was her own beauty. Another was her own nature; she was the daughter of a soldier, raised hardily in the North. Such a one could not easily forgo vengeance, no matter what sort of wise sayings she might mouth.
“Yet,” she admitted, “I would like to clear my father’s name, even though, by my adoption and marriage”—she shivered, despite the weight of silk that pressed down upon her— “he gains great face. It is not the same, however.”
Willow shrugged, clearly and silently expressing her impatience with such line distinctions. Then, just as she bent with infinite delicacy to straighten Silver Snow’s headdress, the summons came. Surrounded by ladies and a guard of honor, Silver Snow was borne away to the throne room.
Slowly, impressively, Silver Snow entered. Suddenly her knees felt like ice thrown into boiling water; she thought that her bones might spin, melt, and cast her down. Her headdress was so heavy that, perforce, she kept her head down for fear of breaking her neck if not of being thought overly bold. And, thanks to the fringe of her headdress, strands of pearls swinging and chiming sweetly against her brow, Silver Snow kept her eyelids lowered too, like a proper modest maid and not a woman come to do battle for her house and for her future.