Before her stood the Son of Heaven himself, a quiet, moody man who seemed to want her to remain with him. Silver Snow thought that she had made her last throw, but now she saw that yet another throw remained in the game.
She considered it. What if she remained? What would happen to the peace that the Son of Heaven and these Hsiung-nu had just forged? It would be shattered, of course. How long would any such agreement with barbarians last? That was a question she knew that she had to ask. But if she went out to the plains, perhaps it might last for years.
They are not barbarians! she remembered her father’s words.
Well then, what of the men of Ch’in? How long might she expect the Son of Heaven’s favor to last, especially were she to become the cause of a war? He was shifting, changeable, unlike the Hsiung-nu who now confronted him.
“Let us give you another princess, and we will offer you more gold, more jade and silk ...” The eagerness in the Son of Heaven’s voice cut deeply.
“Offer us another princess,” said the Hsiung-nu, “and we shall offer you war!”
The Emperor turned to her, the look of a man whom fate had driven to his limits. “What would you, lady?” he asked, and it was almost pleading.
“This one begs His Most Sacred Majesty to consider the health of the Middle Kingdom, which is our Mother,” she whispered. Tears gushed into her eyes, as she spoke to condemn herself to exile. “This one is nothing beside that.”
“We will give you her weight in gold and pearls!” cried the Son of Heaven, and desperation quivered in his voice.
The Hsiung-nu folded arms across their chests and did not bother to speak. Slowly, the Son of Heaven sank back onto the Dragon Throne. He gestured halfheartedly, and Li Ling was at his side, whispering as the Hsiung-nu grumbled among themselves. Silver Snow knew that the eunuch was trying to convince the Emperor that no woman was worth a war.
“But how will she live out there, among barbarians?” She heard the question, not of an Emperor, but of an anguished man who wished to accord her a protection that she had never known before. She did not know whether to laugh or to rage. Having the right to do neither in the Emperor’s presence, she kept her face expressionless as Li Ling assured the Son of Heaven of her strength, her vitality, her knowledge of the language and some customs of the Hsiung-nu.
“I had forgotten,” came the Son of Heaven’s words, pitched just loudly enough that she could hear them. “This lady speaks the tongue of the Hsiung-nu, and writes, do you say? She writes to her father?”
Li Ling bowed his assent.
“Then, she shall write you too, and I shall read those letters; that much, at the very least, I shall have of her!” the Son of Heaven concluded. “I shall read her letters to her father, and his to her. Thus let it be done,” commanded the Emperor.
Li Ling bowed and left the hall. Silver Snow stood alone, facing the Son of Heaven, terribly conscious of the Hsiung-nu who still observed her as if she were a horse that, after spirited bargaining, they had contrived to buy. Or to steal. The old man bowed and left the hall, and the Emperor Yuan Ti assured the Hsiung-nu that Silver Snow could leave whenever they were prepared.
“The lady,” the young man called Vughturoi gave her title a small, wry stress, “must travel rapidly and with a minimum of companions. She may have her own traveling carriage and a donkey. If she proves able to ride, we may also provide her with a horse.”
For a moment Silver Snow knew anger and embarrassment: did these Hsiung-nu think that she was such a paltry creature that they would not sully the back of one of their horses to carry her? Or did they simply think that she was soft? Despising them, she decided at that moment, could harm her; she must win their respect. Thus, when the information was relayed to her, she nodded.
“I will need no companions beside Willow,” she said. “I came to Ch’ang-an with her, and I will not be parted from her now. That way, I shall require no court ladies, which, I am certain, will reassure all of them.”
She could imagine Lilac accompanying her on this journey, and her ears ached with even the thought of that much weeping and whining.
“That is as well,” said Vughturoi. “The grasslands in winter are no place for sheltered ladies.” Silver Snow did not think that she had imagined the disdain in his voice for such soft, frail creatures. “I shall send riders ahead to summon wives and daughters of our horde to greet and serve the princess.”
Vughturoi raised his head and kept his eyes fixed on a point behind Silver Snow’s shoulder. For the first time Silver Snow quailed inwardly as she wondered what those wives and daughters would make of her. Would they be kinswomen of the shan-yu , forced to yield precedence to a woman of the Middle Kingdom, which had been their enemy for as long as they could remember? For that matter, what of this guide of hers, this Vughturoi? He was said to be a son of the old man who would be—she suppressed a shiver—her husband. Was his mother still alive? What would such a woman do, if the shan-yu required her to call a young woman of Ch’in “elder sister”?
Silver Snow had suffered enough from the spite of the concubines in the Inner Courts to fear that. It was said that the women of the grasslands had much more freedom. Would that freedom of theirs be license to abuse the stranger in their midst?
“I am well content,” she ventured to say to the Hsiung-nu prince. No die-away voice, no overly polite “this one”: those were manners she would leave in Ch’ang-an, like baggage abandoned along the line of march. She would, she thought, be abandoning a great deal more—and she doubted that she would regret it.
Silver Snow gazed about the hall that she knew she would never see again. What was more, she knew that she did not care.
“When will we depart?” she asked.
“It is summer now,” Vughturoi replied, although he gave the impression that he did her a great favor by speaking with her directly. “We have the journey from here to the Wall. But from there to our grasslands where my father the shan-yu holds court is another three months. It would be well to finish our journey before the worst of the winter storms.”
Silver Snow contrived to look unconcerned. A slight cough behind her, which she identified as coming from Li Ling, told her that she was holding her own. Keep your own counsel; never show weakness before these people , she warned herself. You must ever be on guard.
Her father had lived thus among them; so too would she.
“Lady,” whispered Yuan Ti. Silver Snow ventured to meet the Son of Heaven’s eyes, which glistened with more than interest in her journey. “Will you truly do this thing?”
It was her last chance, she thought. If, truly, she did not desire this journey, she had only to say so, and he would keep her in the Inner Courts, or, better yet, by his side. That was a fate that any lady in Ch’in would envy. Yet, if he did so, he would throw away a treaty and involve the Middle Kingdom in war once again, war such as had swept her father and Li Ling almost into ruin. No woman was worth that; and no man, be he general, prince, or Son of Heaven, ought to decide otherwise.
Yuan Ti was a man of strange decisions and passions, Silver Snow decided. At one moment, he wanted to banish her; in the next, he would incite a war to keep her. He turned on his advisors like Mao Yen-shou, then rewarded those whom he had turned on—like her father.
Silver Snow glanced at the rigid, unyielding Hsiung-nu. She rather thought that she would take her chances among them.
“This one, as always, is obedient to your commands,” she told the Emperor. “But if she were permitted her own will, she would act as would best serve the Son of Heaven, who has done her the unutterable honor to make her a princess of Ch’in, the Middle Kingdom, and her father. To this one’s weak mind, desolate as she is to admit it, she might serve best as the shan-yu s first wife.”