“They were eager enough to accept those that the Son of Heaven sent to this shan-yu, and they will be glad, I make no doubt, of those that you bring in your dowry. These are simple, robust people. Let them see you shine out like the sun and the moon, and they will respect you the more.”
Willow held out Silver Snow’s finest cloak, a magnificent thing of soft brown sable, under which she wore the red robe of a bride. When the call came, she left her tent, gathering her robes about her with more care than she had shown at any other time during the months of their journey to the court of the shan-yu. Behind her, Sable and Bronze Mirror gasped in wonder and admiration.
“She is worthy,” said one of them, with a fondness in her voice that made Silver Snow arch delicate eyebrows in astonishment as she eavesdropped, “to be called Heavenly Majesty. Indeed, she looks not like a woman at all, but like a creature from the sky.”
The other chuckled, a ribald laugh that was returned by Sable, Silver Snow decided.
“Surely, no,” the deeper voice belonged to Bronze Mirror. “Would you lay rude hands upon a piece of jade? The shan-yu s sons are full-grown, and his daughters have sons of their own. He will cherish this little lady as an ornament for his tent, not his bed-place, being far beyond such sport.”
“A pity. When her beauty fades, a son would give her more arrows for her bow than she now has. And she is a lady who well understands the use of . . . well, weapons.”
Why, thought Silver Snow, they wish me well! Would that all in the camp to which I am about to fare do so as well!
“Aye, indeed. But the Heavenly Majesty wanes. A day may come ...”
“Hush!”
Silver Snow was not at all surprised to see Vughturoi ride up and give the order to start on the very last leg of their journey to the court of his father. She was, however, surprised to see that he had donned fresh leathers and furs and that, round his neck, hung the key with which Li Ling had ceremoniously locked Silver Snow into her chariot upon her departure from Ch’ang-an and then had presented to Vughturoi in token of his authority to guard her.
He grinned as he rode by her chariot, practically under the noses of the camels that were swaying and groaning their way to their ungainly feet. “Courage, lady!” he called in an undertone as he made the key swing on its heavy chain. “How much worse can it be to enter my father’s tents than to slay the white tiger?” That was a question to which Silver Snow would have given all that she possessed or might hope to possess for an auspicious answer.
The pale winter sun was high overhead when the first riders from the shan-yu 's court met Silver Snow’s caravan, a cavalcade of shaggy horses and men who were wrapped in felts and furs and who bore the bows and long spears of the horde. They rode straight at the caravan as if, at any moment, they might level their spears or nock arrow to bow, and charge.
Silver Snow peered out from the curtains of her chariot. Her guards were worse, she thought, than no protection at all, for they signaled all too clearly, “Here is she whom you seek.” “Do you want your bow, Elder Sister?” asked Willow. Silver Snow touched Willow’s hand gently. Though a bow had served her well in many a battle, it was her wits that must serve her now. “Even if I needed it, it would serve no use.” She watched Lord Vughturoi ride out toward the newcomers, admiring his skill with horses, a mastery so deep that it was unconscious. Those from the camp were a very different type of man than Vughturoi and his companions, whom, Silver Snow guessed, must have been among the younger and more adaptable of the Hsiung-nu for the shan-yu to risk sending them to Ch’ang-an at all. These riders were not all older men, by no means, but they seemed somehow rougher, wilder, lacking the refinements of Ch’in culture that Silver Snow had occasionally noted in her escort. Though, like Vughturoi, they were sparsely bearded, many of these men bore facial scars from the custom that many of the Hsiung-nu still observed of slashing their faces when mourning a friend, a kinsman, or a leader.
Had the men been any people other than Hsiung-nu, Silver Snow knew that they would have made much of dismounting, of sitting together and sharing food before discussing their business. Such a meeting might well have lasted the entire day. However, she did not expect that the Hsiung-nu would so much as stir from horseback, and she was right. A trick of the wind brought their voices toward her, and she strained to listen.
“A good journey, and a better one back,” Vughturoi com-men ted to an older man who clapped him about the shoulders. Again the wind blew, and Silver Snow caught only half of his next speech . . not as bad as I expected, and, in fact, well enough. I see that Sandilik the kam-quam, is among you. We have had ...”
Again, a gust of the treacherous, frustrating wind blew away the words Silver Snow listened for as if her life might depend upon them. Kam-quam, she knew, meant a male shaman; and, yes, such a one rode among them, with his spirit drum and his robes trimmed with bones and the skins of snakes, here in this land where no such creatures ever hissed and coiled. Vughturoi’s voice had not sounded that strained and anxious even on the night they stalked the white tiger.
She waited for him to bring up what, she knew, must be the questions that he had suppressed.
“How is . . . those gashes look fresh, Kursik.”
“His Heavenly Majesty survived your absence,” replied the man called Kursik. “He is well, and sent us to seek you.” “The Sun be praised!” Vughturoi’s voice roughed. “But still, you bear scars that look fresh.”
“My brother, Prince. Erlik take him, but, for all that, he was my brother.”
“He followed my esteemed brother Tadiqan, did he not?” “Aye, and that was what undid him. Tadiqan has new arrows, ones that whistle. They say,” the newcomer dropped his voice, and Silver Snow strained to hear him, “that they are bespelled, never to miss the mark. Now he has made a new law for those that follow him. When he fires a whistling arrow, all must fire after him. Well, there was a small thing, a claim of a stolen bride, I think, and Tadiqan fired one of his arrows. At my brother. Am I to require bloodprice from a prince or all of the men who dog his heels?”
Vughtoroi reached out and clapped Kursik on the shoulder. “You may require it of me when I have unpacked. Ch’in, praise Tangr and the Sun, is still rich and eager to share its wealth with us, lest we overrun them. But I must deliver my father’s new bride.”
“That too,” said Kursik. “Tadiqan and his mother have said that no spoiled child of the Inner Courts shall displace Strong Tongue for long, and that when His Heavenly Majesty ...”
“Enough!” Vughturoi’s hand tightened on his spear, then released, as if he longed to hurl it at an enemy but did not dare. “My father lives, and I have returned. It is by no means certain that Tadiqan will be the first of Khujanga’s sons to find his husk. His mother is well named. But should I live to become shan-yu, let her beware that she does not poison herself and her son with that tongue!”
Perhaps Sable, the more friendly and more malleable of the two Hsiung-nu ladies, might tell her more. After all, it was she who had told her of the shan-yu 's sons, how, of ten strong men, all but three had died: two elder and the youngest, the child who was left hostage in the Middle Kingdom.
Silver Snow let the curtains drop. “Fetch Sable,” she whispered to Willow. So Strong Tongue was not a phrase of ill-wishing, inauspicious words that could turn Prince Vughturoi’s face grim in an instant, but an actual person: the shan-yu s eldest wife and mother of a prince who clearly expected to inherit. Those two obviously held some power, or else Vughturoi would not have been dispatched to Ch’ang-an when his father was old enough for people to expect him to die. His sullenness had been fear, for himself and an old man whom he clearly revered, and perhaps even for a young woman who journeyed into more danger than she could possibly expect.