Silver Snow herself, when riding out, was aware of small creatures that appeared to watch her curiously. In return, she was careful about what—or whom—she hunted.
“What did your sister tell you?” Silver Snow turned again, humoring Willow, as the maid combed out her long, black hair, as straight and fine in the lamplight as Willow’s was red and waving. She gazed into the mirror that Willow held for her, a highly polished disk of silver, incised along the edge with wishes for good luck. This burnished moon disk was the one thing from Willow’s previous life that she had brought to Silver Snow’s home; rightly, she treasured it.
For a moment, the room behind her—small, shabby, but familiar and much-loved—wavered, engulfed in a brief vision of vast spaces and felt tents; there followed a rush of wind that drowned out the small, daily sounds of women working among women. Then she blinked and saw, once again, a lady of the Han with creamy skin, large, deep-set eyes the shape of almonds, brows that needed no plucking to shape them into moth wings, a tiny mouth. She shook her head, unpleasantly surprised at what she brusquely dismissed as unfitting vanity.
“We have heard”—Willow slipped the mirror once more into its protective silken bag—“that the Son of Heaven’s beloved First Concubine died in childbed.”
Silver Snow nodded as she dressed cautiously, fearing each time she wore the thin, ancient silk garments that she would tear them beyond any mending. Even this far to the north, the nobles had mourned that much-honored lady, who had been so brave that once, when a tiger had gotten loose, she had stepped before the Emperor until the beast could be lured again into its cage, saying to all that his life was more precious than hers, which was at his service.
“Did not the fur merchant who came last moon,” Willow continued, “say that during the Son of Heaven’s mourning, he returned all of his other ladies to their homes? Though all of the ministers and poets praised the depth of his mourning thus, it was a hardship for the tradespeople when the silks and furs could no longer be offered to those behind the Phoenix screens.”
It is a truth, thought Silver Snow, that with no ladies to buy silk, to demand gems and embroideries and delicate foods, those supplying such would suffer. How not? But I myself am poor, she thought. What is strange about poverty? Surely a right-acting man need not suffer at heart, even though his rice bowl is near empty. Confucius had much to say about that, she knew. Did not her father’s serenity, despite wounds and captivity, even in poverty and disgrace, prove the rightness of such acceptance?
“Did you know,” Willow breathed slyly into an ear that Silver Snow’s mirror assured her was as rosy and delicate as the rare shells from the far-off sea, “that the Son of Heaven wrote a poem about his lady before he summoned his wizards?”
A single bracelet of old white jade clicked against the lacquer chest before which Silver Snow sat. That thought brought more shivers than a winter wind. “The Emperor summoned wizards?” she breathed. “More quickly! Already I have tarried too long in obeying my father.”
“Your pardon, Elder Sister,” said Willow, “but I would rather err by tarrying than have you sicken in your lungs. My sister-in-fur’s fifth cousin”—again, Willow smiled and flashed that uncanny impression of a beast at her mistress—“sat outside the Emperor’s court in Ch’ang-an, and thus she heard him speak:
Silver Snow joined Willow in a heart-felt sigh. “Most beautiful,” she breathed, “and so melancholy. But why did he then summon wizards?”
“To call her back.” One of Willow’s russet, level brows— an imperfection that no Emperor would have permitted among his ladies, but one that gave Willow a curiously trustworthy appearance—quirked, as if she had her own opinion of such wizards and such doings. “What they mumble is mostly foolishness. The Tao goes as it goes; and we, man and beast, are born and we die. Yet, the Son of Heaven is all-wise; so he summoned his wizards, who strove mightily—for men who dabble in such things. Finally, just one wizard produced a shadow . . . the merest flicker . . . against a silken hanging. “Then the Son of Heaven wept and cried out:
“My honored father will say worse than that of me, should I delay longer,” cried Silver Snow. “Are you finished with my hair, or are you not? And will you hold me here longer, you slothful girl, listening to silly news you claim to snatch from the mouths of foxes?”
Willow laughed, exposing white teeth as she threw back her head, showing her strong throat, as white as a fur blaze on a fox’s chest. “Here, Elder Sister, is my most important news. After numerous tears, even more numerous verses, and more memorials than anyone would care to reckon, the Son of Heaven has agreed to choose another Illustrious Concubine, and perhaps even more than one.”
Silver Snow’s hand went to her throat. “But I am the child of a disgraced ...” Then she drew a deep, shaky breath. “Oh, but what could I not do were I to become a favorite! What could I not do for my father? A grant of favor, his titles and honor restored, perhaps ...” Her thoughts took wings and flew as high as the moon overhead where, surely, the lady who lived in that orb saw them and smiled. “Do you think . .
“I think,” Willow interrupted, “that many other ladies dream such dreams tonight. However, what a mirror, mine especially, has shown you is truth. You are very fair, Elder Sister. However, the Hall of Brilliance will be filled with the fairest ladies of the Middle Kingdom. And many of them will have gems and garments that outshine you as much as your eyes outshine mine own.
“Lady,” Willow continued more gravely, “the messenger arrived, the messenger spoke with your father, and you have been summoned. That is all, I tell you with all my heart, that I know to be so. Go you, to find out the rest.”
Abruptly Silver Snow’s eyes flashed, and though fear gripped her, she forced a laugh. “I hear and obey, at once, Elder Sister,” she told Willow as she made for her father’s study.
2
As Silver Snow sped across the frosty courtyard she was grateful for the weight of her robes: the silk underrobe with its high, modest satin collar, falling to a hem that covered even the tips of her slippers; and the overrobe with the long sleeves that tumbled over her hands, trapping some warmth within—along with the fingers that such robes were devised to render useless. The ritualized clamor of hospitality rang in the night air. Though she herself might never see the official who had brought the Emperor’s edicts to her father, she must later supervise from behind the screens the banquet her father would give later that night for their entertainment.
The stream designed to flow into a pool within her father’s courtyard was stilled and frozen. Gnarled pines leaned over it to shed their dark, fragrant needles onto snow shining silver in the lamplight from her father’s room. As much to guard herself from tripping over her flowing robes as to achieve the demure shuffling gait that the Book of Rites prescribed for maidens, she slowed as she climbed the slippery wooden steps. By the carved doorposts of her father’s study, she paused, astonished.