Silver Snow spotted Bronze Mirror and Sable, whose hand covered her mouth. None spoke to her or made those slight shifts back and forth, the faint nods and subtle gestures that can indicate support. Bronze Mirror and Sable might respect and even like Silver Snow, but they had lived all their lives in a camp of which Strong Tongue was mistress and shaman; the other Hsiung-nu knew nothing of Silver Snow, save that the Emperor of Ch’in had dispatched her as a bride to their ancient shan-yu. For all they knew, she might be just as weak, as vain, and as ignorant as Strong Tongue clearly hoped that she was. She had yet to prove herself, and right now she must distract Strong Tongue. For, if her memory was as strong as her tongue, Willow was in grave danger.
She spared one foolish, self-indulgent second to wish that she indeed had been able to lay the skin of the white “tiger” that she and Prince Vughturoi had slain before shan-yu Khu-janga’s feet, in token of her prowess. Then Silver Snow met Strong Tongue’s eyes.
“I had no desire to scorn the customs of the Hsiung-nu,” she declared firmly. “After all, they are my people too; their weal is my well-being; their fate, my fate. I pray you, if I have offended powers in this land, tell me how best to make it right.”
To Silver Snow’s surprise, Strong Tongue did not glare. Ipstead, she held Silver Snow’s eyes the way—as Li Ling had once told her—that the hooded snake of Hind, when it rises to hunt, holds the eyes of a bird, forcing the wretched creature to wait until the snake can strike it. The woman’s tiny, deep-set eyes seemed to expand, a point of greenish flame kindling in their depths. She drew a deep breath, gusty like the purr of a tiger ... a white tiger. Again the thud-thud of a heartbeat resounded. Surely that pounding filled the tent, Silver Snow thought. It nearly deafened her, but none of the Hsiung-nu seemed to notice it.
The night that the white tiger stalked the camp, Sable and Bronze Mirror had not noticed that same sound. It was almost as if the Hsiung-nu were immune to it.
Had she sent the white tiger to slay the unknown but hated Ch’in princess who would displace her or to terrify her into witlessness or a dishonorable, treaty-breaking flight back to her home? That now seemed likely. Perhaps Willow could find out more.
Willow. From whatever obscurity Willow had limped off to, now she hissed, recalling Silver Snow’s attention, reassuring her that she had an ally. Light flashed over Silver Snow, and she drew herself upright. Even thus, she lacked several inches of Strong Tongue’s height; and she was barely half the elder woman’s weight.
The ancient shan-yu seemed to shake himself, as if rousing from a long dream. “Spoken with courage and propriety!” he announced, smiling upon . . . his new toy, thought Silver Snow. I am like the jade vase or the silk robe, not to be kept locked away, but to be displayed and admired as a sign of his wealth and power. For this one moment, however, she was glad of it.
“Strong Tongue is mother of Tadiqan, my eldest son,” the shan-yu continued.
“And heir,” whispered Strong Tongue, though her lord paid that comment no heed.
“She knows the language of birds and has the learning to understand the sound of stones, the creaking of doors and hinges, and the talk of the dead in their graves. There is no better teacher among the women of the Hsiung-nu. Strong Tongue, I charge you, when you have purified the hearth, instruct your elder sister in the ways of the Hsiung-nu, that she may make us gain even more face than we have by her mere presence.”
Elder sister! Silver Snow suppressed a groan of dismay. Any hope that she might ever have had to conciliate such a woman had just vanished the way that smoke drifts up through gaps in the tent into the trackless air.
“I would be humbly grateful for such instruction,” Silver Snow compelled herself to say, and won another smile from her new lord. Standing at his shoulder, Prince Vughturoi barely nodded, but Silver Snow felt herself approved, even protected for the moment. It was a protection granted her for her courage, she knew.
Then she glanced at Strong Tongue, who had circled the hearth with powders and discolored, cracked scapular bones. She grimaced, as if unconvinced—as well she might be. As she busied herself, she moved not just with the gravity of a shaman about a vital rite but with the same self-righteous importance that Silver Snow had noted in the eunuchs of the Inner Courts: each movement made with ostentatious precision as if to ridicule the possibility that her enemy might ever learn them. Catching Silver Snow’s eye, she snorted with highly elaborate disdain, and bent to adjust the placement of a bone. Her massive breasts and haunches seemed to bob with the weight of her own righteousness and her consciousness of her worth.
Silver Snow had seen men and women like her in the Palace, those who delighted in others’ mistakes, who pointed them out loudly in the presence of superiors, and who never forgot them, nor let anyone else do so. She herself found the vindictiveness of such behavior gravely improper. After all, Confucius had taught that one should do nothing that one would not wish to have done to oneself—and Silver Snow, who lamented each of her mistakes as if it cost lives, would sorrow when they were cast up to her.
Nevertheless it was she who was the stranger here, she who must prove herself. These lands, as she had known from childhood, were harsh. Perhaps constant reproofs and reminders of past errors made the difference between survival and death. Well, even though Strong Tongue definitely had no interest in insuring Silver Snow’s survival, she would make certain that such harm would be as difficult to accomplish as possible. I will not fail, Silver Snow told herself. I will use her hostility to harden myself , to become more and more fit to live in this place.
Still, she knew that Strong Tongue would not be content until Silver Snow failed, failed and died.
Thus, I must be ever watchful, she told herself. From the way that the shan-yu Khujanga beamed at both of his senior wives, she knew that he thought that his mere command would guarantee their friendship. That assurance taught her much, both about his former strength and about how badly his mind was fading. A leader sure enough of his power to issue such commands would surely have noted the hostility between his former chief wife and the newcomer who had supplanted her. After all, what was the Ch’in character for “trouble”? Two women under one roof ... or, in this case, in one tent.
Then a new fear struck her. Was Khujanga fading because of simple old age, or something more? She would have to take great care of him herself lest she speedily become a widow.
Silver Snow studied the woman she knew as unfriend, but who had been set her as sister wife and teacher. A long tiger’s claw hung among the amulets at her muscular neck, and the knife that she wore seemed to be well honed. Of all of the Hsiung-nu in the shan-yu s tent, only she and her son wore dress that was totally bare of any Ch’in bravery of silk, embroidery, or jade. Considering that Tadiqan seemed to be the leader of those opposed to peace with the Middle Kingdom, that was but logical.
As she held Strong Tongue’s gaze, she became aware that Tadiqan also stared back. Where his mother’s gaze was hostile, vindictive, however, Tadiqan’s was openly lustful. Silver Snow felt as if, right now, she would trade half of her dowry for a hot bath.