One or two more evenings’ work, she thought, and this scent bag would be completed. This scent bag. Abruptly she dropped the intricately wrought piece of fur and stitchwork into her lap and stared at it. Always in Ch’ang-an, ladies made scent bags as a way of passing the time, of adorning themselves, and—occasionally—of making gifts to men whom they admired.
Why had she crafted this scent bag of brocades, sables, and heavy silken knotwork? She had more delicate fabrics and feathers aplenty in her chests; she might well have created something more dainty for her own use. She remembered the herbs that Willow had ready to be selected for such uses— Ijow many of those would be strong enough to serve in this place of over-strong odors—horse sweat, boiling mutton, and unwashed and greasy bodies? Yet not all of Willow’s herbs were prized for their scent. Others possessed the power to stanch blood, to ward off illness, to avert ill-wishing.
I too might use such powers, she protested to herself, though she knew that she tried to deceive herself.
Her cheeks flamed again, and she tried to turn the talk to spring and the gardens that she recalled. She was aware that she was chattering just as inanely as any of the Peach Blossoms, Jade Butterflies, or Apricots who thronged the Inner Courts. Shortly afterward, the shan-yu rose to depart. Silver Snow glanced away, as he struggled to his feet, just as she had done for her own father. Yet, the shan-yu accepted the arm of his son and walked out leaning on him. Silver Snow was greatly relieved and heartened, and not solely for the dreams of peace that she cherished between Hsiung-nu and Han.
She followed them out and peered beyond the flaps of her tent. For a few paces more, father leaned upon son, as if glad of the younger man’s support and nearness. Then, as two horsemen rode toward them, the shan-yu abruptly disengaged his arm from his son’s and walked forward to greet them. Silver Snow could see from the stiffness of his back the effort that Khujanga made not to totter. Vughturoi stared after his father, then melted into the shadows.
So, he was no longer in disgrace with his father, yet Khujanga seemed to prefer that the tribe think that he was. Silver Snow knit her brows, then knit them more thoroughly as the memories of scandalized, high-pitched voices warning her not to wrinkle her brow dinned in her head. Why would Khujanga not announce his reconciliation with his youngest son?
She could think of only one reason: that in appearing to draw away from Vughturoi, the shan-yu was actually protecting him.
Like it or not, a bond existed between Silver Snow and Vughturoi, and had done so ever since Ch’ang-an, when she had fought to clear her father’s name and her own, and won his grudging approval. That bond had strengthened on the journey west, with each new travail.
Silver Snow knew well that she understood little of men. There had been no other women of her own rank in her home; along the road and in the Cold Palace, she had been isolated from the subtle manipulations by which one thrived in the Inner Courts, the tyrannies and savage, but tiny, humiliations that one used to cast down other women; the flatteries and games that one used to exalt those men by whose favor one rapidly learned to live.
Silver Snow had never seen men thus. For her, there were men like her father and Li Ling: to be venerated and obeyed as elders and teachers; there were men like the Son of Heaven and the shan-yu, leaders who had the power of life, death, or— worst of all—disgrace; and there were officials, eunuchs, warriors, who owed allegiance to the first two classes, and whose opinion of her depended upon their masters’. However, of young men—with a sudden, painful clarity, she thought of the eldest son to which, long ago, an official had offered to betroth her—over whom a woman might sigh or laugh, she had no knowledge.
Never had the women in the Inner Courts or in the houses in which she had stayed during her trip to Ch’ang-an seemed more alien and unsympathetic to her than when they spoke of men and what they delicately called spring musings, everlasting longings, mortal yearnings, or a lot of other names: all flowery, and—to her, brought up as she had been in poverty and duty—all foolish.
Yet she had made a scent bag that fused the art of Ch’in and the wealth of the grasslands, and she knew now that, with every stitch she had taken, she had thought of the prince who had been her first defender among the Hsiung-nu; the prince who had stood outside her tent to listen to her songs and who now spoke in veiled terms of his father’s chief wife, calling her a wonder.
She was a wedded lady, though no wife; she was a queen; and she was the embodiment of the Son of Heaven’s peace with the Hsiung-nu. Should she abandon that to disgrace herself and giggle like a flighty maid? For that matter, did she dare?
“Here!” she cried to Willow. “Take this thing and pack it away. I am ashamed at how sloppily I have wrought it.”
“As you command, Elder Sister,” Willow said, a smile hovering on too-red lips.
“Do not dare to smile!” Silver Snow commanded.
“Indeed not,” Willow agreed. “Forgive this one, if her elder sister thought that she smiled at what she terms poor needlework. Yet, the furs are fine and might perhaps be put to another use. I”—at least, she dropped that aggravating, abject courtesy, which was worse than any smile—“shall pack this in the black chest.”
She did so, then knelt to her mistress. “By your leave,” she said, “the night”—she sniffed at the air, her eyes bright, her head turning constantly toward the opening of the tent—“will be fresh and sweet tonight, if still cold, and I should like to rove. Who knows what I may hear about ...”
“Oh, go!” Silver Snow cried. “But see that you meet no handsome male fox as you range free in your desire to scent the spring wind. I should not like to have to explain why a litter of fox kits sleeps by the fire in my tent.”
She clapped both hands to the treacherous mouth that had uttered such impropriety. Willow, however, laughed sharply, almost a fox’s bark, and vanished behind a heavy hanging. Shortly afterward came a scrabbling at the tent wall, and Silver Snow knew that she was alone.
Much against her will, Silver Snow rushed over to the black chest, flung it open, and pulled out the scent bag. Wrapping herself in her furs, she cradled it in her arms, watching the moon through the vent of her yurt, until her eyes closed.
Scrabbling at the wall of Silver Snow’s yurt brought her halfway out of a deep, almost a drugged sleep, but the effort was too great. Silver Snow moaned and sank back down, burrowing deeper into the furs. When she again woke, it was to a smell of something charred. She sniffed, then glanced with sudden anxiety at the brazier. No, the fire was not just banked; it was dead and must be rekindled. That had ever been Willow’s task.
Silver Snow tugged her robes about her and grimaced with aggravation as she discovered that she had clung, all night long, to the scent bag that she had wrought. Where was Willow? Out all night; and now that the sun was shining she chose to lie sprawling upon her pallet. All of the Hsiung-nu had, doubtless, been up before dawn.