But no, Khujanga smiled. Leaning forward, he patted her hand just as Li Ling had often done. “I cannot spare you, little Queen,” he told her. Though his breath was strong with mare’s milk, it came with more regularity and force than it had for weeks. Even as Silver Snow watched, he looked at the cup of mare’s milk that he held—the goblet formed of the skull of his enemy—then grimaced, and laid it aside. Silver Snow’s smile was unfeigned.
“Good hunting, Elder Sister!” Willow said, after she had undressed her mistess, by way of good-night greeting. She stretched indecorously, with a suppleness that accorded ill with her lame leg. “And clever thinking. ”
Silver Snow raised herself on one elbow. “Which hunt, Willow mine,” she asked. “And which thoughts?”
“It was clever to hunt and to succeed, more clever yet to cook for the old man,” Willow said. “That cup of his,” she grimaced. “It is not well to drink from something so bound up with cruelty.” She limped over to the small chest that was hers, opened it, and brought out her carefully hoarded bags of herbs and simples, many of them the parting gift of Li Ling.
Silver Snow glanced at her maid. Willow scowled at her and shook her head, as if astonished at how slow her mistress was at grasping what, for Willow, seemed to be essentials. Then Silver Snow shivered, though her bedrobes were very warm and closely swathed about her. Her very upbringing— which had instilled reverence for father, Son of Heaven, all of those who were rightfully set in authority over her—made her almost unable to comprehend that Willow, brought up in the amoral worlds of slave markets, furtive sorceries, and shape-changing, found self-evident.
Today, Vughturoi had ridden with the hunt, within easy call of the shan-yu. Today, the shan-yu had not eaten Strong Tongue’s cooking, and he was the stronger for it.
Would the shaman deliberately use her crafts against her own husband and the leader of her tribe? There were, Silver Snow knew, herbs that could give a canny, unscrupulous person power over the man who ate them. A quick, unpleasant vision of Strong Tongue oppressed Silver Snow’s consciousness. She had only to think of the haughtiness in the older woman’s tiny eyes to know that she was quite capable of drugging Khujanga into agreement with her will. Until Silver Snow herself had appeared and had supplanted one enchantment with another, more primal, magic—and Khujanga had fought, weakening himself further.
Strong Tongue would have to know that too, Silver Snow thought.
Perhaps she does. Perhaps she wearies of the struggle, came a voice within Silver Snow’s thoughts. Strong Tongue, balked of the power for which she had schemed so very long, was neither a pleasant nor a patient foe. Vughturoi had ridden with the host, and Tadiqan had been absent. Had matters been otherwise, Silver Snow realized, she might well have been a widow now ... a widow who was forced to become a wife. Why, even at this moment, she might be forced to lie beside . . .
Appalled by her new, and darkest, suspicion, she gagged, but waved Willow away when the maid crouched by her head.
“Put your head down,” ordered the maid, in a voice Silver Snow could not think of refusing. “Now, breathe deeply. I feared that the truth might affect you thus.”
Silver Snow took deep, steady breaths until the dizziness and sickness faded. She pulled her robes up about her shoulders, grateful for the way that they eased her body of the cold sweat that seemed to sheath it.
“The shan-yu is stronger tonight,” she stated. “If, after just one meal, he was stronger ...”
“Why then, Elder Sister, we . . . you . . . must cook for him from now on. Cosset him as if he were your only grandson, and,suffering from a flux. I shall ensure that not only will his food be worth the tasting, but that it shall contain nothing more that will harm him.”
“And if Strong Tongue charges us with sorcery?” asked Silver Snow.
“Then,” hissed Willow, “let her look to her own. Ahhh, Elder Sister, could I but slip into her tent, I would wager that I should find such things that would earn her speedy and painful death!”
Thereafter, Silver Snow and her maid cooked for the shan-yu. Intrigued by the delicate dishes and subtle spices, he beamed upon his wife and her handmaid and ate heartily. Nor did Silver Snow think that it was her imagination that, in the days that followed, he walked more steadily, spoke without the quaver that had entered his voice in recent weeks, especially after meals, and was even able to mount unassisted. In this new flush of health, his heart warmed once again to Vughturoi, who seemed content, each evening, to sit and watch his father, whose eyes were fixed—as Silver Snow was well aware—upon her.
She played and sang, all too well aware that now she played for her life. For the first time, she found herself echoing the wish of Sable and Bronze Mirror that she bear a son. Had the shan-yu been a younger man, she thought, there would have been no question. By now, almost certainly, she would have been carrying a child. Yet, had the shan-yu been a younger man, he— and she—would not be in this danger from Strong Tongue.
One night, much afraid, Silver Snow sorted through Willow’s chests of simples. The shan-yu was ancient; yet, it was true, old men had wed and begotten (or had acknowledged fatherhood) thousands of times. Silver Snow fingered herbs that aided conception, that strengthened the body, that dulled the will. Perhaps the shan-yu could be slightly drugged, then enticed . . . and she would have her heir, her safety.
For as long as Strong Tongue and Tadiqan let him live! It was no strange thing for a child of the grasslands to die during his first three years; though, should he survive them, thereafter it might take a flight of arrows to kill him. The birth of a boychild postponed nothing. And then there was the matter of conceiving such a child. An older woman, more experienced or less scrupulous, might use such methods to secure the heir that she needed. How could Silver Snow, who had never known a man, implement a plan that required the wiles and skills of an accomplished courtesan?
If it were not the shan-yu who must be the father . . .
She shook her head, and though only the firelight was present to witness went scarlet with shame that she had entertained such a thought even for a moment. That thought led not just to death but to dishonor. Carefully Silver Snow laid the herbs aside and locked the chest in which they were stored. She bent to check her bowstring and judged it sound. Then she opened another chest and burrowed into it until she found the knife that she sought and hid it on her person.
She vowed to herself that she would never stir without it.
“Lady,” Willow woke her in the gray chill before dawn. The maid’s face was pale and drawn, her russet hair leached of all color in the half light, and her lame leg dragged more than it usually did.
Silver Snow let her fingers loosen from the jade hilt of the dagger that she kept beneath her pallet. “You have been running all night,” she accused, smiling, though she tried to make her voice sound severe. “I suppose that that means that you will be worthless all day today. Strong Tongue will say that you should be beaten.”
Willow’s characteristic hiss of irritation silenced her mistress. “This one has proved her worth time and time again. And never more than now. Look you, elder sister, at what my kin-in-fur have brought me.”