The cup rolled on the carpets, light striking silver and the yellowed hue of old bone. Bone? That was not her cup at all, then, but the skull cup that she detested so much that she would not look at it, much less drink from it. How had the cups been exchanged . . . and why?
The shan-yu thrust himself upright again, the skin from which the mare’s milk had been poured dangling half empty from his hand. Even as Silver Snow gasped and sought to raise herself, he reeled and caught himself with one gnarled hand, snatching at one of the struts that supported the tent. The skin gurgled as he struggled to regain his balance, and the firelight cast a brazen light upon him. Half of his face seemed to blaze; the other half lay in shadow and appeared to sag, as if it were formed of wax onto which some careless artisan had spilled boiling water. The brazier’s smoldering embers seemed to have kindled in his eyes: tiny demons danced and glared fear-somely in their depths.
With his free hand, Khujanga reached out and smoothed Silver Snow’s hair, disordered from her fall. “I shall guard thee, little one,” he whispered, and his words were slurred.
The skin of mare’s milk sloshing in his hand, he lurched toward the cookfire and poured the mare’s milk into its flames, which flickered up in eerie, shimmering colors. Then, with a hiss, the fire died. All about, women shrieked in outrage at the ruin of good food and the pollution of the sacred flame. Something acrid, with the scent of bitter almonds, blended with the small of burnt food, ash, and meat. Silver Snow bent her head to sniff at the stain on her cushions from the spilled mare’s milk. The same bitter almond scent was there. Willow, with her fox-keen senses and her lifelong training in herbs, would have sensed it immediately; the shan-yu , with a hunter’s sense of smell, had also known, even had he not noticed the exchange of cups.
The mare’s milk had been poisoned. Carefully Silver Snow wiped her fingers on a cloth and tossed the cloth away lest she touch it once more.
As Strong Tongue had done on Silver Snow’s very first appearance in the shan-yu s tent, she hastened toward the contaminated fire. Her callused fingers alternately curled and unclenched on the sallow hide that covered her spirit drum, which throbbed as if she held a beating human heart. She gestured imperiously at the women who clustered by the hearth, as dismayed as Hsiung-nu women ever got, and they cowered before her, afraid—just as she had planned—of a woman of whom it was said that she knew the speech of grass and rocks and the very dead themselves.
“Throw that trash out!” she commanded in a whisper. Among people who were famous for never wasting a thing, her order created shock—and instant obedience. The meat must be poisoned: why else discard it if it were only burnt or smeared with ashes? Then she turned to the shan-yu, who had mastered his failing body and now drew himself up to confront her.
“You are ill, husband,” began Strong Tongue, that tongue of hers harnessed all to wifely support, then lashing free to accuse, “That little viper in silks has bewitched you, poisoned your mind so that now you pollute the sacred flame ...”
“It is not my mind that is poisoned,” Khujanga’s voice was still slurred, and though he tried to shout until the veins bulged in his temples, what emerged was a strangling rasp. “It was this!”
Even as Silver Snow leapt to her feet, one hand reaching for her tiny jade-hilted dagger, determined to run to the shan-yu's side, he hurled the skin that had held mare’s milk at Strong Tongue. She stepped neatly aside, lest she be splashed by even a stray drop of what that skin had held, more proof, if any more were needed, that she had known what it held.
“You tried to kill my wife,” he whispered. “Kill her, and kill ...”
“Aye, and slay you too, dotard, as one clubs on the head a beast that eats more than it is worth. Your sun has set; it is time to let the power pass to younger, braver men. Like Tadiqan, whose blood has not turned to milk because some spoiled child smiles and sings through her pointed nose!”
You hear that! Silver Snow wanted to cry; but there was no one about to obey her. All of the women had fled at Strong Tongue’s command. The old men, like Khujanga himself, had been napping, and only now were the warriors riding in.
“I shall have you trampled by a herd of horses!” he vowed at the eldest wife.
“You?” She laughed, seemingly well content. “You will be lying beneath your gravemound!”
Once again, her fingers moved on her spirit drum, beating out a rhythm so fast that not even a young, vital man’s heart could withstand it for long. Though Khujanga clawed with one hand at his throat, his face purpled, and he gagged as if he had swallowed his tongue, hurled himself at her across the sodden firepit as he had done at Silver Snow only instants before.
The drum flew from her hand; but she stood firm above the shan-yu, who lay face down, his scanty beard fouled with ashes and spittle.
Despite the heat of the evening, Silver Snow shuddered and turned over the old man with hands that felt as if she had bathed them for half a day in an ice-fed stream. His body felt as light as a dead cricket, and already his eyes were dull, glazed with the dust that had filled them as he fell.
He had been dead before he had hit the ground.
Dead, thought Silver Snow. And with him died her immunity, as poor a thing as it was, to Strong Tongue and her pernicious son, who would rule if Strong Tongue could summon him from wherever he rode among the flocks of the royal clan.
“Vughturoi,” Silver Snow murmured. “I must summon him.” Who could she send to find him? She turned, her eyes seeking out Willow, who hastened toward her with a terrible ungainliness that threatened to overturn her at each step.
“Call for your champion, but he will come too late,” Strong Tongue assured her. Though she carefully avoided turning her back to Silver Snow, she stooped with a kind of monumental assurance to retrieve her spirit drum from the tangle of rugs against which it had rolled.
Silver Snow could imagine its voice, throbbing out over the still air, summoning back Tadiqan to claim the title, flocks, and power of the shan-yu . . . and Silver Snow herself. Bile flooded her mouth, and she feared she would collapse on her knees by the hearth and profane it further by retching until she was empty. Still, she was younger, fleeter than Strong Tongue.
Drawing her knife, she flung herself toward the drum and stabbed into its taut drumhead, which parted with a sigh like someone’s last breath. Forgive me, she thought, though she did not know to whom she appealed. Perhaps she but released a spirit who had struggled in torment during all of these years since Strong Tongue had used human flesh to give her spirit drum a voice.
Silver Snow panted as she rose to her feet to confront Strong Tongue. Afraid—certainly she knew fear, perhaps fear even greater than what she had endured when she waited for the bandits to attack on the road to Ch’ang-an or when she slipped out from her tent to stalk the white tiger. Yet she also knew a sort of relief. With Khujanga dead, the woman was now openly to be counted as her enemy. Silver Snow held her dagger at the ready.
Strong Tongue simply folded her arms across her massive bosom and laughed. With insolent slowness, she thrust one hand into her robe and pulled out a tattered, bloodstained roll of silk bearing bore seals that Silver Snow recognized.