“Obedience,” said the shan-yu. He pointed to the carpet on which the shaman stood.
Whispers went up, whispers that Silver Snow could hear, urging him to dispatch his brother and his treacherous dam. In that moment, she too was sorely tempted to speak for Strong Tongue’s death.
“Let His Sacred Majesty think of how much trouble would be spared,” came one whisper, louder than most, from an elder warrior who had long served Khujanga.
“Aye,” muttered Vughturoi. “Yet we have no proof, and our brother’s warriors are too many to be angered or driven away, lest we lose half of our fighting force.”
Again he gestured at the carpets. “Down!” he commanded. “Or our command shall be what it should be, not what it must. To kneel before your shan-yu is a small price to pay for your lives!”
Once again Tadiqan made as if to balk. Once he prostrated himself before his brother, the thing was done, inevitable: any rebellion thereafter would be impiety as well as treason. But Strong Tongue’s hand on his arm forced him first to kneel, then to go to his belly, just as the shaman did.
“Better by far to kill a snake than warm it at your hearth,” murmured Willow. “Come, Elder Sister, and let me care for you.”
Abruptly that suggestion sounded like the most wonderful thing that Silver Snow had ever heard. Even as Vughturoi gave orders for the hearthfires to be rekindled and funeral preparations to be put in hand for his father, she and her maid slipped from the great tent to her own place.
She had bathed, eaten sparingly, and waited, Willow attending her, combing the dust and snarls from her hair until it hung loose down her back like floss-silk. Then she had scented Silver Snow as if for her wedding, and wrapped her in delicate silks that were the hues of peach and apricot. The girl had ever been sparing of words, but tonight her mute patience cut Silver Snow as sharply as Vughturoi’s blade had slashed his face in mourning. Tactfully she sought some way of drawing confidences from her maid, and found none. Thus, she borrowed a tactic from the Hsiung-nu and spoke plainly.
“Sable grieves,” she said flatly. “I thought, earlier today, that the two of you might well have become sisters in truth, that I would have spoken with my lord ...”
But now they both are dead , the old lord who wed me; the young one who might have welcomed you.
Willow shook her head with weary patience. “It was a dream, no more, like the fumes in a fourth cup of wine, Elder Sister. I allowed myself to dream: no more but that.”
“Why should it have been no more?” asked Silver Snow. “And why can it not still be, with ano—”
“Why can it not still be?” cried Willow, interrupting her mistress for the first time in all the years that they had been together. “Can you look at me, look at the leg that would have meant my death had your father not pitied me, and truly ask that?”
Silver Snow shut her eyes, shaking her head in sorrow. “I see only Willow, who is as my sister. And the Hsiung-nu go mounted. There is no lameness when one rides.”
“Elder Sister,” Willow spoke very softly but with utter sternness. “Do you truly think that I would risk bringing into the world a child as blighted as I myself? Do you truly think I could bear to see such a child cast out to die or used as I was? Being weak, I dreamed for a space; and I have paid. Let be.” Silver Snow reached out, took her maid’s hand, and sat thus, silently, as if the two of them scouted by means only of their ears. From time to time she heard a shout of accclaim rise in the great tent. The shouting died away, the feasting with it as the Hsiung-nu sought their own tents, weary after the death-watch and the race of the princes to their father’s side. Still she waited, but Vughturoi did not come.
What would she do if he did not come to her? Nothing in her training had equipped her to seek him out boldly in his own quarters, to confront him with the boldness of Hsiung-nu women. No: she was a lady of Ch’in as well as a queen of the Hsiung-nu; as a lady of Ch’in, she would wait to be summoned or to be visited.
The light slanting into her tent waned, and then it was night. The energy that had sustained her began to fade, and she thought of seeking her bed. Stubbornly, however, she waited. After what seemed to be an eternal period of time, she smiled at a sudden remembrance. Perhaps she would not have to wait or seek out her new lord if he hesitated to claim what was his.
“Bring my lute,” Silver Snow ordered Willow. Putting aside her own melancholy, Willow rose quickly. Silver Snow smiled at the maid’s look of delighted, complicit craft.
How many years ago it seemed that she had mourned in disgrace during her exile to the Cold Palace and had written a song upon leaves that, cast upon the wind, brought her a friend and a new hope. Once again that song must serve. Smiling a little wistfully, Silver Snow plucked the strings of hejr lute and sang:
Ah! There were the footsteps outside her tent, just as she had heard them almost every night of her long wedding journey to the domain of the Hsiung-nu. This night, however, they did not cease outside her tent, but came boldly into its entrance . . . and waited.
“Lady?” Vughturoi might be shan-yu now, but his voice questioned rather than demanded.
Silver Snow walked toward the entrance of the tent.
“This one,” she began, “begs the shan-yu to enter; His Sacred Majesty has no need to question where he may command.”
As Vughturoi entered the tent, she dropped into the prostration that was his due.
“No, lady!” he ordered. “You were queen before ever I was master here. Rise!”
Stubbornly, disobediently, Silver Snow kept her face pressed against the jewel-bright rugs of her domain, gifts from this man’s father, until she felt rough hands upon her shoulders, drawing her upright, standing her upon her feet once more.
“May this one offer you wine?” she murmured.
“Look at me, lady,” Vughturoi ordered.
Thus commanded, of course, she had no choice but to obey. She looked up, meeting his eyes, and felt that same shock of warmth, almost of homecoming that she had known—and suffered shame therefrom—once or twice before when she looked upon him.
“You,” he pointed at Willow. “Out!”
Willow limped out, turning to smile almost impudently at her mistress; and then Silver Snow was quite alone with the prince whom she had summoned to rule over the Hsiung-nu and to be her chosen lord.
“I was riding among our herds,” said the shan-yu, “when a fox yapped at my horse and would not flee. Such is not the nature of the fox kind. Yet I remembered that such a beast had helped us fight the white tiger, and I turned my path aside to join it. Shortly thereafter, I met Basich . . . my . . . my friend.” Vughturoi’s voice almost broke.
Before she knew it, Silver Snow held out her hands to him, offering a comfort that she had not realized that even a warrior lord of the Hsiung-nu might need. He dropped his hands from her shoulders to catch hers.
“He told me of my father’s death, and that you had . . . you had sent for me. So I came, obedient,” he added with a wry grin that made him wince in protest against the pain of his slashed face, “to the queen who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu. Once again you have done so.”