Of course, she would have conceived quickly by Vughturoi: how not? Despite how crowded the shan-yu 's great tent was, Silver Snow shut her eyes, remembering her husband’s quick ardor, his care of her, and his strength. She had spent half of the summer’s days, she thought, dazzled by the nights. She could set a proper value on the hushed giggles and whispers of the concubines in the Imperial Court: they were as green rice compared with the harvest, the harvest that she now bore.
As the mother of a son—of a prince—she need never defer to anyone in the grasslands. Except, of course, her lord; and she had learned rapidly that she pleased him best, obeyed him most faithfully, by being herself. Downcast eyes and bows made him irritable, uneasy, eager to leave the constraints of her tent for the free air of the grasslands.
But if she rode out or tended the sick, played her music or laughed with the bright-eyed Hsiung-nu children, he would come to her side whenever he could. Once again she played and sang almost every night before a shan-yu , but this time her songs were happy. Though such speech came hard to him, Vughturoi had made her understand: he did not want a silk-robed puppet but the courageous lady who had worn pearls and kingfisher feathers before the Son of Heaven to accuse a thief, the lady who had fought the white tiger and won him his throne. And, much to her surprise, she had wanted him. It was a mating unlike the marriages that she had seen, in what seemed now to be another life, on her journey to Ch’ang-an, marriages made by ladies who had pitied her and considered themselves people to be envied. She was content. Or she should have been.
I miss my husband, Silver Snow admitted. It was one thing to call him Vughturoi in the dark privacy of the nights, but she blushed to speak it, even in her thoughts, during the daylight. She had had that thought every day since he had ridden out toward the Han fort on the border of the grasslands. He had wanted, he told her, to speak with the garrison’s commander—who was actually, Silver Snow had learned from Li Ling, the son of an officer who had served with her father and had survived the long march back after the general had surrendered—about a proposal that his father had dictated to Silver Snow shortly before his death, a renewal of his suggestion that the Hsiung-nu defend all under heaven from Dunhuang east to the Yellow River.
Silver Snow remembered the last, private reply to that proposal that she had received; she thought that she could hear Li Ling’s very tones in it: “It is now over a century since the Great Wall was rebuilt by Wu Ti. It is not by any means a mere mud rampart. Up hill and down, it follows the natural configuration of the ground, is honeycombed with secret passages, and bristles with fortified points. Is all this vast labor to be allowed to go to rack and ruin?”
To Khujanga, however, the Son of Heaven had replied courteously enough that the Great Wall had been built to keep the Empire in, not to shut the peoples of the west out. Yet, Khujanga had not let the matter drop; and neither would his son. His sons, Silver Snow recalled. Strangely enough, Tadiqan had liked that proposal.
Perhaps Li Ling’s refusal had been inspired. After all, what if Tadiqan had become shan-yu? Certainly he had prostrated himself before his younger brother and vowed obedience. Yet he made no secret of his detestation of the Middle Kingdom and his desire to plunder it. And his oath to his brother had not stopped him from maintaining his usual retinue of warriors and a circle of older men who were easily made disgruntled as they suspected that, under Vughturoi’s rule, power might pass from them to younger men and to the shan-yu 's outland wife, whom, they saw, Vughturoi intended to treat as consort rather than a mark of Ch’in favor and a charming toy.
Despite such malcontents, Vughturoi had also sent out scouts, he had said, to keep an eye on the Fu Yu, who were quiescent, watching him in this first season of his rule. Nor had the heir of the Yueh-chih yet tried to fulfill his vow of having Vughturoi’s skull as the bowl of a goblet. Still, that left Silver Snow at least nominally responsible for the camp and herds; just bearing those responsibilities respectably strained every resource of patience, tact, and craft that she had possessed, and a few that she hadn’t known herself to own.
One morning, however, she had fainted; and the women of the camp had narrowed eyes (Silver Snow would privately have sworn that their eyes could narrow no more) at her spec-ulatively and had gone into serious conclave with Sable. Thereafter, her lot had been somewhat less difficult, at least with some of them and with their men. Others, however . . . she could lie in an unmarked tomb and those others would still resent her presence in their lands.
No, it was not a good time for Vughturoi to have left, even though he had no choice, or so he told his people. However, there was, Silver Snow knew, another reason why Vughturoi had ridden toward that fortress, a little journey that would last from full moon to full moon and to the dark of the moon thereafter: to bring back the letters from Li Ling or her father, or even from the Son of Heaven. She had written them after Khujanga’s death, informing them that she had followed the custom of the Hsiung-nu and married his successor, praying their forgiveness for having done so without beseeching their consent. There had simply been no time for it. Vughturoi had to claim his father’s place, and when he claimed her, she had had no thought of nay saying him.
I shall have to write them again, she thought. How horrified the court would be! She thought, however, that Li Ling would understand. And her father? Well he had known that when she departed for Ch’ang-an, theirs had been a final parting. She blinked at the dust motes that danced in the slanting sunbeams and turned the carpets to rubies set in gold and copper and mused on auspicious names for a first son and prince.
Against a task as important as that, Strong Tongue’s hostility seemed no more than heat lightning on the horizon. Without her son—and, oh, how she could understand Strong Tongue’s instincts to protect her own flesh and blood now— the shaman seemed shrunken, subdued. At the same time that her husband had ridden out, Tadiqan had decided to ride off on the ever-present need to inspect and number the herds. He had, of course, begged leave of her; but his “begging,” as they both knew, was the merest formality. Silver Snow could not have stopped him had she wished. She could, however, send with him men who were loyal to Vughturoi and who would escort him most vigilantly: and so she did. She hoped that she had done all aright.
When Vughturoi returned to his tents . . . oh, should she tell him as soon as he returned, or should she wait until they were alone? Silver Snow’s soft, anticipatory laugh drew a nostalgic smile from Sable and speculative, hopeful looks from many of the Hsiung-nu. She met their gazes blandly.
She would order the Yueh-chih skull goblet to be hidden, she decided; it was not a thing that a mother-to-be needed to look upon. Perhaps she would tell Strong Tongue to hide away her spirit drum too, that is, if she could not coax Vughturoi to do so. And, if Tadiqan or Strong Tongue said aught to unsettle her . . . just let them! she thought, smiling. She had come into her power now.
What sounded like thunder at the horizon brought her up from her seat, one hand at the small of her back, the other flashing to her lips. See what comes, she mouthed to her women; and Sable, who, by rights, should have had maids of her own to do her bidding, leapt up and ran to the opening of the tent.