“It is our lord!” she cried even as the shrieks and hoofbeats of Hsiung-nu greeting assaulted their ears. Silver Snow flushed and flung out a hand that Willow, greatly daring, leaned forward to take.
“Elder Sister, a bearing woman must not rise so quickly!” she warned. Nevertheless she aided Silver Snow to hasten to the door of the tent.
Dear Willow! If she sorrowed for the loss of Basich and what she might have had with him, no one would have known it from the tenderness with which she guarded Silver Snow frmn hazard.
“Here, Elder Sister, lean on me,” she said, even as Silver Snow laughed and pretended to push her aside. It was not that she was sickly, but that, as queen, she must move with dignity, she informed her maid who managed—just barely—not to give the short, barking laugh that sounded so like a fox.
Like a dance of war, the Hsiung-nu, partnered by their horses, raced into the camp. How fast they rode and how beautifully! Let the people in Ch’ang-an see the Hsiung-nu ride, no matter how ferociously they fought; just let them see that; and they would no longer call their neighbors to the west barbarians, Silver Snow thought.
Vughturoi swung down from his horse, his eyes seeking out Silver Snow and warming with satisfaction at the sight of her: his wife, standing before his tent, helping to ward his people.
She bowed deeply. Then, when no strong hands pressed her shoulders urging her to rise, she glanced up. Vughturoi was watching her carefully, and in his hand were letters: a bundle of wooden strips from her father, thrifty as ever; two sealed rolls of silk from the court.
The rigid courtesies to which she had been raised forbade her, in this moment, to speak until the shan-yu spoke to her; never had she come closer to violating its prohibitions. Then Vughturoi’s hands were on her shoulders, and “Wife,” his deep voice rumbled in her ears.
“Welcome, oh thrice welcome,” she whispered, little more than shaping her lips soundlessly about the words before she bowed again and greeted him properly. He watched her spec-ulatively, as if gauging her strength, then held out the rolls and wooden strips much as he might hand a stripling a sword.
“Be my brave lady,” he ordered more brusquely than he had ever spoken with her, and gestured at her to open her letters. Right out here? Before she had attended to the needs of her husband and his warriors or heard their news? Bowing before the tube that held the letter from the Son of Heaven, she broke it open and began to read.
In the next moment, the world slid sideways. Only Willow’s strong hands held her up. As they released her, she reeled. The sunlight was too bright; the colors that had gladdened her eyes moments ago now seemed to be garish, alien— and who were all of these strangers? None of them, save Willow, were from the Middle Kingdom. None of them would understand.
Yuan Ti, the Son of Heaven, was dead.
Once again she forced herself to glance down at the silk message with its hateful, fateful ideograms. There they were, unmistakable: the characters of the Son of Heaven’s name and the symbol for death. Numb, she read a few more columns. As she expected, she was instructed to follow the customs of the Hsiung-nu and marry Khujanga’s successor.
The letter jolted and danced before her. She was moving, she realized; Vughturoi was guiding her to her tent, Willow beside him, scolding to herself like an enraged fox or a woman of the Hsiung-nu at the stupidity that exposed a woman who bore a child to such a shock.
That is not how I wished him to learn of his son, she thought at her maid. Despite the heat, Silver Snow was trembling violently. Gratefully she accepted the robe that Vughturoi draped over her shoulders and watched as Willow brought out cups. What right did her tent have to look so peaceful, so much as it always did when the Son of Heaven was dead? All this time: how could it have happened and she not known? She could all but hear the laments of ritual mourning, the artistic frenzies of grief that some of the court ladies must have performed. Odd: she could not remember their names; and, at one time, the favor of this so-important, glittering creature or that had been so vital to her well-being. She suspected, however, that some members of the court might mourn sincerely. Her letter from Li Ling no doubt contained expressions of a grief as heart-felt as it was proper, and her father, no doubt, would mourn as a general and a man restored to favor should mourn his ruler. She must try to model herself upon their examples.
By now, the Son of Heaven’s tomb must be near completion, laden with statues of horses, camels, a court wrought in terra cotta and precious metals with as much skill as the finest artisans of Ch’ang-an could summon. Perhaps he lay already in his coffin of many layers, rich with paint and gems.
Did he wear the suit of jade armor that had been her father’s gift? Silver Snow spared a thought for the other suit, the lady’s burial armor, that she had brought with her to the grasslands with the treasures that were her dowry and the Son of Heaven’s too-tardy love gift. The thought made her blink back tears.
Customs warred in her spinning head. She reached for the jade hilt of her tiny knife and drew it to slash her clothing. She must have white robes; she must fast; she must seclude herself and give Yuan Ti, her adoptive father, proper respects. Already she was behind-hand in proper observances. The knife shook in her hand as she thought on that term. Proper observances . . . seeing his father stretched out dead before him, Vughturoi had gashed his face, mourning with blood, not tears. And now, Silver Snow was a woman of the Hsiung-nu.
Trembling, she raised her knife, and Vughturoi dashed it from her hands.
“You are a bearing woman,” he shouted at her, “and I command you that you will not fast, you will not harm yourself! You, Willow! See that you guard your lady, from herself, if need be. If you do not, you shall answer to me.”
He had never shouted at her before, never shown her the fury that Ch’in fears attributed to the Hsiung-nu. Though she had been too stunned to weep as she read the news of the Son of Heaven’s death, Vughturoi’s angry words drew tears from her, and she sank limply onto the nearest pile of cushions, weeping like a weakling of the Inner Courts of the Palace.
Her husband was at her feet in an instant, holding her hands, drawing her wholly into his arms, cajoling her in low, soothing tones as if she were a mare in foal , Silver Snow thought with a horrible pang of inappropriate mirth. The Hsiung-nu were gentle with their horses; despite a summer’s proof to the contrary, she had not suspected that that gentleness might extend to her, too.
“I did not want you to cut yourself, or to grieve so that you harmed our child,” he told her. Had that been fear that she had seen in his eyes, then? Once scolded, the women whom she had known in Ch’ang-an, that garden of Lilacs and Peonies and Peach Blossoms, would have languished and sulked, demanded gifts of jewels or furs before they turned brighter faces to their lords; but that was not Silver Snow’s way. It would baffle and frustrate Vughturoi, not control him (which was not her goal) or comfort him.
“I had hoped,” she told him, “to have told you about our son at a more auspicious moment.”
Shcwould ask Willow to cast the yarrow stalks and, above all else, she would even write to Li Ling and ask him to consult a Taoist sorcerer about this child’s future. He must not share the sorrow of the Son of Heaven’s death.
“Whatever the moment,” Vughturoi said, with a grass-lander’s indifference to the propriety of finding auspicious moments, “he is welcome. An heir for the Hsiung-nu!” His exultation all but stirred the silk and felt panels of her tent’s walls. Then he dropped his voice again and held her closely.
“Do not weep, lady,” he murmured. “Is it that I forbade you to mourn? Mourn you shall, if you must; but you must not hurt yourself or our son. You must eat, and walk in the fresh air; and above all, you must not cut yourself. You are too fair. Leave that for men like me. Promise me that, lady.”