Imperial Lady (Central Asia Series Book 1) Read online

  Surely, on the steppes, her father must have had his lonely days when his exile galled him worse than the pain of any wound. Yet he had persevered and survived. All that was good in her, she thought, came from him; she must not disgrace his teaching by even a moment’s weakness. She drew a deep, consciously steady breath and bent to draw the next character on the fresh green leaf that lay upon the crazed lacquer table before which she knelt.

  “Lady, oh lady!”

  So steady was her hand that she completed the stroke flawlessly before she looked up. Never before had Willow’s voice lilted in precisely that way; in fact, she had always taken care to keep it low as befitted a humble maid, especially now that they were in disgrace. She heard the familiar step/drag—first of Willow’s strong leg, then of her lame one—up the hollowed stairs to the pavilion.

  But what were those other, heavier and more measured footsteps that followed the maid’s?

  The smile on Willow’s face as she entered the pavilion that, even in summer, retained some chill from its very isolation was as bright as sunlight flashing from the mirror that the maid used to foretell. Just as quickly as a maid blows out a lamp, however, Willow shuttered her smile, hooded her eyes, and bowed slowly, painfully, and ceremonially to the floor in appropriate homage to the visitor who followed her into the pavilion.

  It was the eunuch Li Ling who had spoken bravely to the Emperor of the Hsiung-nu before the entire court. In his hand, he held, as another might carry a spray of lilacs or a fan, a number of drying leaves, each of which bore the verses of lament and loneliness that she had composed and so painstakingly inscribed.

  She bowed herself before him, shaking with a return of the old, childish hope. Surely he would speak first. If he did not, then she might venture a word, assuming she could find the power of speech at all.

  “Seeing you, lady,” said Li Ling, “this one feels as if he has asked for melons and been given fine jade.”

  Wondering, Silver Snow looked up. Li Ling stepped forward, his hand going out so that the leaves brushed her chin. Then, quickly, he recollected himself and drew it back.

  “Those are the features of the ill-favored lady of Mao Yen-shou’s portrait,” mused the eunuch-scholar, “and yet, how different! Your complexion is like almonds, not like mud; and your brow and chin do not protrude like a soldier’s. As for the mole—surely that was our worthy Administrator’s invention.”

  Aware that her cheeks were flushing so that her skin resembled not an almond but a peony, Silver Snow looked down.

  “Yes, yes, I am well aware that my behavior is unpardonable, but I pray that you will pardon it for the sake of my old friend, your most estimable father. I had heard that his last child had come to court, and it grieved me to know that you were unhappy and alone.”

  Silver Snow felt the corners of her mouth ache from the unfamiliar wideness of her smile. She cocked her head to one side, looking at the leaves that Li Ling held.

  “Is this writing yours? The brushstrokes are very fine.”

  She shook her head and gestured as if to decry her own ability.

  “And the verses too? I have never seen them before. You composed them upon the leaves, then simply blew them into the air, to fly where they would? Is that it, lady?”

  Silver Snow nodded, then realized that a nod was hardly sufficient courtesy to a friend of her father, an advisor to the Son of Heaven, and the only person, save Willow, to come to her in her exile with no thought but to cheer her. She rose, ceremoniously begged that he seat himself, and ordered Willow to heat the last of the rice wine that she had brought with her from the North.

  “Willow threw the leaves over the wall,” said Silver Snow.

  “And that is Willow?” asked the eunuch-scholar. He stared at her with the same keen interest that he had taken in Silver Snow’s own appearance and her writing: glanced at her hair, which gleamed with russet highlights in the summer sunshine, then dropped his speculative, narrow-eyed gaze to Willow’s hands and the curious way in which the middle three fingers of each hand were of equal length.

  “Very interesting,” he said calmly. “Your maid. Is she from—” he paused, then spoke the name of a region of the Middle Kingdom so obscure that Silver Snow remembered hearing it pronounced but once or twice.

  Willow, entering with the hot wine, heard him and froze on the threshold, the delicate winecups and flask trembling on the tray that she bore.

  “Well, girl, are you?”

  Willow dropped to her knees awkwardly, favoring her lame leg. “Yes,” she whispered. Her hands trembled as she set out the wine on the low table.

  “Then I take it that you are an herbalist? I too have interests in that direction . . . and in alchemy.” He flashed mistress and maid a quick, warning look.

  Alchemy. Some men said that the study revealed secrets of the Tao that otherwise would be locked away from humankind; others, more fearful and more numerous, held that those secrets were, indeed, proscribed to man. From the study of alchemy to accusations of witchcraft, Silver Snow thought, was but a tiny step, no more than a lady in a new gown and shoes might take crossing a high-arched bridge.

  “Be honest with me, as I have been honest with you,” said Li Ling. “Lady, you are my old companion’s youngest child. I mean you only well in your solitude. As for my . . . studies”—he paused delicately—“they, along with music, calligraphy, and poetry”—he bowed at her, a subtle compliment to her verse—“are compensations for what I have lost. I have no heir nor am likely to now. What else can they do but kill me?”

  “Mao Yen-shou threatened me with the penalty for grave-robbing.” The words, still painful after all of these months, slipped out with a speed and bitterness that made Silver Snow gasp, wishing that she unsay them. This man—impossible to think of him as one of the posturing, flabby effeminates who surrounded Mao Yen-shou!—his lordly manner and his keen wit drew the entire sorry tale from her before he had finished his first cup of wine, though, in courtesy, she truly should have waited until he had refreshed himself before she spoke.

  When the tale was finished, Silver Snow sat quietly. For the first time in months, the tension that had knotted in her belly and tightened her spine after the Administrator of the Inner Court’s theft of the jade armor dissipated. Telling Ling Li had brought its own healing, just as lancing a boil relieved pain and swelling.

  “You are indeed your father’s child,” said the old alchemist. “It was not just alchemy for which I was punished. I was your father’s advocate as well as his friend. Do you know, I was there when he was captured? Ah, that was a mighty battle. We would have pursued the Hsiung-nu, but I had no support to follow. Your father set out the crossbowmen. Their aim was so deadly that even the shan-yu himself was forced to dismount and fight on foot. And the Hsiung-nu, without their horses, are but half alive.

  “As I said, we followed. Perhaps we were immodest, maddened by the thought of victory. Your father pursued the Hsiung-nu into a narrow valley, determined to wipe them out. That was when they rolled rocks down to block the valley. Thus, your father was trapped within with his men; I without.

  “First, your father’s men ran out of arrows. In their haste to escape the valley, they abandoned their supply carts . . . a fatal error. Soon they were brought to fighting with axles torn from the carts, with short swords; very quickly, their numbers were reduced. Even had your father been minded to flee, he could not have done so.

  “Once the sun went down, your father took desperate measures. He ordered his men to put away the banners and the flags that they had marched behind with such pride. He burned the treasure that the army carried, ordered his troops to disperse, and himself set off with ten men. Two of those died before he surrendered himself to the Hsiung-nu to save the lives of the other eight—and, lady, you would not fear death in the Middle Kingdom had you but seen death as the Hsiung-nu deal it. The bows, the whistling arrows, the knives, cunningly . . . no!

  “Your father surrendered to save his tr
oops. And yet, of all those brave soldiers, only four hundred ever escaped.

  “I returned to Ch’ang-an, of course, to resign my commission and confess my failure to save my friend, who, I wanted to assure the Son of Heaven, had acquitted himself with courage and dignity. However, I found myself plunged from defeat into scandal and intrigue. Your father’s name and Ancestors were blackened as traitors. I pleaded; all the spirits of my own house know how I pleaded. The fact,” he added with a glance at her, “that you are alive for me to repeat this story is proof of how well I pled. Yet, when the great fears of witchcraft arose, as they do every few years, my defense of a man who now rode with the Hsiung-nu was remembered; and my name and manhood paid the forfeit of my loyalty.

  “After such a life, lady, can you truly fear that I would ever mean harm to you and yours?”

  Silver Snow shook her head, moved past speech.

  “Then let me be your friend. You are in exile from your home. I, too, am in a kind of exile; I miss the honor that once I had. That unfortunate day of the presentation of the pictures, when the Son of Heaven summoned me, was the first time for many sorrowful years. Your father would want you to study, and there is much that I can teach. Will you accept me as a friend?”

  Her eyes bright with admiration at the story of her father’s valor, Silver Snow did not answer for a moment. For a few precious moments, Li Ling’s story had freed Silver Snow from the confinement of the Cold Palace, released her from the constraints of the Inner Courts, set her free to wander, in her imagination, the lands that she had gazed at for all of her girlhood. There too the freedom that she sought was walled away from her. Though her father had had the freedom of the steppes, yet he too had not been free. She sighed deeply.

  Sorrow and disappointment flickered on Li Ling’s face, and he began to rise.

  She held out a hand, daring to restrain him. If he left, she would never again have company, and, once again, she would retreat into the hateful cocoon of the Shadowed One. She would rather die than do that—or would she? Li Ling had not. Her father had not.

  Neither would she.

  She raised her eyes and realized that she had kept the scholar waiting too long for his answer. Both of them were prisoners, suffering shame and loneliness. She would not start this new friendship with more hurt. She smiled, nodded, and poured him some more rice wine.

  “Wonderful!” cried Li Ling. “Your lessons—and yours too, little changeling—will begin immediately.” And this time his smile included Willow.

  CHAPTER 9

  All that summer, laughter and music, not leaves inscribed with grieving verse, floated over the wall of the Cold Palace as Silver Snow, Willow, and Li Ling—three exiles from what might well have been rich, satisfying lives—shared their talents and memories.

  “The most estimable Li Ling has deigned to seek this unworthy one out,” wrote Silver Snow, her brushstrokes sure and delicate, “and has taught her many things. He presents his duty to you and humbly asks that this one remember him to you . . . ”

  She could write with a tranquil heart to her father now and, thanks to Li Ling, be certain of the delivery of her letter. In fact, she could almost smile when she looked back at the torments of rebellion and regret that she had suffered during her entry to the Inner Courts and her banishment to the Cold Palace. The court, which she had hoped would be the instrument of her freedom and her father’s pardon, had turned out to be a snare; the Cold Palace, which had seemed like worse exile to her than the western frontier might have been for that absurd Lady Lilac, now brought her quiet, learning, even peace and freedom of a sort.

  True, her physical being was restricted to the pavilions, and they were no better kept, no warmer, than they had been the previous winter. They were, however, no worse than the courtyards of her lost northern home; and now they contained a treasure that meant more to her than any warmth of brazier or luxury of gem and screen. Above them, her mind ranged afar, as if she finally had crossed the Purple Barrier and now rode free upon grassland and steppe.

  If she had little treasure of silk and none at all of jade, she had the vast resources of Li Ling’s mind. At first, he had confined his lessons to such subjects as he thought might interest a lady of fine breeding: music, calligraphy, verse, botany, and herbs—though, in the study of herbs, Willow far outstripped her and rapidly became even Li Ling’s superior. Hers was the greater kinship with nature; hers was the sharper eye; and hers, Silver Snow realized now, must have been the greater suffering in the first days that they had been immured here.

  This new joy and freedom, she knew, would cease one day. Li Ling was far older than she and, quite possibly, enfeebled by campaigns, wounds, and the punishment wreaked upon him for his loyalty. One day, he would die, and she would be left to her own resources. By then, however, she would be older. She could hope that the scandal surrounding her and the picture that had so slandered her might have been forgotten and that she would be allowed somewhat more liberty to move within the Inner Courts. Perhaps then, she might find and befriend someone just as Li Ling had befriended her.

  “ . . . this one cannot honor her esteemed father enough for the lessons in patience and setting correct values upon things that he has been good enough to teach. Although this one had no choice but to obey the Son of Heaven’s edict, she now esteems the order and dignity of her father’s home and the wisdom of his teachings beyond jade. She will be content to recall them and to attempt obediently to live by them for the rest of her insignificant life . . .”

  Early in the autumn of the second year of Silver Snow’s life in the Cold Palace, she sat in the well-swept courtyard, watching the gold leaves and the pine needles rustle on their branches. The smells recalled her homeland; the breath of the wind, even after it had spent itself crossing the many walls of the Palace, brought her a hint of motion, of freedom. In the grasslands, she knew, the wind would blow long silver swathes in the grass as if it moved over the sea rather than over green growing things.

  Li Ling entered with a step more rapid than was his wont. Silver Snow bowed. Before she had half risen from her obeisance, Li Ling had interrupted her greeting.

  “Where is Willow?” he asked. “Tell her to fetch her yarrow stalks and cast the hexagrams.”

  “Is there change in the wind?” Silver Snow asked with a quiet smile. That too was a sign of her growth, she thought. A year ago, she might have been all flame and anticipation to hear it, and all apprehension lest it harm her. Now, she could look forward to change with curiosity, set it at its proper value, then leave it behind: it would probably be none of her concern.

  “Change?” demanded Li Ling. His weary, wise eyes gleamed, and he was more animated than Silver Snow had ever seen him. “The merest maid—and I do not mean your Willow, either—could know that change is in the wind, a wind that blows across the grassland, bringing us news from the West and, possibly, a new alliance.”

  A swish of robes, an uneven step, and an awkward bow heralded Willow. Hastily she knelt—“careful, child!” cried Li Ling and leaned forward to ease her descent. Out came the yarrow stalks, and as she had not done for months, she cast and scanned the stalks to see what hexagram they formed.

  “Change,” mused Silver Snow. “Travel. Willow, the last time you showed me these same hexagrams . . . yes, she did, Li Ling, and I scolded her. Tell me, most worthy teacher, does this mean that you shall soon be taken from us, to travel once again to the West?”

  It was too early, a childish, rebellious voice in her heart lamented, to lose the man who had been friend, teacher, and surrogate father. Yet, if he was to journey once again to the West, it could only be because the Son of Heaven had restored him to full favor. If that was indeed true, Silver Snow would rejoice. And how much worthier was that second thought than the selfish, timid first one!

  Li Ling smiled and shook his head. “This one’s traveling days are done, little lady. It is the Hsiung-nu who are the great travelers, as you know. The shan-yu Khujanga—you remem
ber his name?”

  “My father was his prisoner,” said Silver Snow. “And you once said before the Son of Heaven that Khujanga, if he won his battles for supremacy in the West, would seek an alliance with the Middle Kingdom. Is it he who rides to Ch’ang-an, then?”

  To her surprise, Li Ling laughed, but there was sadness in his laughter. “So you oversaw the court that day, did you, lady? Your doing, one supposes,” he shot that comment at Willow, who flushed. “You discovered a bolthole for your mistress and, from it, she heard herself reviled.”

  “Yet I also saw and heard you!” Silver Snow retorted.

  “You know,” mused Li Ling, “all that evening, the Son of Heaven swore that he had seen the shadow of his lost lady, running down the corridor. Despite the bevies of Jasmines and Precious Pearls and whatever their sentimental names are whom he possesses, the Son of Heaven is a quiet man who forms deep attachments and grieves cruelly when they are lost or, as he thinks, betrayed. Then, his punishments are all the more severe for his disappointment. Such, I know now, was indeed the case when he sentenced me and let me sit idle in the Inner Chambers. I do not think that he has forgotten his lost love. Still, it is ironic: the shadow that he saw was you . . .”

  Li Ling’s voice trailed off as he entered a reverie. Despite herself, Silver Snow drummed fingers upon the mat.

  “Does this shan-yu Khujanga come then to Ch’ang-an? I had thought he was quite old.”

  “And so he is, child,” Li Ling agreed. “Old, seamed with scars, and worn out with battles. He would die if he rode this far from his grasslands now. But he has won his battles and now seeks his alliance.”

  “Why?” demanded Silver Snow. “The Wall protects us from the Hsiung-nu. Beyond it, however, what restrains them from faring where they will? Barbarians they may be, but they may ride free.”

  For the first time since she had met him, Li Ling almost preened himself. “I have never been more relieved to have my advice disregarded. Years ago, when I rode the grasslands myself, Khujanga used to ask me about the Middle Kingdom. And I told him, ‘Your whole horde scarcely equals the population of a couple of prefectures, but the secret of your strength lies in your independence of Ch’in for all your real necessities. I notice an increasing fondness for Ch’in luxuries. Reflect that one-fifth of the Chinese wealth would suffice to buy your people completely. Silks and satins are not half so well suited as felts to the rough life you lead, nor are the perishable delicacies of Ch’in so wholesome as your kumiss and cheese.’