Imperial Lady (Central Asia Series Book 1) Read online

  She glanced at the eunuchs, then cast down her eyes in a better-than-passable imitation of the maidenliness that she had observed in houses along the road to Ch’ang-an. But in that one glance had been a huntress’ awareness; her eyes took in plum, pear, and apricot trees, their bare branches pruned into symmetrical order and leafless now, and white flower beds in which silk flowers fluttered gaily, harbingers of the real blossoms that would fill them in the spring. Incense, not the sweetness of leaves and blooms, nor the wild freshness of wind and snow, scented the courtyard. In all that vast space encircled by the palace walls, Silver Snow thought, there was not one thing that had been left to nature itself. Beyond the wilderness of sculpted trees and silken gardens rose a splendor of walls and columns, enameled and gilded, pillars stretching up from polished porches to intricately carven roofs of great pavilions.

  It was toward one such pavilion that Silver Snow and Lilac were led, Willow stumping behind them.

  Lilac licked her lips, dry beneath their red paint.

  Why, she is frightened! Silver Snow thought. And her fear stems, not from ignorance, as does mine, but from knowledge. She did not need her father’s scrolls filled with the wisdom of General Sun Tzu to warn her that she must be very careful. Despite all of Lilac’s gushing praise of the dear, dear Administrator Mao Yen-shou, clearly he commanded fear as well as obedience.

  And on him, her future rested.

  Up the stairs they were led, Silver Snow careful to mince as delicately as the elder lady by her side. Perhaps she fears that I shall tell this eunuch that she did not make the journey North. For a moment she toyed with the idea, finding brief respite from fear in a malice that brought a flush to her cheeks in the next instant. Surely, were their positions reversed, Lilac would not hesitate to betray her. But she herself had been raised in a Confucian household; thus was not how she would wish Lilac to behave; and therefore, she herself must not do it. True propriety, not courtly artifice, silenced her.

  They entered a pavilion in which incense fumes wafted in soft gray spirals and melded with the fragrance of the cassia wood of which Silver Snow thought it must be constructed. This pavilion, however, was so richly carved—its pillars inlaid with jade, its walls and cornices inlaid with precious stones, its ceilings brilliant with floral designs—that she could not see the wood itself. Up a flight of marble stairs they climbed, Silver Snow’s eyes flickering from side to side at heavily robed officials and scholars. She despaired at ever understanding the faint, but significant, distinctions of color and headgear that set one rank apart from the next. The ladies—splendid in their robes and hair ornaments, their scent bags fluttering from their sashes—clustered briefly on landings, like flocks of great butterflies pausing on a single stem, before a glance from the ponderously important eunuch, who conducted Silver Snow within, sent them scurrying as fast as decorum and expensive garments would permit.

  The next room was warm, unusually, unnaturally so. Rising from huge glazed jars were the trees which had blossomed and budded in the heat. Behind them, as if hidden in an embrasure or behind a door, musicians played flutes or, with a jade plectrum, plucked music from the strings and sounding board of the p’i-pa.

  A burst of high-pitched voices greeted Silver Snow as she entered the room, but they were speaking not to her, but of politics.

  “Why support one barbarian against another?” asked one eunuch. “In fact, how does one tell the difference between them?”

  “Khujanga,” said a second, deeper voice, with some patience, “is no fool. More than his enemy, he is willing to be guided . . .”

  “Croak . . . croak . . .” several people interrupted, and laughter rose.

  Her guide thumped on the polished wood floor with a staff, then walked boldly into the center of the room. Whether any of the eunuchs would even have looked at her unless her escort had been so dramatic, she neither knew or cared. She was too busy looking about. Here lounged or stood a veritable eunuchs’ court, all more or less brightly clad, more or less avidly curious, save for one man, older than most, thinner than all, who sketched a greeting and slipped from the room. It had been he, she suspected, at whom the others had laughed. And yet, save that he was thinner than the others, she could see no difference among them.

  The next eldest, and far the heaviest and most splendidly dressed, stepped forward. Surely, Silver Snow thought, surely this must be the Administrator of the Inner Courts, responsible for . . . all this splendor.

  But no, he was gesturing them toward the most elaborate door that Silver Snow had yet seen.

  “Will this new lady be received by him?” asked their attendant, apprehension and awe evident in his voice. Just as evidently, he felt that this was an honor that the likes of Silver Snow did not deserve.

  “Take off your outer coat,” hissed Lilac, that odd, fearful quaver in her voice.

  Following the elder woman’s example, Silver Snow let the heavy sheepskin robes fall from her shoulders. Willow bent to retrieve them, but “leave them, girl!” ordered the eunuch, and led them farther inside the pavilion.

  There, a finely carved draughts-board and a tray of delicacies lay forgotten on a low table at his side. An artist’s paints and silks were neatly arranged where they might easily be picked up; and the Minister of Selection, the Son of Heaven’s Administrator of the Inner Courts, Mao Yen-shou, reclined on a silk-cushioned low seat.

  “Bow deeply,” whispered Lilac, who had already dropped down in the first head-knocking kowtow that Silver Snow had ever actually seen performed. Quickly she imitated Lilac, but not before her quick, appraising glance had taken in this man too.

  He was a veritable eunuch among eunuchs. Where the eunuchs who had met and conducted her from her cart had been plump and sleek, this man resembled a ripe plum, even to the sheen of the silken embroideries of his garments. His flesh was pale and better kept than Silver Snow’s own; and his eyes, made even more narrow by cheeks as round as white melons, gleamed like jet, and flickered with intelligent speculation: the quick, appraising eye of the artist—or the courtier.

  They glistened as they gazed at Silver Snow, who found herself rising from her humble posture to meet them, much as a bird stares into the eyes of a hungry serpent. He nodded once and pursed red lips, as if aware that the young woman who knelt before him was something other than the docile bud that she tried so hard to appear to be.

  He extended one beautifully kept hand to a box that lay on the floor at his feet. Impossible, Silver Snow thought, that a man’s hand would be that small, that well-tended, or that free of scars. Though Mao Yen-shou was an artist, not even a smudge of paint or ink defiled the white cleanliness of hands that, clearly, had never felt honest labor of any sort.

  “Let us see this lady’s dowry,” Mao Yen-shou spoke for the first time. Silver Snow felt herself grow hot at the insult he set upon her. No welcome; no greeting. Simply “let us see your dowry.” He would not even use his own soft hands, she thought, to inspect the gifts that her father had starved himself to provide.

  Yet what a cultivated voice the artist had! High-pitched, beautifully modulated, it was as beyond courtesy as it was beyond ugliness: unthinkable, its accents seemed to imply, that such a voice, or its possessor, could do aught that was incorrect or unfair, or even subject to criticism by lesser mortals—such as a very young, very frightened, and very innocent young woman.

  “And this lady is . . . ?” the voice asked, its self-conscious musicality pretending to conceal a yawn. He knows my name! Silver Snow was sure of it. Her fingers curled beneath her hanging sleeves, so much narrower, she realized now, than Lady Lilac’s or those fluttering from the shoulders of the ladies who had stared and whispered as she passed. Surely even the serving girls who had helped to unload her parcels wore finer robes than she had donned for this most important meeting.

  “Lady Silver Snow,” replied the younger eunuch, complicit amusement in his voice, which attempted to mimic the melody of his master’s speech.

&nb
sp; “Ah yes,” yawned Mao Yen-shou. “Old Chao Kuang’s daughter. The traitor.”

  Tears of anger and humiliation welled into her eyes, and she dropped her head, unwilling to betray her sorrow; but not before she saw the triumph in the eunuch’s eyes. He had tried to goad her, and he had succeeded. She blinked furiously and determined that she would not be caught in such a snare again.

  “Well, let us see if the North can provide the Son of Heaven with his due. Open the chests. Greetings, Lilac,” he added as an afterthought.

  Lilac rose from her own prostration and began, her voice shaken from the hauteur that had so affronted Silver Snow, to babble greetings and thanks.

  “You may go. I am certain that you will be glad to see your own courtyard again . . . and what it now contains.”

  Lilac left the room with a speed of which Silver Snow would personally thought the woman incapable.

  “You, lady. You may be seated. Fetch cushions for this . . . lady,” ordered Mao Yen-shou. “And perhaps rice wine. No? No wine? Bring almond cakes too. And litchi. You must try litchi now that you have come to Ch’ang-an.”

  The cushions were more luxurious than any that she had ever dreamed of, much less touched. Silver Snow perforce accepted rice wine, but merely touched her lips to the rim of her bowl when it came. She shook her head at the cakes, which Mao Yen-shou ate with relish, but with never a crumb falling upon his sable collar or satined belly. At his insistence, she tasted litchi, and when she wrinkled her nose at its unfamiliar taste, Mao Yen-shou laughed uproariously, and clapped his hands for a servant to take the fruit from her.

  “Take a cake instead,” he ordered, and watched until, reluctantly, she did. “You are an original, lady; that let me tell you!” he said, leaning forward with a rustle of straining fabric.

  If that silk splits, Silver Snow thought in fascination, I can take my sash, go to one of those trees in the courtyard, and hang myself from the nearest branch. She forced herself to look away.

  “Most Estimable Administrator, the silk and gold appear all to be in order,” said the younger eunuch.

  “Splendid, splendid,” approved Mao Yen-shou. He snatched up a peach, took a quick, dripping bite from it, and then tossed it to the other. “Tell them we want more cakes, then sit with me.”

  “Now, little lady from the North. Well for you that your father is as obtusely honest as I thought. He has stinted you in nothing except, perhaps, the matter of dress.” Mao Yen-shou gestured contemptuously at the silvery, antique brocade that Silver Snow had thought so lovely only a month ago when she found it in her mother’s chests. “Most likely, after half a lifetime and a marriage on the steppes, he forgets how important such things are to ladies. But we can contrive, I tell you; we can contrive.”

  A plump hand went swiftly from the empty tray of sweets to a chest of gold, deft fingers gliding across the heavy, gleaming metal.

  Like a fish jumping in a pool, fear leapt across the surface of Silver Snow’s thoughts, then submerged. The gold and tribute silk were for the Son of Heaven; surely the Emperor’s minister would not think of misappropriating them.

  Mao Yen-shou laughed. “An honest child!” he commended her, and she flushed, finding that his praise made her feel more helpless and more unschooled than had his rudeness. At least that had let her use anger to protect herself. “Doubtless, where other maids learn flute and drum, old Chao Kuang insisted that his daughter study only the Analects. Come with me to the window, child, and see on what your dowry will be spent.”

  Having no choice, Silver Snow followed the Administrator across the room, the last almond cake that she had taken sticking to her hand. As she passed Willow, however, she let it fall into the girl’s lap. Quickly, the serving girl snapped it up, and Mao Yen-shou laughed.

  “I was not supposed to see that, was I, lady? But come: I shall show you something more worth looking at.”

  He led her to the window and pointed to the Inner Courts of which he was the master. Even in the winter, servants set out silken flowers and the women’s orchestra played from a boat that floated in a lake in the center of one impossibly huge court. Individual pavilions glittered with gold and jade and polished wood; gem-bright were the joining of the paving-stones, but not as bright as the ladies who fluttered by in their gauzy jackets and skirts or long, flowing robes.

  Mao Yen-shou sighed. “It has been too long since these courts rang with music and laughter. I have created beauty here, beauty as a fit setting for beauty. But the Son of Heaven rarely walks herein; too many ladies, says he. He still misses the Bright Companion.” In a move as quick as it was unexpected, he turned away from the window and the beauty of the Inner Courts, and walked back into the room. Whatever Silver Snow had expected, she had not expected such an important official to be so mercurial.

  “No use standing there in the draft all day, lady. Come back to your seat.” To her surprise, he waited until she seated herself on the cushions. Then he picked up a brush.

  “The Son of Heaven has told me that he will not have five hundred ladies paraded before the Dragon Throne. No: he has commissioned me to paint the likeness of each lady.” He fell silent, and the silence continued so long that Silver Snow knew that he wanted some reply from her. She had seen a cat stalking mice more than once; was she now the mouse in some strange game?

  “An honor,” Silver Snow commented demurely.

  The eunuch cast down his eyes in a fine imitation of her own mock-modesty, then smiled. “A heavy burden for one no longer young. So many ladies; all young; all fair. How should I favor one above the other? And yet, art is such a matter of chance. One slip of the brush, and the loveliest lady can be rendered plain; a touch of paint here, and see, the palest girl glows like a peony. And all lies within my hands to flatter or to blight. Lady, you are not in the common way. It would take a great artist to accent your good points . . .”

  “And you are such a one?” she asked. Color flamed in her cheeks; surely she was not the pallid maid whom he spoke of having to beautify. “Alas,” she said with some asperity, “this girl is but a poor maid, and a modest one. How should she dare to have one such as the Son of Heaven esteem her own insignificant looks as more than they are?”

  She raised her eyebrows at the eunuch and saw him flush with anger. Behind her and to the side, she heard Willow shift on her knees, making ready in case her mistress should need her.

  “You have remarked on how poor the North is, and spoken of my lord and father’s misfortunes.” Once again, iron edged her words. “We are very honest in the North, but we are poor. Too poor to give such great artists their deserts.”

  “But if you were to wish such artists well, lady . . .” Mao Yen-shou smiled. He was enjoying his little game, Silver Snow thought indignantly. He knew she had no money to bribe him, but he enjoyed her struggles and her embarrassment. “It is not true, as some say, that we of the Inner Courts cannot love; and we are loyal to those who wish us well. To those who do not . . .”

  She thought of the official who had spoken to her of well-wishers and how he had prophesied that she was too blunt-spoken to be in a position to benefit any man by her good wishes. How true his words were.

  Silver Snow’s eyes blazed; and this time, she let the eunuch see it. “I have no gifts to give, and no prospects, sir,” she told Mao Yen-shou. “And even if I had . . .”

  “Is that your last word, lady?” asked the artist. “Bring in the other chests!” he called.

  Four men staggered into the room, each pair carrying the chests that Silver Snow had last seen in her father’s room, the chests that held two suits of jade armor, the gifts intended to make an old lord’s peace with his Emperor.

  “You say that you have no gifts, no wealth. Lady, what are these?” demanded Mao Yen-shou.

  CHAPTER 7

  Though Silver Snow had met poverty, betrayal, and battle without flinching, this ambush in the midst of luxury left her speechless. She opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came out. Her han
ds, concealed in the fraying sleeves of her robe, balled into tiny fists, then, deliberately, loosened. They were as cold as ever they had been in the long days and nights of her journey.

  Slowly and with an immense settling of flesh about him, Mao Yen-shou lowered himself to his knees beside one of the chests.

  “Stupid one!” he told the younger eunuch. “Am I to labor like a fieldworker? Open this at once!”

  “Open the chest!” His companion clapped his hands at Willow who rose painfully, cast a despairing glance at Silver Snow, and then lifted the lid of the larger chest to expose the funeral armor of jade plates, gleaming in the light. Simple and severe in the style of a much earlier age, nevertheless, the armor had its own splendor, which fitted well in this room of high pillars and inlaid walls.

  “You have no gifts to give, lady?” repeated Mao Yen-shou. He ran one hand over the faceplates of the armor, almost purring with pleasure at the jade’s cold smoothness. “My servants found these . . . what do you call these trinkets . . . hidden amid your baggage.”

  At last, Silver Snow recovered her powers of speech. “That is an heirloom of this one’s house,” she said, her voice calm despite the rage and fear that made her heart feel as if it might burst through her breast. “This one’s father commanded that it be presented to the Son of Heaven . . .”

  “On what might be considered your wedding night? How sentimental, and how dutiful,” said the eunuch. “But before you can celebrate that happy occasion, you must first win the Son of Heaven’s attention. And his attention must be won through me.”

  “I told you,” snapped Silver Snow, abandoning the careful proprieties of formal speech, “the armor is my father’s gift to the Son of Heaven. I myself have no gifts to give. Can you not believe that? Look at me. Do I glitter with gems? Are my robes in the fashion of the court? We are poor in the North. But . . . ”