The Tiger Queens (28 page)

The rain slapped harder against my felt walls and the lambs bleated so loudly I threatened to turn them into stew before Boyahoe finally reappeared, trailed by Enebish and tugging the sleeves of a long-bearded physician. Enebish remained by the door, her eyes glistening. “What can we do?”

“Pray to every deity you worship.” I rubbed my silver cross, worn smoother these past months, and flicked drops of milk from my porridge to the ground in an offering to the Earth Mother. “Pray for his recovery.”

The physician made a great show of checking Ala-Qush’s breath and pulse, even removing his curled boots to palpate his feet and using a silver hook to open his eyes. I expected Ala-Qush to react to the latter, but he just stared at the ceiling, unblinking and scarcely breathing.

“The Prince of Beiping has an imbalance of water,” the physician declared, tucking his arms into his wide sleeves. “And it has caused his body to revolt.”

“What can you do?” I asked.

The sage shrugged. “I may be able to alleviate the excess of fluids with my needles, but I believe the worst of the storm has passed.”

By then my husband had fallen silent, his eyes closed in what appeared to be a restful sleep. Still, the right side of his face seemed untethered from the bone, and his arm hung slack at his side.

“Use the needles,” I said, lifting his arm to lay it at his side. “And anything else that may help him.”

The physician nodded, but he drew me away from the children. “I’ve seen this before, Beki. It is possible that the prince will never fully recover from this unfortunate episode.”

“But will he live?”

“I believe so.”

I offered a silent prayer of thanks to the Eternal Blue Sky. “Then do all you can for him.”

I began issuing unnecessary orders to occupy the children and distract them from their father’s condition. “Return the lambs to their ewe,” I said to Boyahoe. “And these crates need to be taken to the Great House.”

Enebish hugged herself, her lower lip trembling. She put on a show of being older than her years but was little more than a scared child. “And my father?”

“He’ll remain here for the time being, until the physician deems him able to be moved.”

“May I care for him?” she asked. It was the only request I could ever recall coming from her, and I knew it had cost her dearly to even ask.

I nodded, wondering if I’d regret my next words. “And bring your mother, if she’ll come. We’ll take turns tending him until he recovers.”

“I’ll fetch her right now,” she said, as if I might change my mind. “Thank you, Beki.”

It was the first time she had used my title without looking as if she might spit. Today was a day of tragedy, but also one of small miracles.

“Wait,” I said, stopping her at the door. “Send a messenger to ride for the monastery. Jingue must return home.”

“Of course,” she said. My request seemed aimed to bring her family together in its time of need, when in fact, I was motivated by reasons far less pure. In the terrible event that Ala-Qush’s spirit flew to the mountains, Jingue would become sole ruler of the Onggud and I’d be nothing more than a childless widow of sixteen winters. I couldn’t afford to have him out rallying the surrounding towns against me, or worse.

Only time would reveal which role I would play in the days to come:
beki
, widow, or corpse.

*   *   *

I’d prayed for my husband’s survival, but death would have been a kindness.

Jingue returned while I was with his father in the Great House, a crick in my neck and my mouth half-open in sleep, a Turkic book on herbs under my face. The treatise was open to the page on the use of a woundwort infusion for weak hearts, and although it had taken me much of the night to puzzle out the full meaning of the entry, I doubted whether such a treatment would have any impact on Ala-Qush. When I wasn’t in the Great House, I was often playing games with Boyahoe to divert him from the fact that his father could no longer eat, walk, or even relieve himself on his own. Ala-Qush’s ruined face rendered speech impossible, but my husband had yet to use the paper and ink I’d suggested we keep nearby. Instead, he vacillated between raging in grunts and moans and throwing things at us with his good arm. I understood the black moods a ruined body could bring, but my temper was being worn thin.

“How is he?” Jingue startled me awake when he touched my shoulder, then knelt at his father’s bedside, his expression pained. He still wore his heavy travel clothes, and he smelled of morning’s crisp air and towering spruce trees.

“The physician’s done all he can. Now we wait.” I rubbed my tired eyes and twisted in my chair to find some relief for my aching back. I’d been indoors for so long I’d almost forgotten what the air outside smelled like, and my nose twitched from the stink of Ala-Qush’s urine bucket.

“What do we wait for?” Jingue removed a carved wooden cross from his throat and laid it across his father’s chest. “His last breath?”

“The physician says the danger of that has passed. That shall have to be enough, at least for now.”

Orbei entered with Enebish then, both their noses wrinkling until their eyes adjusted to the dark and they saw Jingue kneeling next to me.

“Jingue!” Orbei pulled her eldest son to his feet and gathered him into her arms. Scenes between mothers and sons played out the same the world over, although I realized with a pang that I had little hope of ever clasping to me a son born from my own womb.

I busied myself emptying the urine bucket and folding Ala-Qush’s blankets; where the Great House had once entertained Tanghut, Jurched, and Song ambassadors, now the dimly lit wooden house was only the sickroom for a broken old man. Finally, Orbei released her son and took up her bench by her husband, a wooden board and a bag of knucklebones on her lap.

“I thought I might entice him to play when he wakes,” she said to me. Orbei and I had learned to speak civilly to each other while Ala-Qush slept, although our conversations were stilted and often more painful than slitting one’s wrists. Enebish and I occasionally shared talk of the School of Healing and often spent evenings in companionable silence sitting with Ala-Qush.

“Good luck,” I said.

Orbei set herself to the task of combing Ala-Qush’s long hair, and for a moment I imagined her with my husband as a young bride, performing the same simple act on a bed fresh from lovemaking. My cheeks flushed and I beckoned to Jingue. “Will you walk with me?”

I was proud of myself for asking the question instead of commanding him, yet he only shrugged. “For a bit.”

I swallowed my ire and swept past him, wishing I’d thought to wear something more intimidating than an old gray
deel
stained with my failed attempts at making Ala-Qush’s ox broth. Enebish caught my arm on the way out.

“Be gentle with my brother, Alaqai,” she whispered. I searched her eyes for malice but found none, only the stony set of her jaw. “His is a gentle soul, and I won’t have your fire scalding him.”

“I have no intention of harming your brother,” I said. “Although he does try my patience sometimes.”

Enebish smiled at that. “As you do with all of us,” she said.

I chuckled under my breath, prompting Jingue to raise an eyebrow as he gestured toward the door. “I had no idea you and my sister were on speaking terms,” he said, closing the door behind us.

“On good days,” I said. But it wasn’t Enebish I wished to discuss.

“How long to you plan to stay?” I asked, setting us on a path toward the tortoise gate and beyond that, the hills.

“For now.”

“I’ll need you here longer than that with your father in this condition.”

Jingue shook his head. “There are plenty of people to care for him. My place is—”

“Here,” I said, feeling a flutter of annoyance that this very man who’d proposed a School of Healing was, in fact, indifferent toward his afflicted father. “I’d not ask you to wipe the drool from his mouth or help him to his bucket, but—”

“I’m not so weak as to fear caring for the man who sired me,” Jingue said, his voice harsher than I’d ever heard it. “But this hasn’t been my home for some time now.”

Since I’d come to Olon Süme. I recognized the accusation but refused to acknowledge it.

“You belong
here
,” I said, “not in some distant monastery. Your father needs you, Jingue.
I
need you.”

He gave me a startled glance at that, but I walked apace, making my husband’s heir hurry after me. Olon Süme’s walls retreated behind us before he finally spoke. “What do you mean, you need me?”

“I plan to build the School of Healing as you recommended,” I said. “I always repay my debts.”

“Of course.” His face grew stony, the opposite of the reaction I’d expected.

We’d reached the hills and I tossed myself to the ground with a dull thud, plucking several blades of new grass and plaiting them together to help my concentration. Jingue stood nearby, as tall and silent as a birch tree.

“Your father isn’t going to improve,” I said, softening my tone. “No matter how much we may wish it.”

Jingue sat and crossed his legs then, folded his hands in his lap. I imagined him this way at his Nestorian monastery, at peace with himself and the god of the cross. I cringed to think that I was ordering him to leave all that behind, but there was no way to avoid it.

“I know,” he said.

“The taxes must still be collected and appropriated. The border guards must be paid.”

“Life goes on,” he said, his voice pained.

I dared touch him then, thinking of what I’d feel to face my father as a man broken by his own body, yet such a thing was impossible to contemplate regarding Genghis Khan. My fingers brushed Jingue’s shoulder first; then I let my hand fall to join his. My heart tripped at the moment of uncommon intimacy and I waited for him to withdraw his hand, but he didn’t move.

“I plan to allocate a portion of the tolls to build the School of Healing,” I said, breaking the moment by clearing my throat and returning my hands to my lap. I stared at my palms, the innocent flesh and bone that had just trespassed against some invisible boundary. “I’ve been thinking about it since before you ran away to the monastery.”

“I didn’t run away.” He looked askance at me then, and I saw the lie in his words. This was a man who might have walked calmly through any of life’s storms, had I not enveloped him in my unique sort of chaos.

“That’s not what your father claimed. He said you left to get away from me.”

Jingue looked ready to deny it, then sighed. “You were far from what I expected. I found it difficult to hate you as I planned.”

“And do you still wish you could hate me?”

“It would make things easier.” Jingue stood then, as if he needed to put distance between us. I was struck then by his noble height and the way his white
deel
pulled tighter across his shoulders. I wondered for a moment what the muscles looked like underneath, whether they were hard and compact, or long and trim, and what they would feel like under my hands. A flush crept up my neck at the thought and I had to look away.

There was no one nearby, only the clouds overhead and the occasional chatter of a long-tailed ground squirrel. I was reminded of a similar grassy plain at my father’s
khurlatai
, the last time I’d been with a man, and terrible laughter bubbled in my throat at how my life had changed since then. It was inappropriate to be here, alone with my husband’s son, especially as my thoughts regarding Jingue at that moment were far from appropriate.

I scrambled to my feet and stalked down the hillside ahead of Jingue, the burning in my chest so strong that I expected to see flames on my flesh.

“You’ll get your school,” I threw back at him. “But I’ll need your support for my decisions as
beki
, so long as your father lives.”

“And after that?” he called after me.

I didn’t answer. I’d make no promises about a future I couldn’t see.

1211 CE

YEAR OF THE WHITE SHEEP

W
e built the School of Healing and I learned to welcome foreign ambassadors in my husband’s stead, entertaining the Jurched and Song ministers with anecdotes from my newly discovered favorite books on travel and medicine while negotiating higher tolls for the use of our roads to carry their priceless silks and spices to the West. The Onggud bent unwilling knees to me, a result of my continuing role as Ala-Qush’s official wife, but it was Jingue’s constant presence behind me in the Great House that dissuaded the Onggud from attempting to depose me. Despite my gains in their language and the building projects I’d undertaken, I was still an outsider set above them, and they loathed me for it.

Boyahoe I loved because he reminded me of a young version of Ogodei, and Enebish and Orbei tolerated me, but it was Jingue—the thoughtful religious scholar—who seemed content with me as I was. The longer I spent with Ala-Qush’s eldest, the more I came to appreciate his quiet approach to the world, so different from my own quick-blooded temperament. I told myself it was only because I was lonely here in Olon Süme that I anticipated the sound of his laugh with such eagerness or enjoyed the hot thrill of his hand brushing against mine, but I relished them all the same.

We’d lived with Ala-Qush’s illness for more than two years, and it was
a fair autumn afternoon when I managed to drag Jingue from under his pile of books for an impromptu archery competition on one of the last warm days before the frosts came. The golden grasses rippled and the breeze played with his hair as he nocked a quarrel and sent it flying, narrowly missing the center of the rice bag we’d set dangling from a willow tree.

I smirked and drew an arrow from my quiver. “You realize you’ll owe me an accounting of the tolls after I win this shot?”

“I’m still waiting for my pot of rabbit stew after I beat you last time.” Jingue leaned against the tree, dappled sunlight playing on his face. “Although I’m not convinced you didn’t let me win then.”

I hadn’t let him win. I’d only lost because I’d been more interested in watching him and had aimed my last shot so poorly I’d almost shot his horse. “Suit yourself,” I said. “I warned you my cooking was more punishment than reward.”

“I find it difficult to believe that a woman who can speak three languages, ride, and shoot as you do would be cowed by making a simple stew.”

It was true that I now spoke Mongolian, along with passable Turkic and Khitan, yet I still struggled to make yogurt that wasn’t too thin or cheese that wasn’t so salty it puckered one’s lips.

“I am a woman of many talents,” I said. “Unfortunately, cooking is not one of them.” A disturbance on the horizon saved me from saying anything else, a fast-moving rider coming from the roads that led to the west.

My father had finished his initial conquest against the Tanghuts, and his empire had prospered since, including the creation of the
ortoo
, an elaborate messenger system with a series of riders and relay stations to speed the transmission of information. I’d received a message bearing the sad news of Gurbesu’s death from fever and a terse letter from Shigi in the spring carrying word that Sorkhokhtani had given Tolui a son named Möngke and that Toregene had gone on to drop another son for Ogodei. For his part, my brother had requested that a cart of as much wine as I could spare be sent to him across the Great Dry Desert as a proper celebratory gift. I’d sent the wine and my hollow congratulations, then returned to my empty
ger
.

I shielded my eyes against the sun. This was no common arrow messenger wearing an official silver
ortoo
badge at his waist and running at a pace to avoid tiring his horse, but a slight figure wearing a helmet topped with a horse’s tail and bent over a lathered gelding that raced as if the steppes were on fire.

The rider veered toward us and brought the yellow gelding to a halt so hard it almost sat on its haunches. I recognized the delicate sweep of the rider’s nose and her immaculate riding
deel
even before she dismounted and released a sheet of shiny black hair from under her helmet. Sorkhokhtani smiled at me, her cheeks ruddy from the ride, although the rest of her skin was still as soft and pale as the moon. “You look well, Alaqai Beki,” she said.

It had been too long since I’d heard my family speak my name, and I welcomed the unexpected sound. “And you look perfect as always, Sorkhokhtani of the Kereyid.” I pulled her to me in a fierce hug, feeling as if I were embracing a sliver of home. “The People of the Stone Walls welcome you,” I said. “As do I.”

“I bear warm greetings from your family, especially your mother. Borte Khatun is as strong and fierce as ever.” Sorkhokhtani brushed her hair from her cheek, just under the mole she so hated, and looked to where Jingue stood, no longer leaning against the tree. “And is this your husband, Ala-Qush?”

Sorkhokhtani was as small as a weasel and just as sneaky, likely the most intelligent of all my father’s sons- and daughters-by-marriage. Her eyes sparked so I knew that she realized Jingue couldn’t be my husband.

“This is Ala-Qush’s eldest son, Jingue of the Onggud.”

Jingue offered her an elegant bow. “You are most welcome to Olon Süme, Princess of the Hearth.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jingue knew the names of my family, much less their titles or relationships. I’d yet to find a topic that Jingue wasn’t well versed in.

Sorkhokhtani gave a gracious smile. “I’m most happy to be here. This will be a welcome respite after many weeks crossing that infernal desert. It’s been a long time since we’ve known shade, or a good bath or meal.”

“We?” I asked, searching the horizon for the rest of her party.

“Your father sent me ahead with a message for you.”

For my father to travel so far could mean only one thing, yet I didn’t care to discuss so dark a matter, at least not yet.

Jingue caught the meaning in my eyes and swept up his bow and quiver before relieving me of my weapons. “You must be tired and hungry after so long a journey,” he said to Sorkhokhtani. “I’ll return to see that a feast and accommodations are arranged for you.”

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness,” Sorkhokhtani said to Jingue, enunciating each word in perfect Turkic. It was difficult to forget that this sister of my hearth had been raised as a Kereyid princess, more educated than anyone in my father’s clan. Had it not been for the fact that she was already married to Tolui, she and Jingue might have made a perfect match. The very thought made me scowl, earning a quizzical expression from Sorkhokhtani.

“I look forward to meeting the rest of your illustrious family,” she said to Jingue, arching a delicate eyebrow in my direction.

We watched Jingue retrace the path back to Olon Süme’s tortoise gate. “That one seems quite dedicated to you,” she murmured when he was out of earshot, although I could hear the laugher in her voice. “Toregene would ask if you’ve tumbled him yet, but I assume from the way you ogle him that you’ve only dreamed of him in your bed.”

I gaped and slapped her arm. “I suppose it’s a good thing Toregene isn’t here, isn’t it?” I ignored the heat in my cheeks and took the reins of her lathered horse to follow Jingue through the herds of camels and into the city. “You claimed my father sent you with a message. I’d ask why he didn’t send one of my brothers, but I fear I know the answer.”

“Jochi vanquished the northern forest people and fights the forty tribes of the Kyrgyz now,” Sorkhokhtani said. The smile had left her voice and a frown took up an uncomfortable roost on her lips. “Chaghatai, Ogodei, and Tolui spend too much time drinking to remain upright in a saddle long enough to cross the Great Dry Sea.”

I winced at the appraisal of my brothers, recalling the nights I’d watched Chaghatai come to blows while red-faced drunk, and Ogodei
roaring with laughter while swilling from jugs of
airag
and Onggud wine, one right after the other. And Tolui, whom I last saw hiccuping and weeping like a woman until Ogodei led him away. “So you volunteered for the task?”

“I did, the better to survey the lands my son might one day rule.” Sorkhokhtani spoke with the same certainty as if commenting that the sun would rise tomorrow or the mares would drop their foals in spring. I felt the hole in my heart grow a little wider; she and Toregene both had sons, yet I remained childless.

“How does Möngke fare?” The words tasted bitter, but I managed a smile. “I imagine everyone dotes on the Prince of the Hearth’s little heir.”

“They do, yet I try to curb the worst of their excesses, the golden saddles and constant parade of ponies. I’ll raise my son to fill his grandfather’s boots.”

It was no empty boast, for as my father’s youngest son and Prince of the Hearth, Tolui would inherit the lands of my father’s birth. Sorkhokhtani seemed to sense my sadness and squeezed my arm in a rare display of tenderness. “Your arms won’t always be empty, Alaqai. Your womb will fill with life when the time is right.”

“That may be,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. “But I’ve accepted that I’ll be an old woman hunched over my lonely hearth.”

“If that were so, I’d ride to Olon Süme myself and steal you back to my
ger
.”

“I don’t doubt that you would.” I chuckled then. “And I could entertain your brood with exceptionally poor
buree
music.”

She brightened at that. “You learned how to play?”

“I take it as a good sign that the dogs have stopped howling when I practice. How does the rest of our family fare?”

“Yesui’s daughter Checheyigen has gone to marry the Oirat prince and your father promised Gurbesu’s daughter Al-Altun to Tokuchar, the Idiqut of the Uighurs. Tokuchar begged the Khan of Khans on his knees to become his fifth son. Your father might have refused the sable furs, pearls, and gold the Idiqut brought as the bride-price, but when Tokuchar paraded the white gyrfalcons and geldings before him . . .” She shrugged.

And so two more of my father’s daughters would give him alliances and extend his influence. I wondered whether my father’s skill as a conqueror lay in his ability to wage war or in his adroitness at spreading our family across the steppes, mountains, and valleys.

We approached Olon Süme’s gate and Sorkhokhtani recoiled as the breeze ruffled the fur lining of her collar. I recalled my first impression of the city that was now my home, the way nothing could have prepared me for the stench and noise within its confines.

“It helps if you breathe through your mouth,” I whispered. “At least for the first few days.”

She covered her nose as we passed under the gate, her brown eyes wide over the green felt sleeve. “And you live like this?” her muffled voice asked.

“One does what one must.” I was reluctant to venture into the real reason why she was here, but we’d lingered long enough on niceties. “So tell me, who does my father attack this time?”

She lowered her arm, but her nose remained wrinkled. “The Jurched.”

They were our prestigious neighbors to the east, and many of Olon Süme’s noble houses—including Orbei’s—relied on the Jurched for the camlet trade as well as for the steady river of silk and spices as they traveled west. This latest conquest of my father’s would prove more difficult to support than that against the Tanghuts. “When does the army arrive?”

“They’re only days behind. I fear this campaign promises to be bloodier than even the Blood War.”

Gooseflesh rolled over my limbs at her warning and the terrible realization it brought.

In mere days, war would surround us once again.

*   *   *

Time had ravaged my husband but scarcely touched my father. As he dismounted outside Olon Süme, I noted with new eyes that though he stood with bowed legs from his years in the saddle, he was still as solid as a boulder. Shigi had accompanied him and smiled down at me from where he sat astride Neer-Gui, dressed in his jaunty blue judge’s hat. My gelding tossed his mane and I wondered if he remembered our wild chases over the steppes and the long journey together over the Great Dry Sea. I was
glad to see him well cared for but saddened at the remembrance of one more thing I missed from my old life. The hills around Olon Süme swarmed with mounted cavalry bedecked with spears, bows, and gleaming cutlasses. Sorkhokhtani had told me that my father had integrated Tanghut engineers into his corps, that these learned men would build catapults and giant wheeled crossbows when they reached their destination. I’d shivered at her pen-and-ink sketches, for the drawings of the war machines were more menacing than anything I’d seen before. I was glad I wasn’t amongst the Jurched.

“It’s been a long time,
tarvag takal
,” my father said, opening his arms and breathing deeply as he pressed his forehead to mine. My nose filled with the scent of horse and leather, and despite the way he’d tricked me before my marriage, for a moment I didn’t want to let go.

But I was Beki of the Onggud, not just the daughter of the Khan of Khans.

“Father,” I said, stepping out of his arms and gesturing behind me. “My family welcomes you, as do all the Onggud.”

Part of my family at least. Ala-Qush sat in a cushioned wheeled cart that Jingue had fashioned to transport him about Olon Süme. Since his illness, my husband had shrunken into an old man and his braid had gone completely gray. His sons flanked him, Jingue dressed in his usual white
deel
and Boyahoe in a camlet robe of midnight blue tied with a yellow sash. Orbei and Enebish had asked to remain behind to ready the Great House for my father’s arrival. I had granted their request, although I’d recognized it as a plot to avoid facing the Great Khan.

My father clapped Ala-Qush on the back as if they were old friends. For all that my husband bemoaned the crudeness of the Mongols, the protection my father had offered the Onggud had sheltered Ala-Qush’s people from the ongoing saga of war and conquest.

Until now.

Ala-Qush’s perpetual frown deepened and he used a piece of charcoal to scribble on the paper I kept tucked in his chair, then waved it in the air.