The Tiger Queens (31 page)

“Your bride looks weary,” one of my father’s Dogs finally said to Jingue, his voice too loud after several cups of wine.

“She’ll be even more weary after the groom’s through with her,” a red-nosed general hollered, prompting a roar of laughter that might have been heard all the way in Liaoyang. I was no fresh-cheeked virgin, but still my face blazed. This celebration was so different from my first wedding, the merriment heightened by the threat of a battle yet to come. I wished to laugh with them like any other bride eager for her wedding bed. Yet I was no common bride, and this was no common marriage.

“Refill your wine bowls and leave us in peace!” I exclaimed. I craved a moment of calm to collect myself. I could have kissed the tops of Shigi’s curved boots when he began ushering everyone into the night air.

The flap of the traveling tent muffled their voices, and I turned to find Jingue sitting on my father’s narrow camp bed, elbows propped on his knees as he stared at the wine bowl between his hands. We’d scarcely spoken tonight—only our marriage vows—and I found myself light-headed from the wine and the sudden storm of nerves in my belly.

I turned my back and tugged with trembling fingers at the stubborn knot on my sash but was startled as Jingue threw a heavy felt blanket on the ground, causing the fire to waver and sputter before righting itself. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he said, his voice cold and flat. “You take the bed and we can leave at first light.”

My hand fell away and for a moment I could only blink. “You’d sleep alone? But I thought—”

Jingue laughed, yet the sound held no mirth. “You thought I’d force you to share my bed, even after you made it clear that you sought to marry me only because it was the best way to keep your
beki
’s headdress?”

Then I realized the truth, that Jingue had married me in name only, obligated to an alliance to save his family and people.

This was Ala-Qush all over again.

Jingue tossed the remainder of his wine into the fire so the flames hissed and spit; then he set down his bowl, hard. “Rest assured that if I
ever come to your bed it will be because you want me there, Alaqai, not simply because you’ll tolerate me there.”

I stared at him, then burst out laughing. Once started, I couldn’t stop, but I grabbed Jingue’s hand when he cursed and moved to leave. He stopped when I fell to my knees. Never before had I humbled myself in such a manner, but I would do it now, for this man.

“I want you,” I gasped, holding tight as he tried to free his hand. “I’ve wanted you since the day you returned from that cursed monastery of yours.”

“Don’t lie to me.” He scowled as he pulled me roughly to my feet, but his eyes reflected his uncertainty in the firelight. “I’ll stay here tonight and we’ll leave in the morning—”

I let my hands drop. “I’ll never lie to you, Jingue. I want you at my side in the Great House, and to share my tent as your wife. Most of all, right now I want you in my bed, even if it means I have to drag you there myself.”

The silence grew too long, but then it was Jingue’s turn to laugh, a deep, throaty sound that echoed in my heart as he crushed me to him. I inhaled his scent, fresh scrubbed from the river, but still with a hint of ink and horses—before he pressed his lips to mine for the first time.

It was a kiss that left me trembling, truly and gloriously alive for the first time in years.

I arched against him, my entire body tingling with the golden heat that spread from my belly and settled still lower. It had been so long since I’d been with a man, but this was a different kind of hunger, deeper and more powerful. I tugged away his
deel
and trousers and drank in the long brown lines of his body, the way the flames shifted shadows across the sinewy muscles of his chest.

Despite his bandaged arm, Jingue lifted me up and spread me across the bed, covering me with his body and caressing my cheeks. His eyes were the color of damp earth, the very element to calm the fire that always raged in my soul. I realized then that for all our differences, this quiet, thoughtful scholar was the man I could spend the rest of my life with.

“I love you, Jingue,” I said.

He only smiled and brushed his lips against the sensitive skin at the
base of my throat. “And I love you,” he murmured. “In fact, I’ve loved you since almost the day I met you.”

I shivered at the surge of pleasure his lips sent down my body, scarcely managing to gasp a single word. “Almost?”

He chuckled and lifted his lips, leaving me aching for his touch. “I
did
almost let you die of poison that first day.”

“I’m glad you thought better of it,” I said, drawing a sharp breath as he finally loosened my sash and opened my
deel
, his tongue teasing my nipples before he tugged the silk trousers from my hips.

“So am I.” His arms were under me then, lifting me to him so there was nothing but our flesh and the perfect fit of our bodies together. I wrapped my legs around him, gasping as he filled my body and soul in the same moment. “And tonight I plan to prove it to you,” he murmured.

And he did. Several times.

*   *   *

We spent the rest of the evening in each other’s arms, then dressed in
deels
tightly woven with raw silk—the better to stop enemy arrows from penetrating our flesh in the battle to come—and the fur-lined helmets my father had left for us when the sky turned from black to gray. Together we stepped out of the silence of the tent, transformed into a single yoke in the eyes of my father and his men.

My cheeks were flushed with happiness, but I couldn’t resist whispering a question in Jingue’s ear as we walked past waves of bowing soldiers. “So, husband of my heart, will you take any more wives once we return to Olon Süme?”

“You foolish woman.” Jingue chortled. “I waited all this time for you—what could I possibly want with another wife? Aside from peace and tranquility, that is.”

I gave him a fierce scowl and a mock punch to his arm, earning still more laughter despite my relief. Nestorians didn’t make a habit of taking more than one wife, but I’d worried that I might follow in my mother’s footsteps, my heart broken as Jingue married more women, as my father had done. “I can scarcely handle you, Alaqai,” Jingue said, “much less any other women.”

“And I’d have you gelded if you did,” I said. “I’m quite handy with a knife, you know.”

Jingue threw back his head and laughed as we walked to where my father stood with Shigi and Boyahoe, our army of mounted cavalry fanning out behind them.

“It pleases me to see your happiness in this marriage,” my father said to us, smiling before he motioned to where Boyahoe stood with Enebish. “When we’ve defeated the Jurched, this boy-soldier can return to Olon Süme or accompany me to the Khwarazmian Empire to conquer the lazy sultans in their palaces of gold.”

“You never remain at peace for long, do you, Father?” I asked.

He harrumphed, sounding like an old man, but his eyes were as bright as those of a boy receiving his first horse. “There will be plenty of time for peace once my flesh feeds the earth.”

I breathed the cool morning air on both sides of his leathered face while Jingue bid his brother and sister good-bye. “Thank you, Father,” I murmured. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Indeed you shall,
tarvag takal
.” He winked. “When next we meet we shall toast one another’s victories with that fine Onggud wine of yours.”

Shigi presented my tiger sword, freshly sharpened and polished, a knowing look in his eyes.

“It was good that you took this last night,” I said. “You know me well.”

He shrugged. “I’ve always liked Jingue. It would have been a shame to have to arrange his funeral today.”

“Be safe, Shigi,” I said. “Don’t let a Jurched arrow find its way to your back.”

He smiled, turning his palms over to reveal ink-stained fingers, so like Jingue’s that I almost laughed. “I fight with brushes and ink, Alaqai Beki, not swords and spears.”

And I was glad of it, for although he didn’t share our blood, Shigi was as much a part of my heart as my parents, Toregene and Sorkhokhtani, and Jingue. I remembered his words before he first left Olon Süme and wondered if he’d fully reconciled himself to living without a wife at his side, if
he still pined for his married lover. I squeezed his hands, then mounted my borrowed horse and lifted my tiger sword to salute my father, prompting cheers from the soldiers behind Jingue and me.

Despite the flush of excitement, I felt a flutter of dread at the uncertainty of what lay before us when we reentered Olon Süme.

My father pledged victories for all our family, but I could only pray that the Eternal Blue Sky would grant his promises.

*   *   *

With a contingent from my father’s army at our back, we retraced our path through the skeletons of burned villages, listening silently as my father’s soldiers recounted their execution of the Crow Swarm outside one barren Jurched town, the way their war drums had pounded and men galloped at once from all directions. They left only charred earth and fat crows in their wake, like a gaping wound in the earth after a lightning strike. Olon Süme would suffer the same fate if its people refused the demands that Jingue and I would set before them.

The air still smelled of soot and the oily stench of death when Jingue and I approached Olon Süme’s carved tortoise gates, our army of cavalry and hastily constructed ballistas hidden in the hills on ground I’d recently sprinkled with fresh mare’s milk, beseeching the Earth Mother for an easy victory. I prayed that the Onggud fear of war and the threat of mounted Mongols armed with catapults would induce Olon Süme to accept our terms. We’d been gone only ten days, but already the blows of hammers and chisels resounded, signs of a city being reborn. Freshly tilled soil outside the walls lent the impression of spring instead of autumn, but there were no seeds tucked into these furrows. Instead, the last open pit we passed held only corpses with bloated limbs and unrecognizable faces, too many dead to leave uncovered on the steppes for the foxes and vultures.

I stared at the walls ahead and prayed we wouldn’t soon have more bodies to bury.

Several overdressed figures, all wearing the red hats of the Council of Nobles, hurried to the bulwark over the tortoise gate, now frantically closed to bar our entrance. I kept my hands clasped before me, searching for
Jingue’s uncle and shocked when I didn’t find him. Orbei stood stiff-backed amongst the nervous men, but her reptilian features sagged with relief when she recognized her eldest son riding next to me.

A reed-thin man I scarcely recognized from the council lifted his pointed red hat to wipe the top of his shiny head. “Jingue, son of Ala-Qush,” he said, his voice trembling as he stared at me and then scanned the horizon. The man might be a coward, but he was no fool. “To what do we owe this honor?”

Jingue nudged his horse forward, but I held back. “May Christ rest my father’s eternal soul,” my husband said, ignoring the question. “With God’s blessing, the noble lineage of Ala-Qush has ruled Olon Süme for generations, and with his passing, I’ve returned as the eldest son and hereditary heir. I assume you’ll open the gates and follow behind me as I claim the Great House as my own.”

The men whispered amongst themselves, pointed red hats bobbing as their eyes darted to Jingue and me. It was no small thing to supplant their god’s chosen leader, and well they knew it. “And yet you’ve brought the daughter of the Khan of Khans,” the first man said. “Did you capture her as your uncle instructed?”

“I did not capture her.” Jingue glanced at me, his eyes sparking. “I married her.”

And now it was my turn.

“You, the Onggud of Olon Süme, have betrayed us. My father, the Great Khan, craves the blood of the Onggud for the insult you have offered his daughter.” I turned in my saddle to wave my tiger sword at the hills. The metal captured the sun’s light and threw the signal back to where our scouts waited with their catapults and the newly invented spiked shells that would wreak havoc on Olon Süme’s walls. “Jingue, son of Ala-Qush, is the true Prince of Beiping, and as his first and only wife, I, Alaqai Beki, daughter of Genghis Khan, am Beki of Olon Süme. Together we make you a single offer to save your city and your souls.”

Already the disturbance in the hills was being noted as our men moved the ballistas into position. The men on the wall muttered and crossed themselves.

“What are your terms?” Orbei asked, her voice rising above the men’s panic. “Tell us, for we are listening.”

Part of my heart cried out for revenge, for the Onggud to know the same fear I had faced as the fire raged around me and my people screamed in death and fear. But I was mother to these people. And no matter the crimes of her child, a mother never seeks retribution.

I drew a deep breath. “You know what trespasses you committed. Those stains will mark your souls until you draw your final breaths. We offer mercy in this life if you surrender and accept our rule. If you refuse, the full wrath of the Mongol army will rain upon this city, until only your ashes are left to bear testimony to its existence.”

By this time, the hills were covered with the mounted soldiers borrowed from my father, their swords glinting in the sun. The loaders stood ready with the giant lethal arrows for the ballistas. Orbei stepped forward, the breeze ruffling tendrils of gray hair that had escaped from her severe braid. “And our daughter and youngest son?” she asked. “Will they be spared as well?”

“They remain with the Khan of Khans,” I said. “Enebish wishes to continue her work as a healer, and Boyahoe is learning to soldier from the greatest conqueror of all.” When Orbei didn’t respond, I asked the question I needed to have answered. “Where is your brother, he who fanned the revolt that saw this once-great city reduced to rubble?”

“My brother’s body lies beyond the walls now,” she said, her face betraying no emotion. “He was killed during the Night of Flashing Swords.”

The Night of Flashing Swords.

Suddenly I realized why Jingue refused to speak of his wound. “He was killed by a sword wound?”