The Tiger Queens (47 page)

They continued to reminisce about the past, about the first
khurlatai
, when Genghis was proclaimed Khan of Khans and Alaqai had dressed as a man during the wrestling tournament—she claimed she could likely still beat Güyük—but the discussion came to a halt at a rumble of footsteps from the bottom of the dais. Alarm flickered in Toregene’s eyes as more than a dozen guards marched up the stairs, their swords pointed at us.

“What is the meaning of this?” Toregene asked, rising from her gilded bench. “Put down your weapons.”

“My men are acting on my orders, Mother.” Güyük stumbled on the bottom step, his eyes glazed and words slurred so for a moment he might have been his father. Then he leered at me.

“They’re here to arrest the piece of filth who sits at your feet and claims to serve you,” he said, leveling a malicious glare at me even as his sneer revealed teeth already tending toward brown. “Hand over the Mohammedian bitch now, Mother.”

I stared at Güyük, my stomach crawling into my throat with fear, but Toregene stepped between us. “You will not address Fatima in such a manner,” she said to her son. “Fatima has been my most faithful adviser these past years, the sister of my heart.”

“I don’t care if she shared the same womb as you,” Güyük said, wiping the back of his sleeve across his lips. He was so drunk I doubted whether
he’d remember this confrontation in the morning. Still, my heart thundered. “She used the witchcraft of her god to bewitch you into an unnatural love. The Mohammedian is a murderer and a traitor, and she deserves to rot on a pike for all to see.”

I was as terrified as I’d been when the first Mongols poured over Nishapur’s walls, but I was no longer merely a pampered wife. I’d survived much over the course of my life, and this spoiled man-child wouldn’t be the end of me. If the world was fair, come morning Güyük would find himself castrated, his tongue removed, and his helmet confiscated. I burned to spit those words in the drunkard’s face but bit my tongue to save my head.

“Return to your rooms, you drunken fool,” Toregene said, her voice so low I strained to hear her. “Lest I reverse my decision to give you that helmet.”

Güyük’s face grew blotchy with anger, almost curdled. “So you insist on protecting the Persian whore?”

Whore.
I’d only ever known one man in my life. My fingers itched to wrap around Güyük’s throat. Yet if I went for him, I’d find my throat stuffed with stones like Korguz and the camp dogs would feast on my corpse before the sun finished rising.

Alaqai stood then, imperious and snarling like a tiger. “Be glad that your grandfather and father are already dead, for they would disown you for your behavior this night,” she said. “You wear the Khan’s helmet, but you act like a bare-bottomed child.”

Güyük’s hands curled into fists, and a thick vein at his temple pulsed angrily, but Alaqai waved him away as if he were only a fly. “Will you order your guards to drag me away as well, your aunt and the last surviving daughter of Genghis Khan? What about your mother? Shall you arrest her, too?”

Sorkhokhtani rose, her very calm dispelling some of the tension. “Möngke,” she called to her eldest. “And Kublai. The Khan requests your assistance.”

Her straight-backed sons approached Güyük. “Come see the new stallion I brought as tribute for our new Gur-Khan,” Möngke said, as smiling and jovial as ever, yet he looked upon Güyük with distaste. Another emotion filled his eyes when he glanced at me.

Pity.

“Leave the women to discuss their felting and sewing,” he said.

Güyük opened his wine-sotted mouth to argue, but Kublai wrapped a strong arm around his shoulders. “Come, Güyük. I’m sure we can find a pretty slave or two eager to please the Khan of Khans.”

We watched them go and Alaqai gave an angry grunt as the soldiers retreated and the door to the crimson tent closed behind them. “I love you, Toregene,” she said. “But that whelp of yours is a miserable excuse of a man. You must rein him in or we’ll all suffer.”

Toregene turned to me, her pale face cracking so all her emotions shone through her ever-expressive eyes. “I’m so sorry, Fatima.”

I drew a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“Why in the name of all the gods would you thank me?”

“For not handing me over.” A wild laugh bubbled in my throat. “I’ve been waiting for this day since the first time I met your son, after we returned from Nishapur.”

Toregene’s face melted and tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, Fatima.” She clasped my face between both of her hands. “Did you think I might surrender you to him?” She stepped back and offered a watery smile. “Despite your disdain and pretensions, I love you, just as I love Alaqai and Sorkhokhtani. You are the sisters of my heart.”

Words abandoned me. Childless, and without a mother, father, or husband, I had no one in this world. Yet Toregene had been by my side for half my life, a sister not of blood, but of circumstance.

And yet Allah might take her from me as well.

“Fatima should leave with one of us,” Sorkhokhtani said, smoothing her silk
deel
as if discussing the rising sun. “It’s not safe for her here.”

“I agree,” Alaqai said. “Güyük drank enough wine tonight to drain a lake, but he can’t be trusted not to try this again.”

“I can control him,” Toregene said, but Sorkhokhtani cut her off.

“If you can’t, it will be Fatima who pays the price,” she said.

“Perhaps I made a mistake in choosing Güyük,” Toregene said. She looked so fragile, her cheekbones chiseled like ivory and her wide eyes glassy from her illness, that no one contradicted her.

“What’s done is done,” Alaqai said, patting Toregene’s hand and rising stiffly to her feet. “Now Fatima must decide whether to stay and face Güyük each day, or leave Karakorum to seek refuge with Sorkhokhtani or me.”

“It’s your choice,” Toregene said.

I had no desire to run from Güyük, but neither did I wish to live in constant fear of the sound of guards in the palace corridors. I studied Toregene for a long moment, the signs of her illness writ plain on her face.

“You could come with me,” I said to Toregene, but I knew her answer even before she shook her head.

“I swore to protect this khanate,” she said. “I’ll spend the rest of my days here, ensuring Güyük doesn’t destroy the empire his grandfather and father forged with blood and steel.”

I contemplated leaving Toregene alone to face her son and rule the kingdom with only Shigi at her side. Yet as I looked at her now, I realized that my main source of joy since Wien, or perhaps even since Nishapur, had been my sisterhood with this woman. Toregene had saved me—from death and myself—many times, forging a bond deeper than blood.

For many years now, Toregene had been my family. Despite the very real possibility that Güyük would continue to torment me, I couldn’t leave her, especially now when she needed me most. Borte had died of a broken heart and Al-Altun had committed terrible acts in the name of love; surely I could sacrifice my comfort and safety for the sister I loved.

I had survived Nishapur, traveled halfway across the world, and been the instrument of three women’s deaths. I would not allow Güyük and his threats to frighten me.

“I’ll stay,” I said. “Of course I’ll stay.”

Toregene gathered me into her arms in a rare display of tenderness. “Thank God,” she breathed. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

Regardless of what lay ahead, we’d face it together.

*   *   *

As I’d hoped, Güyük remembered nothing—or at least pretended to remember nothing—of the night he tried to arrest me, and the masses that had gathered for the
khurlatai
departed over the coming days, like
thousands of yellow leaves dispersed and quickly forgotten after an autumn windstorm.

“Are you sure you won’t come with me?” Sorkhokhtani asked on the morning of her departure. A messenger had requested Shigi’s presence in the treasury, so he’d already bid the royal women farewell and Alaqai had already left, taking with her carts of books and Toregene’s famed blood sausage, but I only shook my head as Sorkhokhtani mounted her mare.

“I can’t leave Toregene.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat, straightening my shoulders despite the knot of tension in my muscles there. “Her cough worsens, and I’m not sure she’ll make it through another winter.”

“Send for me if you need me,” Sorkhokhtani said. “I’ll ride through the night if necessary.”

“Thank you,” I said. I rarely cried, but my eyes stung at the thought of the ordeal Toregene would face when the weather cooled again this autumn.

“Toregene is fortunate to have you,” Sorkhokhtani said. “I hope that perhaps together you can rein in the worst of Güyük’s excesses.”

I watched her nudge her mare’s ribs and canter away, straight spined and melded to the back of her horse, leaving Toregene and me to face the Khan alone.

I prayed that Sorkhokhtani might be right, yet like the two sides of the moon, the
khurlatai
drew clear lines on Toregene’s waning influence and Güyük’s waxing power. Toregene had thought to guide her son while he settled into the Horse Throne, but our new Khan had no intention of sharing his throne with his mother.

As the sun found its notch in the sky that same day, a young slave waited outside Toregene’s tent, bent over to sniff the fresh narcissus blooms I’d planted for Toregene last fall. I’d buried the bulbs around her tent and the Golden Ordu, and even throughout the palace courtyards in the months after our return from the Viennese campaign, feeling my mother’s hovering spirit as I knelt in my silk robes with their knees stained with dirt. I thought of my mother often these days as I watched Toregene deteriorate, wondering if she waited for me in the abyss of Jahannam, and if
perhaps I might be called upon once more to send a woman I loved to death’s welcome release.

The girl scrambled to stand as we approached and offered a deep bow to Toregene, revealing the gold medallion around her neck that bore the imprint of Oghul Ghaimish’s name on one side and her symbol of a fox on the other.

“Great Khatun,” she said, her eyes darting from us to Toregene’s guards. “I bear a message from the Khan’s wife.”

Toregene glanced at me, then gave a slight nod to her guards. “You may join us inside, and then you may tell us of your mistress’s message.”

The slave bowed her assent, her movements as graceful as a blade of summer grass. We entered the white interior of the tent and arranged ourselves around the hearth, then waited for the girl to speak.

“My mistress, first wife of the Great Khan, seeks your assistance,” the slave said, her whisper weaving into the crack and hiss of the fire.

I waited, expecting tales of madness or secret plots, but she lowered her gaze, her hands fluttering like sparrow wings. “Last night, my mistress angered the Khan because she dropped his platter of lamb on the ground. He beat her, kicked her in the stomach. It has already been a difficult pregnancy, and my mistress fears that if this continues . . .”

Toregene rubbed her temples, her face stricken. “Tell Oghul Ghaimish that I will see my son about this right now. He shall not lay another hand on her, or I’ll have him beaten until he glimpses death.”

Toregene meant what she said, but Güyük was no child, easily disciplined with a harsh word or a whip. He was the Great Khan, and although Toregene had yet to realize it, he could do as he liked to his wife—or anyone—without repercussions.

The girl scrambled in the dirt to kiss Toregene’s hem. “You are a merciful Khatun,” she said. “May the Earth Mother bless you.”

Toregene lifted her up. “And may she bless your mistress with a healthy child.”

“I’ll accompany you,” I said as she scurried off, but Toregene shook her head.

“You’ve managed to avoid a confrontation with Güyük since the
khurlatai
. He’s liable to be upset over my meddling—I don’t want you caught in the middle when the storm breaks.”

Part of me agreed with her, but another part balked at hiding from Güyük. Toregene must have read my expression and clucked her tongue.

“I’ll return shortly, Fatima. You’re welcome to peruse the crate of books Shigi just purchased from the new bookbinder in the market. I’d thought to save them for you as a gift during the Festival of Games, but you may as well read them now if you’d like.”

There was no contest between reading Rumi’s latest verses and listening to Güyük rant and rave. Toregene was welcome to her son.

Toregene swept away with Oghul Ghaimish’s slave trailing after her. The top of the tent was open to the bright blue sky, and the crate of books waited by the door, their pages crisp and still smelling of ink. I tried to settle in to read the
Safarnama
, an account of Nasir Khusraw’s travels during the sacred hajj, but the lingering calls of returning geese overhead scattered my already fragile thoughts.

I snapped the book shut when the door creaked open, expecting Toregene and startled to find Oghul Ghaimish instead. Güyük’s wife hovered at the entrance, barefoot and as thin as ever, save her swollen belly. Her slave claimed that Güyük had beaten her, but she bore no bruises or cuts. Perhaps they were hidden from view, like the injuries inflicted on her mind during Ogodei’s rape of the Oirat girls.

“Welcome, Oghul Ghaimish,” I said, rising and gesturing her inside. “Toregene went to meet with Güyük, but you’re welcome to wait for her return with me.”

She nodded, reminding me of a kingfisher bobbing its head for tadpoles. Her lank hair was stringy today, threaded through with jade and turquoise beads. “Peace shall reign again,” she mumbled. “I know it.”

I waited for her to continue, but she only stared at the patch of sky overhead. The geese still circled there, reminding me of vultures over a battlefield. A tremor ran up my spine. “Where is Toregene?”

Her eyes darted to me and she licked her cracked lips. “In the Golden Ordu with Güyük,” she said. “She sent for you.”

“Now?”

She gave me an absent stare and shrugged. “I believe so. She said she needed you.”

I pushed open the snarling tiger door and forced my steps to an even gait, following the short path beyond the Blue Fountain and through the palace’s grassy courtyards to the Golden Ordu. If I hadn’t been so absorbed in my thoughts, I might have noticed the lack of people in the courtyard and the stillness in the air.