The Tiger Queens (23 page)

I worried about my youngest brother, for although he wasn’t
mean-spirited, he lacked Ogodei’s good humor and ability to hold his liquor. I had to trust that Sorkhokhtani would protect him, as it was no longer my job to do so.

Next in line was Gurbesu, her daughter, Al-Altun, crying fitfully in a sling on her back. “Go with your head high to your first husband,” Gurbesu said, then leaned closer to whisper in my ear. “And if you don’t find happiness with him, remember that he may not be your only husband.”

I shot her a look of feigned shock, but Gurbesu’s words didn’t last long in my mind, coming as they did from a woman who’d walked between the purification fires with not one or two, but
three
men. I didn’t plan to be widowed once, much less twice. And if I did lose my husband, I wouldn’t need to remarry, since I’d have already borne many strong sons. Then I’d have earned my title as Beki of the Onggud, and my independence.

Standing next to Gurbesu were my brothers’ women, Toregene and Sorkhokhtani at the forefront, both wearing dark smudges under their eyes from our sleepless night. Sorkhokhtani pressed a
buree
, a small flute carved from a ram’s horn, into my hands.

“So you never lack music,” she said. “Think of me when you play and you’ll never be alone.”

I wondered then how often she’d felt lonely when she’d first come to us, if she sometimes felt that way still. It was one more thing I’d never thought to ask.

“I don’t know how to play,” I said, forcing the words over the growing lump in my throat.

“True, but what else are you going to do for six weeks in the desert?” She kept a straight face, but her eyes sparked with mischief. “And it’s a child’s flute, the easiest to learn.”

I chuckled and squeezed her hand. I’d never thought to try my hand at music, but now I would, if only to be reminded of long winter nights in my mother’s tent, warm by the fire with Sorkhokhtani’s music filling the air.

Toregene was next, with Güyük sleeping peacefully on her back. I hadn’t expected gifts, but she looped a thin strip of leather around my neck, a worn silver amulet tucked in the middle. Her cross.

“I can’t take this,” I said, covering her hands. “It’s your god’s emblem.”

She smiled, a serene expression compared to the raucous laughter I’d witnessed in her tent. “Christ has kept me safe all these years, and now I hope he may protect you. The Khan has ordered Shigi to join him on campaign, so he’ll watch over you as well.” Her mismatched eyes shone at that, and I squeezed her hand. Toregene and Shigi had always been close, more concerned with their books and scrolls on herbs and religion than with riding and wrestling. “I’ll pray for you both,” she continued, “for Ogodei has promised me a tent for worship when we set up our own camp this summer.”

“You’re leaving?” Somehow I’d expected that everything would remain the same after I left, my family’s lives frozen like winter ice since I’d no longer be here to witness them.

She pressed her forehead to mine, her hands clasped loosely around my wrists. “Everything changes, sister of my heart, whether we wish it or not.”

I filled my eyes with the last images of my sisters and brothers, knowing that time would distort their faces and smiles in my mind. Then they parted before me, clearing a path to my waiting parents.

My mother stood beside my father, dressed in a crisp new green
deel
with
my father’s wolf-tooth necklace at her throat, her black-and-gray hair perfectly coiled under her tall green
boqta
. In her hands she held a second headdress I’d never seen before, two curving horns of black leather on a cap of crimson felt, twisted with gold and dangling waterfalls of white and red beads.

A
beki
’s headdress.

I sank to my knees before her, feeling the weight of everyone watching as she placed the headdress atop my hair, heavier than any helmet.

“Don’t you dare cry,” she whispered, raising me. “Or I might start, too.”

My mother’s eyes were bright with unshed tears as she laid her hands on my shoulders. I offered her my right cheek, then my left, and she breathed two deep inhales, one near each of my cheeks, filling her memory with the scent of me.

Suddenly my knees felt as wobbly as a newborn colt’s. This might be the last time I saw my mother.

She tilted my chin and gave a minute shake of her head. “We will meet
again, Alaqai. Two queens—one grown stooped and the other like a child—shall part once more with tears in their eyes.”

With her words came the smell of divining smoke and burned bone. Since Teb Tengeri’s death, my mother had become our people’s official seer, wary of the messages of the bones but unwilling to allow another fortune seeker to take advantage of so powerful a position. I brushed away the thought of future tears. All that mattered was her promise that we’d see each other again.

“I love you, Mother,” I said.

She smiled, crinkling the scar on her lip and revealing a rotten tooth in the back of her mouth. She cupped my face in her rough hands. “And I love you, Alaqai Beki. Don’t look back, and never forget that you are the daughter of Genghis Khan.”

“And the daughter of Borte Khatun,” my father said, his long mustache twitching as he smiled at my mother. “That counts for far more than being the daughter of a leathery-faced, bowlegged conqueror.”

“Go, Alaqai Beki,” my mother said. “Go, and make us proud.”

My father took my hand and led me away from the
ger
.
I resisted the urge to look back at my mother and clenched my teeth to keep my chin from wobbling. Neer-Gui stood at the head of a contingent of sixteen hundred of my father’s men. A brilliant blue cloth had been tied around the pommel of my saddle, a gift from my mother and a prayer to the Eternal Blue Sky to keep me safe. I could make out a familiar face amongst the crowd of men; Shigi sat tall in his wooden saddle decorated with silver medallions, but he stared beyond me with a solemn expression, as if he, too, was leaving something precious behind. I didn’t have time to ponder that, for the Four Dogs of War bowed their heads to me, a sign of respect I’d never received from the generals, even as the favored daughter of Genghis Khan. After my father saw me safely delivered to Ala-Qush and instated as the Onggud’s new
beki
, he would march with these men against the Tanghut in what promised to be a quick campaign.

I stood as tall as I could, keeping my back to my mother as tradition demanded. We were as different as a mother and daughter could be, but I felt the love radiating from her like warm sunshine on a new spring day.
She would not cry and I would not look back, at least not until we were too far from each other for anyone to see.

Instead, my mother would use a
tsatsal
, an ancient wooden paddle, to fling drops of mare’s milk into the air, pouring a path of white that would guide me even under the darkest sky. She would do this every day until I returned to her.

And one day I would perform the same ritual for my daughter.

I mounted Neer-Gui, keeping my eyes on the rump of my father’s massive black warhorse. Tonight I could pour my tears into the Earth Mother, but for now they stayed buried inside me.

I would soon learn tears weren’t the only things I would need to keep buried.

*   *   *

Shigi and my father let me travel that morning in peace and it was only after the sun reached its highest point in the sky that we stopped to rest the horses and eat the bundles of roasted mutton my mother had packed in our saddlebags.

My father sat next to me and unwrapped the meat from its brown-and-white-spotted goatskin while the soldiers tucked into their meal of dried curds, singing of horses and women between bites. Each of the men in the heavy cavalry wore an iron helmet and coat of mail and carried two bows, a lasso, and a battle-ax, yet despite their load each seemed invigorated at the thought of the coming conquest. Shigi settled next to us, as easy next to my father as he was with his scrolls. I knew my father had set his adopted Tatar brother to recording this campaign as well as finishing codifying the Jasagh so the final legal code might be shared with the rest of the clans, including the new edict that decreed that all members of the Golden Family were above the law. Even now, Shigi retrieved his perpetual stack of papers while he ate, so I wondered if he might leave greasy thumbprints on his fine descriptions of my father’s cavalry or the latest law forbidding the washing of clothes until they were worn out.

“No friend is better than your own heart.” My father recited the ancient saying while he chewed. “Yet your heart seems troubled,
tarvag takal
.”

I offered him a wan smile and removed the headdress, twisting my neck with relief. “I fear I’ll fail at the task you’ve set before me. The Onggud are learned people, and I am not.”

It was only one of the many reasons that I dreaded meeting the strange foreigners I would rule, but the safest to discuss.

Shigi set down his pen, balancing his portion of meat on one leg and a waterskin between both knees along with the thick stack of paper. “It’s true that the Onggud are blessed with much wisdom: shamans learned in the ways of spirits from faraway lands, scribes to record their histories, and great sculptors living in the shadow of the Great Long Wall.”

I scowled when he didn’t continue. “Thank you,” I said. “I feel much better now.”

He gave an elegant shrug. “It’s not my fault you refused to sit still long enough to learn anything during my lessons.”

I rolled my eyes. “Because if I had, then I’d be as wise as their scribes? Or at least as wise as you?”

Shigi gave me a slow smile. “That, my dear Alaqai, you could never be.”

My father chuckled and clapped a heavy hand on my knee. “Even with all that wisdom, the Onggud cities would fall if I directed my armies against them,” he said, his voice roughened from years of inhaling smoke inside dark
gers
. “There are many kinds of knowledge, Alaqai Beki, and of all my children, you are the wisest. You have your mother to thank for that.”

My scowl deepened. “My mother is no longer here to guide me.”

“No, but she has stretched you to the height of men.”

I nudged his toe with mine. “That’s only when I wear that infernally heavy headdress. Take it off and—” I motioned to my bare head and shrugged.

He laughed again. I would miss that sound when he finally left me in Olon Süme weeks from now, something that didn’t bear thinking about. “You and I were both born with clots of blood in our fists. You will be my feet amongst the Onggud, but also my eyes, ears, and mouth.” He licked his fingers, wiped the leftover grease on his
deel
, and stood. “It’s only a matter of time until you determine how to best rule your new people.” He
stuffed the empty goatskin into the front of his
deel
. “And I’ll be leaving Shigi with you, at least for the first few months while you settle in and before our conquest against the Tanghut begins in earnest. That way you’ll have secret eyes of your own.”

My father winked at me, then left to make his rounds among his men, clapping a hand on one of his general’s shoulders and easily joining their conversation, even as my own food remained untouched. The enormity of what my father expected struck me then, making me want to gasp for breath and reminding me of the time Ogodei had thrown me into Older Sister Lake. I’d sunk for what seemed like forever before finally touching the bottom and kicking frantically to the surface, my lungs screaming and my eyeballs threatening to explode. I’d survived the experience, but barely.

I prayed I’d survive what my father required of me.

“It looks like you won’t be going home anytime soon. Instead, you’re stuck with me,” I said to Shigi, expecting a witty rejoinder or conspiratorial smile. Instead he stared again in the direction we’d just come.

“It seems we’re both stuck with each other,” he said, giving a weak smile.

I knew not what troubled him, but I didn’t have room in my heart to worry over Shigi’s problems as well as my own. I was only a headstrong girl, not a conqueror who drew chiefs to me by the sheer force of my personality. I doubted whether I could rule my husband, much less a kingdom, in my father’s name.

May the Eternal Blue Sky and the Earth Mother help me when I failed.

*   *   *

We traveled for six weeks across the Great Dry Sea, riding only at night to save the horses and ourselves from the scorching heat, although it was already well into autumn. I grew accustomed to our upside-down life, sleeping in the light and riding and hunting in the dark. Shigi taught me to play Sorkhokhtani’s
buree
from my saddle, coaching my fingers on a song I’d often heard Toregene humming. We caught an occasional deer but mostly subsisted off dried milk paste and meat from the reserve horses we brought with us. There was no time to cook, nor would we have welcomed the additional heat from the fires, so we tucked the meat beneath our
saddles and ate it raw and soft after the sun disappeared each night. I looked for the fabled Mongolian death worm, the
olgoi-khorkhoi
,
a bright red creature as long as a man and reputed to spew yellow poison that could kill a beast on contact. The
olgoi-khorkhoi
eluded us, but we passed such strange sights that I began to believe my mind played tricks on me: eagles’ nests made of sticks in a land without trees; duck hawks feasting on the flesh of a herd of dead antelope; and the strange bones of massive, long-dead lizards hidden amongst the dunes and blowing sands. I realized that the barren stretch of sands wasn’t dead at all, for delicious water welled up from the earth at the edge of rocky basins, and jerboas with their long tails often leapt in front of our horses in the dead of night. I rode next to my father, listening to his tales of battle, but more important, to his stories of loyalty and honor. He recounted his early exploits against the Merkid and the Blood War against Jamuka, and although I already knew the tales, I listened now for the ways my father had woven men to him to create the Thirteen Nations. Finally, the Great Dry Sea’s constant wind song faded from my ears and its dunes slipped away, diluted first by grasses, then shrubs, and finally the cool birch forests that reminded me of home.