The Tiger Queens (3 page)

Many cups of
airag
later, Yesugei swung up unsteadily onto his horse’s bare back, then dropped the rabbit-fur hat onto Temujin’s head. “I leave my son to you,” he said to my father, then straightened and glanced at his boy. Temujin bore traces of his father in his bushy brows and the wry twist
of his lips, but they differed in the set of their jaws and the slant of their eyes. I wondered if he favored his mother instead, or some ancestor long since passed to the sacred mountains. Yesugei circled his son on horseback, then bowed to my father. “I fear you’re not so clever as they say, Dei the Wise, for I have gotten the better end of this deal.” He turned his horse to leave, then called over his shoulder, “And you should know, this whelp of mine is frightened by dogs.”

Then Yesugei trotted away with his string of horses, heading back to his people, leaving behind a single dun-colored filly as a gift to my father, and a black-haired boy with a scowl like a storm.

My future husband.

*   *   *

Orange clouds streaked the sky that night and the air was so chilled that I jammed my favorite hat—tattered leather with ugly earflaps—over the snarls in my hair before going out to milk the mares. We had quickly learned that the filly left behind by Yesugei was an ill-tempered beast; I’d already been kicked trying to mount her. My father had only shaken his head and sighed. “I should have expected as much from Yesugei the Brave.”

I had hoped my father might send Temujin away after such a slight, but instead he made space for Temujin’s bed on the men’s side of the
ger
. The boy’s blanket was still rolled up, as if he was prepared to flee at any moment.

How I wished he would.

I knew in my heart that I should thank the Earth Mother that Temujin wasn’t older than my father, fat, and toothless, with a passel of snot-nosed children from other wives, old women who would box my ears and make me gather horse dung until my back broke. At least Temujin’s teeth were mostly straight and his skin was smooth—even if he was younger than me and his features seemed permanently etched into a glare. All women married, and I would be Temujin’s first wife, the position of honor girls daydreamed about and women fought for.

But I didn’t thank the Earth Mother. Instead, I cursed my father for promising me to the son of a one-eyed thief and my mother for not trying
harder to stop him. And then it occurred to me—perhaps if Temujin knew what I did about my future, then he would no longer want me. For the first time I considered breaking my oath of silence to my mother.

I looked to the Eternal Blue Sky for a sign, yet the spirits were stubborn that night and the skies remained empty, without even a breeze to hint at the path I should take.

I had just come from telling my friend Gurbesu about my betrothal and my ears still rang with her shrieks of glee. Now I craved the quiet murmur of the river before returning home for the night. I emerged from the forest of tents and gasped at the sight before me. Temujin sat on the back of the dun-colored filly, his fists wrapped tight in the black mane and his ankles digging into the horse’s sides as it attempted to throw him. He leaned back just enough that it was impossible to tell where beast ended and boy began. I waited for him to fly into the fence, pondering whether I’d leave him in the dirt or help him up, when the mare slowed and trotted in a circle around the paddock. Temujin grinned then, an expression of such unfettered joy that I knew he thought himself alone.

He saw me when the filly rounded the bend. I took some satisfaction as his eyes widened and he released the horse’s mane to run his hands over his closely shaved scalp. The breeze ruffled the hem of my
deel
, carrying a whiff of my scent to the horse.

In less than a breath, she reared up and deposited Temujin on his rump in the dust. The animal snorted and cantered off, flicking her tail and dropping a pile of fresh manure on the packed earth.

Temujin scrambled up and glowered at me. “You startled her.”

“So you
do
speak.” I’d expected his voice to be that of a boy, but it already bore the deep tone of the man he would soon become.

“Of course I speak,” he said, brushing off his trousers. “Did you think I was mute?”

The thought had crossed my mind; after all, he’d done no more than grunt during the betrothal ceremony. I shrugged and folded my arms in front of my chest. “You shouldn’t be riding that horse.”

“Why not?” He bent his skinny arms to mirror me, then nickered to the filly. “She’s mine.”

“No, she’s not.” Then the realization filled my mind. “Your father left us your horse?”

He shrugged. “He would never leave behind anything of value.”

Still, he’d left Temujin behind, although his worth had yet to be measured. Yesugei was even slipperier than we’d expected. “She’s not even broken.”

“My father couldn’t break her. That’s why he gave her to me.” He called to the horse again. The filly’s ears flicked as if at a buzzing fly, but then she trotted toward us. “It was either that or eat her.”

Temujin vaulted onto her empty back and offered me a hand up. His hands were square and squat, much like the rest of him.

“I prefer not to break my neck,” I said.

“She hardly ever throws anyone.” He grinned, the expression transforming his young face. “At least not if you hold on tight.”

I ignored his hand, knowing I should leave, but instead I grabbed a fist of the horse’s mane and mounted behind him. The filly startled and sidestepped for a moment, but Temujin didn’t give her a chance to think. Instead, he kicked his heels into her ribs, sending her bolting straight toward the paddock’s rickety spruce log wall.

The scream that tore the sky came from my own throat; the paddock was built so tall that no horse could clear it. Yet with Temujin’s urging in her ear, the dun-colored filly leapt into the air, arcing over the fence and landing with a jolt so hard my teeth almost cracked.

And then we were tearing out of camp, racing past slack-jawed boys bringing in their goats and old men huddled together trading even older hunting stories. I thought I glimpsed my father, but I blinked as my eyes watered at the speed. I clutched Temujin’s bony ribs, feeling my hat fly away and my hair tumble loose behind me.

And then I laughed. Never before had I dashed barebacked over the steppes like this, scattering grasshoppers and racing the cranes overhead.

Temujin’s voice joined mine and he urged the horse faster. Only after the filly’s pace began to lag did he rein her in. The
gers
of my camp were tiny dots on the horizon, white cotton flowers in the distance.

“So you
can
laugh,” he said over his shoulder, mocking my earlier
words. The filly ignored our conversation, more interested in the grass at her feet.

“Of course I can laugh,” I said, making a face at the back of his head.

Temujin seemed much easier now that his father was gone, as if every step Yesugei took away from our camp lightened his son’s heart. I wondered if the same would happen once I left my mother’s tent, but the very thought was like a weight pressing against my chest.

“One day I’ll be khan of my clan,” he said. “I’ll have a whole herd of horses like this one. Sheep, goats, and camels, too.”

“What, no yaks?”

He laughed. “Maybe a few yaks.”

I let my arms hang loose, noting the worn leather of his boot and the countless places where it had been stitched with sinews of various colors and ages. Many boys before him had probably worn the same shoes. I wondered how hard his life had been, how difficult mine would be once we were married. “Your father must be a good herder to be able to spare his eldest son.”

I knew even before his spine stiffened that it was the wrong thing to say. “My father is a terrible herder,” he said. “But he’s an excellent raider.”

I searched for something to say. “I suppose that takes skill as well.”

Temujin glanced back at me again, then laughed. “Are you always so polite?”

“Are you always so rude?” I scowled, but he didn’t seem to mind. “I should return home,” I said. “My mother will be wondering where I am.”

I feared he would argue, but then he urged the filly into a trot toward camp, forcing my arms around him again. “My father told me before he left that I should be pleased to have such an obedient wife,” he said. “I held my tongue.”

“You don’t care for an obedient wife?”

“I think you’re like this filly. You only
act
obedient,” he said, “because you don’t want anyone to see your true nature.”

I let my hands drop completely then, preferring to take my chances on being thrown than to touch him a moment longer. He felt my anger and glanced over his shoulder.

“I meant that as a compliment,” he said, his voice quiet. “I think there’s more to you than you show the world, Borte Ujin.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you don’t want to marry me.”

I sighed, wishing I was gathering stinging nettles or lancing a boil on my mother’s foot. Anywhere but here. “No, I don’t want to marry you,” I finally said.

“Because I’m coarse, rude, and beneath you in every way that matters.” His voice was angry, but his shoulders slumped under the weight of his words.

He spoke the truth, but I didn’t care to injure him further. My mother’s warning filled my mind, the words that had sworn me to secrecy years ago. There seemed so many reasons to tell him the prophecy, and so few to keep the truth hidden any longer.

I shifted behind him, unable to find comfort. “No, there’s something else,” I said, each word drawn out. “My mother cast my future when I was born.”

“So did mine,” Temujin said. “I was born with a blood clot held tight in my fist. My mother claimed the sign meant I was destined for greatness.”

I smiled sadly, glad he couldn’t see my face. “She may be right.”

Temujin seemed to sense my melancholy. “What was your prophecy?”

I hesitated, prompting a low chuckle from deep in his chest. “Consider who my father is, Borte Ujin. Nothing you can say will shock me.”

Still the words lodged like stones in my throat. Temujin deserved to know the truth if he thought to marry me one day. Or perhaps he might abandon me now and avert the whole tragedy.

“My mother cast my bones while bits of her womb still clung to me and blood ran down her legs.”

“And?” Temujin’s hand covered mine and he pulled it to his chest, as if giving me the strength to speak the words.

“I will cleave two men apart and ignite a great Blood War that will rain tears and destruction upon the steppes.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth, and my mother’s warning echoed in my ears. Suddenly it was
difficult to breathe, as if giving voice to the terrible words had cost me more than I knew.

Temujin covered my arms with his, his fingers weaving between mine in the filly’s mane. I leaned forward, letting my head rest on his back and daring to breathe deeply of his scent. “I battled a wolf once to get this tooth,” he said, his bones vibrating with the sound as he touched my fingers to the necklace at his throat. “You can’t scare me away with a warning of blood and war.”

My head jerked up. “Then you’re a fool.”

“No,” he said. “I happen to think you may be worth fighting for.”

The air around me grew suddenly cold, and I shook my head at his audacity. “You’re worse than a fool, then,” I said. “You shouldn’t taunt the spirits with such jests.”

“It’s no jest,” he said. “I promise I would fight for you, Borte Ujin.”

I heard the spirits’ shocked whispers in the flutter of birch leaves and the shifting grasses at the filly’s feet. I wrapped my arms tighter around Temujin, needing his warmth to ward off the cold that had seeped into my bones.

“Still,” I whispered, shivering, “I pray it never comes to that.”

*   *   *

Temujin sought me out often over the next few days to ask my opinion about the goats my father set him to herding or to bring me a gift of brown partridges strung by their wings, each shot through the eyes by his arrows. Once he gave me a purple globe thistle he’d found while riding the dun-colored filly, claiming it reminded him of me. I had nothing to say to that, only stuttered as he smiled and sauntered off, pausing to rub the muzzle of each horse he passed.

It startled me to see the people of our camp warm toward this coarse youth from the Borijin clan, the flock of boys who trailed him and the indulgent smiles of old women as he waved to them each evening. Temujin possessed the talent of drawing people to him, a rarer ability even than my mother’s gift of sight.

A few nights later, an unfamiliar boy spattered with so much mud that
it might have poured from the heavens pounded into our village, his chest heaving like someone dying.

But it was someone else’s soul that was about to be called to the sacred mountains.

I was outside our
ger
straining curds of yak milk through a cloth when the boy reined in his horse, a lathered old thing ready to fall over and die. A heavy autumn rain had drenched our village the day before, and the animal’s every step squelched with mud. The horse bent its head, lips smacking as it drank from a puddle.

The rider swung to the ground, head snapping back and forth so his thin braids slapped his shoulders like a drum. “Where is Temujin of the Borijin?”

My father set aside his work repairing a strap on my mother’s saddle. “Temujin will one day be my son-in-marriage,” he said, standing. “What message do you have for him?”

The boy had to tilt his head back to look my father in the eyes. “I’ve come to return Temujin to his father.”

The words felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of creek water on me. I stood rooted where I was as a crowd gathered, their gazes on me.

My father gave a minute shake of his head, as if to clear the visitor’s words from his mind. “May I ask why you seek to steal my future son?”

The messenger wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “On his way home to his wife and younger sons, Yesugei stopped on the Yellow Steppe to join a Tatar feast.”

Temujin shifted next to me—I hadn’t even noticed his approach until then. He laughed under his breath, but the sound held no joy. “My father never would have feasted with the Tatars,” he muttered, his young mouth twisting in a glimpse of what he might look like years from now, a stooped old man with a scowl etched into his skin. “He defeated them in battle too many times.”