The Tiger Queens (43 page)

Ogodei licked the last grains of rice from his fingers and smacked his lips. He banged his wine bowl on the table upon discovering it was empty. “More wine!” he bellowed.

“Have mine, brother,” Al-Altun said. “I’ve never cared for Alaqai’s Onggud brew.”

“No?” Ogodei chuckled and reached past me to take the still-full bowl from his sister. “And I always believed you to be an intelligent woman.”

Al-Altun chuckled at that, but the way she watched her brother as he slurped down the wine made my flesh prickle. The Khan belched and pounded his chest with a fist, then motioned for the slaves to refill his bowl and downed that as well. I was almost ill when he used his knife to pick the grime from beneath his nails, bits of dirt being flung about the wooden table.

The evening dragged on, Ogodei slurring his words and sloshing wine from its bowl as the tent grew ever hotter. Through it all, Al-Altun sat and endured her brother’s insults, occasionally offering a barbed retort that made Ogodei either frown or roar with laughter. Despite the sweep of stars overhead, the Khan dismissed no one, and soon more than one courtier fell asleep where he sat, slack-jawed and drooling on his platter.

I remained stiff in my chair despite the snores, for being in Al-Altun’s presence was akin to sitting next to a hive of wasps. Ogodei was in the middle of recounting the oft-told story of his bravery against the Water Tatars when he suddenly lurched to his feet, sending wine bowls clattering to the ground and spilling the crimson liquid into the earth like some offering to his heathen spirits. The Khan moaned and clutched his belly, and then stumbled to heave the contents of his stomach into the giant bowl that had earlier held his
palov
.

There was no doubt that the ruler of the largest empire in the world was a drunken fool, and an embarrassment to his family, for I’d lost count of the times I’d watched Ogodei vomit up copious amounts of wine and
airag
. However, once the Khan voided his stomach, he usually gave a lopsided grin and stumbled to his bed. This time he retched again and again.

“Out!” Toregene finally yelled when it became apparent that Ogodei wouldn’t regain control of his stomach. “All of you!”

Heads jerked up and men stumbled to their feet and out the door. Al-Altun paused over her brother’s heaving form. “
Bayartai
, brother,” she whispered, patting him on the back.

I watched her go, troubled by her words. She didn’t bid Ogodei to go in
peace, but instead offered him the final Mongol words of farewell. Perhaps it was a slip, but I doubted Al-Altun did anything without forethought.

Ogodei continued to retch into the bowl, until there was nothing left in his stomach. I drew back in alarm to see a thin stream of blood slip from the Khan’s lips down his chin. Toregene touched the ribbon of scarlet, her eyes widening at its stain on her fingertips. “No,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

I knew then that Al-Altun had poisoned Ogodei. The foolish Khan had drunk like a fish dying of thirst—at least ten bowls tonight—swallowing enough of whatever poison his sister had brewed to fell a bear. Toregene had once stopped me from taking Al-Altun’s life, and now the treacherous Khatun of the Uighurs would kill Ogodei and plunge the Mongol Empire into chaos.

I hurried to where Shigi stood by the door, ignoring Toregene’s panicked calls at my back, but Al-Altun had long since disappeared.

“Seize Al-Altun,” I ordered Shigi. “Haul her back here before she can rejoin her army.”

Shigi looked past me to where Toregene yelled for both of us now, but I grabbed his arm. “There’s no time to waste.”

He must have seen the truth in my face, for he gave a tight nod. “It shall be done.”

I returned to find Ogodei on his hands and knees, his round face pale and glistening with sweat.

“Everything’s spinning,” he gasped, reaching out an unsteady hand for Toregene. “As if I were the center spoke of a wheel.”

Toregene whirled on me, her face a deathly shade of white. “Tell me this isn’t your doing.”

I shook my head, my mind racing. “It’s Al-Altun; I’m sure of it. If only you’d let me kill her after Genghis’ death.”

Ogodei’s eyes widened and the muscles in his jaw twitched. “My Rose of Nishapur tried to poison my sister?”

“Long ago,” I answered. “Toregene stopped me.”

“Pity,” he croaked. “I might have made you a queen if you’d succeeded.”

Toregene looked at me helplessly. “Without knowing which poison she used . . .”

“It may be snake milk,” I said. I thought of the viper that had killed the mare on our journey, the tales I’d heard since then of Uighur shamans milking their venom. “Probably hidden in the wine.”

I remembered the greedy way Al-Altun had watched Ogodei slurp down her wine. I wouldn’t have put it past her to poison her own cup, knowing that her glutton of a brother would drink it as well.

“You’ll finally be rid of me, wife,” Ogodei managed to get out. His words were becoming slower, and more blood oozed from his lips, but he seemed to uncover some hidden well of strength. “You can grow old with Shigi, as you’ve always wished.”

“Hush,” Toregene said, but he took her small hand in his large one, despite the violent tremors that shook his entire body.

Ogodei coughed, the bloody sputum further staining his ravaged
deel
. “There’s something else . . .”

Toregene clutched Ogodei’s hand, but he handed me something with his other hand.

The golden dagger from his belt.

It was me, and not Toregene, whom the Khan addressed. “My half-blood bitch of a sister must die for this.”

I exchanged a glance with Toregene. “She will,” I said. “I swear it.”

Ogodei’s final moments were so painful that, despite his crimes and transgressions in this life, I wished for Allah to hurry and claim him. The Khan lay on his side, panting like a dog on a hot summer day while a never-ending stream of blood slipped down his chin to pool under his face. Finally his chest rose, then fell with a rattle of phlegm.

It didn’t rise again.

Toregene felt for a pulse, pressing two fingers into Ogodei’s thick neck, then sat back to stare at him in stunned silence. It seemed impossible that this ox of a man, so loud and brash, was suddenly dead.

“Everything changes now,” she whispered. “For better or worse, nothing will be the same.”

I didn’t have time to contemplate that, for Shigi and the guards soon
returned. The soldiers recoiled at the sight of the dead Khan and the mess of his blood and vomit. “Al-Altun fled,” Shigi reported. He avoided looking at Ogodei and addressed Toregene instead. “But the Khan’s soldiers found her and dragged her back.”

Toregene nodded slowly and rose, leaving her dead husband on the ground. I wondered if the funeral procession would make its way back to the Altai Mountains so Ogodei could join his father, or if his bones would be laid out in some farmer’s field here so the siege of Wien might continue. Either way, Al-Altun’s bones would soon join his.

Toregene moved to follow the guard, but I stopped her. “Do you wish to greet her this way?”

Toregene looked down, staring at her blood-streaked palms and
deel
for a long moment, as if she hadn’t realized she wore the remnants of her husband’s death. She shook her head. “Better that everyone see me this way.” She glanced at me, her mismatched eyes gleaming with molten copper and gold. “Both of us, actually.”

I hadn’t realized that I, too, was spattered with Ogodei’s blood, vomit, and wine. So much changed in so little time.

I averted my eyes when Shigi bent to whisper something in Toregene’s ear, his hand brushing the small of her back to guide her forward. The rumble of angry voices outside swelled as the door opened, growing louder as we stepped from the Great White Tent. Al-Altun stood surrounded and outnumbered by Ogodei’s guards, her own men held at bay by a ring of gleaming swords as Toregene stepped forward, palms open like a supplicant and adorned with the Khan’s blood.

“Soldiers of the Golden Horde.” Toregene threw her voice so those closest quieted to hear. “I come to you wearing the lifeblood of your Khan, Ogodei, third son of Genghis Khan and ruler of the People of the Felt. Tonight our Khan of Khans has passed to the sacred mountains, slain by the venom of a vile serpent.”

I detected a flicker of triumph over Al-Altun’s features, but it was short-lived when our guards grabbed her arms and dragged her toward us. There was an audible gasp, followed by more angry shouts.

As I’d seen Borte do many times, Toregene raised her hands for silence,
and the mob settled, although their faces still seethed with anger. “I shall not allow the criminal responsible for this to go free while my husband’s body grows cold.” She turned now to stare down Al-Altun, leveling her full fury at the woman Ogodei had hoped to destroy. Instead, Al-Altun had destroyed them both this night. “Al-Altun, Khatun of the Uighurs,” Toregene said. “I do hereby charge you with the heinous murder of the Khan of Khans.”

A deep rumble erupted from the crowd. Genghis Khan’s legal code required the trial of members of the Golden Family for any wrongdoing and forbade their execution. According to the law, Toregene might lock Al-Altun within the wooden planks of a cangue, or perhaps banish her to the far reaches of Siberia. Al-Altun seemed to know this, yet she didn’t even flinch at the announcement, only smiled. “You have no evidence,” she said, almost shouting to be heard.

“You poisoned the Khan of Khan’s
airag
this night with venom milked from a viper,” Toregene said. “Thus we pronounce you guilty of murder and treason. You shall be stripped of your land and titles, and you shall be dragged back to Karakorum, there to remain bound in a cangue until the end of your days.”

Al-Altun opened her mouth to argue, but I stood behind her then, the point of Ogodei’s dagger against her back.

“In order to save your son and avoid a war that will decimate your people,” I whispered in her ear, “you will tell your soldiers to march home without further bloodshed.”

She stiffened in my arms. “And if I refuse?”

“You’ll watch your son’s lifeblood soak the ground, and these men will siege your cities, slaughter your soldiers, and claim your women, just as you did to Nishapur.”

She twisted so she could look me in the face, but her eyes were flat. “You’ve waited a long time for this moment, haven’t you, Rose of Nishapur? I doubt you’d find the courage to kill me.” She gave a strangled laugh. “And even if you did, at least I won’t be alone in the sacred mountains, as I’ve been every day in this life since your foul city murdered my husband.”

“Did you love him very much?”

She pursed her lips. “I did. He was all I had in this life after my mother died, slighted and ignored as I was by the Golden Family.”

I felt Toregene’s eyes on us, heard from far off the murmurings in the crowd. A girl without a mother, her husband killed . . . I almost lowered my knife, but Al-Altun’s next words poured molten iron into my veins.

“And I’ll die content,” she said, “knowing I avenged his death when I saw your city slaughtered.”

Perhaps my desire for revenge had simply lain dormant all these years, or perhaps I’d have been satisfied to hear that Al-Altun had died an old woman warm in her bed, yet I sensed the One God’s hand in all this. It was possible that Ogodei’s death was penalty for his earlier treatment of the Oirat, and Al-Altun’s punishment was divine retribution for Nishapur. Only Allah knew.

“What is your answer, Al-Altun of the Uighurs?” I pressed the blade into her spine so hard she gasped.

“My people,” she said, her voice as strong as any Khan’s. “I submit to this fair judgment in exchange for the Khatun’s promise of your safety and that of my son. Do not fear that I shall be harmed, for in his Jasagh the great Genghis Khan forbade such treatment of a member of his family.”

Al-Altun was thoroughly mistaken if she was convinced that the words of her father would protect her now. I’d thought this woman was like me, but I was wrong. Had I a son with Mansoor, I’d have done anything to protect him, to
live
for him. Perhaps Al-Altun believed she’d done her best to save her child, but she’d condemned the boy to a life alone, the same as she’d lived.

“Command them to leave,” I growled.

“Go home and return to your fields,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Remember me, but do not mourn me, for I shall live a long life.”

Her men cast yearning looks at her, and for a moment I thought they might rebel, but one by one they saluted their Khatun, then turned and walked away. I kept my blade pressed to Al-Altun’s back all the while, imagining her people mounting their horses and riding away, believing their ruler cowed but protected by the decree of a dead Khan.

How wrong they were.

Toregene stood as straight and rigid as the Solitary Tree while the
Uighurs trickled away, her arms tucked into her wide sleeves. Now she turned and offered me an almost imperceptible nod.

“The Khan of Khans commanded your death,” I said to Al-Altun, reaching one arm in front of her chest. “Such was his dying wish, and so it shall be.”

In one fluid motion, I spun Al-Altun around and plunged the knife deep into her stomach. She gasped and her body lurched in my arms as I twisted the blade, jerking it up before pulling the knife out in a torrent of guts, her blood spraying like a fountain in the air.

I waited for the surge of triumph I’d yearned for all these years, but instead I watched in horror as Al-Altun clutched her belly, crimson blood and lavender entrails spilling between her fingers. Blood seeped from her lips and she slowly slid to the ground. I’d once hungered to watch the light leave her eyes, but instead it was as if I was in the courtyard of the mosque once again, the slick feel of Mansoor’s blood on my hands, at the scene I’d relived so many times in my nightmares.

“I, too, sought revenge for my beloved,” she whispered up at me, her bloodstained lips opening and closing as she struggled for breath. “I forgive you, Fatima of Nishapur, for what you’ve done this night. For I shall greet my husband soon, while you—” She gasped and her pupils widened as if finally seeing death. “You shall remain here, alone.”