The Tiger Queens (44 page)

She grew still then, and I imagined her battered soul seeping from her body, leaving behind a heart long since shattered. Another of Omar Khayyám’s poems floated to my mind, long forgotten, but almost making me weep now with its truth.

Khayyám, who stitched the tents of science,

Has fallen in grief’s furnace and been suddenly burned;

The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,

And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!

I had sought Al-Altun’s death, but so, too, would I die one day. I might have plunged the bloodied knife into my own belly then, had Toregene not taken it from me.

“Remove the body,” Toregene commanded one of the guards, gathering me into her arms as I began to tremble, silent tears running unchecked down my face as I muttered in Farsi the prayer for the dead over Al-Altun’s corpse. “It’s finished, Fatima,” she whispered, her frame shuddering with exhaustion. “It’s over, and we’ve survived unscathed.”

But I wasn’t unscathed.

I wanted to forget what had happened here tonight, as I’d often wished I could forget Nishapur. Yet I’d done this, not Allah or the heavens, and I knew this night would be added to my nightmares, to be endured again and again.

T
oregene recalled Ogodei’s forces from the banks of the Danube River, and together our somber funeral procession retraced the path back to Karakorum. The winter journey was treacherous, and anyone who sought to follow us would need only trace the trail of broken carts and horse carcasses that littered the frozen grasslands behind us. Toregene’s illness worsened, buffeted as she was by the winds and snow. Shigi and I demanded that she travel by oxcart, wearing her down with our pleas until she finally relented. I watched as he handed her up into the black cart, one hand lingering on her back while he tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. Toregene clasped his hand to her cheek, closing her eyes and leaning into him. It was a rare moment of intimacy and one that wouldn’t have been possible only a few days ago, so powerful that I had to turn away. I’d reconciled myself to spending the remainder of my days alone, save my sisterhood with Toregene. Still, it was painful to see what I’d lost.

I felt a touch at my elbow and was startled to see Shigi standing there, his face tired and drawn but wearing a puzzled expression. “You’ve left off your veil today, Fatima of Nishapur.”

My gloved fingers touched the exposed skin of my cheeks. With the murder of Al-Altun, I had severed the ties to my past and forced Allah to abandon me. It had seemed only fitting to leave behind the protective veil
that I’d clung to all these years, setting me visibly apart from these murderous Mongols. And so I’d burned the delicate rectangle of silk in my hearth this morning, watching the flames devour the fabric. “So I have,” I said to Shigi. “I’m no longer the same woman who walked through the gates of her conquered city.”

“Veil or no, you will always be the Rose of Nishapur,” he said. “The Golden Family was blessed by all the gods the day Toregene saved you.”

While it was true that Toregene had claimed me, it was Shigi who had found me in the mosque and brought me to her. Our lives were inextricably bound together, their threads woven in a complicated pattern no mortal eye could discern.

“Don’t let her leave that cart today,” he said, his gaze straying to Toregene. “She’s more deteriorated than she looks.”

I glanced to where Toregene sat, directing orders to a slave struggling to carry a wooden crate. “We both love her,” I said to Shigi. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”

Shigi smiled. “I know you won’t. And I’m grateful for it.”

I watched him make his way to where the horses waited, then mount his brown stallion in one fluid motion, before I turned back to the cart. Toregene’s capitulation to travel in the wagon was a double boon for me, for it meant I would ride beside her and forgo the wretched ride on horseback that left me bowlegged and aching for days.

“I once told you carts were for old women and invalids,” Toregene said, scowling as I stuffed fire-heated stones wrapped in wool blankets at her feet. Soon the drifts would grow so deep that we’d be forced back to our saddles, but I hoped that a few days in a cart would help her regain her strength. “It seems my words have returned to torment me.”

“You are neither old nor an invalid,” I said, but neither was true.

“I need your strength, Fatima,” she said, worrying the new golden bangle at her wrist. The bracelet was a gift from Shigi, embossed with two devil masks and a phoenix, so that between that and her silver cross, Toregene might always be protected from malevolent spirits. “There’s no one I can trust other than you and Shigi. Güyük must be proclaimed Khan in a
khurlatai
when we return to Karakorum.”

I could scarcely fathom the idea of spoiled, craven Güyük ruling the Mongol Empire. I tucked the wool blanket around her legs. “Perhaps it would be premature to call a
khurlatai
yet.”

Toregene bit her lip, the skin chapped and as pale as the rest of her. “You think we lack the support to nominate him?”

If a
khurlatai
were called today, I doubted whether Güyük would receive more than a single vote, and that would be the one his mother cast for him. I loved Toregene, but she remained oblivious to her son’s cruel streak.

“You ruled alongside Ogodei, did you not?” I asked, settling beside her, although she insisted on taking the reins. “Perhaps you should guide the empire now, at least until the issue of Al-Altun’s execution dies down. Sorkhokhtani holds the east, Batu the north, Chaghatai’s widow the west, and Alaqai the south.”

“You sent an arrow messenger to Olon Süme?” Toregene interrupted, her teeth chattering. “Alaqai’s the only one I can trust to administer the Uighur lands as well as her own.”

“I did,” I said, holding tight as the cart lurched forward. “And you could reign over all of them as Great Khatun, as Borte Khatun did while Genghis Khan was out conquering the world.”

Toregene sighed. “You may be right, at least for now. After all, my eldest son is not without his faults—”

The world might have been a better place if Toregene had drowned Güyük at birth, but I held my tongue.

“But Güyük is still young enough to learn how to rule. If I assume the regency, we shall groom him to become Khan one day.”

She paused, looking at me as if for my approval. Her eyes were wide and glassy with her illness, mismatched pools reflecting a lifetime of joys and sorrows. She’d grown so frail since we had started this journey, and she might grow weaker still before we reached the walls of Karakorum.

“If Ogodei managed to stay sober long enough to oversee the conquests of Rus and Goryeo and build a new capital, I suppose there’s a chance for Güyük as well,” I said, praying Allah would turn a deaf ear to my lie and not smite me where I stood. “But it may be that your regency shall be necessary for months, if not years.”

My throat tightened to realize that Toregene might not live that long if her illness didn’t abate. I pushed away the thought, for I couldn’t imagine a life without this sister of my heart.

“Ogodei’s councilors won’t tolerate a woman set above them for so long,” she said.

“Dismiss them.” I waved away her concern with a gloved hand. “Consolidate your power immediately so their distaste for a woman as ruler is no longer an issue.”

Toregene gave a slow smile. “Who knew my docile calligrapher could be so vicious?” Her eyes regained their old warmth, but her face remained wan. “Together, Fatima, we’ll gain control of this unruly empire and ensure Güyük’s succession.”

I couldn’t promise that I’d work to support Güyük’s claim to the throne, but next to Toregene, I would help govern the largest empire the world had ever seen. The thought both thrilled and terrified me.

*   *   *

Dawn warmed the sky like a pale bruise over Karakorum upon our silent arrival. Herds of shaggy horses outside the walls nudged the snow with their noses, searching in vain for shoots of early spring grass. Implacable stone tortoises stood sentry at the main gate and the palace loomed tall, finished in our absence and decorated with painted roof tiles incised with grimacing dragon faces. Three stories high, its white exterior was accented with fluted red trim in the style of Cathay, and blue flags atop its roof honored the pagan sky spirit. The pieces of the palace had been named according to the colors of the empire—the Golden Ordu for the sun, the Green Courtyard for the grasslands, and the Yellow Pavilion for the wildflowers that dotted the countryside each summer.

We entered through the west gate and waded through its sheep and goat market, on our way to the main street through town, passing the domed mosques of the Saracen quarter. Outside the courtyard sat a
darvıˉsh
,
his ragged beard and oft-stitched robe bespeaking his holy vows to Allah. I dropped a silver coin into the iron bowl in his lap, then pressed another into his hand. “One for the mosque,” I whispered in Farsi to the ascetic. “And one for you to buy bread for yourself.”

The man’s eyes widened, but he avoided my gaze. “You wear no veil, lady, but speak the old language. I fear I hardly recognize this new world the Mongols have forged.”

“I would be honored if you prayed to Allah for me,” I said. “For I fear he no longer hears my prayers.”

I stood before he could reject my pleas, imagining for a moment that we might be home in Nishapur, but the illusion was ruined by the dirty snowdrifts outside a nearby pagan temple and its cloying smell of incense that spilled into the air amidst the angry snorts of several nearby yaks. Few people were out in the streets in the blowing snow, but those that were exclaimed over our arrival in a medley of languages: Mongolian, Mandarin, French, English, Hungarian, and even Farsi. The city still smelled of freshly hewn lumber and newness, its bright colors gaudy and all for show. Beyond the metal shops with their steaming domed forges and smelting furnaces, four lurid silver lions reclined at the base of the Silver Tree, and heated
airag
flowed freely from their open jaws. The French goldsmith Guillaume Boucher had designed the masterpiece; he had been captured during the campaign against Belgrade and conscripted into Ogodei’s army of craftsmen to turn Karakorum into a cosmopolitan city. Gems hung from the tree’s branches and four golden serpents climbed up its towering trunk, their eyes studded with rubies, while four filigreed branches poured wine, clarified mare’s milk, and warmed rice mead into silver basins. I dipped a hesitant finger into the last basin, smiling at the sweet
bal
, a honeyed milk that Mongol children lapped up like starving kittens. Beyond the Silver Tree was a man-made river, mostly frozen. We passed through courtyards shoveled free of their snow and filled with herds of the Five Snouts, each lazy beast marked with a golden tag in its ear to denote its ownership by the Golden Family.

I was reminded of the interior of the Great White Tent when the palace’s towering door thudded closed behind us, blocking out the wind, although smoke from the torches permeated the air. Beneath our feet, stone ducts guided heated air into the room—a recent innovation brought from Cathay—but despite the decadence that Ogodei had sought when planning
his capital, the simple elegance of the meanest villa in Nishapur might have rivaled all this.

Güyük found us in the main corridor, dressed in cloth of gold like his father, his beard crimped and a foreign shah’s turban on his head. Oghul Ghaimish stood behind him, her braids pinned in two giant loops around her ears and decorated with a plethora of silver bells and ivory animal combs. A child with dried milk on its upper lip clung to the embroidered hem of her
deel
.

“I’m glad to see you returned safe, Mother.” Güyük gave a deep bow, his face a perfect mask. “It was with great sorrow that I heard of my father’s passage to the sacred mountains.”

This dutiful son was hardly the man I’d expected to find upon our arrival, a stranger wearing a familiar—if unwelcome and still pockmarked—face.

“The Great Khatun is weary from her long journey,” I said when Toregene didn’t respond. Instead, she stared at her son as if confronting a stranger for the first time.

“When will you call a
khurlatai
?” Oghul Ghaimish’s whine was followed by the escalating whimpers of her child. Despite her tasteful attire, angry red scratches poked from the collar of her
deel
, although I couldn’t tell if they were put there by her own nails or someone else’s. She picked at her scalp, as if there were nits hidden beneath her oiled braids. “Güyük promised me a green headdress when you returned.”

A green headdress. The Khatun’s
boqta
.

I wondered if Güyük had already promised to make Oghul Ghaimish the Great Khatun. Borte would writhe in her grave to see such an unstable young woman crowned as Mother to the People of the Felts.

“Perhaps you should return to our chambers and rest for a while, wife,” Güyük said gently, his hand on the small of her back. “And take our son with you.”

“Your son.” Welcome color blossomed on Toregene’s cheeks as she stared down at the child cowering behind his mother’s legs. “You made me a grandmother while we were away?”

“I did indeed,” Güyük said, beaming like any proud father. “And my second wife is ready to drop a foal any day.”

Toregene exclaimed over that, but I continued to study Güyük. Perhaps fatherhood had calmed his violent streak, or perhaps that was only what he wanted his mother to believe. I knew not what game he played, but I wasn’t convinced by his act.

Oghul Ghaimish slunk away, taking with her the sound of tinkling bells and the child’s cries as she disappeared around a tiled corner. Toregene patted Güyük’s hand. “I worried when your father chose Oghul Ghaimish as your wife,” she said. “But you’ve done well by her. Treat her gently, and I’m sure she’ll reward you with her loyalty and many more children.”

Güyük followed us back outside and to the Golden Ordu—the white velvet tent held up by pillars plated with gold—inquiring politely about our journey and whether there were plans to return to Wien for a second siege. “Also,” he said, “Sorkhokhtani and her eldest sons recently arrived.”

“Good,” Toregene answered. “Fatima sent a message requesting their presence in the capital upon my return.”

Güyük’s eyes darkened at that, but then he offered his mother a polished smile. “I’m pleased to hear they obliged, especially considering all the times Sorkhokhtani defied my father.”

“Sorkhokhtani desires a quiet life,” Toregene answered as we approached the doors of the Golden Ordu, fluted at the top in the Persian style but carved with dragons and horses in the style of Cathay. Like his people, Ogodei’s palace was a conglomeration of styles from around the world, and I found the mix jarring and disconcerting. “Yet she is grown almost as old as me and has served our family well since Tolui’s death. She understands her duties as Princess of the Hearth.”

It seemed Toregene had forgiven Sorkhokhtani her rejection of Güyük, perhaps because she realized she’d now need the support of Tolui’s widow.

Güyük didn’t have a chance to answer, for the doors were flung open at Toregene’s gesture. Inside, Ogodei’s former councilors milled about, as did various members of the Golden Family, the men standing to the west and the few women to the east as if this were still a humble
ger
that stunk of wet goat wool instead of the grand throne room of the most powerful family on
earth. I nodded to Sorkhokhtani, recognizing her sons Möngke and Kublai across from her.