The Tiger Queens (54 page)

1. What did you most enjoy about the novel? Did any one of the four female narrators appeal to you more than the others?

2. Genghis obviously cares for Borte, despite leaving her to be kidnapped and marrying several other women. How does their love change throughout the book?

3. Many of the women in this book—Borte, Alaqai, Toregene, and Sorkhokhtani—are mothers. Who is the best mother, and why?

4. Shigi and Boyahoe discover Fatima in an act that could be viewed as madness, painting calligraphy in blood around her husband’s and father’s bodies. What is the difference between her and Oghul Ghaimish, who falls so quickly into madness after enduring the rape of the Oirat girls?

5. By the end of the book, each of these women has endured unspeakable tragedies. What traits do they have that allow them to survive—and sometimes flourish—during times of such terrible violence?

6. Many of the women in the novel survive by using careful strategy in reacting to particularly dangerous situations. Compare how Toregene, Alaqai, and Sorkhokhtani react to the most dangerous situations they face.

7. Fatima makes a fateful decision to stay with the dying Toregene rather than escape to safety with Alaqai. Why do you think she makes this choice? Is she fully conscious of all that she is risking?

8. Discuss some of the ways in which the women in the novel—even the minor characters—support and honor one another. How do they betray one another?

9. What do you expect you’ll remember about the novel long after you’ve finished reading it?

If you enjoyed Borte and the fearless, tenacious women of the Mongolian steppes, you won’t want to miss Alexander the Great’s women: cunning Roxana, witty Drypetis, and his pampered but strong-willed half sister Thessalonike.

Read on for an excerpt from Stephanie Thornton’s exciting new novel,

T
HE
C
ONQUEROR’S
W
IFE

Available in print and e-book in November 2015 from New American Library.

336 BCE

PELLA, MACEDONIA

Thessalonike

I
t was a wedding feast to honor our newly made political alliances, a celebration that also saw the return of my golden brother to Pella’s court.

Yet that splendid day would end with a funeral.

The morning began with a predawn banquet of honeyed apricots, flat
staititas
topped with sesame and goat cheese, and crusty loaves of olive bread meant to symbolize the fertility of the recently deflowered bride—my half sister Cleopatra of Macedon—and her dour bridegroom, Alexander Molossus of Epirus.

“You have honey on your cheek, Thessalonike.” My father’s youngest wife and current favorite, Eurydice, pursed her cinnabar-stained lips at me from across the women’s table.

I rubbed my sleep-heavy eyes and licked away the sticky sweetness, earning stern glares from all my father’s wives and a lopsided grin from my half brother Arrhidaeus.

“Like a frog, Nike,” he said, clapping his fat hands before him. The son of a common Illyrian dancing girl, Arrhidaeus was twice my nine summers, but his mind remained that of a child’s. Despite his towering height and broad shoulders, he was allowed to sit on the women’s side of the hall, although I feared that was because none of the men would have him.

“Or a salamander.” I laughed with him, letting my tongue flick between my teeth until Eurydice kicked my foot beneath the table. I scowled, wishing my pretty stepmother were still confined with her infant son to her chambers, where she couldn’t nag me with her insistence on propriety.

The last apricot drizzled with honey beckoned to me, so I stuffed it into my mouth before Eurydice could swat my hand. In the afternoon there would be endless recitations of Homer’s moth-eaten poems and prizes of gold bullion for the finest sculpture celebrating the marriage alliance between Epirus and Macedon, but I was hoping to sneak away for the wrestling and athletic games.

“Come,” Eurydice said, standing and smoothing the elaborate pleats of her woolen
peplos
. “We shall continue our weaving until the men return from the arena. Then Philip has granted us permission to listen to the poets.”

I stabbed my finger inside an olive, wishing I could do the same to my ears when it came time for the recitation. I dropped the pit on the ground, then winked at Arrhidaeus before I crushed the salty green flesh between my teeth. My half brother didn’t notice, too busy digging with a tiny silver spoon into a pomegranate. Eurydice rose and was swept away in a wave of giggling women and a cloud of violet perfume. No one noticed—or perhaps cared—that I didn’t follow. My father’s youngest wife had pretensions of being a dutiful matron, but Eurydice was better suited to
gossiping about the latest fashions or how much her recent treatment of foul-smelling cerussa had whitened her skin.

“Follow me,” I whispered to Arrhidaeus, casting a furtive glance around the hall.

“Where?” he asked. His thick lips drooped into a frown as he gave up on the spoon and used his fingers to fish the last juicy red seeds from the pomegranate’s husk.

“To the arena,” I said, pulling him from the table even as he licked his scarlet-stained fingers. “I’d rather gouge my eyes out than spend the day weaving.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t hurt your eyes.”

“I won’t, my joyful giant, at least not if you hurry.”

My half brother grinned at my name for him. It was kinder than the other names my father’s court used: walnut brain and half-wit. Several of the nobles’ foulmouthed sons had felt the sting of my slingshot in response, so now they held their tongues when I was nearby.

I glanced at the hall’s entrance, the wilted olive branch that announced the birth of Eurydice’s son still over the door, and saw that my eldest half brother, Alexander, and his boyhood companion Hephaestion had arrived, fresh from the baths, if their damp hair and ruddy complexions were any indication. Their heads—one the color of a lion’s mane in sunshine and the other with curls as dark as a crow’s wing—were bent in deep conversation. Their claims on each other’s affections were well-known throughout the palace, and they’d walked in each other’s shadows since Alexander’s recent return to Pella following his exile. Despite that, most of the women—and some of the men—now swiveled in the direction of my beautiful, scandalous brother, several holding chunks of olive bread suspended in midair as he and his friend passed.

Hephaestion’s chiseled features softened as he stooped to whisper in my brother’s ear before striding toward the feast-laden table on the men’s side of the room. Alexander arranged himself stiffly on a wooden bench, his tawny hair parted in a severe line down the middle. His lips curved into a frown as he glanced at our father’s empty dais. My brother had only recently been allowed to return to court, inspiring the continuing whispers
that Eurydice’s newly delivered infant son would supplant him as our father’s heir.

Life had been simple until my father married Eurydice of Macedon, her belly already swollen with a boy-child, or so she had crowed to anyone who would listen. Perhaps it was a result of the wine or the summer’s heat, but at their wedding ceremony Alexander’s blood had almost been shed after Eurydice’s father offered a public prayer to Zeus to grant my father a new, full-blooded heir. Alexander—born of Philip’s Macedonian and Olympias’ Epirean blood—leapt from his seat in a rage and threw his cup of wine at Eurydice’s father, causing my father to draw his sword. There was a collective gasp of shock as Philip lunged forward, presumably to stab his own son, but instead slipped drunkenly on a puddle of wine and fell face-first to the ground. In the outrage that followed, Alexander and his mother had been forced to flee Pella, leaving me bereft of both a brother and the woman who had raised me after my own mother died giving me life.

Alexander had been ordered home for Cleopatra’s wedding—although our father utterly ignored him now that he had his fully Macedonian son—but his mother, Olympias, remained in exile, abandoned in Epirus and left with only her devotions to Dionysus and her famed pet snake, and her hope of one day seeing Alexander on the throne, to keep her content. And that meant Eurydice remained in control of my father’s household.

And in control of me, at least when she was paying attention.

We were almost to the doorway when a strong hand encircled my wrist. “Sneaking off again, Thessalonike?” Hephaestion’s voice held an undercurrent of laughter. “Tell me you’re not planning to climb trees again. I thought you’d have learned your lesson the last time.”

Arrhidaeus’ frown deepened. “No trees. Wasps hurt.”

I raised up on tiptoes to pat his shoulder. “I know. It’s not our fault the wasps built their nest in our favorite oak.”

Or that I’d knocked the nest down while climbing to the tree’s topmost branch, narrowly missing Arrhidaeus’ head and releasing a swarm that attacked both of us. Arrhidaeus and I had spent the remainder of the day plastered in Eurydice’s medicinal mud. Altogether, it was an experience I didn’t care to repeat.

Hephaestion gave an exaggerated sigh and tossed a date into the air. “I suppose I’ll have to return you to Eurydice,” he said, popping the fruit into his mouth and chewing it thoughtfully. “I heard her mention an important tapestry, something about a design of Athena’s defeat of Enceladus involving thousands of very complicated and extremely tiny knots.”

I groaned and fell to my knees. “Please, no. I’d rather you killed me first.”

“No, Nike,” Arrhidaeus said with an emphatic shake of his head. “No killing.”

“Is my sister threatening still another dramatic death?” Alexander asked as he stepped forward, his shadow falling on me. “What is it this time, Thessalonike? Impaled by Persian swords? Ripped apart by lions? Drowned by Scylla and Charbydis?”

“Nothing so glorious,” I muttered. “Death by weaving.”

Alexander, my golden half brother and avowed descendant of the half god Achilles, shared a grin with Hephaestion and then threw back his head in laughter, leaving me scowling and Arrhidaeus’ brows knit together in consternation.

“Are you two going to release me or return me to my doom?” I asked, folding my arms in front of me.

Hephaestion tapped his chin. “She’s a demanding little thing, isn’t she?”

“Always has been,” Alexander said. “When she isn’t stuffing her face with figs or honey rolls.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. Some people stuttered in Alexander’s presence, fearing his mercurial temper and the aura of the gods that clung to him, but I’d spent the full nine years of my life in his mother’s household and knew that the man before me had recently been a boy who drooled in his sleep and kept a tattered copy of Homer’s
Song of Ilium
under his pillow, believing it would imbue him with the power of Achilles.

“If you’re going to continue insulting me,” I said, “then Arrhidaeus and I are leaving for the arena.”

“I’m sure that will go over well,” Hephaestion said, glancing heavenward. “Surely no one will notice Philip’s daughter at the men’s games.”

I narrowed my eyes in speculation. “They won’t care if I’m accompanied by my father’s son and heir.”

A dark cloud passed over Alexander’s features. I’d forgotten for a moment the talk of Eurydice’s son supplanting him, but the storm passed as Hephaestion threw his arm around Alexander’s broad shoulders. “You,” he said to my brother, “must accompany your father into the stadium, but perhaps Arrhidaeus and I can escort young Thessalonike.”

Alexander didn’t answer. He looked past us as to where my father was entering the hall, with every guest lifting a terracotta
skyphoi
of wine in his honor. Before my birth, the poets claimed that the birds sang of Philip’s beauty, but now a livid pink scar ruined one side of his face, a battle wound from the siege of Methone that had also claimed his left eye. The damage only added to his imposing figure.

“If you do, go quickly.” Alexander’s own eyes—one the pale blue of a spring sky and the other a darker hue, like a coming storm—remained shut as he tugged my blond curls, identical to his own. “Your secrets are safe with me, little sister.”

I shrieked with glee, then grabbed Arrhidaeus’ and Hephaestion’s hands and dragged them from the hall, my scarlet
himation
flapping behind me while Arrhidaeus’ chortles of laughter chased us on through the palace courtyard with its potted quince trees and then the apricot and pomegranate orchards, beyond the town gates and the shuttered market—closed in preparation for the glorious spectacle awaiting us—and then to the arena, nestled into the base of Pella’s tallest hill, its autumn grasses muted to a dull gold. Already crowds of men swathed in furs jostled for the best view of the naked wrestlers and javelin throwers, but we found seats near the front row. My eyes bulged to see my eldest and recently widowed half sister Cynnane seated close by, a lone woman among a sea of men, her crinkly curls somewhat tamed by a sheen of olive oil and her body dressed not in her customary short
chiton
but in a refined
peplos
that flowed all the way to her ankles. Women weren’t allowed in the arena, but Cynnane wasn’t a proper woman; she’d been instructed by her Illyrian mother in the ways of war and told of traditions passed down by the chieftains of their family for generations. Although being near Alexander never made me tongue-tied, words always failed me in Cynnane’s presence.

I squatted behind Arrhidaeus, glad for the shield of his hulking
shoulders. The meager autumn sun had scarcely climbed over the horizon when the music of lyres and horns proclaimed the arrival of the twelve gods of Olympus.