The Tiger Queens Read online

  I cast my eyes to the rug and took my place behind my mother. “I’ll deal with you later,” she snarled as I passed. Sorkhokhtani gave me a sympathetic frown and began playing again, picking up in the middle of an epic tale about the hero Jangar, a song that often required several days to complete the entire story.

  I could look forward to my mother ordering me to gather dung every day for the next year. And she’d probably force me to cook again, until I succeeded in poisoning our entire family. Yet there were new lines between her brows, and I wondered what fresh worries had imprinted themselves there.

  I straightened my shoulders, determined not to earn her additional wrath for slouching, when my eyes fell on Gurbesu. My mother’s childhood friend was no longer young but was still striking in her customary red deel, and she looked far younger when she gave me a playful wink. I returned the gesture as my father addressed his followers. “People of the Felt,” he announced, pitching his voice so each man had to lean forward to hear him, as if this were an intimate conversation with one man instead of almost a hundred. “You have come here to pledge support for me as your Great Khan. I shall reward those who fought with me to create this nation, and make each of you the ruler of one thousand households.”

  The clans who supported my father had swelled since the Blood Wars had ended, and as such, each required a leader loyal to my family, as opposed to a chief chosen only for the blood in his veins. The positions were largely ceremonial, yet I’d heard my mother and father discuss this plan as a way to further tighten my father’s net around all the clans and avert a future war. The households of the lesser clans would provide soldiers for my father’s supporters, and I supposed the positions offered were a great reward for my father’s generals. He called up each leader to bestow additional war spoils upon him and confirm him as chief of a clan. In return, the men bent their knees nine times before Father, sealing their promises to each other. Teb Tengeri started the procession, and Sorkhokhtani informed me later that there were exactly ninety-five men honored that day, but I yawned into my hand and thought of the feast we’d soon have instead of listening to their accolades. I finally perked up as our family received their shares: ten thousand households for my grandmother Hoelun, nine thousand for Jochi, five thousand for each of my other brothers, and four thousand for my uncle Khasar.

  Finally it was time to move the ceremony outside. The men of the newly proclaimed Nine Paladins, including Shigi, grabbed a fistful of the black felt cloth upon which my father sat and lifted him into the air with a collective exhale. I followed behind my mother and gasped at the thousands of people who had gathered in the sunshine, their expectant faces turned toward their new Khan.

  Every child grows up in awe of her father, but it was at that moment that I realized the power my father held. At his command, all the men gathered here would ride against our enemies and decimate their cities. The children still on their mother’s backs would grow to serve his desires and obey his commands. My father had always ruled our family, but now he ruled an empire.

  The chiefs carried him toward a wooden platform erected especially for this ceremony, graced only by a wooden bench carved with galloping horses and inlaid with flecks of white bone. Reverently, the men laid the black felt carpet upon the green grass, then stepped back and allowed my father to mount the steps.

  Teb Tengeri came forward then, leaning heavily on his twisted cane. I spared a glance for my mother, noting the sour expression she always wore when she was forced to accommodate the seer. A hush fell as he addressed the crowd, although it would take the winds and mouths of men to carry it to those farthest away.

  “People of the Felt,” he said, his voice strong for one so thin. “You have traveled from far-flung mountains and deserts to lend your weight to this proclamation. Today you have chosen Genghis, son of Yesugei, to be your Gur-Khan. From this day forward, the Eternal Blue Sky and the Golden Light of the Sun shall grant him his authority, in order that he might rule his peoples justly. Should he fail to do so, may his face be blackened with shame and his empire shatter to a million pieces.”

  I jumped as soldiers behind us beat their skin drums together, thudding a steady heartbeat while Teb Tengeri poured an entire jug of frothy mare’s milk into the earth. In perfect unison the thousands of brown faces bowed over their hands, then lifted one palm to my father.

  “Hurree, hurree, hurree.” They breathed the ancient prayer of acceptance. My father nodded once, securing the heavy responsibility they’d placed upon his broad shoulders, and took his place upon the Horse Throne. My mother sat on a leather stool at his side, the epitome of the wise and dutiful wife, almost entirely obscuring Yesui and Yesugen as they sat cross-legged on the ground behind the throne.

  My father flung his arms open then, and the hordes before him stomped and roared their approval, a sound so deafening that the city walls beyond the Dead Lands must have quaked in terror. I caught his eye then, and he grinned, then threw his head back and roared with pleasure.

  My father, the man who’d taught me to ride a horse and string a bow, was now the undisputed Great Khan of all the Mongols.

  And as his eldest and favorite daughter, I wondered what that meant for me.

  * * *

  I ducked my head to hide from my mother and the inevitable tirade I’d receive for the wrestling escapade, disappearing into the celebratory crowd after my father took his throne. People around me discussed the new laws he planned to pass forbidding the kidnapping of women and decreeing total religious freedom for the smattering of Christians, Saracens who accepted the teachings of Muhammad, and Saugata followers of Buddha who had found their way into our empire. The Jasagh—my father’s new code of law—also outlined the new divisions in the military, forbade urinating into water or ashes, and ordered the execution of a horse thief who could not repay his crime with horses or his own children. As airag jugs were emptied and my father left his throne—my heart fell when I saw Boroghul approach him—words slurred and talk turned to bawdy songs. Fights broke out amongst men who wouldn’t remember the insults that left them with black eyes, and more than one couple slipped down to the river for celebratory trysts. I amused myself by kissing a second Kazakh behind a tree—his clumsy fumbles made me swear to steer clear of Kazakhs in the future—and ignored his protests when I slipped away after gauging the time it would take my mother to fall asleep. I slunk on silent feet to her ger but halted when I heard voices within.

  “You must do this, Temujin.” The tightness in my mother’s muffled voice and the use of my father’s old name made me hesitate on the other side of the felt walls.

  “I’ve already taken two other wives,” he said, using the same tone as when I’d pressed him too far for something. “I promised you my only heirs would be your children.”

  “I’m asking you to break that promise.” There was a pause and I could imagine my mother covering his hand with hers. Like all Mongols, my parents rarely touched in public, but in the privacy of their tent, she often laid her head against my father’s shoulder or let him wrap a hand around her waist. “This isn’t a decision I’ve come by lightly,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “Surely one of the boys, or even Alaqai—”

  I pressed my ear closer to the felt at the mention of my name, but my mother scoffed. “Our sons are drunkards,” she said. “And as much as I love her, Alaqai’s soul is full of fire. She’s wilder than the desert winds.”

  My cheeks flared at her accusation. The words might be true, but they cut deep all the same.

  She continued. “Only Jochi has the abilities to succeed you.”

  “The clans will never accept Jochi.” My father’s voice grew rough with some unnamed emotion, and I wished I could see his face to put a name to it. Jochi was the acknowledged firstborn son of Genghis Khan, but his unfortunate name spoke louder than any enemy he might vanquish or all territories he might one day claim for our
people. I’d heard him discuss plans with our father to travel north after the coming winter, to conquer the forest peoples of Rus, and wondered if he hoped for an opportunity to prove himself. Or perhaps to separate himself from us.

  “I know they won’t support Jochi,” my mother said. “Genghis, I would give you more children if I could—”

  “You’d never survive another battle like the one you fought for Tolui. I’d never forgive myself if I sent you to die in the birthing tent.”

  “Then you must do this. Your generals have pressed you to take another wife for years, and Yesui and Yesugen have only given you a passel of girls—”

  Yesui and Yesugen rarely strayed into our camp, but my mother grew tight-lipped and short-tempered whenever my father visited them. Between them they’d birthed a stillborn girl and three living daughters: Khochen, Tumelun, and Checheyigen. All three were silly things with runny noses whom I did my best to avoid. “Who would you propose I take as a fourth wife?” My father’s voice was taut. “To marry the daughter of any of my chiefs would be to set one atop the others. I cannot do that.”

  “It must be Gurbesu.”

  Even I blanched at my mother’s recommendation. Gurbesu had been the only wife of our worst enemy, a shamed woman without any children to care for her. Then I saw the brilliance of my mother’s plan, even before she spoke it aloud.

  “Marrying Jamuka’s widow will be the final end to the great war,” she said. “No other man will think to marry her then, to carry Jamuka’s banner against you. She’s proven her ability to conceive. She may yet give you sons.”

  “There is the question of whether Gurbesu would have me,” my father said, resignation in his voice. “I will not take her against her will.”

  “Gurbesu will have you,” my mother said, her voice heavy.

  I knew she was right, for without a husband or sons, Gurbesu scarcely eked out her survival, relying upon my mother’s generosity and the abundance of wool and milk from our herds. She would be a fool to refuse such an offer, to go from taking milk from our mares to becoming wife to the Great Khan.

  My parents’ voices fell to murmurs, and I knew then that my father embraced my mother. I turned to go, to seek my bed under a tree or perhaps find alternate entertainment with one of the many soldiers available, although my heart wasn’t into a tumble in the grasses right now. Instead, I had taken only a few steps when I was startled to see Toregene and Shigi standing behind me. Her broad cheeks were flushed in the moonlight and her braids had come loose from their ties. I ducked my head and continued on, knowing they would follow me.

  “How much did you hear?” I asked.

  “Most of it,” Toregene said.

  I wondered if that included my mother’s rebuke against me, but I could guess from the weight of Toregene’s scrutiny that it did.

  “Your mother is a strong woman,” Shigi said, his voice reverent. “Her sacrifices make her a worthy khatun.”

  “She spoke against me,” I said, my cheeks still warm.

  Toregene linked her arm through mine. “The truth isn’t an insult,” she said, echoing my earlier thought. I made a sound of outrage in my throat, but she only chuckled. “I wouldn’t change you even if I could, sister of my heart.” She leaned in so that only I could hear her next words. “The only question is, would you?”

  We’d come to the campfire where my brothers passed wine jugs amongst their friends while Ogodei boasted of my escapade in the wrestling competition, drawing awed looks in my direction and making the tips of my ears burn. I learned then that the cook Boroghul had been so angry after I’d beaten him that he’d cornered my father after the ceremony and demanded that girls be forever banned from the wrestling competition. In order to placate one of his favorite cooks, my father had decreed that all future wrestlers wear only breeches and open vests over their bare chests, barring any chance of a woman being able to sneak into the matches. I didn’t doubt that Boroghul had spit in my mutton after that, but my father had told me later that he was so proud of me that he’d give me the next foal his stallion sired and he’d ensure that Neer-Gui was safe during the Slaughter of the First Snows.

  That meant my horse wouldn’t end up in Boroghul’s stewpot, so I supposed it was a fair trade. But my wrestling days were over, and that made my mood blacker than usual.

  Tolui leaned against Sorkhokhtani, asleep with his mouth open and an empty jug tucked into the crook of his thin arm. Even now, she managed to look as delicate as a red-crowned crane, the firelight accenting the sheen of her complicated hair knot. She shrugged and offered me a wan smile as Toregene took her place beside Ogodei, Shigi sitting opposite them with an inscrutable expression. I knew I should join my brothers and sisters, but Toregene’s question rattled in my mind, begging for an answer. Did I want to remain the same and enjoy the carefree and privileged life I’d always lived? Or did I wish to change?

  Only a day before I’d have answered without hesitation. Now I no longer knew.

  * * *

  Gurbesu accepted my father’s proposal, as we’d all known she would. I wondered if she relished the idea of her new position or saw this as her only route to survival.

  There was little extravagance to the marriage ceremony, rushed as it was to occur before the clans left the khurlatai. Gurbesu had no family tent for her husband to collect her from, so my mother had offered her own. I’d seen my proud mother leave at dawn, hiking in the direction of the empty gers near the forest, the ones belonging to her own mothers. I thought to follow her but guessed she’d scold me and send me back. Instead, I joined Toregene and Sorkhokhtani to help ready Gurbesu, as she had no female kin to braid her hair and tie her sash. Sorkhokhtani played her horse-head fiddle, ostensibly so she was spared having to speak to our new mother, and Gurbesu chattered louder than a magpie as she stained her lips with berry juice until they gleamed as red as blood. We all bowed our heads when my father appeared at the entrance of my mother’s ger, my scowling brothers trailing him like a cape. Yesui and Yesugen remained in their tents outside camp, but my mother now stood with the men, her very presence sanctioning this marriage. Her grass-green deel matched her headdress, yet her lips were tight and her eyes remained flat even when Gurbesu gave her an impetuous hug.

  “Thank you, Borte Ujin,” I heard her whisper. “We are truly sisters now.”

  My mother’s lips grew thinner, but she still bent down and placed the traditional polished rock at the bride’s feet. This was typically done in the wedding tent, but I doubted my mother wished to see the tent my father would now share, or worse, the marriage bed.

  “Our family is like this rock,” she said, her voice carrying and silencing the crowd of nobles that had packed themselves between the gers. “Sturdy and powerful, building mountains and empires. May you, too, be powerful as stone, and make our family ever stronger.”

  She murmured something in Gurbesu’s ear, then pressed her forehead to her friend’s. My mother was the most important woman on the steppes, and possibly beyond, but she sacrificed her happiness now to secure my family’s power. I wondered if she thought it a fair trade.

  My father clasped Gurbesu’s hand and led her the short distance through the two purification fires to the small ger across the way. He lingered outside to cast a glance at my mother, then slipped inside after his fourth wife. The crowd of his handpicked ministers and generals jostled forward, all eager for salt tea and the opportunity to rib my father with their coarse jokes. In the shuffle, I lost my place near my family and found myself next to Teb Tengeri.

  My mother despised the shaman, but I was apathetic toward the crippled old man in his blue deel that smelled as if it had gone unwashed since before I was born. Still, despite the press of warm bodies all around us, I felt cornered by my father’s seer when his penetrating brown eyes snared me. My heart lurched when his hand brushed against mine with a rattle from the beads on his robe, ivory a
nd glass trinkets earned from each of his supposed visions. His might have been an accidental touch had it not been for the way his thumb pressed against the pulse in my wrist. Just as quickly, he recoiled from my touch.

  “You carry death in your heart, just like the vermin you’re named for,” he hissed, tucking his hand into his wide sleeves as if scalded. His expression contorted as he eyed the sword in my belt. “Death’s own foot soldier.”

  I touched the tiger sword—my mother insisted I wear it while foreign clans surrounded us for the khurlatai—but Teb Tengeri ducked his head and pressed forward then, leaving me to puzzle over his words. Moments later, Shigi filled the empty space left by the shaman, flanked by Tolui and Sorkhokhtani. My youngest brother would soon marry his betrothed, yet I’d noticed Tolui seek out Sorkhokhtani several times during the khurlatai. Once they were married, I’d be the only one of my mother’s children left unwed, a thought that made me lonely and exultant at the same time.

  Shigi scowled at the seer’s retreating back. “What did Teb Tengeri want?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “He mumbled something about me being vermin.” I squinted at the shaman as Gurbesu’s ger finally swallowed him. Teb Tengeri would bless her marriage bed tonight, nothing my family or I cared to see. “I think his horse bucked him onto his head one too many times.”

  “Or that’s what he wants you to think,” Sorkhokhtani said. I mulled over her words—Sorkhokhtani rarely offered her opinion, but she was typically correct when she did.

  I caught sight of my mother then, retreating into the privacy of her tent. As first wife, her white ger maintained the camp’s easternmost position, with its the first glimpse of the sun, and now Gurbesu’s smaller tent stood to the west behind it, like the tail of a bearded star. Sorkhokhtani whispered something in Tolui’s ear and parted from him, motioning for me to follow. Toregene waved to us from the crowd and together we followed my mother inside. She had already removed the tall headdress with its feathers and beads, and her green deel lay in an uncharacteristic pile on the ground. She stood with her back to us, dressed only in her undertunic, bereft of all the other armor of the khatun. Then she turned and, for the first time in my memory, I saw tears running unchecked down her cheeks.