The Tiger Queens Read online

  “I’ve never let them see me cry, not even when he married Yesui and Yesugen,” she said to us, her voice trembling as she touched the scar on her lip and lifted her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “Remember that when you rule over your own camps: Your people must never see your weakness.”

  I stood rooted to the spot, rendered immobile. My mother possessed the power of a khatun and the wisdom of a mother, but also the frailty of a simple woman who loved a man. My mother’s love for my father—and even for us, her irresponsible brood—gave her strength but also left her vulnerable.

  It was Toregene who moved first, followed by Sorkhokhtani, both of them gathering my mother into their arms. I stepped forward hesitantly, unsure how to act toward this mother who was suddenly so human.

  She pulled me to her and enveloped me in her crisp smell, like the earth after a spring rain. “One day you’ll all be wives, and your husbands will break your hearts,” she told all of us, drawing a shaky breath. “But you must remember that love is the only thing that makes this life worth living. And I love all of you.” She squeezed us tighter. “So very deeply.”

  She released us and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Let’s have some yogurt and go to sleep,” she said, and I marveled at her ability to pack away her momentary frailty, to act as if nothing unusual was happening while her husband bedded another woman in the next tent over. My father had married Yesui and Yesugen, but they’d always been removed from our lives. Gurbesu would be impossible to ignore.

  We drank our yogurt, filling the air with idle gossip to keep my mother’s mind from wandering to what lay beyond the threshold. Finally, after the camp had grown silent and the light of the moon filtered through the top of the tent, we pulled the grass-stuffed mattresses from their wooden frames and shoved them together, lying side by side like sisters.

  It was only after Toregene and Sorkhokhtani had settled into sleep that I felt my mother’s lips brush my forehead, as delicate as the flutter of a moth’s wings. “I love you, Alaqai,” she murmured. “You are the only daughter of my womb, and nothing can ever change that.”

  My eyes burned then, and I shifted closer to her, wondering if she knew I’d overheard her comment about my wildness. But then, my mother knew everything. I found the place on her shoulder where my head had always fit so perfectly, and tucked my feet under her legs as I always had when my father was gone and dreams of rearing horses and lightning had woken me as a child.

  “I love you, too,” I whispered.

  Chapter 15

  The last of the clans finally left the khurlatai, taking with them the warm weather and leaving in their place the persistent morning dew that heralded an early frost. Over the following weeks, my father sent men to drive the herds to the southern river, hoping for extra time to fatten the animals before the Slaughter of the First Snows. Winter was a long siege against death for us; the slaughter would claim the geldings—my father still promised Neer-Gui’s safety—and the old animals when they were at their fattest to keep us from having to feed them during the long months of snow and ice. The butcherings of that lone day would keep us in sausage and dried meat until spring’s thaw.

  Our entire family gathered inside my mother’s tent to eat together for the first time since the khurlatai; the smoke hole was open wide to the twinkling stars and a healthy fire crackled on the hearth. The fresh air and skins of airag going around flushed our cheeks and loosened our tongues.

  My father sat between my mother and Gurbesu, a strange juxtaposition of two women who could not have been more different. My mother looked aged beyond her years, but her childhood friend might have passed for my older sister, especially in the firelight. Where my mother was tall and lean, Gurbesu was short and didn’t own a straight line on her body, made even more curvaceous because my father’s seed had taken root in her belly. We’d learned of this only a few days ago, and now she looked wan, and often excused herself, presumably to heave into the bushes. Perhaps a difficult pregnancy would be the payment for her easy life and the disruptions she’d caused our family.

  Gurbesu still managed to smile and defer to my mother, who had outdone even herself with the spread of boiled mutton, salted cheeses, and fresh yogurt before us. All my mother had done since the announcement of Gurbesu’s pregnancy was pound butter and hold court over her stewpot. We could all plan on becoming very fat over the coming years if Gurbesu’s womb proved as fertile as it appeared.

  My father left his place by the fire to sit by me, laying his bow across his lap and the empty pot from our recent meal of horsemeat stew at his elbow. I stood practicing my aim with a spear, shifting my balance while attempting to skewer a nearby sheep skull through the eye with varying amounts of success. I should have smelled the snare being set when my mother didn’t scold me for putting several holes through her rugs, but I realized too late that the tent had fallen silent, everyone’s backs to us so the only sounds were those of the crackling fire.

  “I’ve had a message,” my father finally said, working the leftover stew grease into his bowstring. “From Ala-Qush of the Onggud.”

  “The Onggud?” I asked when no one else spoke, retrieving the spear I’d just thrown. “Were they threatening to kill you?”

  The Onggud had lent their support to my father at his khurlatai, but only because they realized that, as our neighbors to the southeast, my father would soon cast his gaze to their lands. In truth, they despised us, ruled as they were by Ala-Qush’s ancient lineage, and they often referred to us as wandering, bloodthirsty heathens. The city-dwelling Onggud, also known as the People of the Stone Walls, were our opposites in every way, living behind high walls in crowded cities that smelled of human waste, and growing their food so their bodies were eternally weak from the lack of meat and white foods. The journey to the Onggud territory took at least six weeks over the inhospitable Great Dry Sea, and many who undertook the trip never returned. Still, they were luckier than those who were forced to reside in such miserable conditions.

  “Nothing so dramatic as plotting my assassination.” My father smiled then, but he avoided my gaze. “The Onggud are pragmatic. They realize I’ve targeted their Tanghut neighbors for a winter conquest.”

  My mother gave a loud exhale then. “All because your father sent them a message after his khurlatai telling them so,” she added, her back still to us as she patched a hole in an old deel. There was no such thing as a private discussion in a ger, but I could have done with fewer ears listening to this conversation. “The Tanghut of the Great High White State have the iron, silk, and silver your father craves for his growing empire.”

  “Won’t the Tanghut hide behind their stone walls?” I asked.

  “The strength of a wall depends on the courage of those who defend it.” My father gave an evil grin. “The Tanghut will quake with fear before they even see my army.”

  All else I knew of the opulent Tanghut was that they mainly worshipped the seated Buddha, and, as the main manufacturer of all manner of manuscripts and texts, Shigi often extolled their academic virtues. They sounded like a people in need of conquering.

  “I’ve scarcely unified the Thirteen Nations; without a common enemy they might turn upon themselves again. The Onggud don’t wish to fight us,” my father continued. “Ala-Qush seeks an alliance so we will bypass his people on our way to the Tanghut.”

  “That’s convenient for Ala-Qush,” I said, throwing the spear again. It knocked against the arch of the sheep’s eye bone, but no thrill of victory ran up my spine as it had before. Instead I felt a shiver of foreboding.

  “The alliance is also convenient for us,” my father said, setting aside his bow and standing beside me. “I need the Onggud if I’m to conquer the Tanghut. If the two allied against us—”

  “It would mean another great war.” I retrieved the spear. “Congratulations on your alliance, then.”

  “Alliances are not
simply agreements,” my father said brusquely, adding his hands to mine along the shaft of the spear. “They must be sealed with more than words.”

  And I knew then what he would say, what he had offered Ala-Qush. The realization must have dawned on my face, for my father nodded. “Ala-Qush has agreed that you may take the place of precedence on the north side of his Great House, facing the door.”

  The place of the senior wife. My mother’s place in our tent.

  “But he’s already married.” I wanted to add, and he’s twice my age, but held my tongue for once.

  My father tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “I won’t force you into this marriage, tarvag takal,” he said.

  “But you need the alliance,” I said, seeing the map in my mind, even as I set down my spear. Shigi had often tried to teach me to read, but the foreign symbols cluttered my thoughts until I could hardly think straight. However, I’d grown up watching my father scratch battle plans into the ashes of our hearth, and now I could envision the entirety of his empire and those that lay beyond his reach. “And you need someone to supply your arrow messengers when you campaign against the Tanghut.”

  “It is an important mission,” my father said. “One I cannot trust to anyone else.”

  My chest felt empty, as if my heart and my very breath had been stolen from me. I had no wish to stay forever under my mother’s ger, but my marriage was no simple matter. When I wed, I would gain a new husband and family as any woman did, but also a new people to rule. If not Ala-Qush and the Onggud, then some other ruler and his petty kingdom. Yet this was what my father asked of me.

  I stared past him then, to the southeast where my fate waited, like a panther ready to spring. “I’d like some time to think about it,” I said.

  “I knew you would,” my father said. “But Ala-Qush must have an answer before the snows make the journey to Olon Süme impossible.”

  My mother finally stood then, setting aside the deel she been pretending to mend and placing her palms on my shoulders. “No one can take your place here, Alaqai, but you would make a good beki for Ala-Qush.” The Onggud had forever been a vassal state and now they would bow a knee to my father, but I might be their princess, their beki. My mother pressed her forehead to mine, her quivering voice dropping to a whisper. “You would make us so proud.”

  It was suddenly difficult to swallow as I looked around through bleary eyes, realizing that everyone was watching me. All the treasures in my life were in this ger, and I might soon leave them far behind, carrying only memories and the weighty expectations of my family on my back.

  * * *

  “We need your help,” my mother said one morning only a few days later. From my bedding, I peered through one eye to see her dressed in a stained deel, frayed along the sleeves, and her hair pulled back in a simple braid. The way the meager fire cast her in shadows, she might have been a girl again. “It snowed while you slept and the men have arrived with the geldings.”

  The Slaughter of the First Snows.

  Panic tightened my throat; already the time for my decision was trickling away. I covered my eyes with my arm, but my mother flung off the blankets. The new chill in the air would remain until the spring thaw, icing over our water buckets at night and finally freezing the meat we’d need to survive the long winter that yawned before us.

  “Get up, Alaqai.” Her tone was the same as when she’d ordered me to gather dung as a girl. But I wasn’t a child anymore.

  I didn’t answer.

  “If you want to eat this winter,” she said, “you’ll help us with the slaughter. Either you walk into the blood tent yourself or I can drag you there myself for everyone to see.”

  I rolled over to gauge if she was serious. She was, of course.

  “I don’t want to work in the blood tent. I’ll lasso the geldings instead.”

  But my mother shook her head. “I told your grandmother Hoelun and the other widows that you’d help them. They need a girl with a strong back.”

  “More like they need a girl who hasn’t gone deaf yet to listen to them complain about their aches and pains.”

  “You might one day be beki of a great nation, Alaqai. You must start acting like it.”

  “When I’m beki of a great nation, I’ll have someone else stuff the sausage for me.”

  She waved away my words. “You cannot climb a mountain without taking the first step.”

  I rolled my eyes at the oft-quoted proverb, used for everything from urging me to milk the goats to shearing uncooperative sheep. Still, the slaughter meant plenty of tidbits of meat to nibble on all day, a thought that made my stomach rumble in anticipation. With any luck, I might nab a fire-seared goat tongue.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll help, but only for a little while.”

  I was slow to dress, despite my mother’s urgings, so by the time we stepped outside, geldings screamed and goats brayed as they ran from the boys who chased them with knives.

  Men wielded axes over the carcasses of animals already dead, hacking off heads, hooves, and legs to the sound of cracking bones. Women and children scuttled about to spread skins over the snow to dry, the steam from the fresh hides rising into the chilled air while blood seeped into snowy footsteps.

  And the smell: everywhere the stench of meat and death.

  And life.

  I offered up the traditional prayer to the spirits for this great gift, without which we’d all die during the winter. And tonight we would feast on the oily meat, stuffing our stomachs until we could no longer move.

  I gripped my mother’s hand, suddenly remembering. “Neer-Gui?”

  “Your horse is safe,” she said. “Your father ordered Sorkhokhtani to pen him with his warhorse.”

  I sagged with relief, but it was short-lived.

  From the outside, the blood tent looked like any other ger, but inside the humid cloud of tainted air and scarlet-stained earth assaulted my senses. Fresh horse heads lay piled in the center, their dull eyes open and severed necks covered in clumps of black blood. A girl-child stood with a leather swatter, ready to crush any flies that threatened to land and lay their eggs. Wooden troughs were piled high with hindquarters and chunks of meat, and trays of red muscle and white ribs hung from the ceiling beams like ladders to the sky, adding the occasional drip of blood to the mess of death already underfoot.

  “Send the girl for Toregene if you get too tired,” my mother said, indicating that I should join a cluster of squinty old women squatting over bowls of entrails and wielding sharp knives. At my grandmother’s feet were ropes of yellow intestines, like piles of oversized snakes.

  I turned to tell my mother I’d changed my mind, but she’d already disappeared, perhaps anticipating my sudden weakness. I remembered her words in our ger, but this was no great obstacle I had to overcome, only a mountain of intestines and chopped meat. With a long-suffering sigh, I shuffled to the wooden seat.

  It was my job to rinse and stuff the intestines, to fill them with the tiny chunks of meat and brains that the old mothers’ deft fingers had already minced. Once I had shoved enough meat inside, the intestine was tied off with a bit of sinew and thrown over a tall pole. I was soon covered in blood and stained with offal while a veritable forest of sausages grew around us.

  I lost myself in the monotony of the work, my thighs burning from squatting while I concentrated on the movement of my fingers and listened to my grandmother complain about her latest bout of indigestion and the other crones commiserate about their stingy daughters-in-marriage, who didn’t offer them enough butter from the household churns. Several of the women filched raw meat, grinning at me while mashing the tidbits between pink gums.

  Finally the tent was too full to hold another horse head or string of sausages. My shoulders ached and my mind was numb by the time I stumbled out into the early dark of a winter night.

  Tor
egene and Sorkhokhtani met me then, as if they’d been lurking outside the blood tent waiting for me to appear. Toregene raised her brows and plugged her nose, coughing dramatically. “Alaqai Beki,” she said, “you smell terrible. And you look like you’ve been stuffing sausages all day.”

  “You don’t look so fresh yourself,” I said, nodding at the animal blood that stained her deel. “And I don’t smell any worse than you usually do with all your potions.” In truth, I enjoyed the earthy scent that clung to Toregene from the herbs she gathered and brewed into poultices: the yellow pasqueflower for upset stomachs, burnet roots to suppress bleeding, and globeflower for chest pains. I’d asked once where she’d learned so much about medicine, but my mother had sent Toregene out for freshwater before she could answer. As soon as the door shut behind her, my mother had reminded me that Toregene had lived a life before she’d come to us.

  I’d scowled at that. “But I only asked—”

  “I know what you asked,” my mother said. “But that doesn’t mean that Toregene wishes to answer questions about her past to an impertinent girl.”

  I waited until her back was turned before I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “And if you must know,” my mother had continued, her narrowed eyes making me wonder whether she’d seen my insolence, “Mother Khogaghchin taught Toregene some of what she knows. In fact, I believe I was Toregene’s first invalid.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, suspecting my mother referred to the murky part of her life after she first married my father. I only knew that she’d been kidnapped by the Merkid, that Jochi had been born shortly after, and that I’d get snapped at if I asked further questions.