The Tiger Queens Page 23

  “Hello, Alaqai,” she said. She shrugged at the question in my eyes and picked at the wool pilling on her sleeve. Perhaps she’d been dragged here, too.

  “What’s this about?” I asked, hands on my hips. My frayed temper after a long day threatened to finally unravel.

  “I wanted to speak to both of you before you meet your husbands for the first time,” Toregene said, gingerly sliding Güyük from her back. She tied the sling with its sleeping child to the bed. Satisfied that it was secure, she sat on a bright red pillow, stretching her legs in front of her with a ragged sigh. I remained standing.

  “I’ve already met my husband,” Sorkhokhtani said. “Tolui and I have known each other for years now.”

  “I mean before you greet your men in bed,” Toregene said, as if speaking of the clouds in the sky, or the amount of horse dung she needed for her fire.

  “I don’t need that sort of advice,” I said, with a wave of my hand. After all, I was no blushing virgin who’d never taken a man between her legs. “And I have much to do—”

  “Alaqai Beki, do you know the way to rule a man?” Toregene asked. She nudged one mud-caked boot off, then the other. “Because it takes more than just pulling up your deel for him.”

  I’d had plenty of lovers and envisioned my marriage as something akin to taking on a new horse, not an act that warranted deep contemplation. Toregene seemed to read my mind. “Men are simple creatures,” she said. “Not unlike a goat or a yak. But you wouldn’t ride a goat, and you wouldn’t take a yak across the Great Dry Sea. Just the same, each man is different. Take your brother Ogodei, for example.”

  I really didn’t care to hear about my brother’s prowess—or lack thereof—as a lover, but Toregene didn’t even give me a chance to cover my ears.

  “Ogodei isn’t interested in the finer points of tumbling,” she said, sighing so I wondered if perhaps her Merkid husband had been a more generous lover than my brother. Again, I pushed the thought from my mind. Toregene had something in her palms—sheep fat from the smell of it—that she proceeded to massage into my hands. Normally I’d have groaned with pleasure, but this discussion made me feel like I was sitting inside a tiger’s mouth. One wrong move—

  “Any woman who can brew airag and stew a goat will capture your brother’s heart,” she said, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “Fortunately, I happen to be skilled at both, whereas his first wife can scarcely manage to salt horsemeat.”

  I wanted to say that there was nothing wrong with almost poisoning your entire family each time you attempted to feed them—after all, I’d done it several times myself—but decided against it.

  “You and Sorkhokhtani must discover what your men want,” Toregene continued, “thus assuring your place as their main wives.”

  “But we’ll already be first wives,” I said. “My father guaranteed that.”

  “But a second wife can easily supplant the first.” Toregene’s gaze dropped out of modesty, but a devious smile curled the corners of her lips as she released my hands to pour us bowls of airag. “I did.”

  “Yet none of my father’s wives ever supplanted my mother,” I said.

  “Your mother and father share a rare bond,” Toregene admitted, sipping her airag from an ivory bowl carved with depictions of the Five Snouts. I’d have bet my tiger sword that it was her famous brew, although I couldn’t fathom how she’d managed to hide a jug from Ogodei. “Your parents’ love would stand regardless of how many wives your father took or how many women he has on his raids.”

  I’d never thought of my father claiming women after his battles, and I didn’t care to begin now.

  “I won’t meet Ala-Qush until almost the day we marry,” I said, feeling irritated. “I can’t anticipate what he’ll want from me.”

  “You’ll have to work fast, then,” Toregene said. “Because he’ll want you in his bed that same night.” She turned her attention to Sorkhokhtani. “Now, as for Tolui . . .”

  “Tolui likes to drink and to rut,” Sorkhokhtani said, shifting from one hip to the other. “Preferably at the same time.”

  My jaw fell open, but Toregene laughed. “Well done, Sorkhokhtani.”

  Our future Princess of the Hearth shrugged. “Don’t look at me like that, Alaqai. It’s not as if you haven’t tumbled in the grasses yourself.”

  I turned the conversation back on her. “No wonder my brother clings to your shadow.”

  Her delicate fingers fluttered in her lap. “I’ve taught him a thing or two, mostly because sinking his spear into me is the only thing that keeps him from crying into his bowls of airag.”

  I frowned then, thinking of all the times this winter that Tolui had become so sloppy with airag and Onggud wine that my mother had ordered him out into the frigid cold to sober him.

  “There’s no greater feeling than your blood boiling with lust. Don’t you miss that?” I asked them both.

  Sorkhokhtani shrugged. “I haven’t had any man except for Tolui. Our coupling is nothing to make my blood boil”—she raised an eyebrow at me—“but I can tolerate it.”

  Toregene only stared into the bowl of airag cupped in her hands. “We’re not all so fortunate to feel passion with our husbands; sometimes we find love instead where we least expect it.” Her sharp glance killed the question on my lips. “You may be lucky and come to love Ala-Qush, but if not, don’t think for a moment that I’m sanctioning you tumbling another man once you’re married. You don’t want your children to end up like Jochi.”

  My unfortunate brother with his murky blood. Toregene’s message was clear: I might find love with another man, but I was never to act on it.

  Sorkhokhtani shot me a mischievous grin. “Although I’m sure you can make Ala-Qush’s blood boil if you can ride him all night long.”

  I laughed at that. I knew not which spirit goaded Sorkhokhtani on, but I would miss this new girl when I left for Olon Süme.

  “And you’ll have to deal with Ala-Qush’s other wife, the one he’s been forced to set aside for you,” Toregene said to me. “That will be no small task.”

  Her unsaid words hung heavy in the air. That woman would view an untried girl as an easy target. I’d have six weeks in the Great Dry Sea to ignore the inevitable, but now seemed as good a time as any to start heeding other people’s advice.

  I heaved a great sigh and finally sat down, folding my legs under me. “I suppose I can sleep in my saddle.”

  Toregene’s smile lit her already lined face and she raised her bowl to me. “There’s a good girl. Perhaps we should start with a discussion of which herbs can harden the softest of male flesh?”

  * * *

  I found myself wishing that night would never end as I joined in the laughter in Toregene’s tent, drinking enough airag to set my head throbbing, and sneaking back to my mother’s ger with Sorkhokhtani only when the chickadees heralded the coming dawn. In my absence, my mother had rolled and bound my waiting felts, and they stood like dutiful sentinels outside her door. Folded in a pile between them was a new deel and trousers dyed with the juice of red goji berries. Tears stung my eyes at the precious gift and the realization that daylight meant the end of this life and the beginning of a new one. It meant leaving my sisters and brothers.

  And my mother.

  One of Tolui’s snores exploded from inside the tent, like the snort of two great rams poised to smash their heads together. Sorkhokhtani groaned and I clapped my hands over my mouth to stifle my sleep-deprived laughter.

  “Between all the sex and the snoring, I’m never going to sleep once we’re married,” Sorkhokhtani muttered.

  “Dose him with airag and stuff your ears with wool.” I gasped for breath, then pulled her into a heartfelt hug. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “And we’ll miss you,” Sorkhokhtani said, her hands fluttering awkwardly against my back. “You’d best go and rea
dy yourself now if you want any peace and quiet,” she said, her gaze straying to the spreading light on the horizon.

  “I’ll be back before the sky surrounds the sun,” I promised, giving her another quick hug and grabbing the scarlet bundle my mother had left for me.

  The early song of a dun-colored jay accompanied me to the river, its surface shimmering like wet trout scales. I flung off my clothes and dove in as I’d done as a child, when I’d swum naked with Ogodei and Tolui. The river was bitingly cold and I gasped as my nipples puckered and gooseflesh rolled down my skin. To keep from defiling the river, I shivered my way back to the bank and scrubbed myself dry with my old caftan. The new deel and trousers were soft against my skin, evidence of the extra beatings my mother had given them, and I took care plaiting my braid down my back. I would bid my mother farewell with a clean body, if not a clean soul.

  It seemed the entire sprawling camp had woken while I bathed, and it took me longer to retrace my steps as I bid farewell to childhood friends and women I recognized from drawing water at the river. They patted my cheeks and bid me a long life filled with easy winters and many children. When I finally neared my mother’s tent, my entire family stood ready to see me off. My brothers were closest in line, quaffing from a skin of wine. They bowed their heads to me—the only time I’d ever see them do so—and Ogodei offered me the wine.

  I arched my eyebrow and took a sip, feeling it scorch the back of my throat and spread its warmth into my belly. “Feeling generous this morning?”

  He tweaked my nose as he had when I was little, offering me his most jovial grin. “Don’t say I never gave you anything, sister.”

  Dwarfed beside Ogodei, Tolui sniffed. His eyes glistened so I knew he was already drunk before I hit the wall of alcohol on his breath. Tears and drunkenness were common partners for my youngest brother, although it seemed early even for him to be red-faced with drink. I wanted to shake him by the front of his deel, to tell him to start acting like a man, but his lower lip quivered.

  “I’ll miss you, sister,” he managed to choke out.

  I pulled him to me then, not wanting his last memory of me to be a rebuke. I was sure my mother would fill his ears with reprimands later. “I’ll miss you, too,” I said, shooting Ogodei a meaningful look over my brother’s shoulder. “Listen to Sorkhokhtani,” I said as Ogodei sighed and led him off, hopefully to drop him in a horse trough. “You’re lucky to have her.”

  I worried about my youngest brother, for although he wasn’t mean-spirited, he lacked Ogodei’s good humor and ability to hold his liquor. I had to trust that Sorkhokhtani would protect him, as it was no longer my job to do so.

  Next in line was Gurbesu, her daughter, Al-Altun, crying fitfully in a sling on her back. “Go with your head high to your first husband,” Gurbesu said, then leaned closer to whisper in my ear. “And if you don’t find happiness with him, remember that he may not be your only husband.”

  I shot her a look of feigned shock, but Gurbesu’s words didn’t last long in my mind, coming as they did from a woman who’d walked between the purification fires with not one or two, but three men. I didn’t plan to be widowed once, much less twice. And if I did lose my husband, I wouldn’t need to remarry, since I’d have already borne many strong sons. Then I’d have earned my title as Beki of the Onggud, and my independence.

  Standing next to Gurbesu were my brothers’ women, Toregene and Sorkhokhtani at the forefront, both wearing dark smudges under their eyes from our sleepless night. Sorkhokhtani pressed a buree, a small flute carved from a ram’s horn, into my hands.

  “So you never lack music,” she said. “Think of me when you play and you’ll never be alone.”

  I wondered then how often she’d felt lonely when she’d first come to us, if she sometimes felt that way still. It was one more thing I’d never thought to ask.

  “I don’t know how to play,” I said, forcing the words over the growing lump in my throat.

  “True, but what else are you going to do for six weeks in the desert?” She kept a straight face, but her eyes sparked with mischief. “And it’s a child’s flute, the easiest to learn.”

  I chuckled and squeezed her hand. I’d never thought to try my hand at music, but now I would, if only to be reminded of long winter nights in my mother’s tent, warm by the fire with Sorkhokhtani’s music filling the air.

  Toregene was next, with Güyük sleeping peacefully on her back. I hadn’t expected gifts, but she looped a thin strip of leather around my neck, a worn silver amulet tucked in the middle. Her cross.

  “I can’t take this,” I said, covering her hands. “It’s your god’s emblem.”

  She smiled, a serene expression compared to the raucous laughter I’d witnessed in her tent. “Christ has kept me safe all these years, and now I hope he may protect you. The Khan has ordered Shigi to join him on campaign, so he’ll watch over you as well.” Her mismatched eyes shone at that, and I squeezed her hand. Toregene and Shigi had always been close, more concerned with their books and scrolls on herbs and religion than with riding and wrestling. “I’ll pray for you both,” she continued, “for Ogodei has promised me a tent for worship when we set up our own camp this summer.”

  “You’re leaving?” Somehow I’d expected that everything would remain the same after I left, my family’s lives frozen like winter ice since I’d no longer be here to witness them.

  She pressed her forehead to mine, her hands clasped loosely around my wrists. “Everything changes, sister of my heart, whether we wish it or not.”

  I filled my eyes with the last images of my sisters and brothers, knowing that time would distort their faces and smiles in my mind. Then they parted before me, clearing a path to my waiting parents.

  My mother stood beside my father, dressed in a crisp new green deel with my father’s wolf-tooth necklace at her throat, her black-and-gray hair perfectly coiled under her tall green boqta. In her hands she held a second headdress I’d never seen before, two curving horns of black leather on a cap of crimson felt, twisted with gold and dangling waterfalls of white and red beads.

  A beki’s headdress.

  I sank to my knees before her, feeling the weight of everyone watching as she placed the headdress atop my hair, heavier than any helmet.

  “Don’t you dare cry,” she whispered, raising me. “Or I might start, too.”

  My mother’s eyes were bright with unshed tears as she laid her hands on my shoulders. I offered her my right cheek, then my left, and she breathed two deep inhales, one near each of my cheeks, filling her memory with the scent of me.

  Suddenly my knees felt as wobbly as a newborn colt’s. This might be the last time I saw my mother.

  She tilted my chin and gave a minute shake of her head. “We will meet again, Alaqai. Two queens—one grown stooped and the other like a child—shall part once more with tears in their eyes.”

  With her words came the smell of divining smoke and burned bone. Since Teb Tengeri’s death, my mother had become our people’s official seer, wary of the messages of the bones but unwilling to allow another fortune seeker to take advantage of so powerful a position. I brushed away the thought of future tears. All that mattered was her promise that we’d see each other again.

  “I love you, Mother,” I said.

  She smiled, crinkling the scar on her lip and revealing a rotten tooth in the back of her mouth. She cupped my face in her rough hands. “And I love you, Alaqai Beki. Don’t look back, and never forget that you are the daughter of Genghis Khan.”

  “And the daughter of Borte Khatun,” my father said, his long mustache twitching as he smiled at my mother. “That counts for far more than being the daughter of a leathery-faced, bowlegged conqueror.”

  “Go, Alaqai Beki,” my mother said. “Go, and make us proud.”

  My father took my hand and led me away from the ger. I resisted the urge to look ba
ck at my mother and clenched my teeth to keep my chin from wobbling. Neer-Gui stood at the head of a contingent of sixteen hundred of my father’s men. A brilliant blue cloth had been tied around the pommel of my saddle, a gift from my mother and a prayer to the Eternal Blue Sky to keep me safe. I could make out a familiar face amongst the crowd of men; Shigi sat tall in his wooden saddle decorated with silver medallions, but he stared beyond me with a solemn expression, as if he, too, was leaving something precious behind. I didn’t have time to ponder that, for the Four Dogs of War bowed their heads to me, a sign of respect I’d never received from the generals, even as the favored daughter of Genghis Khan. After my father saw me safely delivered to Ala-Qush and instated as the Onggud’s new beki, he would march with these men against the Tanghut in what promised to be a quick campaign.

  I stood as tall as I could, keeping my back to my mother as tradition demanded. We were as different as a mother and daughter could be, but I felt the love radiating from her like warm sunshine on a new spring day. She would not cry and I would not look back, at least not until we were too far from each other for anyone to see.

  Instead, my mother would use a tsatsal, an ancient wooden paddle, to fling drops of mare’s milk into the air, pouring a path of white that would guide me even under the darkest sky. She would do this every day until I returned to her.

  And one day I would perform the same ritual for my daughter.

  I mounted Neer-Gui, keeping my eyes on the rump of my father’s massive black warhorse. Tonight I could pour my tears into the Earth Mother, but for now they stayed buried inside me.

  I would soon learn tears weren’t the only things I would need to keep buried.

  * * *