The Tiger Queens Read online

  The air around me grew suddenly cold, and I shook my head at his audacity. “You’re worse than a fool, then,” I said. “You shouldn’t taunt the spirits with such jests.”

  “It’s no jest,” he said. “I promise I would fight for you, Borte Ujin.”

  I heard the spirits’ shocked whispers in the flutter of birch leaves and the shifting grasses at the filly’s feet. I wrapped my arms tighter around Temujin, needing his warmth to ward off the cold that had seeped into my bones.

  “Still,” I whispered, shivering, “I pray it never comes to that.”

  * * *

  Temujin sought me out often over the next few days to ask my opinion about the goats my father set him to herding or to bring me a gift of brown partridges strung by their wings, each shot through the eyes by his arrows. Once he gave me a purple globe thistle he’d found while riding the dun-colored filly, claiming it reminded him of me. I had nothing to say to that, only stuttered as he smiled and sauntered off, pausing to rub the muzzle of each horse he passed.

  It startled me to see the people of our camp warm toward this coarse youth from the Borijin clan, the flock of boys who trailed him and the indulgent smiles of old women as he waved to them each evening. Temujin possessed the talent of drawing people to him, a rarer ability even than my mother’s gift of sight.

  A few nights later, an unfamiliar boy spattered with so much mud that it might have poured from the heavens pounded into our village, his chest heaving like someone dying.

  But it was someone else’s soul that was about to be called to the sacred mountains.

  I was outside our ger straining curds of yak milk through a cloth when the boy reined in his horse, a lathered old thing ready to fall over and die. A heavy autumn rain had drenched our village the day before, and the animal’s every step squelched with mud. The horse bent its head, lips smacking as it drank from a puddle.

  The rider swung to the ground, head snapping back and forth so his thin braids slapped his shoulders like a drum. “Where is Temujin of the Borijin?”

  My father set aside his work repairing a strap on my mother’s saddle. “Temujin will one day be my son-in-marriage,” he said, standing. “What message do you have for him?”

  The boy had to tilt his head back to look my father in the eyes. “I’ve come to return Temujin to his father.”

  The words felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of creek water on me. I stood rooted where I was as a crowd gathered, their gazes on me.

  My father gave a minute shake of his head, as if to clear the visitor’s words from his mind. “May I ask why you seek to steal my future son?”

  The messenger wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “On his way home to his wife and younger sons, Yesugei stopped on the Yellow Steppe to join a Tatar feast.”

  Temujin shifted next to me—I hadn’t even noticed his approach until then. He laughed under his breath, but the sound held no joy. “My father never would have feasted with the Tatars,” he muttered, his young mouth twisting in a glimpse of what he might look like years from now, a stooped old man with a scowl etched into his skin. “He defeated them in battle too many times.”

  The messenger continued. “The Tatars bear no love for Yesugei’s clan. They recognized him and poisoned him. He is dying.”

  Temujin swayed on his feet. Without thinking, I reached out and squeezed his hand, cool and dry to the touch. No one should face death alone.

  “Where is Temujin?” the messenger repeated. “His father is asking for him.”

  My father’s eyes sought him out. “If my friend thinks so much of his son, I’ll let him go.” He glanced at our clasped hands. “When he’s seen his father again, have him come quickly back.”

  Temujin pressed his palms together and bent over them, his lips tight. He might not have been the image of a respectful son when his father was here, but then, Yesugei hadn’t been the image of a perfect father either. Still, the pull of blood remained.

  “I promise to return before the next full moon,” he said, the ancient stars flickering overhead. “To you and your daughter.”

  Temujin looked at me, the question plain in his eyes. The ancestors pushed on me from all sides, whispering conflicting words of duty and sacrifice in my ears. I swallowed hard, meeting his gaze. “I will wait for you,” I said. “I promise.”

  Someone pressed an offering of milk into my hands and I looked up to see Temujin holding a bone cup. Together we poured the white liquid into the earth, sealing our promise to each other.

  Temujin didn’t bid me good-bye—those sacred words would be spoken only right before death claimed one of us—but instead unclasped his wolf-tooth necklace and tied it around my neck. I touched its edge, feeling the sharpness of its promise as my betrothed mounted his horse. Temujin nodded and then kicked his heels, leaving the messenger scrambling behind him. Mud and tufts of soggy grass flew into the air as the horses took off.

  I watched him disappear over the horizon, while the rest of the clan floated back to the warmth of their gers until only my father remained.

  “He’ll return soon, Borte,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “He promised.”

  Temujin’s coming had shaken my world, as surely as a blizzard in summer or the mares dropping their foals on the darkest day of the year, but as his father’s eldest son, he might not return if Yesugei died. It would then be Temujin’s duty to provide for his mother and siblings, to hunt and herd as he’d promised to do for my father.

  If Yesugei died, I might never see Temujin again.

  Yet I felt my soul already bound to his. Whether he returned or not, I had only one choice.

  I would wait.

  Chapter 2

  1178 CE

  YEAR OF THE YELLOW DOG

  Temujin didn’t return.

  At seventeen, I was nearly past the age of marriage; all the other girls from my childhood balanced infants at their breasts and at least one more at their hips. I let die the hope that I might be able to overcome the curse I bore and lead a normal life.

  I thought myself very wise then, as the young often do, yet I knew very little.

  For seven long years I had watched the empty horizon while the birth and death of the seasons forced me to grow into my breasts and hips. I spent the summer days scrying stories from sheep bones with my mother and the winter nights unfolding the messages of my dreams. The swirl of gossip claimed I was a dishonored woman, cast aside by the lowest of the Thirteen Hordes. Worse still, the truth of my curse had spread in all four directions across the steppes, whispered from clan to clan after Temujin left. I shed hot tears and cursed him for spilling my secret to the world, for I could no longer even draw water from the river without the old women of our clan averting their eyes or the young men spitting at my feet.

  Still, although my name was stained, it was now Temujin’s that was blackened beyond repair.

  As the seasons passed, travelers brought us ever-wilder tales, claiming that Temujin had returned to his mother after his father’s death, but their clan had abandoned them on the banks of the Onan River. He and his family were reduced to wearing the skins of dogs and voles, to eating roots and even the repulsive fish that ran in the rivers. It wasn’t until he took the anda blood vows with another young man that he gained an alliance with a second clan, likely saving both him and his family from certain starvation.

  Then the stories took a sinister turn. A wizened traveler with a mustache like two silver snakes claimed Temujin had murdered his half brother, a boy who had shared his father’s blood, although their souls had unfurled in different wombs. My mind couldn’t reconcile the smiling boy in scuffed boots taking aim at his brother’s back with a bow and arrow, and the image haunted my dreams. How could I marry a man who had murdered his own brother?

  Temujin went on to battle other clans until finally he was captured by the Tayichigud. The
y strapped a heavy wooden cangue over his neck and shoulders, a terrible form of torture meant to degrade the soul as he was forced to beg from his enemies, unable even to feed himself due to the awkward bulk of the contraption.

  I’d be a liar to claim I shed tears for him, for some small part of me believed that Temujin’s dead brother and all the other spirits were having their revenge on this boy, whom I now realized I had scarcely known at all. I relished the thought that somewhere under the stars he suffered while I bore the dark stares and muttered curses of my clan. But somehow Temujin managed to escape, and people now whispered that the upstart son of one-eyed Yesugei sought an alliance with Ong Khan, the most powerful leader on the steppe.

  All of it mattered, yet at the same time, none of it mattered.

  The sheep bones scalded my fingers, but still I held them tight, scowling at their jagged lines, which spread like scars, before thrusting them back into the fire. The angry flames spit at me, the smoke and heat making my eyes water. A tiny grasshopper leapt onto a rock and then disappeared between the blades of green grass. I sucked my fingers, tasting the familiar tang of singed flesh and ash.

  It was the taste of a war yet to come, a shadow of dead men and burning steppes. And the bones foretold that I would cause this war as surely as if I myself had wielded the bow and flaming quarrels that started it.

  “Borte Ujin, you’re quiet as an owl in daylight.” Gurbesu hovered over my shoulder like a gaudy dragonfly, long turquoise stones jangling from her ears, as she tried to see the message of my fate. Gurbesu was as bright and bold as a summer day, the lone girl in our clan who paid no heed to the rumors about me, mostly because the gossip that swirled about her was just as plentiful. A herd of her father’s shaggy goats grazed nearby, doing their utmost to ignore us. “What do the bones say this time?”

  A blind crone could predict the futures of every girl in our camp—they’d all marry men from distant camps and churn out lapfuls of wide-cheeked children who would learn to crawl, ride, and then run across the steppes. The only variation was an early death, heralded by the abrupt end of a fissure on the bone, as the girl struggled on all fours to usher new life into the world.

  But the cracks in Gurbesu’s oracle bones told the story of a long life that wouldn’t end until most of her teeth had fallen out and her breasts sagged to her knees. Her sheep bones remained as white as polished ivory, but the marrow of mine always charred black, flaking away and staining my fingernails with the darkness of war and death.

  My mother said it was the strength of my water element that allowed me to withstand the heat of the sacred fire and read the divining bones with such terrible clarity. I often wished I favored the air or earth instead of the most powerful element, for water feeds the Earth Mother, making it stronger even than the mountains. Yet my mother promised that one day I would be grateful for the strength of the rain and river, lakes and streams.

  Gurbesu prodded me in the ribs. “What do they say?”

  “Nothing about a man like a stallion in my bed. Sorry to disappoint.” I mustered a smile and stoked the fire, watching it devour the evidence of my bleak future.

  “He doesn’t have to be a stallion.” Gurbesu giggled. “Maybe a snake, one with a quick tongue.”

  “Gurbesu!” My ears burned. “The bones said I’ll soon have a visitor,” I said, fingering the wolf-tooth necklace that was always at my throat. It wasn’t a full lie; in my dream the night before, a foreign bird with long white feathers had landed on our ger, pecking holes in the thick felt until I chased it away. I’d almost mentioned it to my mother to have her make sense of it, but I thought better of it.

  “We all have visitors, you silly yak,” Gurbesu said. “That’s the whole point of the Festival of Games.” She gestured with an open palm to the white gers that crowded our camp, the tents that covered the steppe like a snow-dotted lake. The men’s wrestling—Gurbesu’s favorite competition—would begin when the sun reached its crest in the Eternal Blue Sky.

  Gurbesu shielded her eyes as she studied the men clustering around the empty horse paddock and ran the tip of her pink tongue over her full lips. Sixteen winters old and with the perfectly round, flushed cheeks so often lauded in love songs, my friend was everything I wasn’t—short, plump, and more than willing to let the village boys push open her deel and fondle her ample breasts behind the tall pine tree outside our summer camp. Gurbesu’s father would be hard-pressed to keep his only daughter from stealing off with one—or likely more than one—of the wrestlers tonight. One day my friend’s father would negotiate her bride-price and I’d be alone.

  “Speaking of visiting,” Gurbesu said, “I noticed you with Degei this morning.”

  “He needed a poultice. That speckled ewe bit his finger.”

  “If I were his sheep, I’d bite him, too.” She looked at me through lashes as thick as a camel’s and we burst out laughing. There were rumors that Degei occasionally used his animals as a man would a woman, an offense typically overlooked in young men, but often prompting parents to find them wives before another season passed. Gurbesu flopped back in the grass, her hair gleaming in the summer sun like a river of ebony. “Degei follows you like a lamb.”

  “He’s about as smart as one, too.” I shook my head. “I don’t think Degei can be counted as a visitor.”

  “He might,” she said, grinning, “if he visited your bed.”

  “Gurbesu!” I threw a stick at her, but it only served to make her laugh harder. A shaggy goat lifted its head, sniffed in indignation, and trotted off to the sound of tinkling bells.

  Perhaps I should let Degei between my legs. Still, I liked to think I might do better than Degei, with his affinity for sheep and his breath like a rotten mushroom.

  I emptied a skin bucket of water on the fire. “We’d best go or we’ll miss the festival entirely.”

  Gurbesu brushed the dust from her felted skirt, the same vivid red as summer poppies. “Let me know if you’d like me to carry a message to Degei,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes and stooped to gather my leather pouch of divining bones as Gurbesu danced down the path toward the well-trodden horse pasture, where almost all the clans had gathered. She elbowed her way through the crowd surrounding the horse paddock and I followed in her wake. An old man from our clan with an unkempt beard drew a sharp breath and stepped back when I passed. I cursed my uncommon height then, wishing I could disappear as he leaned away to avoid contaminating himself by brushing against me. A whisper traded with the foreigners at his elbow soon cleared our path. Even in a crowd as large as this, I would always stand alone.

  I tilted my chin high and looked to the belly of the Eternal Blue Sky, heavy with the promise of rain yet to fall. Gurbesu had reached the paddock’s railing and now perched on the top rung, but I dragged her to the bottom after a man with fists like boulders threatened to throw her into a fresh heap of dung if she didn’t move. She didn’t notice; her gaze remained riveted on the crowd of wrestlers, dressed only in leather vests, breechcloths, and knee-high boots. The majority of the competitors were young, but a few had traces of gray in their beards and more hair on their backs than on their heads. Most wore their vests clasped with bone toggles, but some bare bellies reminded me of autumn hogs, hanging over the red and blue sashes tied around their waists. Of course, it was the men with chests that looked as if they’d been carved from stone that held Gurbesu’s attention.

  The wrestlers paired off, some evenly matched, but others squared against opponents twice their size and a head taller. They waved their arms in the traditional dance of soaring eagles, then grasped their opponents’ waists or shoulders. Gurbesu giggled next to me, but my eyes were on a slender young man not far from us. The red felt of his vest and black leather of his breechcloth were well made, and his cheekbones were exquisitely high but not too narrow.

  White boned then, one of the ancient and noble lineages. My family, lik
e most, was born of the common black-bone clans.

  He moved with the grace of a dragon as he finished the eagle dance. I watched as he and his opponent locked limbs, wincing as the larger man tried to trip him, and then losing sight of them as the other teams staggered about the field. It didn’t matter; the noble would be lucky to leave the field without a clutch of bruises to mar his fair skin.

  Gurbesu and I cheered as the number of wrestlers in the paddock began to dwindle, the losers melting into the crowd with their bloodied noses and faces smeared with dirt as the victors faced off against each other until only two remained. To my surprise, the white-boned noble from the first match stood victorious. He’d need the strength of the dragon he so resembled as he faced one of the crowd favorites, a battle-scarred warrior from a distant western clan.

  The two performed the eagle dance and clasped hands before using their shoulders to ram each other. They remained locked in what might have been an embrace between old friends for so long that the crowd grew restless, but neither man was able to force the other to his hands or knees to claim victory.

  “I hope that smelly ox doesn’t drop the young one on his head,” Gurbesu whispered. She and I had both seen plenty of matches end that way over the years, leaving men with bruised eyes and broken noses. I forced myself to unfurl my fists, but Gurbesu clutched my damp palm. “It would be a shame to waste such a pretty face.”

  Still the white-bone and the ox clung to each another. Finally the noble dared to lean back and lunge at his opponent’s stomach, locking his arms around the man’s thick waist and twirling him around. The surprise attack unbalanced the giant and he tottered, finally crashing to the ground with a puff of dust amidst a mixture of curses and cheers from the crowd.

  The winner offered a hand to the giant, who roared with laughter and stumbled to his feet.

  “Jamuka of the Jadarin is the winner!” An official in a blue vest bowed before the victor, offering him a wooden cup filled with fresh milk and a pointed blue velvet hat trimmed with sable. The white-bone accepted the headdress and took the cup, pouring the milk into the earth in an offering to his ancestors while the judge tossed traditional cheese curds to the spectators.