The Tiger Queens Read online

  The crowd cheered and men rushed forward to clap the winner on the back, likely the ones who had placed bets on his victory. Others grumbled under their breath and stuffed their mouths with cheese, drifting off to watch the horse races or gamble over impromptu games of knucklebones thrown in the dirt. Gurbesu lingered, making camel eyes at several wrestlers still damp with sweat, their knees and hands smeared with dirt. “You go ahead,” she said. “I don’t want to miss the horse races.”

  “The races don’t start until the sun hits the top of the Black Mountain,” I said.

  “Then stay,” she said, an evil glint in her eye. “I’m sure I could find a visitor to entertain even you.”

  I rolled my eyes to the dark clouds overhead, feeling the first drops of rain on my cheeks. “I’ll find you before the races.”

  “Meet me at the river,” she hollered, fluttering her fingers as she pulled her deel tighter around her breasts. A wrestler in snug brown breeches stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of her. I ignored the stab of envy at my friend’s easy confidence as Gurbesu laughed and crooked a bold finger at him.

  Today our camp had swollen to the size of many villages, filled with the last happy conversations and laughter of reunited friends and family before the first frost killed the grasses and winter’s snows cut us off from one another.

  And yet I’d never felt so alone.

  * * *

  “It’s unfortunate that white-bone didn’t join the horse races yesterday.” Gurbesu lay on her stomach in the grass along the river, feet kicked up to reveal the skin of her legs while she braided daisies into a chain. I traced the imprint of hoofprints stamped into the earth, mostly dry after today’s brilliant sunshine. Gurbesu had met me here after the Festival of Games’ final horse races, her normally sleek hair mussed and her deel terribly rumpled.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “I’d have liked to see him on a horse—I’ll bet Jamuka of the Jadarin can ride more than just a filly.”

  I threw a twig at her, but she dodged it.

  “I wonder if he’ll join any of the other wrestling competitions,” Gurbesu mused. “I rather liked seeing him in his leather breechcloth.”

  “I’d have thought his breechcloth was too much for you.” I nudged her foot with mine, but she only grinned wider.

  “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t open your deel for him,” she said. “I’ll know you’re lying.”

  I rolled onto my stomach to hide my scarlet cheeks. It didn’t matter what I thought; I hadn’t seen Jamuka since the wrestling competition and likely wouldn’t before he finally left after the Festival of Games.

  Gurbesu and I lay in silence long enough that the murmur of the river and the warmth of the sun had almost lulled me to sleep, when a branch suddenly snapped behind us. Jamuka stood there, dressed in black breeches and a red felt caftan open at the neck.

  I scrambled to my feet, but Gurbesu only raised herself to an elbow, shifting to show all her curves to their full advantage. “Hello,” she said, her voice huskier than normal. She grinned when Jamuka only stared at her. “You’re Jamuka of the Jadarin clan, are you not?” she asked, as if questioning a simple herder and not one of the white-bones.

  Jamuka blinked and his jaw clenched. “I am.”

  “We watched you win the wrestling tournament,” Gurbesu said, a sensuous smile spreading across her plump lips. “A thousand congratulations on your well-deserved victory.”

  Jamuka ignored her and his gaze settled on me instead, reminding me of the way heavy snow settles on the branches of a birch tree in winter. I clasped my hands behind my back to avoid picking apart the wool of my sleeve. Even with my height—unnatural for a woman—Jamuka was almost a head taller than me, yet another thing I found disconcerting about this white-bone.

  “Are you Borte Ujin?” he asked.

  I glanced at Gurbesu, but she only raised her eyebrows. “I am,” I answered.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “Daughter of Dei the Wise and the famed seer Chotan.”

  My heart thudded in my chest. Why in the name of the Eternal Blue Sky had this man sought me out?

  Gurbesu stood and crossed her arms over her ample chest. “And I am Gurbesu, daughter of Inancha Bilge,” she muttered. But my friend pouted only a brief moment, recovering quickly from the slight. “I just realized,” she said, flashing me a wicked grin. “I forgot to milk the goats.”

  Liar. Gurbesu had so often forgotten to milk the goats that her father paid a girl half our age to care for their herd. My pampered friend could scarcely manage to tell the difference between a sheep and a goat.

  My glare was sharper than an arrow, but Gurbesu winked and scampered off, pausing only to call over her shoulder, “Don’t forget the archery competition in the morning.”

  Jamuka watched her go, and for once I wished Gurbesu’s hips didn’t sway like poppy blossoms in the wind. I thought he might follow her, but he turned back to me, studying my face for so long my cheeks began to burn. “I understand that you’re a seer as well?”

  It should have come as no surprise that he wanted his future read—few would speak to me if it weren’t for my skill with the bones now that my prophecy was known to all.

  Still, a spirit whispered to me not to read Jamuka’s future. To divine for this white-bone would only court danger.

  “I was trained by my mother.” I avoided his eyes and brushed off my brown deel, a sparrow next to a dragon.

  “Chotan is well respected, even amongst my clan.”

  Far off in the pasture, a goat bleated. I shrugged. “She might still see your future if you ask.”

  “I’d ask you instead.”

  I stepped around his shadow, wishing to avoid even that slight contact with him. “You might ask,” I said, “but I’d refuse.”

  He reached out as if to stop me, but his hand fell away at my sharp inhale. “Please,” he said. “Chotan is renowned over the steppe, but there are murmurs that her daughter is even more gifted.”

  I knew I should deny him, yet his words spoke to something within me, dry and withered but not yet dead.

  “I’ll need a fire.”

  I produced my knucklebones and a handful of flat sheep scapulae from my pocket, a few old and bleached white, others still soft and the color of mare’s milk. Jamuka’s eyes widened and I shrugged. “A good seer is never without her bones.”

  His lip twitched into a smile. “Then I’ll make the fire.”

  The wind shifted as he walked away, and I caught a trace of his soul’s scent—horse, pine, and strength. I stiffened at the intimacy and exhaled, unwilling to carry even the slightest fragment of him within me.

  I watched Jamuka from the corner of my eye as I gathered grass and dried goat dung while he struck his flints together to start the flame. He seemed a man who would be as comfortable at the elbow of a khan as wrestling with the men of his clan. Yet his interest in seeing his future seemed more than idle curiosity. I wondered what it was this man wished to hear.

  It didn’t matter what his ears and heart yearned for. I was merely the mouthpiece of the Earth Mother and the Eternal Blue Sky. I would speak the truth.

  I waited for the flames to beckon with their heat. Too little warmth and they would hold tight to their secrets; too much and they’d rush to spill their message, irrevocably singeing and ruining the bones, and perhaps even the bearer’s future days.

  “Choose your messenger.” I held out the bones like precious offerings. I expected Jamuka to choose the palest of them all, to match his white-boned lineage, but instead he chose a thick yellowish shoulder bone, one taken recently from an unblemished black ram with great curled horns.

  I washed the bone in the river first, then rubbed it with dirt and offered it to the Eternal Blue Sky, so it would carry the remaining three elements into the fire. Balancing the bones ove
r the flames with a greenwood stick, I watched them reveal their secrets, not the soft curves foretelling a life of ease that I expected, but two jagged black fissures intersecting each other. They unfurled like miniature storms to the edge, cleaving the bone almost in half as I yanked it from the heat. Tiny fractures no wider than the hairs of an infant ran toward the two great cracks.

  I glanced at Jamuka, but his expression was as smooth as river rock. For the first time I wondered if the Earth Mother might forgive the gift of a lie.

  “Perhaps you should choose another bone?” My voice wavered and Jamuka’s eyes flicked to mine. Too late, I dropped my gaze.

  “You’ll never hide the truth with eyes like those, Borte Ujin.” His voice was gentle. “I don’t shy from the future. Neither should you.”

  “Only fools rush headlong into that which they cannot see.” The bone whistled as it cooled in the summer air, a high squeal akin to the warning cry of a chickadee on her nest.

  “Tell me what you see.” A note of impatience crept into Jamuka’s tone, but there was something more in the way he clenched his jaw. I wondered if he already knew the words I must say.

  “Two thick lines stride across the bone without wavering,” I said, trying to soften the blow. “Men are drawn to you like sheep to their shepherd.”

  “I’m ambitious and men will follow me.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve been told this before.”

  “But you will betray one of those men.” I brushed the place where the lines intersected, feeling their sharp grooves with my thumb. A gentle knock cleft the bone in two, a perfect fracture along the lines. I’d seen marrow that black only on the divining bones of one other person. “And one of you shall destroy the other.”

  “Who?”

  His hands covered mine, strong and insistent. I thought to draw away, but instead I hesitated, letting his warmth linger. “I cannot say. The bones show only the skeleton of the future.”

  Not for the first time, I wondered if divining only half-truths was worse than facing the future blind.

  Jamuka’s mouth tightened and his expression hardened into a glare aimed at the horizon. “Always the same prediction,” he said, his voice rough as he withdrew his touch to rub his cheeks. I folded my fingers over the bones, drawing their heat into my flesh to replace his warmth. “Thank you for the confirmation, Borte Ujin. I trust that you’ll not speak of this to anyone?”

  Never before had I been asked to keep a vision secret, but I understood all too well the import of keeping quiet such a dark future. I nodded. “You have my word.”

  “Thank you.” He stood and walked toward the forest, picking up a long stick with which to beat the unfortunate bushes on the side of the path.

  I watched him go, then threw water on the dying fire, jumping back at its burst of white smoke hissing like an angry spirit. The ashes caught on the breeze and I contemplated the burning flakes for a moment before walking back toward camp, the leather pouch of fresh bones clattering in my pocket like old friends.

  Sometimes the spirits offer us a warning of the storm to come.

  It’s not their fault when we’re too blind to recognize it.

  Chapter 3

  T he Festival of Games was almost finished, and soon our village would empty of its visitors, leaving only memories and the trampled grasses to bear testimony to their existence. I’d caught glimpses of Jamuka in the days since I’d read his prophecy, and occasionally I felt someone’s eyes on my back, only to find him watching me. Yet we’d not spoken since we stood before the divining fire, and I realized that was how he wished it to remain.

  Jamuka had used me for what he needed and now scorned me like everyone else. Although I should have expected as much, I was disappointed to realize that he was no different from all the others.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Gurbesu said, flopping down onto the pile of wool I was beating into felt. My friend’s hair was braided with vibrant red threads, but the fibers of dull brown wool I’d been beating clung to my braids, like nettles of scratchy wool the color of freshly turned earth.

  I dropped the beating sticks to stretch my aching back, but Gurbesu snatched them and dangled them out of reach. The other women of our clan typically worked throughout the spring to make felt from the freshly sheared sheep, their songs and gossip binding them together as surely as the fleeces were pounded smooth. Yet I worked alone into the summer. Once the wool was flattened, my father would help me roll it so it could be pulled behind our horse and turned into felt panels.

  I gestured to the low sun and paused to sprinkle water onto the wool. “You must be ill to rise this early.”

  I expected Gurbesu to pull a sour face, but she only stood and sighed, chewing on her lip. “I haven’t slept all night,” she said, staring at my stick and then tossing it onto the grass. “Not since Father told me.”

  “Told you what?” I retrieved the stick, startling a speckled orange butterfly that had landed on a nearby boulder. It fluttered away, its beauty fleeting. “Did he finally manage to sell you to a slave caravan?”

  “Not quite.” She avoided my eyes. “I’m getting married.”

  I had to reach out a hand to steady myself. It had been only a matter of time before Gurbesu married some sturdy herder with an eager smile and an even more eager member between his legs, but a part of me still trembled to learn that I would soon be left alone.

  “I’m sorry, Borte. I didn’t think it would be so soon—”

  “Don’t be silly.” I hugged my friend, trying not to cling to her as if she were already gone. Our clan was surrounded by peoples anxious to fly the black banner of war, shed men’s blood, and steal their horses, but we flew the white banner of peace, preferring to marry our daughters amongst the constantly warring tribes and create bonds not easily broken by war. I should have realized that the Festival of Games would provide Gurbesu’s father with the perfect opportunity to forge an alliance with a new family.

  The Unigirad girls were shields meant to protect the clan. Yet if the bones were to be believed, one day I would become the sword that would spill the clans’ blood across the steppes.

  “I’m so happy for you,” I said. “This is what you’ve been waiting for.”

  She moved back, studying my false smile. “You’re a terrible liar, Borte Ujin.” Her face softened. “But I am happy.”

  My eyes stung when she told me that her bridegroom, Chuluun, was a member of the fearsome Naimans, who lived at least a week’s ride west of our nearest camp, farther than either Gurbesu or I had ever traveled. Her marriage would keep the peace between our clans, but I would likely never see her again.

  I gathered the courage to ask the question that had been tormenting me. “When will you leave?”

  Gurbesu bit her lip again, suddenly entranced with the leather thong that held the end of her thick braid. “In three days.”

  “Three days?” My screech sent a cloud of grasshoppers flying for safety. “But Chuluun still has to work off your bride-price—”

  Gurbesu shook her head. “Chuluun is a widower with a young daughter, so my father agreed to forgo the bride-price in return for my permanent position as senior wife.”

  “You’ll be a wife and a mother?” I asked, aghast. Gurbesu was less maternal than a weasel; I pitied the poor girl who would soon call her mother.

  She shrugged and flicked her braid over her shoulder, the glossy hair capturing the sun’s weak light. “My esteemed father traded me for five of Chuluun’s best horses.”

  We stared at each other, then burst out laughing. Such a trade was more than generous.

  Gurbesu touched my hand, suddenly serious. “Perhaps if you talked to your father, he could arrange your marriage into the Naiman clan.” She bumped her hip against mine and a grin tugged her lips. “Chuluun has a handsome brother—”

  I turned away,
making a halfhearted attempt to beat the wool again. “You know I can’t do that.”

  Instead, I would honor a promise I’d made long ago and try to avert the war foretold years before. I would not rain death and destruction upon my people, no matter what the bones said.

  Gurbesu pressed her forehead to mine. “Oh, Borte. Who is going to make you smile when I’m gone?”

  “Perhaps Degei,” I offered weakly, but Gurbesu didn’t laugh. “I’m happy for you,” I said. “Really, I am.”

  “If this is what you look like happy,” Gurbesu said, cocking her head to the side and folding her arms across her chest, “it’s no wonder you frighten away all the men.”

  I gave her a gruesome grin and she giggled, draping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me down into the cloud of wool. She twirled a downy tuft between her fingers. “I know you think your fate is set—”

  “Gurbesu—”

  “I’ll stuff this wool in your mouth if you don’t let me finish,” she threatened, shaking the brown clump over my face. “The bones only tell part of the future,” she said. “You have to live, Borte Ujin, something you’ve never been very good at. Search for happiness and I think you’ll be surprised by what you find.”

  The words were pretty, but they rang false. “I’ll try,” I said to placate her. “Still, I think you’ll have enough happiness with your warrior for both of us.”

  She giggled. “I certainly intend to. Chuluun is built like a stallion, at least where it matters most.”

  “Gurbesu!” My shock only made her laugh harder. “Please don’t say you two are already rutting.”

  “Just because you won’t let me say it doesn’t make it less true.”

  I couldn’t help myself; I drew her into a fierce hug where we lay, never wanting to let go. Gurbesu was bold, impetuous, and terrible trouble. Still, she would take a part of my heart with her when she married. If I wasn’t careful, soon there would be nothing left.