The Tiger Queens Read online

  “Fatima?”

  I looked down to see Sorkhokhtani staring at me, a strange expression on her usually placid face. “I asked if you knew where Borte kept a ewer for the flowers.”

  “They’re beautiful,” I managed. “I’ll find something to put them in.”

  Sorkhokhtani padded past Alaqai, but I decided against a ewer and instead spread them like a wreath around the edges of the bed. I knew not whether the Khatun noticed them, but Alaqai’s eyes gleamed even as more tears spilled down her cheeks. I shivered to realize Borte had foretold this very moment and waited for it all these years.

  I removed the bag of narcissus bulbs from my pocket, then ground them to a pulp with a heavy stone and stirred extra willow bark into the mixture with a silver spoon engraved with tigers and dragons. I’d always envisioned the bulbs as a weapon with which to murder Al-Altun, but now they’d become an instrument of mercy. Alaqai reached out a trembling hand for the bowl. “Give it to me,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  The temptation to hand the poison to her was overwhelming, yet I shook my head. “No,” I said. “A daughter should never be the instrument of her mother’s death.”

  Sorkhokhtani looked at me with sad eyes. “You say that as if you know.”

  “I do,” I said. “And my soul has already been damned to Jahannam for it.”

  Sorkhokhtani gave a small smile. “We should not presume to know what any god—the Earth Mother, Christ, or Allah—intends for us. They may yet surprise you, Fatima of Nishapur.”

  Alaqai looked as if she might still demand the poison, but after a moment her hand fell to her side. “Thank you,” she whispered to me.

  I drew a deep breath, wondering if I imagined the smell of campfires and rushing rivers as I spooned the mixture onto Borte’s tongue. I worried that perhaps the Khatun lacked the strength to swallow, but her eyes met mine for a brief moment and then her throat worked.

  I gave her a second spoonful. And another.

  We took turns bending over the Khatun and breathing deeply, sharing the remaining fragments of Borte’s soul among us. Sorkhokhtani began to sing then, her voice as clear and strong as any imam’s, and the rest of us joined in, my voice mingling with Toregene’s deeper timbre and Alaqai’s husky tone. It was our voices that would send Borte’s soul to Jannah’s waiting rivers of wine and honey tonight.

  I wondered then whether it was flowers Borte saw—or perhaps the campfires of her many children or her daughters gathered around her—as I felt her soul slip from her body, hover for a moment above us, and finally fly free into the waiting sky.

  Chapter 24

  The leaves unfurled and changed, fell, and grew again while Genghis’ sons fought among themselves for their father’s position. The flesh fell from the Khan and Khatun’s bodies and the sun bleached their bones white, abandoned to the steppes they’d fought for. Before Alaqai returned to the Onggud, I’d helped her, Toregene, and Sorkhokhtani erect Borte’s ger in an empty valley within a day’s walk from Ogodei’s camp, a sort of shrine packed with the Khatun’s butter churns, cheesecloths, and even a finely wrought silver cradle that Tolui and her grandchildren had once slept in. Her spirit would linger there, and Genghis’ spirit banner now waved outside Ogodei’s Great White Tent. As Borte had foretold, the Great Khan’s empire fractured the moment he drew his last breath, a precious piece of jade splintering from within. Yet it took longer to discover the fracture within Ogodei, despite his place at the head of the Thirteen Hordes.

  The clans gathered for a khurlatai to confirm Ogodei as Khan, but not everyone agreed that Genghis’ third son should succeed his father. Hotheaded Chaghatai refused to partake of the proceedings and took his people and his vote with him back to his lands in the west. Finally, after ritually declining the nomination three times, Ogodei bowed his head and accepted the helm of the Khan. His first act was to seize the lands along the Tuul River, the verdant valleys gifted by Genghis to his wives Yesui and Yesugen. Because the women were only secondary wives and had no sons to stand for them, the rest of the Golden Family ignored the bloodless conquest.

  Ogodei took to passing out pearls and gold coins to his people and wearing a golden robe both day and night. It seemed a shame to waste such good silk dressing an ox, but if people grumbled, it was only to mutter that Genghis’ third son was becoming a soft man of easy pleasures.

  Not only soft, but sedentary.

  After seizing Yesui and Yesugen’s lands, Ogodei slaughtered half a herd of sheep and summoned the Golden Family to his newly erected Great White Tent for a feast. I accompanied Toregene, who wore Borte’s tall green boqta as befit her new station as the Great Khatun, and ignored the churning in my stomach as the Khan tore into greasy haunches of mutton, licking his fingers and belching so the air grew thick with sour fumes. Sorkhokhtani sat with her sons, silently picking at her food while Tolui’s place beside her remained empty. Everyone else shared bowls of golden wine between them, but I’d overheard Sorkhokhtani forbid her sons to so much as breathe too deeply near a bottle of wine or jug of airag. Given their father’s example, I couldn’t blame her.

  Pieces of gray meat fell from Ogodei’s mouth as he revealed the full reason for his celebration: a proclamation that he would build a permanent capital to replace his father’s wandering circles of tents.

  “Our new city shall be the envy of the world,” he boasted, after rambling on about his great ger and plans for the city’s earthen walls. “Artisans and architects will compete to live there, to show off the splendors commissioned by our empire.”

  I gave an audible scoff, earning a scathing glare from Güyük.

  “Let me guess,” Ogodei’s son snarled. “The imperious Persian slave doesn’t believe my father can accomplish such a feat?” Güyük rose, his skinny fingers curled into fists at his sides.

  “Be seated, Güyük,” Toregene said to her son. “Fatima hasn’t been my slave for some time.”

  I shrugged, arranging my silver slippers with their curled toes beneath the hem of my new crimson robe. “What do you Mongols know of beauty?” I asked from beneath my veil.

  “We’ve conquered the world over,” Güyük sputtered, ignoring his mother’s command to sit. “If anyone can build the world’s greatest capital—”

  “It is not you Mongols,” I finished for him. “Instead, you and your kind destroyed countless beautiful cities from Persia to Cathay.” Güyük was a petulant child trussed up in a man’s body; I sometimes wondered if perhaps Toregene had mistakenly lain with a demon to conceive him.

  “How dare you speak in such a manner?” Güyük demanded, but his father’s hand clapped down hard on his shoulder.

  “Let her continue, boy,” Ogodei growled. “You speak as if you think you were Khan. Yet you’re only a lamb who has yet to fight his first battle.”

  Güyük flushed, his face as red as a misshapen radish, but he obeyed his father. Ogodei leaned back on the long bench of his carved Horse Throne—the same one that his father had once sat upon, although Ogodei had ordered it gilded over with gold—and traced the rim of his wine cup with his thumb. “Tell us, Rose of Nishapur,” he said, “what you would recommend so that our city rivals the splendor of Baghdad and Samarkhand.”

  I stood, ignoring the nervous flutter in my belly. “First of all, no ruler of any civilized people sleeps in a tent, no matter how grand. You must build a palace.”

  “I’d as soon take up a plow and eat grass like cattle as I would sleep within walls,” Ogodei said. “A Mongol doesn’t live within stone.”

  “But your city will have a wall around it, will it not?” I countered.

  The Khan scratched his chin. “We have made many enemies over the years. My architects insist on having walls to guard the treasures within.”

  “And you must have a palace to showcase those riches. Else all those kings and foreign ambassadors will forever see you as a marauding
heathen.”

  Of course, the rest of the world would always view these bloodthirsty horsemen as savages who stunk of leather and dung, but I needn’t mention that to Ogodei.

  Even Toregene gasped at the audacity of my insult, and Güyük looked as though he might strangle me then and there. But Ogodei only nodded slowly. “We shall add a palace, then.” His gray eyes glinted mischievously. “Although I hope you don’t expect me to sleep there.”

  “Sleep where you will,” I said. “But you must receive your subjects in a throne room decorated with gold and jewels.”

  “I see why you keep this one close to you, wife.” Ogodei glanced at Toregene, then dropped a stack of drawings in my lap. “She hides a ready mind behind that veil. What else should I build, Rose of Nishapur?”

  I tapped my chin, pretending to ponder his question as I scanned the ink sketches of buildings. There were districts for homes and markets, and an impressive array of houses of worship. “Thus far, your city has storehouses and guard towers, four gates, two Saracen mosques, twelve temples, and too many Nestorian churches to count.”

  “My city shall be a tolerant place,” Ogodei said, pride evident in his eyes.

  “Yes, but it still has nothing to awe its visitors,” I said. “No statues or art to make jaws drop in wonder when they enter its gates.”

  “Like Nishapur’s famed turquoise domes,” he said.

  I felt a pang of remorse then, that I was here, prodding the Great Khan to build a capital to rival the city of my birth, while so many others had met their deaths at the end of Mongol spears and swords. No town could be as lovely as Nishapur, but perhaps I could help this new Khan build a fair city in which his conquered peoples could come together, to live in a place of beauty and art, of stars and poetry. Perhaps Ogodei might learn to take more interest in building cities instead of destroying them.

  “Like our domes,” I said. “And the Gate of the Silversmiths.”

  “Everyone out except for the Rose,” Ogodei roared, his mustache twitching over his smile. “Send for my architects!”

  I started at being singled out, but Toregene’s imperceptible nod encouraged me to stay. Güyük shot me a glare and leaned toward me. “You’ll pay for making me look the fool,” he snarled, his breath hot and damp on my ear. “I have plans for you, Fatima, and one day my mother and father won’t be able to protect you. Then what will you do?”

  Fortunately, I was saved from responding when Möngke and Kublai each grabbed Güyük by the arm and dragged him outside with talk of a horse race. Still, he twisted to glance back at me, his eyes afire with fury and some other emotion. Sorkhokhtani trailed behind them, as silent as ever.

  Once the door closed, Ogodei patted the seat next to him on the golden bench. He blew an exasperated puff of air through his thick lips when I hesitated. “You’ll lecture the Great Khan on his building follies, but you cringe at sitting next to me? Perhaps you’re not so brave as you seem.”

  I sat then, enveloped by the male smell of him and that of his priceless perfume—a rare scent that originated from tiny black spheres of deer musk. The pungent balls fell from the glands of a diminutive fanged Kashmir deer and were collected from the forest floor before camels carried them to wealthy buyers along the Silk Road. Ogodei smiled. “Now, listen well to these architects and artisans from Cathay and your Khwarazm lands, Fatima. You’ll help decide what other splendors my city needs.”

  I spent the remainder of the evening listening as architects proposed all manner of things to decorate Karakorum’s imaginary flagstone streets—giant tortoise statues to stand sentry at the main gate, a pond stocked with swans and koi fish, and palace pillars carved with dragons whose tails wrapped around the base of marble columns. I finally left the Khan’s tent under a moon that shone brighter than a thousand candles, with orders to return again in the morning. Still, an unwelcome thought stole away my euphoria.

  These Mongols were the scourge of the earth, brutal warlords and murderers, adulterers and thieves; yet Borte, Toregene, and Sorkhokhtani had shown me true kindness. Alaqai had sacrificed her happiness several times to rule her people, and Shigi was so refined he might have graced the court of the Shah. Even Ogodei strove to build cities of everlasting beauty and had recently ordered that all Mongols set aside a two-year-old wether—a castrated ram—each year to help feed the poorest among them.

  I wanted nothing more than to revel in what had once been a pure and simple hatred toward these uncouth infidels. But that was becoming more impossible with each passing day.

  * * *

  Ogodei’s building plans were temporarily forgotten when death revisited the Golden Family. Ogodei had turned his eyes to the east and taken Tolui with him to finish their father’s conquest against the Golden King of Cathay. Their first forays were successful, and Toregene received a messenger who claimed that dead Cathay soldiers littered the land like rotting trees. The men then stopped on the Yellow Steppe, and Ogodei fell ill. Shamans divined the meaning of horse entrails on the earthen floor of the Khan’s tent and proclaimed that Ogodei might be saved if someone from his family offered his life in his place. And thus Tolui committed the lone act of bravery in his life, claiming that without Ogodei, the Mongol people would be like orphans and the people of Cathay would rejoice. He offered to die so that Ogodei, his chosen older brother and the Great Khan, might live.

  “Let my elder brother Ogodei determine how to care for my sons and widow, until my orphan boys reach manhood,” Tolui said, raising a wine jug and swaying on his feet. He sat down hard, a lopsided smile on his face. “I’m drunk.”

  Perhaps it was the copious amount of wine Tolui had already guzzled that evening that infused him with rare courage for so selfless an act. The shamans sang their songs lauding his great sacrifice, and Tolui continued drinking, swilling enough wine to fell twenty soldiers while the bearded men conjured their devilry. The moon had scarcely moved from its notch in the sky when Tolui stumbled to his feet, burst from the tent in a drunken tirade, and breathed his last.

  Now Sorkhokhtani, too, had become a widow. It seemed we women had two choices in life: death in childbed or widowhood.

  Shortly after the funeral cortege arrived from Cathay, Toregene and I knelt in Sorkhokhtani’s tent, preparing Tolui’s body, when Ogodei came to comfort his brother’s widow. The Great Khan had recovered from his illness shortly after his brother’s demise and insisted on traveling home with the sledge bearing Tolui’s corpse. Mongols rarely cried for the dead, for they believed that the tears of the grieving became an ocean of trouble for the dead. Yet, while Sorkhokhtani’s eyes were dry, Ogodei’s were bloodshot to match the ruptured veins that flared across his nose and cheeks.

  “Tolui was the bravest of my brothers,” he muttered. “While Jochi and Chaghatai argued between themselves for my father’s favor, Tolui always stood steadfast by my side. He died for me and thus honored you, Sorkhokhtani, and your sons.”

  Sorkhokhtani accepted the Khan’s condolences in silence. I should have known something was amiss when Toregene excused herself, claiming she needed more sandalwood although a basket of the fragrant bark sat at Tolui’s feet.

  “You must be provided for, Sorkhokhtani,” Ogodei said. His collar was folded under and his sleeves pulled back, another superstition to confuse any malignant spirits that lingered near the dead. “I will not have it said that my father’s Princess of the Hearth has been neglected or mistreated.”

  “Your family has always cared for me,” Sorkhokhtani said, folding her hands demurely in her lap. Tolui’s body lay between them, his torso covered by a white silk shroud. His eyes were closed, his face pale and stiff. I’d had to fight down the panic that welled in my throat when we first began to purify him, to quash the remembrance of Mansoor and my father as they lay in the mosque courtyard. It had been years since that fateful day, yet I would never escape from its shadow.

  “I wo
uld ensure that we’re always in a position to see to your well-being,” Ogodei said. “That’s why I would urge you to marry Güyük after the forty-nine days of mourning for my brother are finished. It was your husband’s wish that I provide for you and your sons.”

  Sorkhokhtani’s face remained as aloof as ever, but a mixture of disgust, revulsion, and horror flashed in her eyes before she dropped her gaze to stare at her hands.

  “Tolui’s body is scarcely cold,” I said quickly, giving her time to gather her thoughts. “Perhaps you could discuss this some other time.” Sorkhokhtani may not have loved Tolui—it was difficult to imagine such a proud woman caring for such a weak excuse for a man—but marrying Güyük would be a fate worse than death.

  But Ogodei’s next words stopped my heart. “Güyük asked first to take you as his wife, Rose of Nishapur,” he said to me. “He claims he’s thirsted for you since the day his mother brought you to our camp.”

  “Toregene would never allow it.” Yet even as I said it, I wondered at the truth of the words. Toregene indulged her son in everything, and although I was no longer her slave, I couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t give Güyük my hand if he demanded it.

  “It matters not what the Khatun feels about the match,” Ogodei said. “It only matters that I will not allow the marriage.”

  I breathed a silent prayer to Allah, promising the One God my eternal obedience. “Instead, I must see the Princess of the Hearth provided for,” Ogodei said to Sorkhokhtani.

  “My sons will provide for me,” Sorkhokhtani said slowly, lifting her chin to reveal a woman once more in full control of herself. “I thank you for your thoughtfulness, but as the widow of the man who saved your life, all I ask is to grieve in peace and retire quietly with my sons.”

  Ogodei’s eyes narrowed and he studied her for a moment before giving a curt nod. “You were a good wife to Tolui, and he was the best of brothers to me,” he said. “For no one else would I entertain such a preposterous idea, but I will honor your request.”