The Tiger Queens Read online

I hurried to where Shigi stood by the door, ignoring Toregene’s panicked calls at my back, but Al-Altun had long since disappeared.

  “Seize Al-Altun,” I ordered Shigi. “Haul her back here before she can rejoin her army.”

  Shigi looked past me to where Toregene yelled for both of us now, but I grabbed his arm. “There’s no time to waste.”

  He must have seen the truth in my face, for he gave a tight nod. “It shall be done.”

  I returned to find Ogodei on his hands and knees, his round face pale and glistening with sweat.

  “Everything’s spinning,” he gasped, reaching out an unsteady hand for Toregene. “As if I were the center spoke of a wheel.”

  Toregene whirled on me, her face a deathly shade of white. “Tell me this isn’t your doing.”

  I shook my head, my mind racing. “It’s Al-Altun; I’m sure of it. If only you’d let me kill her after Genghis’ death.”

  Ogodei’s eyes widened and the muscles in his jaw twitched. “My Rose of Nishapur tried to poison my sister?”

  “Long ago,” I answered. “Toregene stopped me.”

  “Pity,” he croaked. “I might have made you a queen if you’d succeeded.”

  Toregene looked at me helplessly. “Without knowing which poison she used . . .”

  “It may be snake milk,” I said. I thought of the viper that had killed the mare on our journey, the tales I’d heard since then of Uighur shamans milking their venom. “Probably hidden in the wine.”

  I remembered the greedy way Al-Altun had watched Ogodei slurp down her wine. I wouldn’t have put it past her to poison her own cup, knowing that her glutton of a brother would drink it as well.

  “You’ll finally be rid of me, wife,” Ogodei managed to get out. His words were becoming slower, and more blood oozed from his lips, but he seemed to uncover some hidden well of strength. “You can grow old with Shigi, as you’ve always wished.”

  “Hush,” Toregene said, but he took her small hand in his large one, despite the violent tremors that shook his entire body.

  Ogodei coughed, the bloody sputum further staining his ravaged deel. “There’s something else . . .”

  Toregene clutched Ogodei’s hand, but he handed me something with his other hand.

  The golden dagger from his belt.

  It was me, and not Toregene, whom the Khan addressed. “My half-blood bitch of a sister must die for this.”

  I exchanged a glance with Toregene. “She will,” I said. “I swear it.”

  Ogodei’s final moments were so painful that, despite his crimes and transgressions in this life, I wished for Allah to hurry and claim him. The Khan lay on his side, panting like a dog on a hot summer day while a never-ending stream of blood slipped down his chin to pool under his face. Finally his chest rose, then fell with a rattle of phlegm.

  It didn’t rise again.

  Toregene felt for a pulse, pressing two fingers into Ogodei’s thick neck, then sat back to stare at him in stunned silence. It seemed impossible that this ox of a man, so loud and brash, was suddenly dead.

  “Everything changes now,” she whispered. “For better or worse, nothing will be the same.”

  I didn’t have time to contemplate that, for Shigi and the guards soon returned. The soldiers recoiled at the sight of the dead Khan and the mess of his blood and vomit. “Al-Altun fled,” Shigi reported. He avoided looking at Ogodei and addressed Toregene instead. “But the Khan’s soldiers found her and dragged her back.”

  Toregene nodded slowly and rose, leaving her dead husband on the ground. I wondered if the funeral procession would make its way back to the Altai Mountains so Ogodei could join his father, or if his bones would be laid out in some farmer’s field here so the siege of Wien might continue. Either way, Al-Altun’s bones would soon join his.

  Toregene moved to follow the guard, but I stopped her. “Do you wish to greet her this way?”

  Toregene looked down, staring at her blood-streaked palms and deel for a long moment, as if she hadn’t realized she wore the remnants of her husband’s death. She shook her head. “Better that everyone see me this way.” She glanced at me, her mismatched eyes gleaming with molten copper and gold. “Both of us, actually.”

  I hadn’t realized that I, too, was spattered with Ogodei’s blood, vomit, and wine. So much changed in so little time.

  I averted my eyes when Shigi bent to whisper something in Toregene’s ear, his hand brushing the small of her back to guide her forward. The rumble of angry voices outside swelled as the door opened, growing louder as we stepped from the Great White Tent. Al-Altun stood surrounded and outnumbered by Ogodei’s guards, her own men held at bay by a ring of gleaming swords as Toregene stepped forward, palms open like a supplicant and adorned with the Khan’s blood.

  “Soldiers of the Golden Horde.” Toregene threw her voice so those closest quieted to hear. “I come to you wearing the lifeblood of your Khan, Ogodei, third son of Genghis Khan and ruler of the People of the Felt. Tonight our Khan of Khans has passed to the sacred mountains, slain by the venom of a vile serpent.”

  I detected a flicker of triumph over Al-Altun’s features, but it was short-lived when our guards grabbed her arms and dragged her toward us. There was an audible gasp, followed by more angry shouts.

  As I’d seen Borte do many times, Toregene raised her hands for silence, and the mob settled, although their faces still seethed with anger. “I shall not allow the criminal responsible for this to go free while my husband’s body grows cold.” She turned now to stare down Al-Altun, leveling her full fury at the woman Ogodei had hoped to destroy. Instead, Al-Altun had destroyed them both this night. “Al-Altun, Khatun of the Uighurs,” Toregene said. “I do hereby charge you with the heinous murder of the Khan of Khans.”

  A deep rumble erupted from the crowd. Genghis Khan’s legal code required the trial of members of the Golden Family for any wrongdoing and forbade their execution. According to the law, Toregene might lock Al-Altun within the wooden planks of a cangue, or perhaps banish her to the far reaches of Siberia. Al-Altun seemed to know this, yet she didn’t even flinch at the announcement, only smiled. “You have no evidence,” she said, almost shouting to be heard.

  “You poisoned the Khan of Khan’s airag this night with venom milked from a viper,” Toregene said. “Thus we pronounce you guilty of murder and treason. You shall be stripped of your land and titles, and you shall be dragged back to Karakorum, there to remain bound in a cangue until the end of your days.”

  Al-Altun opened her mouth to argue, but I stood behind her then, the point of Ogodei’s dagger against her back.

  “In order to save your son and avoid a war that will decimate your people,” I whispered in her ear, “you will tell your soldiers to march home without further bloodshed.”

  She stiffened in my arms. “And if I refuse?”

  “You’ll watch your son’s lifeblood soak the ground, and these men will siege your cities, slaughter your soldiers, and claim your women, just as you did to Nishapur.”

  She twisted so she could look me in the face, but her eyes were flat. “You’ve waited a long time for this moment, haven’t you, Rose of Nishapur? I doubt you’d find the courage to kill me.” She gave a strangled laugh. “And even if you did, at least I won’t be alone in the sacred mountains, as I’ve been every day in this life since your foul city murdered my husband.”

  “Did you love him very much?”

  She pursed her lips. “I did. He was all I had in this life after my mother died, slighted and ignored as I was by the Golden Family.”

  I felt Toregene’s eyes on us, heard from far off the murmurings in the crowd. A girl without a mother, her husband killed . . . I almost lowered my knife, but Al-Altun’s next words poured molten iron into my veins.

  “And I’ll die content,” she said, “knowing I avenged his death when I saw your
city slaughtered.”

  Perhaps my desire for revenge had simply lain dormant all these years, or perhaps I’d have been satisfied to hear that Al-Altun had died an old woman warm in her bed, yet I sensed the One God’s hand in all this. It was possible that Ogodei’s death was penalty for his earlier treatment of the Oirat, and Al-Altun’s punishment was divine retribution for Nishapur. Only Allah knew.

  “What is your answer, Al-Altun of the Uighurs?” I pressed the blade into her spine so hard she gasped.

  “My people,” she said, her voice as strong as any Khan’s. “I submit to this fair judgment in exchange for the Khatun’s promise of your safety and that of my son. Do not fear that I shall be harmed, for in his Jasagh the great Genghis Khan forbade such treatment of a member of his family.”

  Al-Altun was thoroughly mistaken if she was convinced that the words of her father would protect her now. I’d thought this woman was like me, but I was wrong. Had I a son with Mansoor, I’d have done anything to protect him, to live for him. Perhaps Al-Altun believed she’d done her best to save her child, but she’d condemned the boy to a life alone, the same as she’d lived.

  “Command them to leave,” I growled.

  “Go home and return to your fields,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Remember me, but do not mourn me, for I shall live a long life.”

  Her men cast yearning looks at her, and for a moment I thought they might rebel, but one by one they saluted their Khatun, then turned and walked away. I kept my blade pressed to Al-Altun’s back all the while, imagining her people mounting their horses and riding away, believing their ruler cowed but protected by the decree of a dead Khan.

  How wrong they were.

  Toregene stood as straight and rigid as the Solitary Tree while the Uighurs trickled away, her arms tucked into her wide sleeves. Now she turned and offered me an almost imperceptible nod.

  “The Khan of Khans commanded your death,” I said to Al-Altun, reaching one arm in front of her chest. “Such was his dying wish, and so it shall be.”

  In one fluid motion, I spun Al-Altun around and plunged the knife deep into her stomach. She gasped and her body lurched in my arms as I twisted the blade, jerking it up before pulling the knife out in a torrent of guts, her blood spraying like a fountain in the air.

  I waited for the surge of triumph I’d yearned for all these years, but instead I watched in horror as Al-Altun clutched her belly, crimson blood and lavender entrails spilling between her fingers. Blood seeped from her lips and she slowly slid to the ground. I’d once hungered to watch the light leave her eyes, but instead it was as if I was in the courtyard of the mosque once again, the slick feel of Mansoor’s blood on my hands, at the scene I’d relived so many times in my nightmares.

  “I, too, sought revenge for my beloved,” she whispered up at me, her bloodstained lips opening and closing as she struggled for breath. “I forgive you, Fatima of Nishapur, for what you’ve done this night. For I shall greet my husband soon, while you—” She gasped and her pupils widened as if finally seeing death. “You shall remain here, alone.”

  She grew still then, and I imagined her battered soul seeping from her body, leaving behind a heart long since shattered. Another of Omar Khayyám’s poems floated to my mind, long forgotten, but almost making me weep now with its truth.

  Khayyám, who stitched the tents of science,

  Has fallen in grief’s furnace and been suddenly burned;

  The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life,

  And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!

  I had sought Al-Altun’s death, but so, too, would I die one day. I might have plunged the bloodied knife into my own belly then, had Toregene not taken it from me.

  “Remove the body,” Toregene commanded one of the guards, gathering me into her arms as I began to tremble, silent tears running unchecked down my face as I muttered in Farsi the prayer for the dead over Al-Altun’s corpse. “It’s finished, Fatima,” she whispered, her frame shuddering with exhaustion. “It’s over, and we’ve survived unscathed.”

  But I wasn’t unscathed.

  I wanted to forget what had happened here tonight, as I’d often wished I could forget Nishapur. Yet I’d done this, not Allah or the heavens, and I knew this night would be added to my nightmares, to be endured again and again.

  Chapter 26

  Toregene recalled Ogodei’s forces from the banks of the Danube River, and together our somber funeral procession retraced the path back to Karakorum. The winter journey was treacherous, and anyone who sought to follow us would need only trace the trail of broken carts and horse carcasses that littered the frozen grasslands behind us. Toregene’s illness worsened, buffeted as she was by the winds and snow. Shigi and I demanded that she travel by oxcart, wearing her down with our pleas until she finally relented. I watched as he handed her up into the black cart, one hand lingering on her back while he tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. Toregene clasped his hand to her cheek, closing her eyes and leaning into him. It was a rare moment of intimacy and one that wouldn’t have been possible only a few days ago, so powerful that I had to turn away. I’d reconciled myself to spending the remainder of my days alone, save my sisterhood with Toregene. Still, it was painful to see what I’d lost.

  I felt a touch at my elbow and was startled to see Shigi standing there, his face tired and drawn but wearing a puzzled expression. “You’ve left off your veil today, Fatima of Nishapur.”

  My gloved fingers touched the exposed skin of my cheeks. With the murder of Al-Altun, I had severed the ties to my past and forced Allah to abandon me. It had seemed only fitting to leave behind the protective veil that I’d clung to all these years, setting me visibly apart from these murderous Mongols. And so I’d burned the delicate rectangle of silk in my hearth this morning, watching the flames devour the fabric. “So I have,” I said to Shigi. “I’m no longer the same woman who walked through the gates of her conquered city.”

  “Veil or no, you will always be the Rose of Nishapur,” he said. “The Golden Family was blessed by all the gods the day Toregene saved you.”

  While it was true that Toregene had claimed me, it was Shigi who had found me in the mosque and brought me to her. Our lives were inextricably bound together, their threads woven in a complicated pattern no mortal eye could discern.

  “Don’t let her leave that cart today,” he said, his gaze straying to Toregene. “She’s more deteriorated than she looks.”

  I glanced to where Toregene sat, directing orders to a slave struggling to carry a wooden crate. “We both love her,” I said to Shigi. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”

  Shigi smiled. “I know you won’t. And I’m grateful for it.”

  I watched him make his way to where the horses waited, then mount his brown stallion in one fluid motion, before I turned back to the cart. Toregene’s capitulation to travel in the wagon was a double boon for me, for it meant I would ride beside her and forgo the wretched ride on horseback that left me bowlegged and aching for days.

  “I once told you carts were for old women and invalids,” Toregene said, scowling as I stuffed fire-heated stones wrapped in wool blankets at her feet. Soon the drifts would grow so deep that we’d be forced back to our saddles, but I hoped that a few days in a cart would help her regain her strength. “It seems my words have returned to torment me.”

  “You are neither old nor an invalid,” I said, but neither was true.

  “I need your strength, Fatima,” she said, worrying the new golden bangle at her wrist. The bracelet was a gift from Shigi, embossed with two devil masks and a phoenix, so that between that and her silver cross, Toregene might always be protected from malevolent spirits. “There’s no one I can trust other than you and Shigi. Güyük must be proclaimed Khan in a khurlatai when we return to Karakorum.”

  I could scarcely fathom the idea of spoil
ed, craven Güyük ruling the Mongol Empire. I tucked the wool blanket around her legs. “Perhaps it would be premature to call a khurlatai yet.”

  Toregene bit her lip, the skin chapped and as pale as the rest of her. “You think we lack the support to nominate him?”

  If a khurlatai were called today, I doubted whether Güyük would receive more than a single vote, and that would be the one his mother cast for him. I loved Toregene, but she remained oblivious to her son’s cruel streak.

  “You ruled alongside Ogodei, did you not?” I asked, settling beside her, although she insisted on taking the reins. “Perhaps you should guide the empire now, at least until the issue of Al-Altun’s execution dies down. Sorkhokhtani holds the east, Batu the north, Chaghatai’s widow the west, and Alaqai the south.”

  “You sent an arrow messenger to Olon Süme?” Toregene interrupted, her teeth chattering. “Alaqai’s the only one I can trust to administer the Uighur lands as well as her own.”

  “I did,” I said, holding tight as the cart lurched forward. “And you could reign over all of them as Great Khatun, as Borte Khatun did while Genghis Khan was out conquering the world.”

  Toregene sighed. “You may be right, at least for now. After all, my eldest son is not without his faults—”

  The world might have been a better place if Toregene had drowned Güyük at birth, but I held my tongue.

  “But Güyük is still young enough to learn how to rule. If I assume the regency, we shall groom him to become Khan one day.”

  She paused, looking at me as if for my approval. Her eyes were wide and glassy with her illness, mismatched pools reflecting a lifetime of joys and sorrows. She’d grown so frail since we had started this journey, and she might grow weaker still before we reached the walls of Karakorum.

  “If Ogodei managed to stay sober long enough to oversee the conquests of Rus and Goryeo and build a new capital, I suppose there’s a chance for Güyük as well,” I said, praying Allah would turn a deaf ear to my lie and not smite me where I stood. “But it may be that your regency shall be necessary for months, if not years.”