The Tiger Queens (21 page)

I’d scowled at that. “But I only asked—”

“I know what you asked,” my mother said. “But that doesn’t mean that Toregene wishes to answer questions about her past to an impertinent girl.”

I waited until her back was turned before I stuck my tongue out at her.

“And if you must know,” my mother had continued, her narrowed eyes making me wonder whether she’d seen my insolence, “Mother Khogaghchin taught Toregene some of what she knows. In fact, I believe I was Toregene’s first invalid.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, suspecting my mother referred to the murky part of her life after she first married my father. I only knew that she’d been kidnapped by the Merkid, that Jochi had been born shortly after, and that I’d get snapped at if I asked further questions.

I swiped my thumb now across Toregene’s nose, leaving a smear of blood and who knew what else. She gave a mock howl and jumped back, making both Sorkhokhtani and me laugh as tiny snowflakes drifted around us and tangled in our hair.

“Your mother saved you a goat tongue,” Sorkhokhtani said. “It’s waiting in her tent.”

“Along with enough sausage to feed an army,” Toregene said.

“No sausage,” I groaned, straining to put one foot in front of the other. “I never want to see another intestine as long as I live.”

“What?” Toregene teased. “Did you discover today that you’re not made for crone’s work?”

I realized then the simple trap my mother and sisters had sprung on me. They’d known the Great Slaughter would show me the ordinary life that yawned before me here. Still, I wasn’t ready to make a decision yet. Instead, I threw my arms open, hugging both of them to me and sharing with them the slick of blood and offal on the front of my
deel
.

Amidst their shrieks, I laughed, realizing how hard it would be to leave my sisters behind, and also how difficult it would be to stay.

That night I went to my father and told him I would marry Ala-Qush.

My father grunted his approval while my mother beamed at me, although she seemed to blink from the cook smoke more often than usual. “You’re the fiercest marmot on the steppes, Alaqai Beki,” my grizzled father said, pressing his forehead to mine. “You’d make any father proud.”

Still, tears stung my eyes. I had only the winter left with this family before I forged a new one, and I knew the days would pass too soon.

*   *   *

That winter was the worst anyone remembered, a
tsagaan zud
, or white famine, with towering drifts of snow too deep for the Five Snouts to reach the frozen grass underneath and storms that buried our starving herds. We took the smallest sheep and goats into our
gers
, but each morning outside we’d find the carcasses of ice-crusted animals, their eyes frozen open in the frigid temperatures. The unlucky meat was destined to be burned, but my mother ordered Ogodei and Tolui to bury a few animals in the forest snows under marked trees. “Better to eat impure meat than to starve days before the spring thaws,” she said, ignoring their scowls to hand them metal shovels.

And it wasn’t only our animals that perished that season. On the darkest day of the year, Teb Tengeri made the ominous prediction that my uncle Khasar sought to topple my father from his place as Gur-Khan, a rumor that opened a deep rift between my father and uncle. Fearing there might be truth in his shaman’s words, my father had Khasar locked in a cangue, and it took my grandmother Hoelun to put the family to rights again. Roused from the warm
ger
she rarely left in her old age,
she pushed through the crowd and unlocked Khasar from the cangue before turning on my father.

But instead of railing at him or striking him, she crossed her ancient limbs beneath her in the snow. Seated like a child awaiting a story, she wordlessly undid the ivory toggles on her
deel
and tugged the robe open,
revealing leathery brown breasts that sagged to her midriff. Dark like distended bruises, the nipples touched her navel, and her ancient skin was riddled with white birth scars from the children she’d once carried. There was a collective gasp and people hurried to avert their eyes at this terrible indecency. My father moved, presumably to cover his mother, but she raised a gnarled hand and screeched at him.

“Do you recognize these breasts that nourished you and your brother?” she howled, holding the wrinkled flesh in both hands. “As an infant, you could drain one of these breasts, but Khasar could empty both. You and your brother came from the same womb, are built from the same bones, and drank from the same breasts.” She sneered at my father then, her voice reaching a fevered pitch. “What sort of leader are you to claim you’ve killed all your enemies, yet you can’t stand the sight of your brother?”

Her anger spent, she suddenly transformed from an angry she-wolf into a haggard old woman, and all eyes turned to my father.

His jaw clenched, and his voice pulsed with anger when he spoke. “We have heard our mother,” he said, his words clipped and formal. “And we’re ashamed of what we’ve done.”

With that, he turned and stalked toward the horses, leaving angry footsteps in the snow. My jaw dropped, for I’d never before heard my father admit to any wrongdoing. He was invincible to me, as indomitable as the blue-gray wolf from which we all sprang. My mother ignored him and stepped forward to support my grandmother.

The next day, meddlesome Teb Tengeri was gone, having fled under the cover of night and later found to be agitating nearby clans to support him in a bid for power against my father. It didn’t take long for him to be dragged back to camp and his neck broken in response to his treachery, his body discarded in a far-off snowdrift.

Shortly after, my grandmother Hoelun passed in her sleep, discovered frozen in her bed after she failed to emerge from her
ger
in several days. Our entire family mourned as my grandmother was carried to the icy cliff that would hold her bones for eternity. We fell silent for three nights to show respect for the mother who had given us life and protected us.

But the winter wasn’t only death. It brought life, too, and the promise of a future yet to come.

Babies are rarely born at convenient times, and Toregene’s child chose to begin the long process while we were all abed. The river had groaned and threatened to break only days ago, lightening our hearts to think that we’d soon be able to draw water without boring through an unforgiving plank of ice, but now a late blizzard raged outside. None of us would have
known of Toregene’s coming battle had it not been for Sorkhokhtani, for Ogodei snored next to his wife, sleeping off a bout of hard drinking from the night before.

Sorkhokhtani had gone to check on Toregene and now ran to my mother’s
ger
, her hair snarled with ice and eyelashes crusted with snow as she struggled to close the tent door behind her. “Her waters broke,” she said, but my mother was already up, shoving her feet into heavy leather boots. And then, bowing to my father—“With the help of the Earth Mother you’ll soon have a grandson, Khan of Khans.”

My nose dripped despite the smoldering fire and my cheeks felt too frozen to smile. I shoved my fox-fur hat—I’d had plenty of time this winter to sew the Kazakh’s prize fur into a winter hat complete with floppy earflaps—to cover my face, but someone shook my foot.

“Get out of bed, Alaqai Beki,” my mother said. “It’s not every day that you get to witness a mother and child battle for life.”

“I’m not married,” I mumbled. “It would offend the spirits for me to be in the birthing tent.”

“You and Sorkhokhtani will be married women soon enough,” my mother said. “I’d not send you to your own birthing tents without knowing what you face.”

For a moment I wondered if that was kindness or cruelty on her part.

“You struggled for days to birth Tolui,” I said. “Can’t Toregene wait until the sun rises?”

“Remember those words when you’re struggling alone on all fours, wishing for some woman—any woman—to rub your back or massage your feet.”

I cursed under my foul breath and rose, pulling the hat I’d slept in farther over my ears. “I’m coming,” I said. “But I’m not rubbing her feet.”

“Fine.” My mother’s face disappeared behind a brown wool scarf. “You can massage sheep fat between her legs to ease the babe out instead.”

I blanched and looked to my father for escape, but he only grimaced and wrapped a thick bearskin blanket around his shoulders. “I don’t understand you women,” he said. “I’d spend a lifetime in the Great Dry Sea before I’d push another human out of my arse.”

My mother ignored him and beckoned me with an impatient hand. I drew a resigned breath and followed. We formed a human chain against the blinding snow, but thankfully, Toregene’s tent was within stumbling distance. We passed Ogodei on his way out, his head bent against the storm.

“I’d rather stay out here all day than in there,” he yelled over the wind. “Care to join me, Alaqai?”

“Don’t you dare,” my mother said, pulling on my arm.

I cast a longing glance at Ogodei’s back as my mother pushed inside Toregene’s tent with a furious gust of wind and snow.

A wall of welcome heat hit me first, followed by the sour smell of something utterly primal. Toregene crouched naked near the fire, her only adornment the silver cross talisman at her throat. She panted and her body swayed as if she was listening to faraway music. She hadn’t noticed our entrance, her eyes closed as her hands pressed against her stomach, obscuring the dark line that cleft her belly at the navel. My mother shed her coat and scarf to kneel by her adopted daughter, murmuring in her ear and wiping hanks of sweaty hair from her face.

“It’s not yet time,” Toregene managed to say between gasps.

“It certainly looks like it’s time,” I muttered, resisting the urge to cover my nose and close my eyes.

“I think Toregene is the expert here and not you, Alaqai,” Sorkhokhtani whispered. “She’s done this before. More than once, actually.”

“What?”

“She had children with her Merkid husband,” Sorkhokhtani answered, shedding her extra layers of winter wool. “You might know these things if you took time from your games to listen to other people.”

I stood openmouthed by the door as Sorkhokhtani stirred the potent brew of boiling herbs Toregene had gathered this autumn in preparation for the birth: the heart-shaped seed pods of shepherd’s purse, dried purple cranesbill petals, and fragrant valerian root. I’d listened with half an ear while she told me about each on the last sunny day before the snows fell, the leaves and petals already brittle from the night frosts. Yet Sorkhokhtani was right; I’d been too consumed with thoughts of Ala-Qush’s proposal
and had never thought to ask how Toregene knew which herbs would stop her bleeding and which would dull the worst of the birth pains.

I knew that my father had brought Toregene to us after the final Merkid raid, but a black pit opened in my stomach to think of what had happened to her children.

“Boil water,” my mother finally ordered me, peeling off her hat. “And warm the sheep fat over the fire.”

I cringed at the idea of what the fat would be used for but did as she instructed, glad to keep my hands busy as my mother laid Toregene on the bed and checked between her legs. “Toregene’s right,” my mother announced. “It will be a little longer yet.”

We settled in, my mind still churning while Sorkhokhtani raided Toregene’s rafters for strips of dried goat meat. We passed around the salty meat and took turns holding Toregene’s hand with each fresh surge of pain. I’d expected a dour environment, having heard stories of my mother’s struggle to drop my brother, so I was surprised at the easy gossip and jokes that filled the time between Toregene’s pangs.

“It’s too bad we can’t arrange for one of us to always be in the birthing tent,” Sorkhokhtani said once, after we’d all laughed at one of Toregene’s jokes that compared men’s members to sheep tongues. I’d avoided looking at my mother then, hoping she’d never learned of my experience with certain male parts.

“So we could always stink of blood and one of us would always be in agony?” Toregene asked, taking little sips of melted snow from the bowl my mother offered her. “That sounds worse than any demon’s punishment.”

“It would teach the men to gather dung and cook their own stews,” Sorkhokhtani said.

“They’d never survive,” my mother proclaimed from behind me, prompting nods and girlish giggles. She hovered over me, then squeezed my shoulders and pressed her lips to my temple in an uncommon display of tenderness.

I’d always felt most comfortable around men with their brash camaraderie and simple talk, but I realized then that the struggles and burdens we women bore bound us closer together, forging us ever stronger.

Finally, the real work began. Toregene’s body seemed to rebel, and she lost control of her stomach and bowels.

“This is normal.” My mother arched an eyebrow at my look of disgust after Toregene finished retching, then thrust the putrid bowl at me. “They don’t call birth a battle for nothing,” she said. “We women must triumph even over our own bodies.”

I didn’t dare inhale, and stepped outside only long enough to fling the foul mess into the howling winds. Perhaps I wasn’t quite ready to join women in everything.

Toregene began pushing then, screaming and clutching her blankets as she begged her god of the cross to steal her spirit and end her misery. I stood terrified, watching the surges tighten across the bulk of her naked belly. Sorkhokhtani alternated between pressing warm towels and rubbing sheep fat into the patch of livid flesh between Toregene’s legs, thankfully relieving me from having to fulfill my mother’s threat. I almost plugged my ears when Toregene’s next scream rent the air, then caught a glimpse of that new pink flesh that began to emerge from the yawning thatch of black hair.

Transfixed, I scarcely heard my mother when she ordered me to take one of Toregene’s legs, and stumbled to follow the instructions when she yelled them a second time. Amidst our urgings to push, Toregene let fly a final animal scream. A pale, blood-streaked mass slipped into my mother’s waiting hands. She ran a practiced finger inside its mouth and was greeted with a forlorn wail.