The Tiger Queens (26 page)

And then there was Jingue. He’d remained silent this entire time, standing almost a head taller than all the rest. I wondered if he’d curse his decision to save me one day, if perhaps he already wished he’d let me die.

Teb Tengeri had once called me a foot soldier of death, yet tonight I’d narrowly escaped losing my soul to the sacred mountains. Instead, I’d punished my greatest rival and succeeded in placing all the potential heirs to my throne under my control.

Now I just had to keep them there.

“Y
ou did what?” Ala-Qush roared louder than a winter wind the following morning.

My husband had returned early from his supposed dealings with the border patrols, smiling and laughing with his men as he approached the Great House until his gaze fell on me leaning against its wooden wall and playing my
buree
. Enough shock flickered over his features that I wondered if he’d expected to return home to find my body already cold. His timing was both convenient and suspicious, giving me the strength I needed to withstand the onslaught of his fury as he dragged me into the Great House.

“Orbei had to be punished,” I said after I’d recounted the events of the evening, shaking him off and lowering my voice so he had to stop blustering to hear me. I sat with my hands folded around the flute, wondering how much the walls of the Great House muffled the conversation for all those listening at the door. The two stray dogs sat at my feet, their unblinking eyes trained on Ala-Qush. “I am your wife and
beki
. It is my honor and duty to raise your children.”

“You’ll do no such thing.” He slammed his fist onto the wooden table and I forced myself not to flinch. One of the dogs growled deep in his throat.

“I’ll do whatever I please.”

“I’ll not have this strife in my household—”

“And I’ll not fear poison at every meal!” My temper finally erupted. It was difficult to think straight after spending a sleepless night for fear of waking to find a knife at my throat. I’d lain with my tiger sword at my side and made the children remain in my
ger
so I might keep an eye on them, only to discover after I ordered Enebish to a makeshift pallet that Jingue had disappeared. I doubted whether I could have won a fight with Ala-Qush’s eldest, especially as I owed him my life.

Anger rolled in thick waves from Ala-Qush, yet I pressed on. “I’m sure you knew nothing about Orbei’s plot,” I said. “Despite my death being a convenient solution to all your problems.”

I waited for him to deny the accusation, to protest that he’d known nothing of Orbei’s intentions, but he only leaned on the table, the tension in the room making it difficult to breathe. “I won’t allow you to harm my children,” he said.

“I’m nothing if not benevolent,” I said, pausing. “Provided that there are no repetitions of last night. You’d be hard-pressed to explain my death to my father, especially after the account Shigi transcribed last night. Rest assured that word of recent events will make it to my father’s camp if anything happens to me.”

“Fine,” he barked, then turned and slammed the door behind him. I waited until his footsteps had ceased pounding the earth, then slumped into a chair with my heart thudding in my ears. The dogs laid their heads in my lap and I stroked their ears with shaking hands.

Only sixteen, and I was already
beki
.
And now I was a mother as well.

*   *   *

It was precisely because I owed Jingue my very breath that I sought him out that afternoon. I didn’t care to be beholden to anyone, least of all the young man who stood to gain the most from my downfall.

I searched for him first outside the Great House and then traipsed down Olon Süme’s narrow streets. Glaring mothers and wide-eyed children cowered when they saw the bow and the quiver of arrows slung on my back, and merchants turned up their noses at my plain
deel
and sturdy boots.
Craving air that wasn’t tainted with the stench of unwashed humans, I rescued Neer-Gui from Ala-Qush’s stable of long-legged horses and stalls of dirty hay. My poor gelding was unaccustomed to being penned, but I had no desire to let him roam free and find him on the doorway of my
ger
as I had the dead marmot. Together, we left the city walls and passed through the herds of straw-colored camels and into the hills. I snagged a handful of the season’s last striped gooseberries from an obliging bush and let Neer-Gui graze below; then we left the established path to stalk hares with the first patches of winter fur on their clumsy back feet. I nocked my arrows with practiced ease and let them fly. I wished I could aim my bow straight at Ala-Qush’s miserable heart, but unfortunately, starting a war with the Onggud didn’t seem like a good way to please my father.

Toregene would tell me that her god had spared me from death for some greater purpose, and I chose to believe that purpose was tied to my role as
beki
, although I hadn’t worked out exactly how. It seemed I was beholden not only to Jingue for my life, but also to Toregene’s long-suffering god.

Neer-Gui and I returned from the hills with two rabbits strung on my saddle and a smattering of itchy pink welts on my neck that made me wish I’d thought to rub squirrel grease on my skin to repel the insects. My heart almost broke when I had to leave my horse in the stable, his eyes pools of sadness as he nuzzled my shoulder.

“I know,” I said, stroking his mane. I’d taken it out of the leather thong Ogodei had teased me about and felt a pang of homesickness as I thought of my laughing older brother. “I wish we’d never come here, too.”

Kicking pebbles from my path on the way to my
ger
, I passed buildings sacred to Olon Süme’s people: squat Nestorian churches with rough wooden crosses nailed to their doors, a Saracen house of worship with men facing west on silken prayer rugs, and several dilapidated buildings where yellow- or red-robed children recited the wisdom of ancient sages in words I couldn’t understand. Nothing here was familiar, certainly not the magnificent rooster that cackled as I passed its perch, and I found I hated the town more and more with each passing day. Even to my untrained eyes, the buildings looked worn and shabby, like old crones buffeted too long by life
and the winter winds. The door to one cross-marked building yawned open and I peered inside, drawn by the melodious language spoken by the teacher.

It was Jingue.

He stood before the pupils—all boys—while reading a passage from an open book. He asked a question and the class answered in perfect unison, like a flock of geese flying south for the winter answering the call of their leader.

This was a world I would never belong to.

Jingue glanced up and his eyes met mine; then he raised his hand. I caught sight of Boyahoe as the children stopped their recitation, but Ala-Qush’s youngest ducked his head as if hoping to become suddenly transparent. I stood rooted to the ground, my fingers still sticky from the gooseberries, my skin mottled with mosquito bites, and two dead hares dripping blood onto the ground from my belt. Compared to Jingue, with his freshly shaved face and spotless white robes, I was nothing more than a heathen from the steppes.

Jingue watched me for a moment too long, then said something in Turkic I wished I understood. The students all scrambled to their feet, but Jingue guided Boyahoe back to his bench and placed a blank paper and brush before him. The others smirked and continued to the door, until Jingue’s harsh tone stopped them before they crossed the threshold.

Judging from the obsequiousness of their bows as they passed, he’d probably reminded them that their barbarian
beki
had a volatile temper and a quiver of arrows on her back.

“I’m glad to see that you’re recovered from last night’s . . . excitement,” he said in Mongolian when the last boy had vaulted down the steps. I couldn’t decide if Jingue’s look of concern was true or false, but considering who his parents were, I guessed false.

“I’m still breathing, if that’s what you mean.” I didn’t mention that the tip of my tongue remained numb from the
gu
poison, and instead I stood awkwardly, wishing I had something with which to busy my hands. Now I knew why my mother was always stitching, churning, or stirring a meal on the hearth—to give herself time to think in moments like this.

“Why did you do it?” I finally asked, fiddling with the roll of brushes on his table.

“Do what?” Now it was his turn to avoid my gaze.

I set down the brush and leaned back. “Stop me from taking the
poison. It would have been the perfect way to send my body back to my father.”

I waited for him to ignore the accusation as Ala-Qush had, but he only sighed. “I thought of that,” he said, picking up a brush and twirling it between his ink-stained fingers. “But the Commandments forbid killing. And I doubt Christ would have taken kindly to the murder of one of his followers.”

I flushed at that. “I respect the god of the cross,” I said. “Yet I don’t worship him.”

“But you wear his emblem.” Jingue’s expression was lodged between bewilderment and anger. He likely would have let me die if he’d realized I worshipped the Eternal Blue Sky and the Earth Mother above all the other spirits.

“It was a gift from someone close to me,” I said, covering Toregene’s cross with my hand. “I’m learning to appreciate your god’s powers, and I won’t soon forget that I owe my breath to you both.”

“I would hope not,” he said. “Because of you, Enebish won’t speak to me and my mother makes a sign to ward off demons when she sees me.”

“They won’t remain angry for long,” I said. “Blood will always win out.”

Unfortunately, no one here shared my blood. And too many others sought to spill it.

“It seems I owe you, then,” I said, expecting him to demur. Yet Jingue rarely acted as I expected.

“It would appear that way,” he said.

I scowled and pretended to peruse his open scroll. Shigi had taught me several of the strange symbols and I could now write my name in the new Mongolian script my father had ordered Shigi to create and also in Turkic, but the majority of these jagged characters still swam before my eyes. Jingue guided Boyahoe’s hand to complete a line like a lightning bolt, although the character was already marred by countless inkblots. I took
comfort in the fact that my letters were better than my seven-year-old stepson’s. Not by much, but still.

Jingue tucked his arms inside his sleeves. “So am I to call you Mother as well?” His tone was mostly amused, but I detected a dose of annoyance, too.

“What year were you born?”

“The Year of the Iron Dog,” he answered. “In the fall.”

“So I’m your elder,” I said. “Though only by a season.”

“Then I’ll call you Alaqai.”

No one except Shigi had spoken my name in anything other than hatred since my father had left. I didn’t know if I liked the sound of my name on Jingue’s lips, but I admired his boldness.

“My mother—I mean, Orbei”—Boyahoe bit his lip at the error, considering I was now his official mother—“said never to call you Beki.”

“What are you supposed to call me instead?”

“Heathen,” he said, blithely unaware of the insult or his brother’s sharp inhale. “Or Horse-Face.”

Orbei’s words in her son’s mouth stung, but they weren’t lethal, coming as they did from a viper without teeth.

“I’ve a feeling your mother has many more choice names for me,” I said, wishing I could call Orbei a name or two. That cross-eyed camel should be kissing my feet for sparing her life last night, not filling her son’s ears with insults against me.

Boyahoe offered me an innocent smile, then put the finishing flourish on his last character. Jingue relaxed and took the ink-stained brush from his brother, cuffed him affectionately on the chin, and herded him out the door.

“I didn’t expect you to be a teacher,” I said.

“Life is full of the unexpected,” Jingue said as he watched his brother go, echoing his mother’s sentiment when I’d first met her. “I certainly didn’t expect you to be as you are.”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?”

Jingue didn’t answer. “You don’t speak Turkic,” he said after Boyahoe had disappeared around a corner. “Do you at least read it?”

An insult then. He and his family had expected an educated
beki
and had received an illiterate heathen instead. Fortunately, by now I was accustomed to disappointing people.

“It’s a difficult language.” I didn’t tell him of my lessons with Shigi, tedious and painful as they were.

“You’ll never gain our respect if you don’t learn our language,” Jingue said, letting the door close. Sound and sunlight penetrated the paper-lined window, but I still felt trapped inside. “And without that respect you have no hope of ruling us.”

I wondered if he meant himself, his family, or the Onggud. Probably all three.

I crossed my arms and leaned against Boyahoe’s desk, although the dead rabbits at my hip made that a bit awkward at first. “Why would you of all people offer me advice?”

He shrugged. “Once you have our esteem you might be able to do some good here, perhaps persuade my father to build more religious houses or a School of Healing to train physicians to minister to the sick.”

I snorted at that. “I was once accused of being death’s foot soldier. I’m undoubtedly the least qualified person in this town to help the sick.”

Jingue dipped the used brush into a bowl of water, seemingly nonchalant about my protest, yet his shoulders tensed. Perhaps this was what he sought from me, although I was an unlikely candidate to build anything with walls. And Toregene was the healer, not me. Still, the idea was intriguing.

“I take it your father isn’t well-disposed toward these projects?”

“My father believes that we are beset by enemies along all our borders. He cares only for his alliances and how much wealth he can accumulate to purchase them.”

That explained why I was here, along with the carts of silks and weapons that had accompanied me. Jingue’s black ink swirled like smoke in the bowl of water before it dissolved. “But you’ll never get anywhere if you can’t talk to the Onggud,” he said. “Or understand what they say about you.”

I untied the rabbits from my belt, dropped them on the table with a dull thud, and sat down. “Then teach me.”

My father always claimed that one should know an enemy better than a friend, and Jingue still fell firmly in the camp of the former. Shigi could verify later that Jingue hadn’t taught me to call his mother a snot-dragging yak instead of asking where to find the butter churn, but this was an opportunity I couldn’t allow to slip away.