The Tiger Queens (39 page)

The camp felt strangely silent without the energy Alaqai and her family had brought, but I was thankful for the emptier paths with fewer eyes to discern my true motives tonight. I elbowed my way past several scowling generals in their whispering silks and creaking leather to where Al-Altun exclaimed loudly over Ogodei’s new Great White Tent, its size and the team of twenty snowy oxen that could pull it across the steppes. Unlike his father, who lived in a simple
ger
all his days, Ogodei reveled in ostentation. Hidden in the shadows, I doubled back to where Al-Altun’s slaves were
assembling their hearths and her modest traveling tent. The air was warm from the roaring fires with their massive cauldrons and the stench of boiling horsemeat, and a cook in a stained
deel
supervised the flurry of slaves. He whirled about when he saw me, his face turning redder than it already was in the heat.

“Get out,” he ordered, a single glance taking in my foreign robe and veil. “The only slaves allowed in my kitchen are the ones I’ve ordered here.”

“You’ll have to explain that to Ogodei and his senior wife,” I said. “They sent me to supervise this meal, and they outrank the Khatun of the Uighurs.”

The cook’s eyes narrowed to a squint at my lie, but he threw his hands in the air with a curse in Uighur. “Fine,” he said. “But stay out of my way or I’ll see to it that you accidentally run into one of my carving knives.”

I scowled over my veil despite my nerves, remembering the foul language and threats I’d often heard my head cook in Nishapur mutter under his breath. Perhaps the heat and smell of blood made cooks a permanently surly sort. Yet I didn’t have time to parry with this man.

“Fine,” I said. “Where are you preparing the Golden Family’s food?”

The cook jerked his head toward several smaller metal
kazans
set over a trench dug in the ground, merry fires blazing underneath with rice cooking inside. And on a low table nearby, piles of chopped carrots and yellow onions waited to be mixed into the tasteless Uighur dish of
palov
. No one would notice the addition of my narcissus bulbs.

“Ogodei is a cultured man whose cooks hail from the farthest reaches of Cathay,” I lied. “He won’t be impressed with this slop you plan to feed him.”

The cook’s nostrils flared. “I’ll have you know that the Uighur aqueducts bring pure water from ancient glaciers, proof that my people are more civilized than the bowlegged creature you serve. My family has been making
palov
for generations—”

“I don’t care if your family served
palov
to the Prophet,” I said, cringing at my blasphemy. “Where are your spices? Ogodei’s favorite spices must be added so that he and the Golden Family can choke down this swill.”

The cook’s glower would have stopped a fainter heart than my own, but he dug under his collar, then flung a key at me. “The chest is there.” He spat the words. “And you’ll account for every grain of salt and flake of pepper you use.”

The drums outside Ogodei’s tent began their steady beat as the cook stormed away. I hadn’t much time. I rifled through the man’s impressive store of spices, removing garlic cloves, lumpy gingerroots, and a packet of black pepper. The paper of the narcissus bulbs crackled beneath my fingers as I removed them from my pocket. One had rotted on the journey, but the remaining three were white and only slightly wrinkled underneath, no longer smooth from their long absence from the earth. I cut them as quickly as I could with my knife, palming them and letting the fire devour the evidence of their papers and tiny root clumps.

I made a great show of grating the priceless gingerroot, while next to me, the Uighur cook supervised the filling of golden bowls of varying sizes, all hammered with scenes of daily life in the various khanates. The largest must be for Ogodei, decorated with crude scenes of horses, mountains, and even several tents; another showed the familiar domes of my homeland. The smallest bowl depicted camels traveling through the Silk Road oases of the Uighur kingdom.

Al-Altun’s bowl.

But I had to be sure.

“Which is your khatun’s bowl?” I asked the cook. “I’ll not waste precious spices on her Mongol tongue, accustomed as it is to boiled horsemeat and bland rice.”

The cook growled at me like a dog about to attack but jerked his thumb at the camel bowl before turning his back on me with a curse.

Allah had heard my prayers. This was my chance.

I opened my hand, marveling for a moment at the chopped narcissus bulbs and the power I held in my palm. My heart pounded so loudly in my ears that the skies might have thundered and I’d have been oblivious to the storm.

I was so absorbed in what I was about to do that I didn’t notice the shadow that fell over the bowls before me.

“Here you are,” Toregene said. Her hand on my shoulder startled me so I almost cried out. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Without hesitating, I dropped the narcissus into the golden bowl of steaming rice, praying that she wouldn’t realize the crime I’d committed.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I thought I’d help prepare the meal.” My voice was smooth, but the blood rushed in my ears.

“But you can scarcely boil water.” Her brow knit as she studied the chopped bits of poison in Al-Altun’s bowl. “Is that garlic?” She took a bit out and sniffed it. “It doesn’t smell like garlic.”

I didn’t think when she lifted the poison to her lips, but grabbed her wrist and flicked the narcissus back into the
palov
. “Don’t,” I said. “Please . . .”

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing, Fatima?”

“Correcting a wrong from long ago,” I said. “Since Nishapur.”

Horror dawned in her eyes. I waited for her to shriek at me, but instead, there was a flash of gold like lightning as she shoved Al-Altun’s bowl to the ground. Immobile, I watched helplessly as meat, rice, and precious bits of narcissus were strewn across the earth.

Then came the unexpected bolt of pain at my temple, and I staggered back at the impact of Toregene’s open palm across my face.

“Idiot!” she screamed. I gaped at her and clutched my cheek as slaves scurried to clean the mess.

“What’s going on?” The cook was purple faced at the sight of the overturned bowl, growing more livid as he looked from Toregene to me.

“My fool of a slave knocked over Al-Altun’s bowl,” Toregene said, grabbing my arm so hard I scarcely resisted the urge to rake my nails across her face. My promise to Mansoor was gone, scattered across the trampled earth, and it was all her doing.

The cook lunged at me. His fist made contact with my other temple, causing a second explosion of pain and a ringing in my ears. “I’ll have your hide for this, Saracen!”

I steeled myself for the next blow, but Toregene yanked me away from the cook before it could land. “Throw some fresh rice in a pot,” she tossed
over her shoulder. “I’ll skin this slave myself.” She hauled me away from the cursing cook and his fires, dragging me out of camp until we’d reached the river. Perhaps she’d drown me now; she was within her rights to do so.

Instead, she whirled me around. “Christ’s wounds,” she cursed, her chest heaving. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Al-Altun deserves to die a thousand deaths for what she did in Nishapur.” My veil had come loose in the fight and I ripped it off, waiting for Toregene to hit me once more, to rail at me for my disloyalty or perhaps find a guard to order my execution, but she only grabbed me by my shoulders and gave me a shake.

“Only God can judge Al-Altun, or mete out her punishment.” She held my shoulders and drew a ragged sigh. “Just as only he can judge you.”

I recoiled at her words. My mother’s death had been a murder of mercy, but Al-Altun’s death would have been a crime borne of revenge. Yet she would walk free after tonight’s dinner, oblivious to how close she’d come to dying.

I’d failed completely.

The sob that escaped my throat took me by surprise, and it required every shred of my willpower not to lash out, not to scream with fury at my impotence. What sort of wife and daughter was I that I couldn’t even avenge my family?

“I know something of what you’re feeling, Fatima,” Toregene said. I shook my throbbing head and lurched away when she tried to touch my hand.

“You know nothing,” I yelled, and then I was overcome with uncontrollable sobs. I wanted to throw something, to inflict this searing pain on someone else, but instead I closed my eyes and clamped my lips tightly to smother the sounds of my misery. My eyes snapped open when Toregene drew me into her arms, and I stiffened at the embrace. It had been so long since anyone had embraced me, but then I let her hold me, silent tears streaming down my cheeks.

The river muffled the sounds of my hiccups, and when I stepped back it was to find Toregene staring past me at something only she could see. “I
do
know what you’re feeling,” she said slowly. “For I watched the first son
of my womb and my husband being cut down like terrified horses in the midst of a midnight raid. Another son, too, still a babe at my breast.”

“What?” My pounding head could scarcely make sense of her words, yet one look at her pale face and haunted eyes told me she spoke the truth. “When?”

She blinked as if she’d forgotten I was there. “It was years ago, during the Blood Wars and before I came to Borte’s tent. My second son was scarcely a season old, and Genghis brought me to Borte with sour milk still staining my
deel
. For years after that, I dreamed of killing the Khan.”

“The Khan?” I struggled to make sense of this new tragedy, hidden for so long. “You mean Genghis?”

She nodded. “He led the final raid against the Merkid. I imagined all the ways I might kill him, envisioned stabbing him in the stomach or slitting his throat while he slept more times than I could count.”

“Why didn’t you?” My hand had been stalled by distance all these years, but the flame of revenge in my withered heart had never died. I couldn’t imagine the temptation of sleeping in the same tent with my family’s murderer, or watching him laugh over a bowl of stew cooked by my own hands.

Toregene opened her palms in a gesture of submission. “Borte loved the Khan, and I love Borte. I couldn’t cause her to suffer my same pain.” She clasped my hands. “Al-Altun sought revenge on Nishapur because your city killed the husband of her heart. Her mother was long dead, and as the daughter of a lesser wife, she was never needed by her father and the rest of the family. Her husband was all she had. Isn’t it possible that you’d have done the same in her place?”

I saw the simplicity of her logic but also its inherent flaw.

“My family—my people—didn’t deserve to die,” I said. “And neither did yours.”

“But they
did
die, and one day they will greet us when we’ve glimpsed our last of this world. You shall see them again, Fatima. I promise it.”

I looked into her eyes then, one glowing gold and the other like burnished copper. “That’s why you saved me, isn’t it?” I asked, wiping my eyes. “In Nishapur?”

She gave a sad smile. “I’ve often wondered if perhaps it would have been kinder to let you die instead. But yes, Fatima, I saved you because I saw echoes of myself in you.” She stepped closer, touching my collar and withdrawing the chain that held the silver tiger medallion that marked me as her slave. “And now I’d like to do something I’ve been considering for a long time.” She lifted the necklace over my head, placed it in my palm, and folded my fingers over it. “I give you your freedom, Fatima. You are no longer my slave, but I would be honored if you choose to stay by my side.”

Freedom. I could leave here, return to Persia, and make a life for myself.

But there was nothing left for me in Persia, no family or home.

I stared at the medallion with its image of a snarling tiger, more tears stinging my eyes. I’d reconciled myself to the fact that I would endure the remainder of this life alone, no parents, husband, or children to fill my days. Even my hope for revenge had been destroyed, but before me now stood a woman, an unexpected sister who had rescued me more than once.

The jagged outline of the Altai Mountains was black against the twilit sky, a dragon’s back as wild and fierce as these lands I’d always hoped to leave. Toregene had given me my freedom tonight, and perhaps more, yet I wondered if one day I might regret my decision to remain at her side.

“I’ll stay,” I whispered, the words catching in my throat. “For now, at least.”

I was bound to this woman by the bonds of life and death, ties closer perhaps than those that bound sisters of the same womb.

Against my will, Toregene had become my family.

I
avoided Al-Altun until she left our camp, spending my time in Toregene’s tent either working on my record of the Khan’s death or bent over a prayer rug, begging Allah to heal my battered heart. Perhaps the One God heard my prayers, but he ignored the other broken heart in our camp.

Each month after the Khan’s funeral found Borte more deteriorated. She still rarely left her tent, and while I’d assumed the night at the lake had been an isolated spell brought on by some terrible dream or a wayward djinn, instead the Khatun’s fits of forgetfulness increased and her thoughts became so tangled that her mind was more often lost than present among us.

The light in Borte’s eyes finally grew dim, and she ceased recognizing Toregene and Sorkhokhtani. On her worst days, the Khatun sobbed over terrible memories she couldn’t share, fighting with the strength of a tiger as I tried to calm her, screaming the name “Chilger” as she bucked against me. I sent the fastest arrow messenger available to summon Alaqai again and prayed that the only daughter of Borte’s womb would be able to cross the fabled Great Dry Sea in time. Finally, the Great Khatun fell silent, calling out in her dreams to those who had long since turned to spirits.

Gurbesu.

Jamuka.

Temujin.

“I’ll care for her,” I told Toregene one day. Sorkhokhtani was brushing the cascade of Borte’s hair while the Khatun sat motionless in her bed. Both Toregene and Sorkhokhtani had much to attend to, assisting their drunken husbands as they attempted to hold together their father’s empire and garner enough support to call a new
khurlatai
to proclaim the next Khan, while still arguing amongst themselves over who that would be. For now, tradition dictated that Tolui, as Prince of the Hearth, hold the position of regent, despite the fact that Genghis had intimated his preference for Ogodei. No one wished to see Genghis’ eldest son, Chaghatai, wear the Khan’s headdress.

“The Khatun gathered us all to her,” Toregene said, her gaze faraway. “Like lost cranes, we were tumbled about by an autumn storm and so broken she feared we might never be whole again. Now it is her daughters’ privilege to care for her.”

I sat back, stung. “I didn’t mean to presume—” Anger tightened my throat. “Of course you and Sorkhokhtani must care for her. And Alaqai, when she arrives.”

Toregene blinked and patted my hand absentmindedly, watching as Sorkhokhtani styled the Khatun’s white hair, as thick as a sheep’s fleece. “You are one of Borte’s daughters, Fatima. The last, in fact.”

Chastened, I fiddled with the silver bangle on my wrist. “She suffers,” I said. “It’s difficult to watch.”

Toregene stood and rifled through a box of herbs she’d taken to leaving in Borte’s tent, retrieving a small glass vial filled with a murky brown liquid. “Willow bark might ease the worst of her pain.”

I turned over the vial in my hand before tucking it into my waistband, knowing that willow bark would be useless in the face of such a terrible fight. “There’s something else,” I said, the words lodging in my throat. “Narcissus bulbs could speed her toward peace.”

A cold hand tightened around my heart, but it was too late to take back the words. My narcissus bulbs would no longer be a secret, but I couldn’t watch Borte’s long and futile struggle against death when it was in my power to end it.

“Speed her toward peace?” Toregene asked. “Or would you use your narcissus bulbs to usher her toward death? Is that what you planned to use on Al-Altun?”

I avoided her eyes and her questions. “Are peace and death not one and the same?”

“The god of the cross forbids such a crime,” Toregene answered. “As does Allah, if I’m not mistaken.”

Allah forbade suicide, but my soul was forever stained from feeding my own mother the narcissus bulbs she’d begged for when her body became too ravaged to bear any more pain. I touched Toregene’s hand. “Our gods forbid it,” I said. “But Borte’s does not. My father’s brother lingered like this for many more years, lost between life and death.”

Toregene pursed her lips, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “We’ll make no decisions until Alaqai arrives. I’ll not deprive a daughter of her final chance to see her mother.”

I recalled Alaqai’s comment the first time I’d met her about carrying death in her heart. I doubted whether she’d see Toregene’s decision as a kindness.

*   *   *

Alaqai arrived with her son, both swathed in black, with the bloodshot eyes of the grieving. Although she hadn’t yet seen forty years, the Khatun’s daughter leaned heavily upon her adolescent son, as if the burden of life had grown too heavy for her now.

“Boyahoe was killed in battle against the Song,” she said, closing her eyes as if to steady herself. “We received your message about Mother and left before his funeral feast. I couldn’t even give him the proper forty-nine days of mourning.” Alaqai’s voice quavered as her expression hardened. I recognized the mask of hidden sorrow, for it was one I’d perfected long ago, as effective as the veil that covered my face today. Alaqai whispered something in her son’s ear, and he scampered off, likely relieved to be free of his mother’s grief, even for a few moments. “Boyahoe’s life was too short,” Alaqai said, stomping her foot. “It’s my fault he’s dead, for I let him go off to prove himself in battle. I’m done marrying. I won’t curse another husband with an early death.”

“Our entire camp will feast in Boyahoe’s honor, even the dogs,” Toregene said. “Together we shall celebrate his life.”

“He’d have liked that,” Alaqai said. “I think his happiest time was here, in the army with Father. Now they’re both gone, and Mother . . .” Her eyes filled, but she drew a ragged sigh and blinked back the tears. “How is she?”

Toregene gestured for me to answer. “Borte Khatun is much changed since you last saw her,” I said. “The men are with her now.”

“I want to see her,” Alaqai said. “And then I’ll visit Father’s bones.”

Borte’s blue seer’s door stood proud and defiant as Ogodei and Tolui stumbled outside, both dressed in rumpled
deels
. Shigi stepped out behind them, upright under his blue judge’s cap as he tucked his arms into his sleeves. I’d seen Toregene slip into his tent the night before and wondered how he could share the same air with Ogodei the morning after making love to his wife. I’d convinced myself that it was only my loneliness that had made me yearn for Shigi, yet my continuing bitterness toward him hinted otherwise.

“The Khatun rests now,” Shigi said, his gaze briefly meeting Toregene’s before flickering away. It was a tender expression of concern, but so brief no one else seemed to notice. “Her sons may have exhausted her with their reminiscing about the Great Khan.”

Tolui’s nose was redder than normal and he wiped it with the back of his sleeve, leaving a shiny trail of snot like a slug’s path. He gulped air, showing off his missing tooth.

“Go with Ogodei,” Sorkhokhtani said to Tolui, cupping his cheek with her hand. Sometimes I still had a difficult time reconciling graceful Sorkhokhtani with her coarse, and typically drunk, husband. “We’ll sit with the Khatun.”

Ogodei’s great bulk almost swallowed Alaqai as he pulled her into a tight embrace. “It’s good to see you, sister,” he said. “Perhaps with you here, our mother may yet win her battle over death.”

I exchanged a look with Toregene and Sorkhokhtani, feeling the terrible weight in my pocket. My mouth went dry and my underarms grew damp. If all went as we’d discussed, today I would become a murderer a second time over.

Alaqai’s fingers threaded through the Spirit Banner outside Borte’s
ger
, the tail of her father’s favorite warhorse. “I miss you, Father,” I heard her whisper. “One day we’ll race each other on horseback again. I might even let you win.”

Then she stepped inside. I’d never grow accustomed to the stench of burning dung inside all the Mongol tents—more like a stable than a home—but despite my veil, Borte’s tent smelled also of Toregene’s freshly ground herbs and the insidious smell of death that grew stronger every day. Alaqai wavered and I guided her inside, toward the bed her mother hadn’t left for so many months. Borte’s brown eyes were blank, as they always were, her mouth slightly open. I might have thought she’d already passed to the next life had it not been for the gentle rise and fall of her chest and the sound of her labored breathing. “You’ve faced battles with flashing swords,” I whispered to Alaqai. “And watched three of your husbands leave this life. Let those trials give you courage now.”

She worked to swallow, and it took a moment before she managed to speak. “How long has she been this way?”

“A full season,” I answered. I opened the smoke hole in the top of the tent wider to let in fresh air and removed my veil, since I was safe in the company of women. “We feed her broth and milk, bathe her from a bucket, and move her to avoid sores on her skin.”

Alaqai pressed her knuckles to her lips and squeezed her eyes shut. “‘Two queens—one grown stooped and the other like a child—shall part once more with tears in their eyes.’ She foretold our final meeting, but I never imagined it like this.”

Toregene and Sorkhokhtani were at her side with a rustle of silks, bolstering her with their strength. “Just as she cared for us when we were young, now we care for her,” Sorkhokhtani said.

“She once spent an entire afternoon spoon-feeding me mutton broth when I fell ill with a fever,” Toregene said. “It is an honor to do the same for her now.”

“She often used to sing Tolui to sleep,” Sorkhokhtani said. “Now I sing to her each night.”

“She’s so broken,” Alaqai whispered. “Even more than my father, my mother was always the strongest person in any room.”

“She might yet linger like this for months, even years,” I said.

Tears finally spilled down Alaqai’s cheeks, and she knelt at her mother’s side. “She’d hate this slow death.”

I swallowed hard, prompted by Toregene’s nod. “With your permission, we would speed her on her journey.”

“Speed her?” Alaqai gave a sharp intake of breath. “You mean kill her?”

“Borte Khatun is already gone,” Sorkhokhtani said. “This shell of flesh and bone isn’t the woman who rode out to save her husband from the Tatars, or who rescued the People of the Felt from Jamuka’s plots.”

Alaqai touched the wolf-tooth necklace at Borte’s throat, the necklace that Toregene had insisted I tie around her neck each day despite her chests of silver and jade. “I can’t imagine a life without my parents. Yet it seems I have no choice.”

“Borte Khatun was ill before your father died,” I said. “I fear his death sped her illness.”

“And there’s nothing more to be done?”

I shook my head. “We’ve tried everything. Her spirit has already fled.”

She nodded and drew a deep breath. “How would you . . . ?”

I dared to touch her hand, relieved when she didn’t draw away. “Narcissus bulbs,” I answered.

“Will it be painful?”

I couldn’t lie; death by poison was rarely an easy way to leave this life. “It will be quicker than this.”

Alaqai nodded, squaring her shoulders as she clutched the bed. “She’d want me to say yes. But I need to say good-bye first.”

“Of course.”

Sorkhokhtani slipped silently outside, and Toregene and I sat on a woven silk rug near the door as Alaqai whispered to Borte while the sheep bleated outside, Alaqai occasionally chuckling over some shared memory from long ago while she brushed her mother’s hair and arranged her hands over her chest. I remembered my mother’s hands as she lay dying, their
delicate webbing of veins and perfectly trimmed nails. Those pale hands had taught me the graceful curve of calligraphy and wiped the tears from my cheeks when I pricked myself with my sewing needle. Yet it was what Sorkhokhtani held that stole my breath now, as she slipped into the tent with an armful of rainbow-hued wildflowers. The vivid colors of the blossoms robbed me of my voice, and I heard my mother’s final words in my mind.

“There are so many colors,” she’d gasped, her eyes staring unseeing toward the ceiling. Blood and vomit trickled from the corner of her lips. “Colors like our garden in spring.”

She drew a last tortured breath and then her soul burst from her body, freed of the sickness that had ravaged her, leaving me clutching the remnants of the narcissus bulbs that still bore the marks from her teeth. I threw them across the room, but the touch of the bulbs polluted my palms, their fire increasing as I listened to my father wail at my mother’s bedside after he found her body stiff and cold.

He was so overcome with grief that he never noticed me burying the mangled bulbs in the garden or scrubbing my hands until the water in the porcelain ewer was cloudy with blood.

“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.”