Chapter Twenty-nine

ATOAD. THE GIRL whom Mergen-Khan had summoned to wed the Tinglut-Khan was a toad. Gazing in dismay over the shambles of his mission, Prince Daritai had to admit that his father might have been right about the Qubal all along. He’d never believed the explanation Mergen-Khan had given for the disappearance of the Lady Chaiujin. Murdered, Tinglut had guessed, by a Qubal hand and not a serpent-demon.

“Mergen cost me a royal daughter,” the khan had reminded him. “He owes me a royal wife, something pretty and young to warm my bed in winter.” Though he wouldn’t say as much in front of Hulegu, Tinglut wanted heirs with royal Qubal blood. He would use those children to claim the Qubal ulus in the war he planned, to install himself as regent for the sons he planned to get. The present heir possessed all the skills he needed to foresee his own downfall if Daritai succeeded. Hulegu, of course, would expect the mission to fail.

The treaty had offered an opportunity to spy out the truth about the Qubal’s intentions. It hadn’t taken Daritai long. At best he could report that the proposed bride was a dirty-faced shamaness with no court manners, a ridiculous totem, and an overbearing manner. Tinglut wouldn’t have minded the dirty face if she were pretty enough, which she was. He might even find the skills of a shamaness useful for prolonging his vigor. But the khan his father would never accept a sharp-tongued toad in his bed.

It seemed clear that Mergen had never intended to claim her and that he did so now only to pacify his neighbor, who would have accepted the girl in ignorance of her lowly station and her calling. And, it seemed, if he read the direction of that wind correctly, that the prince himself had interests in that quarter. From the careful way he moved around her, Daritai thought they hadn’t slept together yet, but it seemed likely to happen soon. The Qubal prince didn’t mind the toad part either, which Daritai didn’t want to think about. So much for honorable intentions.

As for murder, the young warrior with the knife in his chest gave clear evidence that those closest to the khan were still busy killing each other. He thought the general’s son was just the first move in the latest game of Qubal politics, and wondered how long Mergen had before he followed his brother onto the pyre. Sooner than later, if the gur-khan didn’t do something about his blanket-sons. Tinglut would have solved the problem by strangling them in their sleep. Daritai sometimes waited sleepless in his own bed for the soft tread of the assassin.

His own father wasn’t the issue now, though. He had seen too much, and so had his son. Mergen knew it; his personal guard glared at the Tinglut forces across a divide no greater than a single step, yet fathoms deep in mutual suspicion. The hostile tension of the armies had settled like damp in Tumbinai’s bones. The boy sat rigidly erect in his saddle, dark eyes wide, afraid to make a move that would tilt the balance into violence. Daritai had trained him for warfare, but they were too outnumbered to call it anything but slaughter. Tumbinai would know that, too.

Whatever happened to Daritai, he was determined to bargain or beg for the life of his son. When the gur-khan had dismissed his old shaman to his duties, he nudged his horse forward, keeping his hands in view of the guardsmen who surrounded him.

“We should return to our own tents and leave you to your grief.” He bowed to acknowledge the mourning court, but said nothing of his intention to pack up his tents and his son as quickly as he could and slip away like Mergen’s own Durluken.

The gur-khan cast a brief glance at him but his opaque gaze fixed on the dead boy with his arm flung over the ram. The silence between them stretched like a bowstring until Daritai could endure it no more. Breaking every rule of hostile diplomacy, he slid from his horse and knelt at the foot of the mounted khan. With head bowed, he filled the silence with his bargain.

“If you need a hostage, I will stay, and vouch for the discretion of my men. I ask just a small party of his most familiar guardsmen to take my son home.”

“And what will keep the boy quiet when he finds himself the target of his grandfather’s questions?”

Still on his knees, Daritai tilted his head back to face Mergen. Great Sun, he noted, had begun to fall, and it shone like a gathering of spirits around the impassive gur-khan. “He knows you’ll kill me if he breaks his word.”

“A good argument if he cares. What if your death means nothing to him?” The golden light behind him cast Mergen’s features in shadows from which an emotion as powerful as it was fleeting escaped his glacial eyes. It seemed he was not so unaware of his own peril as Daritai had suspected.

With a wry half smile the prince answered the emotion behind the question. “Then I’ll die, but Tumbinai will be as safe as I can make him.”

“Not safe enough.”

The wistfulness of Mergen’s tone robbed it of any threat. They both knew they stood on the brink of war, with only the love of their children as common ground between them.

“Send half your guard with him.” The gur-khan nodded permission and Daritai bowed deeply, slack-muscled with relief. This time, maybe, love would be enough.

But Tumbinai said, “No.”

From his precarious position among the horse’s legs, Prince Daritai had lost the advantage of perspective that Mergen held from the back of his gelded bay. So he couldn’t see the boy’s growing horror as his father offered his life for his son’s freedom. Daritai wouldn’t have noticed that Tayy had returned and listened sharply or that Eluneke had drawn closer with the Princess Orda still in her arms. Or that the little girl had fixed the Tinglut boy with a stare that sent a warning shiver straight up Mergen’s spine.

The gur-khan had seen it all, however, and he wasn’t pleased with any of them, least of all the boy Tumbinai, who was looking back at Princess Orda with a fierce pro tectiveness that seemed equally to enfold his endangered father. So when he said, “No,” to the gur-khan’s offer to hold his father prisoner in his place, Daritai was surprised. Mergen wasn’t, though they shared a common displeasure.

“I won’t leave my father. And the little girl needs someone to watch over her.” Stubborn and headstrong, the boy firmed his quivering chin and met the gur-khan’s stare with a level gaze of his own. He’d grown up in the court of the Tinglut-Khan, that look said. He knew about throwaway lesser children and he wasn’t going to let anything happen to the Princess Orda.

At that moment, Mergen could cheerfully have wrung General Jochi’s neck. The boy had held the little girl in his arms, stirring all the instincts in him to defend the weak. Mergen indulged in a little silent swearing while the father tried not to show his terror and the boy swallowed a lump the size of a walnut in his throat. Prince Tayyichiut, of course, was watching him with all the terrible knowledge of his own experience in his eyes. Tayy had seen the murders of his father and mother, his own enslavement by pirates, and the deaths of his friends in battle. And now he trod a careful path through the uncertain threats of his own court.

None of them wished their own prince’s history for this child. Mergen just wasn’t sure how he could prevent it. They were at an impasse until, in a quavering whisper, the boy Tumbinai said, “I don’t like my grandfather.”

The boy’s father might have turned to stone. He didn’t panic, but something desperate and dangerous coiled inside his stillness. Don’t draw your sword, Mergen prayed, let him finish. They’d already lost a boy today. With luck and a little common sense, nobody else had to die.

“My father doesn’t either.”

Prince Daritai said nothing, but the coiled springs of his muscles all relaxed at once. His eyelids slid down, rose again without hope, as he pulled himself upright, his chin held up, his chest thrust out, ready for the sword or the knife.

Don’t be a fool. Mergen couldn’t make the warning out loud, or tell the man, At this moment we are allies in getting this child home alive. Don’t mess it up. He could, however, learn over his horse’s neck and whisper conspiratorially to the boy, “I don’t like him either. But I do like Princess Orda. If you go with your father, I will make sure that nothing happens to her.”

The look that came back at him shook him to his boots. Tumbinai didn’t think this khan would live long enough to protect his little niece.

“You see too much, boy,” Mergen warned him. “Get those eyes of yours under control if you want to survive your grandfather’s court.” He let a little of his own cunning reach his eyes but didn’t wait to see what effect he’d had on the boy. “Go,” he told the father.

With a precise bow Daritai mounted his own horse and grabbed the reins from his son. Then, without another word he turned and led the boy away from their avid audience. His guardsmen followed, and Mergen sent a handful of his own to see them on their way. As mistakes went, he thought he’d just made a big one. The boy was innocent, but his father was a spy, going home without a treaty or a bride for the Tinglut-Khan. He couldn’t bring himself to regret it. And when he heard Tayy’s soft, “Thank you,” at his side, he was glad.

Prince Daritai rode with sedate dignity toward the Tinglut camp. Mergen would have his own spies watching and he didn’t want to arouse more suspicion, or interest, than the gur-khan had already shown. Unfortunately, this left Tumbinai with the leisure, and the breath, to talk.

“I can’t believe you did that.” The Tinglut court was a harsh school, but Tumbinai had learned his lessons well. In spite of his obvious distress, he kept his tone flat and emotionless. “Did you think I would leave you in enemy hands and run home to my grandfather like a frightened ewe?”

“I expected you to behave like a soldier and do as you were told. Clearly, I expected too much of you. That is my failing.” Daritai had learned restraint at the same harsh knee. His heart twisted in his chest for the things he could not do—hold the boy safe and protected in his arms, rage at him for risking his life, weep for the peril which required such bravery of a child. He should be proving himself with blunted short spears at jidu, demonstrating his prowess at wrestling or in horse racing, not defending his father in an already bloody situation.

He hadn’t planned to teach this particular lesson so soon, but dire need might settle it the more firmly in both heart and head. “You’re fortunate that the gur-khan is a wise and a merciful man. If he’d decided to punish you for your impertinence, I’d have been honor bound to stop him. And he, to save face before his court, would have punished you even if he had to kill me to do it.”

As he had hoped, Tumbinai was measuring the truth of the words, his agile mind all in his eyes. Mergen was right; he’d have to control that. Tomorrow would do for that lesson, but no later. They still had Tinglut-Khan himself to face. But the boy was adding up the afternoon and the total was tugging down at the corners of his mouth.

“He wouldn’t kill us, there’d be war.”

“Think, boy. Do you see a princess coming home with us?”

They had entered their own camp. Daritai spoke more sharply than he otherwise might have done, between orders to break camp and move out. Servants ran to drag down the felted tent cloths. Urged on by the sharp end of his tongue, his warriors leaped from their saddles to help in the bundling of the lattices and the packing of the wagons. At the very center of this furious burst of energy, Tumbinai sat and thought.

“We don’t have a treaty,” he said slowly. “I liked the toad-girl, but I don’t think Grandfather would marry her.”

“I think he’d be damned insulted at the offer,” Daritai agreed.

Tumbinai fell silent, mulling over all that he’d seen and heard, while his father made plans and cast them aside as quickly. He had to get his son out of here, before Mergen changed his mind. Going home meant Tinglut and his half brother Hulegu, and the dangers that came of being one heir too many.

Daritai thought he might have another answer, but he had to move fast and gather more soldiers before Tinglut-Khan had a chance to react. A displaced heir was a threat to the backside sitting on the dais; he was surprised that Hulegu’s assassins hadn’t murdered him already. But a prince who claimed for himself the Qubal khanate became a power to be dealt with on his own terms, and if that prince claimed the title of gur-khan, khan of khans, for his father, they both might prosper.

There was the problem of the Uulgar clans in the South, whose army had gone home under a Qubal-Khan in Mergen’s name. But he thought that he might strike a bargain there. The man could keep his new title and answer to no overlord. The Uulgar were, after all, far away and of no consequence to the Tinglut-Khan or to Daritai. And if, in the future, Daritai should cast his eye in that direction, he would do so for the glory of his father, with all the horsed warriors that the two ulus together, Tinglut and Qubal, could muster.

“What will happen to the gur-khan?” Tumbinai asked, and made a face. He knew the board and how the stones must lay or be swept away. Mergen might fall at the hands of a Tinglut warrior, but he was more likely to die as his brother had, of ambitious relatives, before Daritai had mustered his army. Living seemed the longest odds. “I promised the little girl she’d be safe.”

It was on the tip of Daritai’s tongue to remind the boy not to make promises he couldn’t keep, but something stopped him, a warning in his son’s eyes. They were young yet, but Chimbai’s little princess in his own household, as the future wife of his son, would legitimize his claim to the Qubal khanate. His father wouldn’t be happy about it, but with an ulus behind him, Daritai could deal with old Tinglut-Khan.

“That’s right, you did.” Daritai smiled. “We will just have to make sure that you keep your promise.”

Tumbinai looked uneasy, but he slapped the boy on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. The girl will be safe; that’s what matters.”

He left his son in the care of his guardsmen and galloped to find his own captains.

“Hurry!” he cried, gathering his warriors around him. A few of his forces must move at the pace of the wagons. The rest would travel to the tent city of the Tinglut-Khan at speed. There were armies to raise, and quickly, before Mergen brought his unruly princelings into line and the opportunity was lost.