Conn Iggulden - Conqueror

‘As you say, my lord. There are new sewage pits being dug in the south quarter …’

Guyuk raised his hand to stop him.

‘I do not need to know. Make him vanish, Gansukh, and you will have my gratitude.’ He looked at the other men. ‘Well? Can Gansukh manage on his own? One of you must send my servants away. When you are asked, you will say Ochir left us earlier.’ He smiled through the smeared blood. ‘Tell them he promised me his vote in the gathering, that he gave his solemn oath. Perhaps the fool can benefit me in death as he would not in life.’

His companions began to move and Guyuk walked away from them, heading to a bathing room he could reach without crossing a main corridor. For a year or more, he had not washed without servants, but the blood was itching his skin and he wanted to be clean. The troubles that had enraged him earlier that evening seemed to have fallen away and he walked with a light step. The water would be cold, but he was a man who had bathed in freezing rivers from a young age. It tightened the skin and invigorated him, reminding him he was alive.

Guyuk stood naked in an iron bath of Chin design, with writhing dragons around the rim. He did not hear the door open as he upended a wooden bucket and poured water over his head. The cold made him gasp and shudder, his penis shrivelling. As he opened his eyes, he jumped at seeing his mother standing in the room. He glanced at the pile of clothes he had thrown down. Already the blood on them had mingled with the water, so that the wooden floor ran with red-tinged lines.

Guyuk put the bucket down carefully. Torogene was a large woman and she seemed to fill the small room.

‘If you wish to see me, mother, I will be clean and dressed in a few moments.’ He saw her gaze fall to the swirl of bloody water on the floor and he looked away, picking up the bucket and refilling it from the pink water in the bath. The palace had its own drains, specially constructed in fire-hardened tile by Chin experts. When he removed the stopper, the incriminating water would vanish under the city, mingling with the night soil and filth from the kitchens until no one would ever know. A canal ran by Karakorum and Guyuk supposed the water would empty into that, or into some pit where it could soak. He didn’t know or care about such details.

‘What have you done ?’ Torogene said. Her face was pale as she stopped and picked up his tunic, sodden and twisted.

‘What I had to,’ Guyuk replied. He was still shivering and in no mood to be questioned. ‘It does not concern you. I will have the clothes burnt.’ Guyuk raised the bucket again, then tired of her scrutiny. He let it fall back and stepped out of the bath.

‘I called for fresh clothes, mother. They should have been brought to the audience room by now. Unless you are going to stand and stare at me all day, perhaps you could fetch them.’

Torogene didn’t move.

‘You are my son, Guyuk. I have worked to protect you, to gather allies for you. In a night, how much of my labour have you undone? Do you think I don’t know Ochir was invited here? That he has not been seen leaving? Are you a fool, Guyuk?’

‘You have been spying on me, then,’ Guyuk replied. He tried to stand tall and unconcerned, but the shivering grew worse.

‘It is my business to know what happens in Karakorum. To know every deal and argument, every mistake, such as the one you made tonight.’

Guyuk gave up the pretence, exasperated at her lofty tone of disapproval.

‘Ochir would never have supported me, mother. He is no loss to us. His disappearance may even be a gain, in time.’

‘You think so?’ she demanded. ‘You think you have made my work easier? Did I raise a fool, then? His families, his friends, will know he came to you unarmed and that he disappeared.’

‘They have no body, mother. They will assume …’

‘They will assume the truth, Guyuk! That you are a man who cannot be trusted. That alone among the nation, your offer of guest rights cannot make a man safe. That you are a wild dog capable of killing a man who has drunk tea with you in your own home .’

Overcome with anger, she left the room. Guyuk barely had time to consider what she had said before she was back, thrusting dry clothes at him.

‘For more than two years,’ she went on, ‘I have spent every day courting those who might support you. The traditionalists who might be approached on the grounds that you are the eldest son of the khan and you should rule the nation. I have bribed men with lands, horses, gold and slaves, Guyuk. I have threatened to reveal their secrets unless I receive their votes at a gathering. I have done all this because I honour your father and everything he built. His line should inherit, not Sorhatani’s children or Batu or any of the other princes.’

Guyuk dressed quickly, pulling the deel robe roughly over a tunic and tying a belt around his waist.

‘Do you want me to thank you?’ he said. ‘Your plans and schemes have not made me khan yet, mother. Perhaps if they had, I would not have acted on my own. Did you think I would wait for ever?’

‘I didn’t think you would kill a good man in your father’s house. You have not helped me tonight, my son. I am so close. I do not know yet what damage you have done, but if this gets out …’

‘It will not.’

‘If it does , you will have strengthened the claims of every other man in line. They will say that you have no more right to this palace, this city, than Batu.’

Guyuk clenched his fists in frustration.

‘It is always him. I hear his name every day. I wish he had been here tonight. I would have removed a stone in my path then.’

‘He would never come to you unarmed, Guyuk. Whatever you said or did to him on the trip home has made it harder for me to bring you your inheritance.’

‘I did nothing. And it is not my inheritance!’ Guyuk snapped. ‘How much easier would all this have been if my father had named me in his will. There is the source of it all! Instead, he left me to scrabble around with all the others, like a pack of dogs fighting over one piece of meat. If you had not assumed the regency, I would be out there in the gers, looking at my father’s own city in envy. Yet still you honour him. I am the khan’s first-born son, mother! Yet I must bargain and bribe to gain what is mine by right. If he was half the man you seem to think, he should have considered that before his death. He had enough time to include me in his plans.’

Torogene saw the pain in her son’s face and relented, her anger vanishing. She took him into an embrace, moving to ease his distress without thought.

‘He loved you, my son. But he was obsessed with his city. He lived with death on his shoulder for a long time. Struggling against it exhausted him. I do not doubt he wished to do more for you.’

Guyuk rested his head on her shoulder, thinking sharp and unpleasant thoughts. He needed his mother still. The nation had learned to revere her over the years of her regency.

‘I am sorry I lost my temper tonight,’ he murmured. He forced a breath like a sob and she gripped him tighter. ‘I just want it all too much. I cannot bear it, mother. Every day, I see them looking at me, wondering when we will call the gathering. I see them smiling at the thought of my defeat.’

Torogene stroked his damp hair, smoothing it with her hand.

‘Shh. You are not the same as them,’ she said. ‘You have never been an ordinary man, Guyuk. Like your father, you dream of greater things. I know it. I have sworn to make you khan and it is closer than you know. You already have Sorhatani’s son, Mongke. You were so clever to take his oath in the field. His brothers will not disobey their mother. That is the heart of our position. Then in the west Baidur has received my envoys. I am confident he will declare for you in time. Do you understand now how close we are? When Baidur and Batu name their true price, we will call the nation.’