walls of Yenking had not saved that city from fire or siege, he knew. His walls were the warriors of the khan, the tribes who had brought a Chin emperor to his knees and razed a shah’s cities.
Already, Ogedai loved his creation, from the vast expanse of the central training ground, to the red-tiled roofs, the paved gutters, the temples and churches and mosques and markets and homes by the thousand, most still empty and waiting for life. Scraps of blue cloth fluttered in the plains wind on every corner, a tribute to the sky father above them all. In the south, green foothills and mountains stretched far away and the air was warm with dust as Ogedai rejoiced in Karakorum.
The twilight was deepening into a soft gloom as Ogedai handed his reins to a servant and strode up the steps to his palace. Before he entered, he looked back once more at the city straining to be born. He could smell fresh-turned earth and, over it, the fried food of the workmen on the evening air. He had not planned the herds of livestock in corrals beyond the walls, or the squawking chickens sold on every corner. He thought of the wool market that had sprung up by the western gate. He should not have expected trade to halt simply because the city was unfinished. He had chosen a spot on an ancient traders’ road to give it life – and life had begun pouring in while whole streets, whole districts, were still piles of lumber, tile and stone.
As he looked into the setting sun, he smiled at the cooking fires on the plains surrounding the city. His people waited there, for him. His armies would be fed on rich mutton, dripping fat from the summer grass. It reminded him of his own hunger and he moistened his lips as he passed through a stone gate the equal of anything in a Chin city.
In the echoing hall beyond, he paused for a moment at his most extravagant gesture. A tree of solid silver stretched gracefully up to the arched ceiling, the centre point open to the sky like the ger of any herdsman. It had taken the silversmiths of Samarkand almost a year to cast and polish, but it served his purpose. Whoever entered his palace would see it and be staggered at the wealth it represented. Some would see an emblem for the silver people, the Mongol tribes who had become a nation. Those with more wisdom would see that the Mongols cared so little for silver that they used it as a casting metal.
Ogedai let his hand slide down the bole of the tree, feeling the metal chill his fingers. The spreading branches reached out in a parody of life, gleaming like a white birch in moonlight. Ogedai nodded to himself. He stretched his back as lamps were lit by slaves and servants all around him, throwing black shadows and making the evening seem suddenly darker outside.
He heard hurrying footsteps and saw his manservant, Baras’aghur, approaching. Ogedai winced at the man’s keen expression and the bundle of papers under his arm.
‘After I have eaten, Baras. It has been a long day.’
‘Very well, my lord, but you have a visitor: your uncle. Shall I tell him to wait on your pleasure?’
Ogedai paused in the act of unbuckling his sword belt. All three of his uncles had come to the plains around Karakorum at his order, gathering their tumans in great camps. He had forbidden them all from entering the city and he wondered who would have disobeyed him. He suspected it would be Khasar, who regarded orders and laws as tools for other men rather than himself.
‘Who is it, Baras?’ Ogedai asked quietly.
‘Lord Temuge, master. I have sent servants to tend him, but he has been waiting now for a long time.’
Baras’aghur made a gesture to indicate a sweep of the sun in the sky and Ogedai pursed his lips in irritation. His father’s brother would be well aware of the nuances of hospitality. Simply by arriving when Ogedai was not there to greet him, he had created an obligation. Ogedai assumed it was deliberate. A man like Temuge was too subtle not to grasp the slightest advantage. Yet the order had gone out for the generals and princes to remain on the plains.
Ogedai sighed. For two years, he had readied Karakorum to be the jewel in an empire. His had been a splendid isolation and he had manoeuvred to keep it so, his enemies and friends always off balance. He had known it could not last for ever. He steeled himself as he walked after Baras’aghur to the first and most sumptuous of his audience rooms.
‘Have wine brought to me immediately, Baras. And food – something simple, such as the warriors are eating on the plain.’
‘Your will, my lord,’ his servant said without listening, his thoughts on the meeting to come.
The footsteps of the two men were loud in the silent halls, clicking and echoing back to them. Ogedai did not glance at the painted scenes that usually gave him so much pleasure. He and Baras’aghur walked under the best work of Islamic artists and it was only towards the end that Ogedai looked up at a blaze of colour, smiling to himself at the image of Genghis leading a charge at the Badger’s Mouth pass. The artist had asked a fortune for a year’s work, but Ogedai had doubled his price when he saw it. His father still lived on those walls, as well as in his memory. There was no art of painting in the tribes he knew and such things could still make him gasp and stand in awe. With Temuge waiting, however, Ogedai barely nodded to his father’s image before he was sweeping into the room.
The years had not been kind to his father’s brother. Temuge had once been as fat as a feasting calf, but then lost the weight rapidly, so that his throat sagged into flaps of skin and he looked far older than his years. Ogedai looked at his uncle coldly as he rose from a silk-covered chair to greet him. It was an effort to be courteous to a man who represented the end of his time apart. He had no illusions. The nation waited impatiently for him and Temuge was just the first to breach his defences.
‘You are looking well, Ogedai,’ Temuge said.
He came forward as if he might embrace his nephew and Ogedai struggled with a spasm of irritation. He turned away to Baras, letting his uncle drop his rising arms unseen.
‘Wine and food, Baras. Will you stand there, staring like a sheep?’
‘My lord,’ Baras’aghur replied, bowing immediately. ‘I will have a scribe sent to you to record the meeting.’
He left at a run and both men could hear the slave’s sandals clattering into the distance. Temuge frowned delicately.
‘This is not a formal visit, Ogedai, for scribes and records.’
‘You are here as my uncle then? Not because the tribes have selected you to approach me? Not because my scholar uncle is the one man whom all the factions trust enough to speak to me?’
Temuge flushed at the tone and the accuracy of the remarks. He had to assume Ogedai had as many spies in the great camps as he had himself. That was one thing the nation had learned from the Chin. He tried to judge his nephew’s mood, but it was no easy task. Ogedai had not even offered him salt tea. Temuge swallowed drily as he tried to interpret the level of censure and irritation in the younger man.
‘You know the armies talk of nothing else, Ogedai.’ Temuge took a deep breath to steady his nerves. Under Ogedai’s pale yellow eyes, he could not shake the idea that he was reporting to some echo of Genghis. His nephew was softer in body than the great khan, but there was a coldness in him that unnerved Temuge. Sweat broke out on his forehead.
‘For two years, you have ignored your father’s empire,’ Temuge began.
‘Do you think that is what I have done?’ Ogedai interrupted.
Temuge stared at him.
‘What else am I to think? You left the families and tumans in the field, then built a city while
