In that time, with just a few letters and messengers, he had won back the freedom of his office. No longer was he troubled by Sorhatani's constant enquiries and demands on his time and resources. No longer was he summoned at all hours of the day and night to explain some matter of policy, or some aspect of the titles and powers she had been granted in her husband's stead. It was a perfect application of power, he decided: the minimum force to achieve the desired outcome.
For the previous two days, the palace corridors had been scrubbed by an army of Chin servants. Anything made of cloth had been sent to the courtyard and beaten free of dust before being carefully replaced. Fresh fruit had been packed in ice barrels and brought to the kitchens below ground, while cut flowers were placed in such profusion that the entire building was heavy with their scent. The khan's wife was coming home and she must not be disappointed.
Yao Shu strolled along an airy corridor, enjoying the weak sunshine on a cold, clear day with blue skies. The joy of his position was that no one would challenge the khan's own chancellor if he chose to be there when Torogene returned. It was almost his duty to welcome her and there was little Sorhatani could do about it.
He heard a horn blow from the outskirts of the city and he smiled to himself. Her baggage train was in sight at last. He had time to go to his offices and put on his most formal robes. His current deel was grubby and he brushed at the cloth as he jogged to his work rooms. He barely noticed the servant prostrating himself at the doorpost as he passed. He had clean robes in a chest. They would be a little musty, but the cedar wood should have kept the moths at bay. He crossed the room with quick steps and was bent over the chest when he heard the door swing closed behind him. As he spun round in surprise, a click sounded, then the scrape of a key in a lock.
Yao Shu forgot about the chest. He crossed to the door and tried the handle, knowing it would not open. Sorhatani's orders, of course. He could almost smile at the woman's sheer effrontery to lock him in his own rooms. It was all the more irritating that he was the one responsible for introducing locks to the doors of the palace, at least those which guarded valuables. The lessons of the long night had been learned, when Chagatai had sent men into the palace to spread terror and destruction. Only good doors had saved the khan then. Yao Shu ran his hands over the wood, his calloused skin making a sibilant sound. He matched it with a hiss of air through his teeth.
'Really, Sorhatani?' he muttered to himself.
He resisted the pointless urge to rattle the handle or call for help. The whole palace was busy that morning. There could be servants rushing by outside, but it was more than his dignity would take to have to be rescued from his own rooms.
He tapped the door with the palm of his hand, testing its strength. From childhood, he had conditioned his body to hardness. For years he had begun each day with a thousand blows on his forearms. The bones had cracked in tiny fissures, filling and growing dense so that he could unleash all his strength without fearing his wrists would snap. Yet the door felt depressingly solid. He was no longer a young man and, smiling ruefully to himself, he put aside the young man's response of force.
His questing hands moved to the hinges instead. They were simple iron pegs, lowered onto rings of iron, but the door had been put into place while it was open. Now that it was closed, the frame prevented him from lifting it. He looked around his offices, but there were no weapons there. The chest was too heavy to be flung at the door and the rest – his inkstone, his pens and scrolls – were all too light to be of any use. He muttered a curse under his breath. The windows of the room were barred in iron, high and small enough so that the winter wind did not freeze him as he worked.
He felt his anger growing again, as all his attempts at reason failed. It would have to be force. He rubbed the two large knuckles on his right hand. Years of the striking post had given them a sheath of callus, but the bones underneath were like marble, cracked and healed until they were a mass of dense bone.
Yao Shu removed his sandals and stretched his legs for a moment. They too had been hardened. Time would tell if he could break through a door with nothing else.
He chose the weakest spot, where a panel had been fitted into the main frame. He took a deep breath, readying himself. Sorhatani stood at the main gate to Karakorum. She had fretted for some time over where to receive Ogedai's wife. Would it seem like a challenge to force her to come all the way through the city to the palace before they met? She did not know Torogene well enough to be certain. Her main memory of her was a motherly woman who had remained calm on the long night when Ogedai had come under attack in his rooms. Sorhatani told herself she had done nothing wrong, that she could not be reproached for her care of the khan. Yet she knew well enough that a wife's feeling about a younger woman was not always a rational thing. No matter how it went, the meeting was going to be delicate, to say the least. Sorhatani had prepared herself as best she could. The rest was up to the sky father and earth mother, and Torogene herself.
The retinue was an impressive sight, with outriders and carts stretching back along the road for almost a mile. Sorhatani had ordered the city gates opened, rather than insult Torogene, yet she feared that the khan's wife would just sweep by her as if she did not exist. She watched nervously as the first rows of riders passed under the gate and the largest cart trundled closer. Pulled by six oxen, it moved slowly and creaked loudly enough to be heard some distance away. The khan's wife sat under a canopy, with four poles of birch supporting a silk roof. The sides were open and Sorhatani twisted her hands together at the first sight of Torogene returning to her husband and Karakorum. It was not reassuring, and Sorhatani felt the woman's eyes seek her out at a distance, then rest on her as if fascinated. She thought she could see the gleam of them and knew that Torogene would be seeing a slim and beautiful woman in a Chin dress of green silk, her hair tied with a silver clasp as large as a man's hand.
Sorhatani's thoughts raced as the cart came to a halt just a few paces away from where she stood. Status was the issue and the one thing she had not been able to decide in the days previously. Torogene was the khan's wife, of course. When they had met last, she had been Sorhatani's social superior. Yet in the time since, Sorhatani had been granted all the titles and authority of her husband. There was no precedent in the short history of the nation. Certainly no other woman had ever had the right to command a tuman if she so chose. It was a mark of the khan's respect for her husband's sacrifice that he had made the ruling at all.
Sorhatani took a deep, slow breath as she saw Torogene was moving to the edge of the cart, extending her hand to be helped down. The grey-haired woman was older, but the khan's wife would have bowed to Tolui if he had been standing there. The khan's wife would have spoken first. Without knowing how Torogene would react to her, Sorhatani didn't want to throw away her sole advantage. She had the status to demand respect, but she did not want to make an enemy of the older woman.
The moment when she would have to decide came too quickly, but her attention was dragged away by the sound of running footsteps. Sorhatani and Torogene both looked up at the same time as Yao Shu came through the gate. His face was stiff with anger and his eyes glittered as they took in the scene. Sorhatani caught a glimpse of bloody knuckles before he clasped his hands behind his back and bowed formally to welcome the khan's wife.