Morris shook his head weakly. “Can’t write the message down. Even so, there are no mail routes to deliver it.”
A message that could not be written. A destination beyond the all-encompassing reach of the British postal service. Things began to get stranger and stranger. Huntley started to wonder if, perhaps, he was lying drunk in a gutter somewhere, already deep in his return to England alcohol binge, and everything that had happened, was happening, was a whiskey-induced delusion. “Where’s it going?”
“To my friend, Franklin Burgess.” Morris gritted his teeth as a wave of pain moved through him, and Huntley did his best to comfort him, brushing clammy strands of hair back from Morris’s forehead. “In Urga. Outer Mongolia.”
“That is…far,” Huntley managed after he found his voice.
Another ghostly smile curved Morris’s mouth. “Always is. Was headed to a ship to take me there when,” he nodded toward the horrible wound in his stomach as his smile faded. With his free hand, he clutched at Huntley’s jacket. The strength left in Morris’s grip surprised Huntley, but Morris was growing more and more agitated. Huntley tried to calm him, but to no avail. Morris became nearly frantic, spending the last of his energy as he tugged Huntley closer. “Please. You must deliver the message to Burgess. Thousands of lives at stake. More. Many more.”
Huntley hesitated. Inwood’s letter was in his pocket. The promise of a quiet future beckoned. What Morris asked was huge, a deviation from plans to settle in Leeds, and yet, to Huntley’s mind, an adventure into unknown lands was infinitely preferable to tranquil stability. The fact that he’d thrown himself into a fight minutes after arriving in England told him so. Intelligent, probably not, but Huntley never put much stock in dry logic. And Morris had saved his life, the ultimate obligation. He could not refuse the dying man.
He said, “Give me the message. I’ll deliver it to him.”
Morris seemed momentarily surprised that Huntley had agreed, but then pulled him down so his ear was level with Morris’s mouth. In words barely audible, he whispered into Huntley’s ear. Huntley didn’t quite know what to expect, but certainly not the two lines of nonsense that Morris faintly gasped. How could the lives of thousands or more rest on something not even Edward Lear would comprehend?
“Repeat them back to me,” Morris insisted. He was waxen and pale, his lips growing stiff and awkward. The blood from his wound was slowing now. The source was nearly tapped out.
Feeling not a little ridiculous, Huntley repeated Morris’s message—three times at Morris’s urging—until the dying man was satisfied.
“Good. You must leave. Tonight. Next ship leaves. Two weeks. Too late.”
Huntley, who hadn’t been relishing the idea of his return to England, was still surprised by the speed with which he was supposed to leave it. He had some money from his army discharge, but he doubted he had enough to pay for a trip to the other side of the world. Soldiering was not the way any man could make his fortune, though perhaps that was the reason it attracted such a variety of reckless fools, including himself. As if anticipating his objections, Morris added, “In my coat pocket. My papers. Take my place on the ship.”
His head still swimming with all that he had seen and heard within the span of an hour, Huntley could only nod. Then a thought occurred to him. “This man, Burgess,” he said. “I doubt he’ll trust me if I show up at his door with some ridiculous…er, coded message, and say that you’ve…” He let his words trail off, even though it was clear that they both knew Morris wasn’t going to make it out alive from the alley.
Morris’s eyes were dull and sinking into his face. Huntley could barely hear him when he said, “Waistcoat inside pocket.”
As carefully as he could, Huntley reached into the small pocket sewn into the lining of Morris’s waistcoat. He pulled from the pocket a small circular metal object that turned out to be a compass. In the dimness of the alley, he was just able to see that the exterior of the compass was covered with minute writing in languages Huntley could not read, though he suspected they were Greek, Hebrew, and, yes, Sanskrit, of which he had a small knowledge. He opened the lid. Each point of the compass was represented by a different blade: the Roman soldier’s pugio, the European duelist’s rapier, the curved scimitar of the Near East, and the deadly serpentine form of the kris from the East Indies. A classic English rose lay at the center of the compass. Huntley realized that the compass was exceptionally old, with the heaviness of precious metal. Whispers of the past seemed to curl from it like perfumed smoke, and the lure of distant shores beckoned from within it, more powerful than any siren’s call. It was extraordinary.
“Give that. To Burgess.” Morris’s breath grew even more shallow. “Say to him, ‘North is eternal.’ He’ll know.”
“I’ll do that, Morris,” Huntley said, straight and solemn.
“Thank you,” he gasped. “Thank you.” He seemed to relax at last, no longer fighting the inevitable.
“Is there someone else I should tell about you? Some family?”
“None. Only family I have. Will learn soon enough.” And with those words, a final spasm passed through Morris, the body’s last struggle to cling to the knowable world. He arched up, almost flinging himself from Huntley’s arms as a strangled sound ripped from his throat. Then he fell back, eyes open, and Huntley knew it was done.
He looked down at the dead man’s face. Morris couldn’t have been more than forty or forty-five, a hale man who, though he wasn’t a soldier by trade, had kept himself well-conditioned. He was dressed finely, without ostentation, the quality of his clothing revealing a certain level of status few, including Huntley himself, would enjoy. Shame to have Morris’s life end so abruptly, shame to meet death in an ignominious, dirty alley, the victim of an unfair fight.
Huntley reached down and closed Morris’s eyes. He sighed. No, he never quite got used to death, no matter how familiar it had become.
Two hours later saw Huntley standing on the deck of the Frances, watching the lights of Southampton grow smaller and fainter in the dark of night.
Good-bye, again, he thought.
After Morris had expired, Huntley took the travel papers from the dead man’s pocket and saw that the ship on which he was intending to sail would be leaving shortly. There wouldn’t be time to call for the police, since a lengthy inquiry would surely follow with the real possibility that Huntley would be forbidden to leave the country until the matter of Morris’s death had been resolved. That could take weeks, weeks that Morris had assured him he did not have. So Huntley carefully lay Morris’s body upon the ground and used the man’s coat to cover his face. His own clothing was utterly soaked in Morris’s blood. Getting on a ship in gore-drenched clothes was not an attractive or likely option. He had gone through his pack and found a fresh change, wrapping the ruined garments in a small blanket and stuffing them back into his pack. No point in leaving any clues to his identity when the constabulary did finally discover Morris.
Huntley had felt not a little guilty, leaving Morris alone in that dank alley, but there was nothing to be done for it. When he had presented the papers to the steamship Frances’s first mate, he was taken at his word to be Anthony Morris, of Devonshire Terrace, London, and was shown to a cabin far more luxurious than the one Huntley had voyaged in on his return. As the ship raised anchor and prepared to sail, the elegance of the cabin, with its brass fixtures and framed prints, could not compete with the restlessness of Huntley’s heart, and he found himself standing on the deck with a few of the other passengers, watching the shore of England recede.
“We’re going to Constantinople.” Huntley looked over and saw a young, genteel woman at his shoulder beaming at him. A sharp-eyed mama stood nearby, watching the flirtation of her charge, but had evidently gleaned enough information about “Mr. Morris” to render him an appropriate target for a girl’s shipboard romance. Huntley felt the stirrings of panic.
“This is my first international voyage,” the girl continued brightly. “I cannot wait to get away from boring old Shropshire.” She waited, smiling prettily, for his suitably charming response. A light sweat beaded on his back.
“Knew a fellow from Constantinople,” Huntley finally said. “Excellent shot. I once saw him shoot a mosquito off a water buffalo’s rump.”
The girl gaped at him, flushed, then turned and walked away as quickly as she could toward the protective embrace of her mother. After the mother glared at him, both females disappeared. Presumably they were off to spread the word that Mr. Morris was the most uncouth and ill-mannered man on the ship, including the one-eyed cook who was both a drunkard and an atheist.
Perhaps a little more time away from England would be for the best. Huntley would have to start his bride hunt when he came back, and, if that last exchange was any indicator, he sorely needed some refinement where his conversation with ladies was concerned. Fifteen years out of the company of respectable women tended to leave a mark on one’s manners.
He had an even larger enigma on his hands than the workings of the feminine mind. Reaching into his pocket, Huntley pulled out the remarkable compass and stared at its face. He rubbed his thumb over the writings that covered the case as if trying to decipher them by touch, then flipped open the lid to look at the four blades that comprised the four directions. Priceless and old, even he could see that. And full of mystery.
Yes, things were about to get very interesting. No Leeds and job and wife, at least, not yet. A wry smile touched his lips, and he turned his back on the receding English coastline to make his way back down to his cabin.
A Mysterious Message Delivered
Urga, Outer Mongolia. 1874. Three months later.
An Englishman was in Urga.
The town was no stranger to foreigners. Half of Urga was Chinese; merchants and Manchu officials dealt in commerce and administering the Qing empire. Russians, too, had a small foothold in the town. The Russian consulate was one of the only actual buildings in a town otherwise almost entirely comprised of felt ger tents and Buddhist temples. So it was not entirely unexpected to hear of an outlander in town.
But Englishmen—those were much more rare, and, to Thalia Burgess, more alarming.
She hurried through what passed for streets, jostling past the crowds. Strange to be amongst crowds in a land that was mostly wide open. Like a typical Mongol, Thalia wore a del, the three-quarter-length robe that buttoned at the right shoulder to a high, round-necked collar, a sash of red silk at her waist. Trousers tucked into boots with upturned toes completed her ordinary dress. Though she was English, as was her father, they had both been in Mongolia so long that their presence was hardly remarked upon even by the most isolated nomads. No one paid her any mind as she made her way through the labyrinth of what approximated streets in Urga, toward the two gers she and her father shared.
She tried to fight the panic that rose in her chest. Word had reached her in the marketplace that an Englishman had come to this distant part of the world, which, in and of itself troubled her. But the worst news came when she learned that this stranger was asking for her father, Franklin Burgess. Her first thought was to get home at once. If the Heirs had come calling, her father would be unable to defend himself, even with the help of their servants.
As she hurried, Thalia dodged past a crowd of saffron-robed monks, some of them boys training to become lamas. She passed a temple, hearing the monks inside chanting, then stopped abruptly and threw herself back against the wall, hiding behind a painted pillar.
It was him. The Englishman. She knew him right away by his clothing—serviceable and rugged coat, khaki trousers, tall boots, a battered broad-brimmed felt hat atop his sandy head. He carried a pack, a rifle encased in a scabbard hanging from the back. A pistol was strapped to his left hip, and a horn-handled hunting knife on his right hip. All of his gear looked as though it had seen a lot of service. This man was a traveler. He was tall as well, half a head taller than nearly everyone in the crowd. Thalia could not see his face as he walked away from her, had no idea if he was young or old, though he had the ease and confidence of movement that came from relative youth. In his current condition, her father couldn’t face down a young, healthy, and armed man with an agenda.
Thalia pushed away from the pillar and dodged down a narrow passage between gers. Whoever he was, he didn’t know Urga as she did, and she could take shortcuts to at least ensure she arrived at her home before him. Thalia had been to Urga many times, and, since her father’s accident, they had been here for months. The chaos still did not make sense to her, but it was a familiar chaos she could navigate.
As she raced past the light fences that surrounded the tents, she had to thread past herds of goats and sheep, horses and camels, and dodge snarling, barely tamed dogs that stood guard. She snarled at a dog who nipped at her leg, causing the animal to fall back. Nimbly, she leapt over a cluster of children playing. As Thalia rounded past another ger, she caught one more glimpse of the Englishman, this time just a brief flash of his face, and, yes, he was young, but she did not see enough to ascertain more.
Perhaps, she tried to console herself, he wasn’t an Heir, merely a merchant or some scientist come to Outer Mongolia to ply his trade, and in search of the language and faces of his homeland. She smiled grimly. It didn’t seem likely. No one came to Urga without a specific purpose. And the Englishman’s purpose was them.
At last, she reached the two gers that made up the Burgess enclosure. Thalia burst through the door of her father’s tent to find him reading. The furnishings here were exactly as they might be in any Mongol’s ger, with only books in English, Russian, and French to indicate that she and her father were from another country. She allowed herself a momentary relief to see him unharmed and alone. Franklin Burgess was fifty-five, his black hair and beard now dusted with silver, green eyes creased in the corners with lines that came from advancing age and nearly a lifetime spent out of doors. He was her sole parent, had been for almost her entire twenty-five years, and Thalia could not imagine her world without him. She might as well try to picture what life might be like without the sun. Cold. Unbearable.
At her hurried entrance, he set aside his book and peered at her over his spectacles.
“What is it, tsetseg?” he asked.
Thalia quickly explained to him what she had learned, and her father frowned. “I saw him,” she added. “He didn’t know where he was going, but he wasn’t panicking. He seemed used to dealing with unfamiliar situations.”
“An Heir, perhaps?” Franklin asked as he removed his glasses.
She shook her head. “I could not tell.”
With more calm than she felt, he said, “Be a dear and hand me my rifle.” Thalia hastily retrieved her father’s gun, one that could open up a nicely sized hole in anyone who sought mischief. Franklin checked to be sure it was loaded, then tucked it behind the chair in which he sat, within easy reach. He was careful not to disturb his right leg, propped in front of him on a low stool. The bones were finally beginning to repair themselves after the accident with the horses, and neither Thalia nor her father wanted any kind of setback to the healing process, not when it had taken so long for the nasty double break to mend at all. It was amazing that, after being trampled by a herd of horses, her father had sustained only a few cuts and bruises in addition to his broken leg. It could have been much worse.
“We don’t know if he is an Heir, though,” Franklin said. He looked over to the kestrel they kept, perched quietly near the bookcase. The bird didn’t seem uneasy, a good sign. “Just in case it isn’t an Heir, perhaps it would be wise if you…” He gestured toward her del. His own clothes were a mixture of European and Mongol, and while it might be more common for European men to adopt some aspect of native dress outside of their home country, it was entirely different for women. Should this strange Englishman turn out to be nothing more than a trader or scholar, it wouldn’t do to raise suspicions. To the outside world, Franklin Burgess and his daughter Thalia were simply anthropologists collecting folklore for their own academic pursuits.
Thalia looked down at herself and grimaced. “The things I do for the Blades,” she muttered, and her father chuckled. She gave him a quick kiss on his bristly cheek and rushed into her ger. Most Mongolian families did not have separate gers for parents and children, but as soon as Thalia had turned thirteen, her father thought it best to stray from native custom and give his daughter some privacy.
“Udval,” she called to her female servant in Mongolian, “can you please grab my dress? The English one? It’s in the green chest. At the bottom.”
Thalia began pulling off her del, her boots to follow, as the woman set aside her brewing of milk tea to look for the seldom-used gown.
“Here is your dress, Thalia guai,” Udval said, holding up the pale blue gown in question. She looked at it, then looked back at Thalia, doubt plainly written on her face. “I think, perhaps, it has grown smaller.”
Standing in the middle of her ger, wearing a chemise and drawers, Thalia fought back a sigh. “No, it has stayed the same, but I have gotten bigger.” Three inches taller, to be more precise. The last time Thalia had worn that gown, she had been fifteen, and though she had been a relatively average-sized girl, she was now a tall woman who stood nose-to-nose with most men. She and her father had purchased the dress ready-made from a Regent Street shop, and it was now the sole remaining relic of their long-ago trip to England. Fashions, no doubt, had changed considerably, but into what, Thalia hadn’t the vaguest idea. The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine seldom reached Outer Mongolia.
“We’ll have to do the best we can,” she said to Udval, who held the dress open as Thalia struggled into it.
“Do Englishwomen have fewer ribs?” Udval asked as she valiantly tried to close up the back of the dress.
“No,” Thalia gasped, trying to suck her sides in as far as she could, “they prefer to have all their ribs shoved into their innards with a corset.”
“Ah! It is closed now, but do not take deep breaths. What is a corset?”
Thalia tugged at the cuffs of the dress, but unless she wanted to tug the sleeves right out of the shoulder seams, her wrists were going to be pitifully exposed, the cuffs ending in the middle of her forearms. “A torture device that compresses a woman’s ribs and stomach.”
Udval looked shocked. “Why do the Englishmen punish their women like that?”
“Because the women are much smarter than the men,” Thalia answered. She shook out the full skirts that hung limply to the ground. Without a crinoline to support the fabric, the dress looked like a deflated circus tent. Thalia remembered that she hadn’t a single pair of the dainty shoes she had worn with the dress, and even if she did, her heels would now hang off the back. She shoved her feet back into her Mongolian boots. There wasn’t much time left.
She started for the door, but then remembered her mother’s hand mirror, and pulled it from the small box of jewelry and other mementos left to her after her mother had died. Thalia scanned her reflection critically. Englishwomen kept their hair up, so Thalia took her mass of heavy, dark hair and hastily pulled it into a bun that almost immediately began to slide loose. She found a few pins in the box that managed to tame her hair, but just barely. She hadn’t any cosmetics, so there would be no way to hide the telltale flush of color in her cheeks, or the gleaming brightness of her jade green eyes, all of which came from years on horseback beneath the expansive Mongolian sky. She recalled that Englishmen liked their women pale and delicate. Thalia failed on both counts.
What did it matter? Her primary concern was making sure that the inquisitive stranger was not an Heir, or anyone else who might cause her and her father harm. Fashion could go hang.
Thalia ran back to her father’s ger, cursing as the narrow dress bit into her sides. Their other servant, Batu, followed her inside, and he made a choking noise when he observed her dress. She gave him a fierce scowl that would have sent lesser men running for cover, but Batu had known her since she was a child, and only chuckled to himself as he moved to put away the books scattered throughout the ger.
When Franklin saw her enter, his eyebrows rose.
“You look…”
“Hilarious,” Thalia supplied.
“Well, yes,” her father agreed. “But I was also going to say ‘lovely’.”
Thalia went to one of the painted chests and pulled out her father’s seldom-used revolver, then checked to ensure it was loaded. “I can’t very well be both.”
Before her father could answer, there was a knock at the wooden door to the tent. Her father called out, “Enter.” The door began to swing open.
Thalia tucked the hand holding the revolver behind her back. She stood behind her father’s chair and braced herself, wondering what kind of man would step across the threshold and if she would have to use a gun on another human being for the first time in her life.
The man ducked to make it through the door, then immediately removed his hat, uncovering a head of close-cropped, wheat-colored hair. He was not precisely handsome, but he possessed an air of command and confidence that shifted everything to his favor. His face was lean and rugged, his features bold and cleanly defined; there was nothing of the drawing room about him, nothing refined or elegant. He was clean-shaven, allowing the hard planes of his face to show clearly. He was not an aristocrat and looked as though he had fought for everything he ever had in his life, rather than expecting it to be given to him. Even in the filtered light inside the ger, Thalia could see the gleaming gold of his eyes, their sharp intelligence that missed nothing as they scanned the inside of the tent and finally fell on her and her father.
“Franklin Burgess?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” her father answered, guarded. “My daughter, Thalia.”
She remembered enough to sketch a curtsy as she felt the heat of the stranger’s gaze on her. An uncharacteristic flush rose in her cheeks.
“And you are…?” her father prompted.
“Captain Gabriel Huntley,” came the reply, and now it made sense that the man who had such sure bearing would be an officer. “Of the Thirty-third Regiment.” Thalia was not certain she could relax just yet, since it was not unheard of for the Heirs to find members in the ranks of the military. She quickly took stock of the width of the captain’s shoulders, how even standing still he seemed to radiate energy and the capacity for lethal movement. Captain Huntley would be a fine addition to the Heirs.
There was something magnetic about him, though, something that charged the very air inside the ger, and she felt herself acutely aware of him. His sculpted face, the brawn of his body, the way he carried his gear, all of it, felt overwhelmingly masculine. How ironic, how dreadful, it would be, if the only man to have attracted her attention in years turned out to be her enemy. Sergei, her old suitor, had wound up being her enemy, but in a very different way.