Batu still looked dubious that anyone was on the steppe besides themselves and the occasional herd of gazelle, but Thalia’s instincts for such things were seldom wrong, so he did not pursue the matter any further.
She had become aware of someone’s presence behind them shortly after they had ridden past the outskirts of Urga, when the gers had begun to thin into more and more remote ails, or encampments. It could only be Captain Huntley, and though he had been very good at remaining quiet, keeping his horse from kicking up too much telltale dust, she had known he was there.
She had been all too aware of him since he stepped into her father’s ger. He was big and commanding and unapologetic about both of those qualities, and though Thalia had always been at ease in the presence of men, there was something about Captain Huntley, something so specifically masculine, that she could not feel comfortable around him. His golden eyes, his whiskey voice, his very physical nature that the tent could barely contain—these things combined like a drug in her body, a drug on which she could not become dependent. She could never trust such an opiate as Captain Huntley. Her swift and strong reaction to him was unnerving. The very fact that he did bother her bothered her even more, until she felt as though she was chasing her own ghost, grabbing at something that would always slip from her grasp.
In a few more minutes, it would no longer matter. She would confront Captain Huntley and insist that he return to England. Truthfully, it didn’t matter where he went, Brazil or the Maldives or anywhere else, so long as he wasn’t following her in Mongolia. And then her interest in him would disappear, as it must.
She and Batu crested the rise, then rode down into the small valley where she planned on watering and resting the horses. Water was always scarce, even far north of the vast Gobi desert. It would not benefit her and Batu to push the horses, despite the time concerns, since thirsty horses tired quickly. Better to lose a few minutes here and there than to face a larger obstacle later on.
The valley that contained the stream was shaped like a cup, surrounded on all sides by low, rocky hills. A few larch trees dotted the valley, most of them clustered near the water’s edge. As they approached the stream, she and Batu dismounted and led the horses to the water. The animals gratefully dipped their muzzles into the cold, fresh stream, and Thalia crouched near the bank, cupping her hands to take her own drink. She closed her eyes, tasting the sweet and bracing water. Its purity was never in doubt. To pollute a lake or stream was a great sin for a Mongol, and all nomads took great care to preserve the cleanliness of the water, since it was so precious. Drinking deeply from the stream, Thalia remembered the sludge and rubbish floating in the Thames, the children and women walking up and down its muddy banks, looking for anything of value that had been discarded and then churned up. She had heard tales, too, of a noxious fog that rose up from the Thames, blanketing London with a thick yellow haze that made it impossible to see or breathe. She had no idea how anyone could live like that, why Londoners never saw the direct relationship between clean water and the health of themselves and their city.
As if her thoughts had conjured up another Englishman, Thalia heard the rattle of rocks kicked up from the ground behind her. It had to be the captain. She rose, preparing to be very polite but exceedingly firm in her assertions that she and her servant would proceed alone. As she turned, the polite refusal vanished as her blood chilled.
Henry Lamb stood twenty feet away. Impeccably groomed and blond, he smiled without warmth. He was accompanied by an unsmiling Jonas Edgeworth, his black hair gleaming with tonic, his moustache clipped and severe. They were both attired in the most expensive expedition clothing that Bond Street could provide, as well as armed with revolvers on their hips. Nearby stood three Mongols of dubious appearance holding the reins of a half dozen saddled and packed horses. One of the Mongols was exceedingly big—a barrel-chested man with powerful arms and a rapacious look. His del was threadbare, and he wore a battered European hat, with a wicked hunting knife hanging from his belt. He could probably tear a camel apart with his bare hands. However, the large Mongol did not frighten her nearly as much as the well-groomed Englishmen. She instinctively stepped back, trying to reach the rifle strapped to her saddle.
“Please, Miss Burgess,” Lamb said, holding up his hands and giving her another bland smile, “it isn’t necessary to resort to base violence.”
“I believe Tony Morris might disagree with you,” Thalia answered. She tried to hold her voice level, keep the fear out of her words, but she couldn’t keep her thoughts from Tony, lying dead in an alley in Southampton, with only Captain Huntley to bear witness to his passage from this world to the next. Would Batu play the same role for her?
Lamb’s smile faltered only slightly. “An unfortunate, but necessary, casualty.” He took a step toward her, and she lunged toward her rifle. Before she could pull the gun from its scabbard, Jonas Edgeworth and two of the Mongols had their own guns pointed at her and Batu. Lamb did not bother to draw his own weapon, and actually looked a little bored as he drawled, “I think it will be much more civilized if we conduct our conversation without your being armed, don’t you agree? Take your hand off of your gun.”
Thalia obeyed but did not bother to answer. Her mind whirled, trying to figure out how she and Batu could get away, if she could pull her rifle in time. She understood that it had been Lamb and Edgeworth, along with their hired muscle, that she had observed following her, and not Captain Huntley. If only it had been him. She would much rather tell the attractive, persistent captain to go away than face down two Heirs and their brutes.
“What do you want?” she asked, stalling.
“You know what we want, girl,” Edgeworth barked. Unlike Lamb, he hadn’t mastered the art of polished menace, and his pale skin was already reddening with anger.
Again, Lamb held up one finely manicured hand. “Enough, Edgeworth. We don’t have to resort to anything unpleasant. Yet.” Edgeworth reddened further, but clamped his lips together to keep his silence. Lamb continued, tipping his head toward the giant Mongol, “Our friend came to us a few months ago with a riddle about where to find the Source.”
“Then you know where to find it,” Thalia answered.
“Not quite. But you know this miserable country very well.” He picked at a minuscule piece of dirt on his lapel. Thalia nearly smiled at the Sisyphean labor. “Come now, Miss Burgess,” Lamb added, attempting to sound appealing, “don’t be difficult. You can prove yourself a credit to your sex, and do your country a great service as well, by telling us where the Source is. I am prepared to make it worth your while.”
“So you can enslave the people of Outer Mongolia?”
“With the power of the Source at our disposal, Mongolia would be conquered,” Lamb snapped. “We’d force these shiftless nomads into real work. Mining.”
“And those that resisted?”
“Disposed of.”
“Killed, you mean.”
Lamb shrugged, unconcerned about the possibility of slaughter. “Yellow barbarians don’t matter.”
Instead of answering Lamb, or running up and shoving her knee into his groin as she longed to do, Thalia turned toward the three Mongols standing nearby. “Do you know what these Englishmen mean to do?” she asked them in Mongolian. “They will steal the heart of your homeland and use it against you, to subjugate you, murder you if you resist them.”
Two of the Mongols shifted uneasily. But the large Mongol grunted in an approximation of a laugh. “Who do you think sold them the information about the prize in the first place?” he said.
“But your country,” Thalia protested, shocked, “your way of life as a nomad—”
“Doesn’t buy me a herd of camels,” the Mongol said. “Or put mutton in my belly or women in my ger.”
Batu looked disgusted, and Thalia could not blame him. She was horrified that someone could trade his life and culture for a handful of pound sterling.
“That’s enough of that,” Lamb cut in, speaking in English. He was irritated and impatient, his polish beginning to rub away, revealing greed, ambition, and something uglier, something cruel and brutal, beneath. “I’m tired of niceties. I’ll let my men get the answer out of you.” He gestured toward the Mongols, waving them forward. His men leered at her, concerns about their way of life forgotten in exchange for a chance to assault her, and began to advance. Thalia knew she couldn’t get to her rifle in time, so she went for the knife at her waist just as one of the Mongols reached out to grab her.
He never touched her. There was a loud crack, and the man fell to the ground, blood seeping from a hole in the middle of his chest. He was dead within seconds. Everyone, including Thalia, whirled around, looking for the source of the gunfire. She and Batu immediately drew their weapons from the scabbards on their saddles and crouched low, having no time to register shock.
Lamb ran for the shelter of his horses. A bullet whined, and a small patch of ground exploded near his feet as he sprinted. Edgeworth began firing wildly at the top of the valley as he, too, headed toward the cluster of agitated horses. The large Mongol unshouldered his Russian rifle as he squatted behind some brush. When another gunshot pierced the air, grazing the Mongol’s cheek, the man merely dabbed at the line of blood on his face and shouted at the remaining Mongol thug. The big Mongol pointed at the rise of the hills to the east, and ordered his compatriot to ride up there and take out the marksman while he provided cover fire.
The man looked dubious at first, but the large Mongol shouted that he would tear his insides out and feed them to the hawks, and looked as though he meant every bloodthirsty word. So the man leapt into the saddle to obey. The giant Mongol began firing at the crest of the hill as the other rode closer to whomever was shooting from the valley’s rim. It wasn’t a deep valley, and the rider would reach the crest within a moment. The marksman, whoever he was, could not defend himself against the rider and the huge Mongol’s fire at the same time, and then Thalia and Batu would be on their own.
Another shot rang out, and the rider was pitched from his horse. He groaned, clutching his chest, and went still. The animal reared in fright and sped away, leaving behind the body of its rider. The large Mongol turned toward Thalia with a snarl as she swung the barrel of her rifle away from the dead rider and toward the Mongol’s head.
“My accuracy is even better at this distance,” she said to him as more shots rang out from the top of the valley.
With a vicious sneer, he began to unfold from his crouch, heading toward her.
“Tsend!” Lamb shouted at the big Mongol. He and Edgeworth were struggling to keep the horses under control, the animals snorting and shoving each other as they tried to break free and run away. “We’ll get her later!”
The Mongol, Tsend, looked torn. He clearly wanted to smash the butt of his rifle into her face, and maybe do worse, but another shot from the sniper just missed Tsend’s head. The lure of coin and threat of bullets from the hidden marksman both won out, and the Mongol ran for his own mount. The two Englishmen and their Mongol brawn rode furiously away, bent low over the saddles and casting fearful, angry glances over their shoulders. Batu tried to fire at them, but his muzzleloader was too old and slow to be very accurate when he was hurried. It did not seem to matter as the Heirs disappeared over the ridge, the sounds of their horses’ hooves echoing in retreat.
As soon as they vanished, Thalia leapt to her feet but kept her rifle close. She shielded her eyes from the sun as a figure of a man appeared at the top of the valley, the light behind him turning him into a golden-ringed titan.
“Nice shot,” he said with a familiar gruff voice as he made his way quickly down the side of the hill. “But I could’ve taken him with my revolver had he made it over the ridge.”
Thalia lowered her rifle and tried not to sigh with relief.
“You are an extremely stubborn man, Captain,” she said.
He came down into the valley with long-legged strides, forming from a shape of light into a very real man. A man who was almost smiling as he approached her and she almost smiled back.
“In your case,” he answered, “that’s a very good thing.”
She wanted to say something clever and stoic, something a battle-hardened veteran might pronounce while calmly lighting a celebratory cheroot, but that was precisely the moment her mind and body both realized that she had just shot a man. Killed him. Not an animal, but a human. Her legs gave out from under her as her vision dimmed. She was a murderer. Nausea clutched her stomach.
But then she felt something warm and solid beside her, around her, as she was lowered gently to the ground. “All right. Everything’s right, lovely,” the captain murmured, his arms cradling her as he eased her onto the grass. She let him hold her as she tried to find some air but couldn’t find enough anywhere in the world to fill her lungs, let alone take a simple breath. The world retreated. She felt the rifle slip from her fingers, and it was only the quick reflexes of Batu that kept it from clattering to the ground.
“Now, just be calm, lass,” the captain said, quiet and steady. “Have a look at me and be calm.” With one large, callused hand cupped around her head, he turned her to face him. His hat was off, and, through the mists that gathered inside her head, she could see him, as close as he had been the other day, no, closer. She could see the hard planes of his face that seemed, at that moment, just a little softer, the bump on the bridge of his nose that revealed at least one break, the contrast with his beautifully formed mouth, and the small lines that fanned out from the corners of his amber eyes. His eyes, she realized, were not nearly as cold as she had first thought them, but full of living energy, almost animalistic in its intensity. It was that immediate connection to life that started to bring her back from wherever she had been drifting.