Gabriel hadn’t thought, but had instinctively taken Thalia’s hand in his own. When the world fell apart and reshaped into something new, the only thing that felt right and balanced was her. He needed the touch of her skin, having her close and under his protection, as a warm vapor shaped itself into a thick cloud within the tent. Gabriel didn’t know what the hell the cloud was, what it might be capable of doing—good or ill—and had to be sure he could safeguard Thalia.
He waited, tensed, as shapes congealed within the mist. Gabriel’s other hand hovered over his revolver, just in case. Maybe a bullet couldn’t stop a magical steam creature, but it might, and he’d be ready.
Instead of a beast or something sinister, the figures revealed themselves to be people. They sharpened into focus, as did the world around them, until it was like watching a stage play hovering over the ground. The crowd watching the display shouted out as one, and even Gabriel had to swallow an oath. The figures in the clouds were the tribe themselves. Gabriel recognized several of the faces, including those of the chieftain and his wife. And, Great Gideon, Gabriel himself and Thalia, as they had competed in the nadaam and taken a meal with Bold’s family. Bizarre, to see himself manifested within the steam.
Everyone in the tribe appeared to be going about his or her normal life, performing chores, tending to the animals. And cooking. Oyuun gasped nearby as she watched herself in the mists, filling the tea kettle. Yet, these ordinary tasks were odd because—
“Everything is going backward,” Thalia murmured beside him.
“Like a zoetrope spinning in reverse,” Gabriel answered.
And in that strange pattern, the ordinary life of the tribe played out topsy-turvy, the sun setting and rising, west to east, and odder still, foals disappearing back inside their dams, tall grasses retreating as seeds into the earth, thaws turning to snow. Yet, through it all, the shadow play kept returning to the kettle as Oyuun and then many other women, old dames growing young, boiled water inside it as their families moved across the steppes. Always, the bright carpet of red flowers surrounded them, wherever they camped.
“My grandmother,” Bold exclaimed as one of the cloud women brewed tea. Then she disappeared and more women took her place. Whole generations, hundreds of years, passed in a moment. Even the kettle itself grew slightly less battered. The unceasing rhythms of life, even in reverse, made Gabriel feel humbled and small, knowing how brief his own time on this earth was in comparison to the bigger world. He gripped Thalia’s hand more tightly.
Then there was a shift within the clouds. The kettle left the tribe and was now carried backward in a horseman’s pack. A soldier, judging by his armaments. But he carried no firearms, only a blade and bow. It seemed to be far back in the past, possibly more than five hundred years. He sped through the steppes, through territory which seemed recognizable to Gabriel, and quickly he realized why. A thriving city appeared in a familiar valley.
“It’s Karakorum,” Thalia breathed.
“Except alive.”
The ruin was now the center of a flourishing Mongol Empire, and the whole stone tortoises supported pillars to mark the limits of the city. Carts, merchants, scholars, ambassadors, traders, and holy people from all over the known world streamed into Karakorum, and the riches on display made Gabriel’s eyes sting. Even the wealth of the gilded palaces in India could not compare to the piles of gold, jewels, and silks that flowed like a swollen river. And included in that opulence was the humble kettle, carried in by the soldier, where it found its home within one of the vast storehouses of treasure and plunder.
But it didn’t stay within the warehouse for long. Along with tapestries, polished blocks of jade, and scroll paintings, the kettle was placed into a cart and taken backward with a great army heading southeast. Even an old soldier like Gabriel could not stop the whistle of appreciation to see the size of this army, a huge column of riders and horses, stretching to the horizon and beyond. The ease and comfort of the men in their saddles marked them as the finest horsemen Gabriel had ever seen—and he’d been witness to incredible feats of horsemanship over the years. The vision within the mist moved along the enormous army, until it reached a single armored man, trailed by generals and guards, at the head of the troops. A man with ruthless intelligence glinting in his dark eyes as he surveyed the lands around him, missing nothing, assessing everything for his empire. Gabriel’s heart seized. The man’s power was a palpable thing, certain.
A name rose up from within the tent, passing like a torch amidst the tribe watching the steam clouds. “Khan,” the herdsmen murmured. “Genghis Khan.”
“Oh, my God,” Thalia gulped. “It really is him.”
Gabriel said nothing, stunned. He, Thalia, Batu, and the tribe were the first people to see the conqueror’s face in over six hundred years or more. There was no denying the man had the air of command about him, worn with complete assurance. And yet, the Khan was a man only. Not a myth, or a creature of magic, but flesh, as faulty and fragile as any other living thing.
Still, Genghis Khan knew warfare. And Gabriel witnessed its cruel machine as the kettle’s clouds showed smoking ruins turn into thriving towns, villages, and cities, the result in reverse of having the Khan’s army pitilessly subjugate and pillage with no concern for human life, only acquisition. Whatever settlement foolish enough to try to hold out against the Khan met with a gruesome, bloody end. Those who conceded defeat were spared, but those that defied him were destroyed utterly. The tribe, watching such scenes of slaughter, screamed and wept. Even Gabriel, who had witnessed things that would drive most men mad, felt his gorge rise to see men torn to pieces, women and children skewered, kings and ministers tortured to death. Thalia pressed her face into Gabriel’s shoulder as she shuddered. He stroked the back of her head, offering what comfort he could. It was made worse because it was going backward, and a mutilated corpse became, in a moment, a man fighting for his life.
“You must think me a coward, not to watch,” she gulped.
“I think you’re a good woman who hates death and suffering. No shame in that.” He was glad that he could still be troubled by such brutality. If it left him unmoved, that would disturb him.
Everywhere the Khan vanquished, he took. Not only treasure and goods, but people, too. Learned men and craftsmen were taken prisoner, added to the spoils. Yet the kettle continued on with the army, taken past the grassy steppes until the terrain grew barren and rocky, thirsty plains swept by the wind. A vast and pitiless desert.
“The Gobi,” said Thalia, who’d lifted her head from the shelter of Gabriel’s shoulder. Shining wet tracks marked her face, and he brushed away the moisture with gentle fingertips. “I’ve only visited the very edge with my father a few times.”
“A harsh place,” Gabriel replied.
“But beautiful, from what I saw.”
He had to agree that it was, in its desolate way. People lived there, too, tending short-legged camels and sheep. The isolated herdsmen were left undisturbed by the Khan, who passed them by. Through the hard desert rode the huge army, covering miles and miles, the porous border between Mongolia and China, until, appearing on the horizon, rose a craggy peak. At the top of the peak stood a thickly walled building with the distinctive sloped ceramic roofs of Chinese temples. The army was making its way, backward, toward the temple. A cold ember settled in Gabriel’s stomach. Monks and holy men would be no match for the Khan’s soldiers.
“Look away, Thalia,” he commanded her quietly.
She complied without a word of protest, pressing her closed eyes into the curve of his neck, so he had the strange double feeling of watching the army of Genghis Khan slaughter a temple full of Buddhist monks while Thalia’s warm breath fluttered over his skin. She smelled of grasses and sandalwood.
“They’ve gone now,” Gabriel said, after a time, “and the kettle stayed behind.”
Thalia raised her head to watch. “I wonder if the monks knew what the kettle was?”
“If they didn’t, they’re taking damned good care of a simple teapot.” It wasn’t used in daily routine, but was kept in a locked cabinet in the head monk’s chambers; the head monk held the key. Seconds earlier, a Mongol soldier had smashed that same cabinet as a monk tried to defend it.
Moments later, just before the killing blade stopped him, the monk stood before the cabinet, hands in the air. Bright energy glowed briefly. He’d been trying to cast a protective spell.
“Oh, God,” Thalia said, under her breath. “They did know it was magical.”
What, exactly, the powers of the kettle were wasn’t revealed, for it stayed safely hidden for still more generations. Until, one day, the cabinet was opened, and a monk took the kettle far into the depths of the temple, through courtyards and passageways. Then sparks and flame. A man, stripped to the waist, pounding metal into shape. The kettle was made and then unmade over the blacksmith’s anvil. A swirling ball of light was released as the kettle became raw material. Close at hand, a senior monk chanted, drawing magic from the fires of the forge. The kettle and its power was then unborn.
The thick clouds of steam shrank quickly, retreating into the kettle, until nothing was left of the history everyone had just seen but a lingering damp warmth.
For long moments, no one spoke. Not even a baby fussed.
Gabriel turned to Thalia. “Looks like we’re going to China,” he said.
“I will send my best horsemen and hunters with you,” Bold insisted. “We may no longer be soldiers in the khan’s army, but, if we have to protect the magic from wicked men, we can fight.”
A small council had gathered in Bold’s ger to discuss what should happen next. It was certain that after Tsend’s defeat at the nadaam, the Heirs would come soon. They still believed the Source was the ruby, would kill for it, but when they did learn that the ruby had no power, they would destroy everything and everyone in the search for the true Source. There was little time to spare. The kettle had belonged to the tribe for generations, but everyone had agreed that it needed to be returned to its place of origin, the Chinese temple on the other side of the Gobi, and safeguarded by those who had created it. The temple survived, or, at least, it had at the time the khan’s army left it. They had to take the chance that it still stood, hundreds of years later. There was no alternative.
Through Thalia, Gabriel said to Bold, “The men we had spoken of before, they’re dangerous, and they’ll be hunting the magic, to take it by any means necessary. Including killing. I can’t ask you to risk your men’s lives.”
Bold drew himself up proudly. “It is our decision to make. All of us would gladly sacrifice ourselves to defend our country, our families, those that we love.”
Gabriel understood. He glanced over at Thalia, her face serious and focused as the literal fate of nations was being decided. She showed no fear, no hesitation, only a burning desire to see the just thing done. If all Englishwomen were raised in Mongolia, they’d be formidable creatures. That wasn’t right. There was only one Thalia, and no nation could claim her as its exclusive handiwork. It was her uniqueness that made him all the more determined to see no harm come to her, no matter the cost to himself.
“Fine,” Gabriel said, his voice clipped. “Get your men together. We leave in an hour. Some must stay behind to protect the ail if the Heirs return.”
With a nod, Bold left the ger, taking the men who had gathered for the council with him. Gabriel could hear the chieftain, issuing orders as his tribesmen hastened to do their duty.
“Batu,” Thalia said, turning to him as he stood nearby, “you must ride for Urga immediately and let my father know everything that has come to pass.”
“Everything?” Batu repeated, looking from Thalia to Gabriel and back again. So, the man knew what had happened between them. Gabriel supposed it wasn’t that hard to figure out, given that every time he looked at Thalia he felt as though he’d drunk pots of wine. He probably had damned stars in his eyes, like some fool in a Walter Scott epic. But he didn’t feel like a fool. He felt…her.
“Everything about the Source,” Thalia said firmly. Still, a deeper blush stole into her cheeks as she spoke. “Tell him where we are going.”
Batu narrowed his eyes, but agreed. “I will pack my belongings now and be off at once.” He took a few steps, then stopped and held out his hand to Gabriel. “This is how it’s done?”
Gabriel swallowed his momentary surprise. He would have figured Batu would have tried to castrate him instead of shake his hand. “Yes,” he said, taking Batu’s hand and giving it a shake. “You’re a fine man, Batu. A fine soldier.”
“You, as well, Huntley guai,” was the solemn answer. “We would have been quite lost without you. I would have been dead many times over.” With a meaningful glance at Thalia, he added, “And I trust you to do what is right.”
“Batu!” Thalia yelped.
“I will try to do right,” Gabriel replied. “In everything.”
That seemed to satisfy the loyal servant. Releasing Gabriel’s hand, he turned to Thalia and quickly enfolded her in a tight embrace, which she returned. Batu said something in Mongolian, before saying in English, “Be safe, child.” His voice sounded thick.
“I will. And you, too,” Thalia said, and murmured something else in Mongolian. She held him close, this man she had known almost her whole life and who was to her as close, if not closer, than blood. He’d taught her to ride and helped her move past the silencing grief of her mother’s death, felt her injuries, and struggled to keep her from harm. Gabriel, jaded as he was, felt his own eyes grow wet to see the unconditional, fierce love between these two old friends.
Then Thalia forcibly stepped away, pain and resolve warring in her expression. “Tell my father I love him. And I will do him and the Blades proud. I swear it.”
“You have already, Thalia guai,” Batu said, blinking. After dragging his sleeve across his eyes, he strode hastily from the ger, as if afraid another moment would see him disgraced.
Now Gabriel and Thalia were alone in the ger. They stared at each other for a moment before he crossed over to her and put his arms around her. She felt strong and alive. They knew what the Source was now, and what they had to do with it. The Heirs would be coming, and they would be desperate. Which meant they would do anything to claim the Source for themselves. Including killing anyone, even a woman, who stood in their way.
He was glad women weren’t soldiers. If he’d fallen in love with a female soldier, each day in the army, each day facing death, would’ve been hell, knowing that a precious life could be lost.
“Don’t try to send me with him,” she said, willful.
“I want to, yes,” Gabriel answered, and when she started to protest, he continued, over her objections, “but I won’t try. It’s your right to protect the Source. Just as it’s my right to protect you, whether you want that protection or not.”
Her expression softened as she linked her fingers behind his neck. “I wish I knew what tomorrow might bring. I wish I knew we had a future together.”
For the first time in a long while, Gabriel understood what a torture it was to want a future. Especially knowing there was a high degree of likelihood that it wouldn’t come to pass. In war, there were always casualties. All he could try to do was make sure that she wasn’t one of them.
Wars required soldiers, and Henry Lamb knew that he, Edgeworth, and Tsend, even driven as they were, made up a piss-poor, meager army. To that end, Lamb had dispatched Tsend to find them a decently sized batch of mercenaries. The Mongol had grumbled about being sent on such a menial task, but Lamb needed to punish the bastard for failing to win the ruby.
Turned out that the ruby wasn’t the Source after all. Ironic, that. The enchanted hawk that Lamb had circling the herdsmen’s settlement had kept Lamb and Edgeworth partially informed. He’d seen it himself, albeit from a distance, when the hunting eagles had nearly torn themselves from their perches when presented with the genuine Source. Definitely strong power there, perhaps the strongest Lamb had ever seen. As Lamb sat at his folding camp desk, penning a letter to the Heirs back in England, he wondered how to best phrase, “The Source is a grubby old tea kettle,” in a way that didn’t sound completely ludicrous, or, worse, make him look like a buffoon.
Hell, he hadn’t gone to Cambridge for nothing. Lamb managed to cram several polysyllabic words into a few sentences, obfuscating the truth just enough so that the higher members of the Heirs’ inner circle would consider Lamb, and themselves, very clever. It was a trick Lamb had mastered years ago at King’s College, and even earlier, when he’d written letters to home while at Harrow.
“Where the hell is that filthy bugger?” snapped Edgeworth, pacing.
Lamb blotted his letter with a grimace. He felt honor-bound to correct Edgeworth’s abominable swearing habit, but knew he couldn’t cross the younger man. His father was too important to make an enemy of the son. Besides, Lamb needed to stay in Jonas Edgeworth’s good graces. As soon as they returned in triumph to England, Lamb planned on calling on Edgeworth’s sister, the cumbersomely named Victoria Regina Gloriana London Harcourt, née Edgeworth, and more familiarly known as London. She was a pretty woman, perhaps a little too clever, but kept ignorant of the existence of the Heirs through scrupulous manipulation. London’s husband, Lawrence Harcourt, had been an Heir, and it had been on an assignment three years ago that Harcourt had died at the hands of a Blade, Bennett Day. London never learned the details of her husband’s death. If Lamb could secure the widow London’s hand in marriage, he’d be that much closer to Joseph Edgeworth and the inner circle.
With that in mind, Lamb was careful to keep his tone unruffled. “He’ll be here soon with the men we need.” Lamb rose and walked with the letter to their campfire. He reached into his pocket and produced a sprinkling of dried flowers.
“But the Burgess bitch and that tyke soldier are already on the road,” Edgeworth complained. He pointed to the seeing mirror, which indeed revealed Thalia Burgess, the Yorkshireman, and a dozen Mongols riding south, toward the desert. “We don’t know where they’re headed, and we’re out of spells and Sources to slow them down.”
Lamb tossed the letter and flowers into the fire at the same time. The letter curled up quickly, then disappeared in a small cascade of glowing ash. It would reach its destination within hours: a continual fire, burning in the study of the Heirs’ headquarters in London. Such communication was kept to a minimum, since the dried flowers that enabled the spell were exceedingly rare, but Lamb knew that the inner circle would need to know about the latest development in the pursuit of the Mongolian Source.
“The imbeciles only use magic which belongs to themselves, pretty puny stuff, so it stands to reason that they’re going to try to take the Source someplace safe, someplace they believe we won’t be able to breach,” Lamb explained to his short-tempered protégé. “It’s true, I don’t know where that might be, but it doesn’t signify. We’ll catch them before they secret it away. They are merely a bunch of sheepherders led by a woman, with some brute of a common soldier providing muscle. Nothing to fuss about.”
Any further complaint from Edgeworth was drowned out in the sound of approaching hoofbeats. Both Lamb and Edgeworth watched as Tsend rode up. Mongols were largely, and disgustingly, loyal to their homeland, and Lamb had entertained not a little fear that Tsend would be unable to find men desperate and greedy enough to betray their motherland. But gold always seemed to unearth the rapacious, like pigs rooting in shit.
“Where are the men?” Lamb snapped, looking past Tsend.
Wordlessly, Tsend pointed down the road. What Lamb saw there made him truly smile for the first time in weeks, and even Edgeworth shuddered.
Gabriel had been lulled into a false sense of calm. For those few, brief days with Bold’s tribe, he hadn’t been a campaigning soldier. There were those incredible, but brief, hours with Thalia that reminded him he was a man. True, competing in the nadaam hadn’t exactly been a seaside holiday, but Gabriel had been focused on one goal at a time, instead of keeping constant vigilance. The way he was doing now, back on the road, racing toward uncertainty with enemies in pursuit.
Or so he believed. “One of the bloody frustrating things about the Heirs,” he growled to Thalia riding beside him, “is that you can never see them until it’s too late.”
“I’d say that maybe they aren’t following us,” she said, “but that would be hopelessly naïve. But I have to ask: are you sure?”
Gabriel glanced around. They were moving too quickly for him to do proper reconnaissance, which scorched his sausage. How was he supposed to protect Thalia and the Source if he couldn’t get a feel for the land, or sniff out those inbred Heirs? It was enough to make a man chew on his own bullets.
“They’re out there,” he said. “Thanks to their damned magic, I don’t know where, exactly, but they’re on our tail.”
“It’s been nearly a week since we left,” Thalia pointed out. It had been endless hard riding until the horses were half-dead. The end of each day saw Thalia, Gabriel, and their escort collapsing into brief, exhausted sleep; then they rose before dawn to ride even more. It had been tough going, but no one, including Thalia, had complained. Gabriel’s body, on the other hand, was grumbling something fierce, being so near to her but denied the pleasures of her skin.
“Doesn’t matter. Maybe they’re gathering strength. Maybe they’re playing with us. Any of that could be possible.” He tightened his jaw. “I hate running away instead of standing and fighting.”
“We’re not running away,” she answered. “This is a…strategic retreat.”
His smile was wry. “You sound like a commissioned officer covering his arse.”
“Commissioned?” She snorted. “Hardly.”
“That’s right. You’re too smart.” He said, thoughtful, “You’d have made a first-rate soldier.” But he was glad she hadn’t been.
Thalia laughed quietly. “I can’t take orders, or haven’t you noticed?”
“I’ve noticed.” And he liked it.
Had Batu reached Urga by now? Gabriel tried to imagine what the servant was telling Franklin Burgess, not only about the quest for the Source and its uncovering in the most unlikely place, but about him and Burgess’s daughter. He didn’t know how someone told a man that his daughter had taken a lover. Seemed deuced uncomfortable. But what about the return? Gabriel wouldn’t let himself think of what would happen after the Source had been brought back to the Chinese monastery. If he did, he would start having hope, making plans—both surefire ways to meet disaster and pain.
The best way to avoid that was to stay on guard. That proved difficult with long days in the saddle and not a single opportunity to be alone with Thalia. Their riding company was all men, and while Gabriel didn’t think any of them would blame him for sharing her pallet for the night, he sure as hell didn’t want to treat any of them to listening to a rendition of that particular sound Thalia made, high, in the back of her throat, moments before she came.
Gabriel then treated himself to the longest and most elaborate streak of mental cursing he’d ever embarked upon. He couldn’t let himself remember the sounds she made, or he’d lose his godforsaken mind.
In his saddlebag was not just the kettle, but the ruby, as well. Both objects weighed on him constantly. Just before he’d left Bold and his tribe, the chieftain had reminded him that the ruby was still his and Thalia’s charge for the year. Which meant that it would have to be guarded and returned. Gabriel was no stranger to duty and responsibility, but he felt himself stretched thin. He wouldn’t allow himself to break.
After a few more days, the grassy steppes began to disappear, replaced by long stretches of rocky, scrub-dusted plains. Whatever moisture was in the air vanished just as the greenery did. It wasn’t hot, but light bounced off the arid earth, and biting winds raced unimpeded to choke them with dust. Still, it was beautiful, the way a knife was beautiful, spare and brutal in its precision. Gazelles, white-tailed and spry, leapt in herds like laughter, or grazed on the scarce grasses. Their curious black stares followed the group as they kept up their tough pace. Overhead, falcons wheeled in the sky. They had been keeping constant company with the riding group, only sometimes diving down to snatch tiny, unlucky prey from the plain.
“Amazing anything can live out here,” Gabriel said to Thalia.
“People do, too,” she answered. “If life on the steppe is hard, the Gobi is harder. And this is just the outlying lands. I’ve never traveled so deep into it before.”
“Suppose that puts us on equal footing, then.” He smiled.
“You have no equal, Captain.”
They had just crossed a rock-strewn rise, when Gabriel wheeled his horse around. The other riders cantered on, but Thalia stopped and brought her horse back. Both mounts stamped impatiently, edging back and forth.
“What is it?” Thalia asked as Gabriel stared at the sky.
“Birds.”
She followed his gaze. “There are always hawks and falcons.”
He shook his head. “Something’s not right. Feels like they’ve been following us.” He took a spyglass from his saddlebag and trained it on the birds of prey. “I could swear they look familiar.” He handed her the glass, and she looked as well, but could only shrug her shoulders.
“I can’t recognize them.”
Gabriel couldn’t shake the feeling, a cold awareness prickling his scalp underneath his hat. Even as his horse tugged on the reins, impatient to join the rest of the group riding southeast, he kept scanning the sky, the horizon. Both the sky and the earth felt immense, stretching into eternity. Nothing could hide here. Except—
“There!” The shimmering surface of the ground danced in waves, then broke for a moment, revealing the truth beneath.
“Oh, my God,” Thalia breathed, standing up in the stirrups.
No need for a spyglass. Even a nearsighted clerk could see them. Only a few miles away and headed straight for Thalia and Gabriel. With nothing between them except rock and scrub.
“They bought themselves a whole damned army,” Gabriel spat.
He’d anticipated that, in their push to claim the Source, the Heirs would find a handful of men to add to their strength. Instead, hammering across the stark earth like vengeance itself was a thick, dark swarm of riders.
“How many?” Thalia asked.
A quick calculation. “Seventy-five, maybe more.” Gabriel glanced over to where their own Mongol complement had stopped, waiting for Thalia and him to catch up. Two dozen men of their own, and, despite their willingness to fight for and defend their home, likely no match for nearly a legion of mercenaries. Mercenaries fueled by greed and magic.
Without another word, he and Thalia kicked their horses into gallops, heading as quickly away as the already tired animals would allow. Gabriel’s mind raced faster than the horses as he cursed himself. He’d no idea how long the Heirs had been following them, and, had he known, wouldn’t have let them get this close. There was no way to outride them. No way to lose them. The land was too flat, leaving no place to hide. Maybe, if he…
“No,” Thalia shouted at him over the pounding of their horses’ hooves.
Bent over the neck of his mount, Gabriel looked at her.
“I won’t let you sacrifice yourself to help us gain time!” she yelled.
He scowled. Holy hellhound, she’d read his bloody mind. “I don’t see any other damned alternatives,” he snarled back. He wanted to give her the ruby and kettle, and send her ahead whilst he provided a distraction. Clearly, she didn’t care for this plan.
They had reached their own group of riders, who, catching sight of Thalia and Gabriel racing toward them, inferred that they were being pursued. Thalia let their men know what they were up against. Eyes widened in surprise, but not fear. They began talking amongst themselves. Twenty of the men jumped down from their horses and began gathering fallen branches and sticks from the low saxaul trees. And while they did this, the Heirs’ army thundered closer.
“Come on, damn it,” Gabriel bellowed at them. “We’re riding, now!”
But the men paid him no mind, even as Thalia urged them on in Mongolian and Gabriel swore at them with every foul word he knew in English. They tied the branches to their horses’ tails, then remounted. One of the men, whom Gabriel remembered from the nadaam, spoke tersely with Thalia before setting his heels to his horse. The twenty men then rode off with him, veering toward the west. The branches tied to the horses’ tails dragged on the ground, kicking up enormous clouds of dust. The air became thick and yellow.
“What the hell do they think they’re doing?” Gabriel demanded. “They’re leaving a trail.”
“But not our trail,” Thalia answered with a shake of her head.
A gruff laugh sprung from Gabriel. She was right. Their Mongol allies were creating a huge screen of dust, not only creating the illusion that Thalia and Gabriel were headed west, but hiding them in the process and drawing the Heirs away. “An old trick from the days of Genghis Khan,” one of the remaining riders explained. Gabriel couldn’t help but admire their ironclad bollocks. No time to waste on admiration, though. He, Thalia, and the other riders wheeled their horses about and sped on their way, deeper into the unforgiving desert.
Henry Lamb was a ponce, or so Jonas Edgeworth thought. He’d complained to his father about being sent to Mongolia with a man who had more starch in his underwear than most blokes had in their entire wardrobe, including shirts for church. For Christ’s sake, Lamb didn’t even follow cricket. But Joseph Edgeworth had insisted that his son accompany Lamb.
“Ponce or not,” his father said, “Lamb is a valuable Heir. He can show you a few things out in the field that you can’t learn at home.”
Jonas was just now learning that you never, ever made Henry Lamb angry. The man might’ve been a ponce, but when he was enraged—devils protect Jonas. Satan himself would piss in his brimstone drawers from fear.
When Lamb discovered, after a whole day of chasing Thalia Burgess and her band of supporters, that he had been tricked, only God or Queen Victoria could have inspired so much terror. The eighty battle-hardened, heartless fiends Tsend had found cowered meekly as Lamb ranted and raged, actually tearing small trees up from the ground and using their trunks to bash in the head of an unlucky decoy they’d managed to catch. The others fled, but they had to hear the stomach-churning gurgles coming from their dying comrade.
Jonas, no stranger to brutality, couldn’t even watch as Lamb’s immaculate clothing became spattered with brains and blood. When the chap was quite dead, Lamb wasn’t done with him. Lamb’s prized Sheffield knife, polished and gleaming, was used to cut him into bits, which were left for the animals. Jonas would’ve been sick, but was afraid that, in Lamb’s frenzy, any sign of such activity would send him off on another berserker rage. So, instead, he swallowed his gorge and looked away as the true face of Henry Lamb was revealed.
After a half an hour of this, Lamb seemed to have sufficiently calmed for Jonas to speak to him. “Jesus, Lamb,” he said as they both mounted up, “all that wasn’t necessary, was it?”
Lamb barely spared the desecrated remains a glance. Of greater concern to him were the stains on his Bond Street clothing. He tsked and frowned over them like a disapproving valet surveying the night’s damage to a dinner jacket.
“Oh, that,” Lamb drawled. “That’s nothing compared to what I plan to do to that Yorkshireman.”
“And the girl?”
The gleam in Lamb’s eyes caused Jonas’s stomach to clench. “She won’t go quite as quickly.”
With that, Lamb ordered the men out, and no one complained about how tired and hungry they were, not a single man. Jonas rode alongside Lamb and wondered what, if anything, he could tell his father.