Warrior

by Zoë Archer

  “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—