LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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