Natalia Noblis stood with her older sibling in the outer courtyard of their home, watching the odd procession of individuals entering. At sixteen years of age, she still wore her hair in the style of a girl a year her junior, with two braids tied together to hold back the loose hair that fell down her back. Traditionally, she should have worn her hair like her sister, in an updo with curls surrounding her head. However, Natalia wasn’t much of a traditionalist, and she couldn’t see wasting an hour each morning fixing her hair in that way. She was not going to start wearing her hair like that until her father forced the issue, and she doubted that he even noticed. He could be remarkably airheaded at times.

Her older sister, Valerna, was obsessed with her hair, which was odd since she dressed like a man most of the time. But then, she also flirted with anything male, and some things female, so perhaps it wasn’t that surprising that she paid such attention to what she considered her most beautiful attribute. In Natalia’s estimation, Valerna had nothing to worry about in that department, as her older sister was one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. The woman’s penchant for wearing a short sword in addition to her nontraditional garb simply made her more striking in most men’s eyes. Natalia herself was rather plain in comparison with either of her siblings, but she didn’t mind. Anonymity was her ally. Currently, she was exercising that, allowing Valerna to do the talking. As usual, she was talking about men.

“Oh, look there,” She said, a sly look in her eyes, “There’s Major Jonesoton, he is a gorgeous one, I love a man with gray at his temples. It makes him look so much more sophisticated. Hmmm Lieutenant Colonel Jameson isn’t bad looking either, but a little old for me.”

Natalia did her best to tune her sister out, instead examining the other two people in the party, the ones she didn’t recognize. They were odd additions by her estimation. One was an old man, bald, with a grey-white beard and only one eye. His face was heavily scarred, and under the open black vest she could see more scars crisscrossing his well-muscled chest. The old man wore what she recognized as the uniform of a senior undertaker, but he moved like no undertaker she had ever seen. Natalia grew up with a father who was one of the best warriors in the world and had been consistently exposed to fighters from an early age. This old man who moved with a slight limp had more martial prowess than any man she had ever seen. The young man who accompanied him was even more of a conundrum though. Valerna’s voice cut off her ruminations.

“The bald fellow doesn’t look like my type, but that boy with him…” Valerna wiggled twin blonde-brown eyebrows, “Well, he is a little young for my taste, but he’s almost handsome!”

Almost handsome was the correct way to describe the boy. Natalia guessed his age to be about a year younger than herself, based on the freshness of his face, and the fact that he had his hair tied back in a top knot that was traditional for young lordlings under the age of manhood. His hair was a ruddy brown, but his eyes were nearly yellow. When paired with his deeply tanned face, it made for an odd set of features. If his eyes had been lighter in color, she almost certainly would’ve called him handsome, but as it was, those eyes looked like they belonged to a wild animal. His body structure and size could’ve belonged to someone three to five years his senior, with broad shoulders and nearly six feet in height. He too wore the uniform of an undertaker from the boneyard, although his vest was a stained white rather than black, and he moved in an odd parody of the old man’s movements.

At first, Natalia thought that he was trying to copy the one-eyed man’s deadly grace, because of the way he was looking at the old man. Her opinion changed when a wagon carrying bales of hay towards the stables bumped violently and sent a bale in the direction of the two strangers. The old man avoided it easily, taking two limping steps unconsciously. The boy did not match the man’s perfect movements, but he did move with far more agility and smoothness than any boy at that stage of life had a right to. He jumped nimbly into the air, knees coming up to his chest, and allowed the bale to roll under his feet, he landed on his toes and scanned the surroundings instinctively, looking to see if there was anything else for him to avoid.

Both of the additions were troubling. By her estimation, the old man was almost certainly a warrior, and he appeared to be joking with her father, who was laughing uproariously. That implied that he was not intimidated by her father’s rank and station. The younger man certainly looked less comfortable, but he was doing an admirable job of hiding it, keeping his head held high and acting like he belonged. He was the real conundrum. He wore the clothes of an undertaker also, but wore his hair like a young noble, and judging from the bow he just gave in the direction of her father, he could act like one too. In addition to the strange relationship that her father seemed to have with the old man, the two strangers on her father’s property were a troubling occurrence. She felt like she was looking at a painting half done. She was missing too many details to complete it, but she knew that if it was fully viewed everything would come together. Valerna, of course, noticed nothing of the sort. Her sister, like her father, could be remarkably airheaded at times.

“My, but that was an impressive jump! That boy is quite agile.” Valerna exclaimed. Then she grinned wickedly at her little sister, “The way you are staring at him, zaychik, says that you want to find out just how agile.” she waggled her eyebrows again. It was one of her favorite facial expressions. Natalia elbowed her firmly in the ribs. Or, rather, she tried to. Valerna had been spending half of every day in a training ring since she was ten years old, and she moved out of the way of the elbow gracefully, chuckling as she did so. Natalia wasn’t surprised. She had never been as martial as either of her siblings, and she never would be, but that didn’t bother her much. Her strengths lied in other areas. Namely, she was far more intelligent than anyone else in her family. She didn’t mean that arrogantly, she just knew it to be true. Her father was barely literate, relying on his officers to tell him what he needed to know, and his youngest daughter to manage his household. As a result, Natalia had been dealing with political puzzles, purchases of food, straw, weapons, and all manner of other things since she was barely nine. That had been when her mother died. She hadn’t been alone of course, she had advisors who she relied upon heavily, but she knew that she possessed a far better understanding of the world than the rest of her family.

“Come off of it,” she said to Valerna, “Those eyes are too scary for me.” Valerna snorted in something between disbelief and agreement. As if summoned, those yellow eyes settled upon her. His gaze was… intense. That was the only way to describe it. He wasn’t leering at her or her sister, that was impossible really, as his eyes didn’t go anywhere but their faces, but when those eyes met hers, she felt like she was being weighed. She realized that she had been staring into this strange young man’s eyes from across the courtyard while the party was stopped so her father could talk to a servant. Her face reddened. His smirked. The smirk wasn’t mocking, rather it served to soften his features. His eyes suddenly seemed to have a spark of amusement and chagrin in them. Her sister’s stage whisper shattered the moment.

“For someone who said that she finds a man’s eyes scary, you’ve been staring at them for an awfully long time.” This time Natalia’s elbow didn’t miss. And when she heard the laugh that exploded from the mouth of the young man across the courtyard, she grinned triumphantly.