The River of No Return (44 page)

“But how does it follow that Julia is a human talisman? What does that even mean?”

“It means Peter was right.” Alva scowled. “Which she usually is, damn it. She told me that the Talisman would have a jagged edge, that it was broken. That it was one half of a desperate promise with the unknown.”

“There is nothing broken about Miss Percy,” Jemison said.

“Her terrible birth—that’s what I’m thinking of,” Alva said. “What if she was born across the Pale? Or born in her mother’s violent transition back? She was torn into this world, don’t you see? Torn from another world. An orphan, a foundling . . . her very brilliance a threat to her life.”

Jemison shrugged. “Sounds like the human condition.”

“If you’re right,” Nick said, “Julia was conceived, or carried, or born in a world where time is moving backward. Perhaps she has some hidden knowledge about the Pale, hidden even from herself? Or some power? Something so powerful that Ignatz decided to bury it away and hope it never surfaced?”

“Yes,” Alva said musingly. “Eréndira brought her back here, back to this forward-moving time—a talismanic connection to that other world, torn from one time and given to another. Eréndira died of the effort it took to return, or of complications from childbirth—and she put little Julia into the arms of her teacher, not her father. Ignatz went to great lengths to hide Julia from Arkady. Which must mean that Eréndira and Ignatz both feared what the Guild would make of Julia.”

“But the Guild wants to turn the Pale back, too,” Nick said. “For all that you hate them, they are more misguided than evil. And how different was Julia’s life with Ignatz from life in the Guild? The Guild relies on ignorance to keep their power. They lie to us and keep us happy with money. Well, isn’t that what Ignatz did to Julia? Raised her as an earl’s granddaughter and told her nothing at all? He might have been a great Ofan teacher, but he used Guild methods to control her. I think . . .” Nick took the copper ring from Alva’s fingers and turned it so that he could see the motif of the eye in the circle. “I think there must be something bigger, something more at stake than just the old feud between the Guild and the Ofan.”

All three were silent then, under the weight of this revelation and the possibility that they might never find Julia.

Nick closed his eyes. He had no idea where to even start. She was lost. Lost, perhaps, because Ignatz had lied to her. Julia was truly orphaned—orphaned even from herself—and Nick was powerless to help. He felt despair well up in him, deep and cold.

Despair . . . a spider held over a flame . . . the Foundling Hospital! “Orphans,” he said, his voice rough. “Stolen children!”

“Yes?” Alva’s voice was threaded with confusion.

Nick turned to her, but it wasn’t her eyes he saw. Flat, blue eyes. Despair. The terrible nothingness sucking at his soul . . .

“Nick? Nick!”

He looked at his palm and found that he was holding the acorn, in addition to the copper ring. “Mibbs,” he said, and closed his fingers around them. “He is here, in London. A man accosted my mother the other day about a baby . . . it must have been him.”

“A baby?” Alva frowned. “The Foundling Hospital . . .” Her eyes flew to Nick’s. “Oh, God, and what he said to Leo!”

“Exactly.” Nick got to his feet. “Everywhere Mibbs has been, and every question he has asked, begins to make sense. He is looking for Julia. He was looking for her in America, among indigenous people, because he must know about her mother’s connection to the P’urhépecha. But now he is also looking for her in Europe. He has been looking up and down the River of Time, always searching for an infant.”

“Yes,” Alva said. “Babies. It is always babies. He’s not thinking that she might be grown!”

“That must be it. And thank God she is grown, in this time, for it might keep her from him. But Mibbs is getting close. He knows now that Julia is connected to Arkady, because he asked for Arkady the other day.”

“What if he is now looking for her as a grown woman?” Alva whispered. “Perhaps he followed her from Berkeley Square today.”

“If that is the case,” Nick said, “then we have lost—”

The sound of running feet and a shout interrupted him. A little old man came careering around the corner of Carlisle Street, a Bow Street Runner in tow.

“It was right here,” he said breathlessly, pointing with his stick. “Right where that great dog is now. It was a grand old traveling coach, sir. As the girl walked past it, a big, pale man got out brandishing a club. She seemed to know him, for she laughed at first and said something. But the man hit her over the head, tossed her into the carriage, and then the coachman whipped up the horses and drove away. I saw the coat of arms on the coach door then, sir. Very simple, sir, a red field with a silver shield, and three weasels on it. I called and tried to run after them but . . .” He broke down in frustrated tears. “Please believe me. A young lady is in grave danger.”

The little old man, the runner, and Solvig now stood together, looking at the blank cobblestones of the street. Nick felt a laugh of relief bubbling up in his throat, and Alva clearly understood, too, for her eyes were sparkling. Mibbs didn’t have Julia. Eamon did.

* * *

“Why can’t you just go back in time and catch Miss Percy as she leaves your house? Why do we have to go chasing after the coach? For that matter, why can’t you go back before Vogelstein’s death and ask him about Julia?”

Alva pressed her seal into the hot wax on the last of three notes she had written. “Because we can’t,” she said simply.

A servant had been dispatched to Berkeley Square and to Jemison’s house in Camden Town for their things, including pistols and horses. Jemison had been peppering them with questions as they waited. Nick was jumping out of his skin with impatience, now that there was something he could actually do. He paced up and down in front of the fire like a caged animal, listening to the conversation with one ear and to the pounding of his heart with the other.

“But why?”

Alva answered patiently. “Because we move back and forth in time on streams of human emotion, Mr. Jemison. Big streams. We have the ability to use those streams of feeling, but we ourselves—we are just bit players, and our own feelings, our own life stories, they plod forward day to day. So if I’m here today and in 2029 tomorrow and in 1580 the next day, I will still tell the story of my life as a story that proceeds forward in time.”

“Your life moves forward day to day, even if those days don’t follow each other on the calendar.”

“Exactly. Which means that I cannot know what is coming for me, and I cannot go back to a day I have already lived through.”

“‘Solomon Grundy,’” Nick said without turning from the window. “‘Born on a Monday, christened on Tuesday, married on Wednesday’ . . . where the bloody hell are the horses?”

“But other time travelers must know your future. They should be able to tell you when you die, for instance!”

Alva caught Nick’s eye. “You see what happens when you invite Naturals into your world? They invariably start telling you that your lifestyle is freakish.” She turned back to Jemison. “Our talent is queer,” she said. “Why do our stories proceed unmolested even as we jump about in the river? If we time travelers know the big shapes of human history, the movements of markets and epochs, you would think we could know what is destined in our own piddling lives. And yet . . . we cannot.”

“That makes no sense,” Jemison said. “Naturals are condemned to a preordained story, we are bound to live lives that you, the time travelers, can know—but that we cannot. While you, the time travelers, don’t know your own futures, even though you can travel forward in time. You have possibility, movement, hope, and from what you have just told me, I can only assume that we Naturals are doomed.”

“Oh, no,” Alva said. “You misunderstand me. You are not doomed, Mr. Jemison, any more than I am. I mean, you shall die one day and so shall I, but how you arrive at that final chapter is up to you. You have choices to make. It is only the big picture that continues always to look the same, no matter what we small actors do—and by we I mean all of us, Natural, Ofan, Guild. We run about like busy ants, but the wars do not change. They never change. And that is exactly what we Ofan hope to learn how to alter. What we
must
learn how to alter, else one day the Pale will wash across us and we will vanish like a dream.”

Jemison’s dark eyes were intent. “So the future of mankind is set in stone, and while individual lives may sparkle and shine, we are little more than spirits, melting into air. You seem to be basing your hopes in fairy dust, Miss Blomgren.” He sounded doubtful in the extreme, almost condescending.

Alva shrugged. “But surely that is what hope is! ‘The tune without the words.’ Maybe not knowing the words means that we can make them up as we go along. And more importantly, it means that we can go back and change them. We can already change the river in tiny ways, you know. Nick did today when he told you about us. But it is only play, the level at which we dabble now. A dip in the river, a splash, a brief obstruction of the flow, and then our individual revels end. But I believe that if we can learn to channel our dreaming, then we can make the fact that we don’t know the little things alter the things we know too well . . .”

Nick was ready to tear his hair out. “Oh, my God, Alva, Arkady told me you Ofan were all a bunch of dangerous dreamers. How can you be whittering on like this when Julia is lost? If you don’t shut up I’m going to kill you. There. How’s that for a hopeless ending to your story?”

“I would simply jump away from you, Nick. You know that.” Alva smiled a little sadly at Jemison. “We are cowards, really, we time travelers. We cheat death over and over. Jumping away from one story and into another. Always pursuing the hope of another day.”

Jemison curled a lip. “That’s a fancy way of saying you are seeking immortality, Miss Blomgren. All dressed up as charity to a benighted humanity.”

Alva’s eyes widened; she was startled by the scorn in his voice. “No . . . not individual immortality. I’m talking about group action. The fact that we don’t know what happens to us individually—that’s what gives me hope for humans collectively. It must be possible to change the big story.”

“I am just a poor Natural,” Jemison said. “But would that not be to grasp too much power, Miss Blomgren? You have read your Milton, I assume. God will punish you if you claim too much knowledge. . . .”

“He’s right, Alva,” Nick said peevishly. “And what you’re describing sounds quite a lot like fascism. Or corporate personhood.”

Alva snorted. “Says Mr. Aristo. What is your title but a kind of immortality?”

Nick pointed at her. “I didn’t ask for it.”

“And yet you wear it so well.”

Nick stared at her. If the horses didn’t arrive in the next minute . . .

But then the sound of hooves rang in the street. They all rushed to the window.

It was the servants, with their mounts.

“Thank God!” Nick tossed his own note to Arkady on Alva’s pile of letters on his way out of the door. He had told the Russian that Julia remained unfound but that he was following leads. Hopefully that would keep Arkady at bay, but Nick and Alva were sure that Arkady would come immediately to check if Alva had gone with Nick. It was therefore vital that she remain at home in Soho Square to try to put him off. But she was sending several Ofan after Nick and Jemison, so that they would have some backup in Devon.

* * *

“I wish I had had time to teach you more,” Alva said as she stood beside the two men and their horses a few minutes later. “I can’t believe I’m sending you off like this, and with no one but a Natural for protection.”

“Thanks a lot.” Nick checked and tightened Boatswain’s girth.

“Yes,” Jemison said. “Thank you for the kind words of support.”

“I’m being realistic,” Alva said.

“Look.” Nick turned to her. “The fact is, I’m finally doing something I know how to do, and I am with a companion in whom I am completely confident.” He swung up and into the saddle, Boatswain shifting under him. “Tracking down Julia and thrashing Eamon is, in fact, an easy proposition for two Peninsular soldiers. So although we thank you for your concern, we are quite capable.”

“Yes, I see. I’m sorry.” Alva looked up at him, her hand on his knee. Nick was sure they made a touching picture—a beautiful woman bidding her menfolk farewell. But what she said next hardly matched the tableau. “The Guild and Mr. Mibbs—they want Julia because they think she is the Talisman,” she said. “I wonder if there is a way to convince them that she is not? When you find her and free her from Eamon, work out how much she knows and how well she is trained. Surely Ignatz at least taught her how to use her talent, even if he didn’t tell her of her own importance.”

Nick shrugged. “Arkady thinks she is untrained, and when I pressed her for information about her grandfather, she almost wept with confusion.”

Alva shook her head over this. “Ignatz! I’d kill him now if he weren’t already dead. You have the ring, yes? Give it to Julia and tell her as much as you can. Hopefully a few Ofan will reach you soon, and together you can come up with a plan that will protect Julia for the long term.” In the flickering light Alva looked like the angel from whom the Ofan took their name. The face she tipped up toward Nick was radiant with purpose, the two iron flambeaux holders rising behind her like a brace of wings. “Make it seem as if she is entirely innocent of what’s going on. That way, we can save her for the Ofan.”

“I’m guessing she will make her own choice about the Ofan and the Guild,” Nick said. “I’m hoping to save her for herself.”

“That is disgustingly romantic,” Alva said, and stepped away from the horses. “Now go!”

Nick tipped his beaver hat and let Boatswain dance in a circle. Then he and Jemison galloped away over the cobblestones, heading for Oxford Street.

I
t felt as if her skull were broken and as if her body were being shaken to pieces. Her ears were filled with a crashing, rattling sound. Julia lifted a hand to touch her head. Just that movement alone set her retching.

An arm lifted her, and there was a sharp rapping sound. Then the rattling slowly subsided, and the terrible swaying and bumping ceased. Julia opened her eyes to almost complete darkness, but even that was enough to sting. She closed her eyes. Something smelled rank and close and mildewy. She retched again.

A door was opened and she was lifted outside. Chilly air made her head hurt sharply for a moment, then soothed it. She took a breath of the clean air, tried to open her eyes again, then leaned forward and threw up. Her face was wiped roughly, and then a flask was held to her lips.

“Drink.”

Eamon. That was Eamon’s voice. Julia struggled to remember, even as she drank the nasty warm brandy that was being forced on her. Why was she with Eamon? She had been walking somewhere, running from someone . . . who was it? Eamon? She didn’t think so . . . someone was chasing her, someone scary . . . Her head was spinning now, and she was swirling down into a whirlpool of darkness . . . swirling . . . but at the center of the whirlpool there was a little pointy-nosed face, surrounded by quills . . . a hedgehog. It opened its mouth and it said, in Grandfather’s voice: “Pretend.”

* * *

Boatswain was not a young horse, and Nick was not as fit as he had been in Spain, the last time life’s rich pageant had called for him to ride for hours across open countryside. As for Jemison, his piebald horse could not be kept to the gallop for more than a few minutes at a time. So here they were, three hours later, posting decorously along instead of galloping
ventre à terre
to the rescue. But Eamon was driving a blown team—Monsieur LeCrue had said that they were already covered in sweat when they set out, and Eamon would find it hard to change horses in the middle of the night. That blown team was hauling an old carriage, one coachman, one young lady, and one big, heavy, crazed earl.

Ah. Nick and Jemison reined in. Just ahead, a coach was pulled over to the side of the otherwise deserted road. Nick couldn’t see the team, but there seemed to be two people standing outside the equipage . . . he watched, narrowing his eyes. It was a wretched dark night, and in spite of the moon he couldn’t make out very much.

The bigger figure was lifting the smaller figure back into the coach. That had to be them. Nick smiled. The little one had been on her feet, so she was alive. But then the big one had lifted her. Perhaps Eamon had drugged her, the scoundrel. It would be hard to ride off with a drugged woman over his saddle. After a moment’s whispered conversation, Nick and Jemison decided that if the team wasn’t completely blown, they could dump Eamon by the roadside and steal the whole rig.

They checked their pistols as they let the coach lumber back into the road. Then they watched.

The coach set out at a good clip, so Eamon must have managed to find a new team somewhere.

“We’ll steal it, then,” Nick said. “You ride ahead and hold them up; I’ll follow behind and get Eamon out.”

Jemison was standing in the stirrups, stretching out his legs. “Bloody hell, my arse hurts! How did we ride back and forth across Spain so easily?”

Nick grinned. “Are your pistols ready?”

“Yes.” Jemison settled again in the saddle and chirruped to his horse. It was a flashy animal, with big black handprints on a white ground; hardly a highwayman’s horse. But . . . they had to make do with what they had. He watched as the animal walked over to the grassy edge of the road, then trotted along silently, slowly gaining ground on the lumbering coach.

When Jemison drew level with their quarry, Nick set out after him. He saw Jemison rein his horse, saw him raise the pistol; he didn’t shout to make the team stop, but the team did stop, and Nick spurred up to the door. He knocked loudly on it. “Eamon! Show yourself!”

Eamon stuck his head out of the window, his mouth gaping open.

“Beautiful night,” Nick said. “Now get out of the coach and leave Julia behind.”

Eamon’s eyes protruded eggily from his head. “The devil I will!” He ducked back inside, shouting, “Drive on!”

But the coachman did not drive on. Nick glanced up ahead and saw that Jemison still had his pistol trained on the unfortunate man. He knocked again on the door. “Eamon! Come out now. We are two armed men. . . .”

The door burst open, sending Boatswain rearing. Nick held to the reins with one hand and grabbed for a pistol with the other. Eamon was scrambling out of the coach, a pair of pistols waving wildly in his fists. “Leave me!” he screamed. “Leave me or by God I’ll kill you!”

Boatswain dropped back down onto all four hooves and capered, Nick holding him tightly and cocking the gun. He watched in disbelief as Eamon raised a pistol and aimed it directly at Nick’s head.

“Leave me!”

Nick kicked Boatswain; the horse leapt forward as Eamon’s pistol exploded. Nick heard the bullet whiz past his ear; he turned in the saddle, cocking his pistol and aiming at Eamon, just as Eamon raised his other pistol.

The guns fired simultaneously, the sparks flying. Boatswain squealed and Nick felt the horse’s panic, but he pulled him in a tight circle and rode back to the coach; Eamon was lying on the ground, shot through the chest.

Nick swung down from Boatswain and stood by him as he calmed, then looped the horse’s reins over the handle of the coach door. Only then did he look at Eamon.

There he lay, dying, his hand fluttering like a butterfly over his chest, his eyes glimmering in the scanty moonlight.

Nick stepped over him and into the coach. Julia was there, on the seat, unconscious, looking small and broken, on the seat. But she was breathing. Nick searched in her hair for the place where Eamon had coshed her. There. An alarming swelling.

He cradled her head for a moment, hating the way it lolled, feeling for a pulse in her throat. It was strong and steady. For just a moment, he buried his head in her hair and breathed in her scent. She was going to be all right.

He arranged her more comfortably on the seat, then climbed down from the coach.

Eamon lay silently, staring up past Nick at the dark sky. Blood was pumping from between his fingers. Jemison, the coachman, and the team were silent, too; the only sound came from Boatswain, munching loudly on the long, sweet grass that grew by the side of the road.

“I’m for it,” Eamon whispered after a moment.

“Yes.” Nick said brusquely. “It looks that way.”

“Now I will never know the secret. She knew what it was. She knew. . . .”

“The Talisman is not for you, Eamon. You could never have used it.”

“That Russian came, and then he left,” Eamon said, his voice gaining a little strength. “I followed—I knew he was going for Julia and she is mine. I went to the house of the old man’s mistress to find your direction. There was Julia, walking along. I am going to marry her, and she will tell—” He collapsed back, gasping and looking with incomprehension at the blood that flowed beneath his fingers.

“You are dying,” Nick reminded him more gently. “You must tell me if there is anything you wish done, any final messages you need me to deliver.”

But Eamon was choking, the blood oozing sluggishly from his wound. Nick stood aside and bowed his head; he did not want Eamon’s last sight to be the face of his killer.

After Eamon’s final stuttering breath, Nick walked toward the team; Jemison still had his pistol held on the coachman. “He is dead,” Nick called. “It’s over.”

But Jemison didn’t move. The team was as still as if they were carved from stone.

The hair on Nick’s neck rose, and he raised his eyes slowly to the coachbox.

The coachman was facing forward, but as Nick watched, he turned his head and shoulders, and that broad, white face hove into view like the sails of a ghost ship.

It was Mr. Mibbs.

* * *

Nick raised his other pistol and fired, but the lead ball stopped six inches from Mibbs’s nose. It hung there for a moment, suspended in front of Mibbs’s expressionless face. Then he lifted a thick hand and plucked it from the air. He examined it, bit it, and tossed it back to Nick.

Nick reached up and caught the bullet in his hand. It was half the size of the acorn and much heavier. He let it fall to the ground and stood weaponless and strangely calm as Mibbs climbed down from the coachbox.

Mibbs was wearing a ridiculously overblown many-caped coachman’s cloak and a too-small, too-tall top hat. The color of the hat and cloak was hard to discern in the moonlight, but Nick thought it was probably a bright orange-yellow. The buttons were the size of saucers.

“May I ask you,” Nick said, “for the direction of your tailor? You are invariably dressed in the most interesting of fashions.”

Mibbs walked forward, staring at Nick. And Nick felt it again, the despair . . . he clung to the thought of Julia in the carriage, to the thought of the acorn in his pocket, but he could feel the power of Mibbs’s will like an undertow.

“I am looking for a baby,” Mibbs said. He had a generic American accent, smooth and confident—almost friendly. Yet those eyes were pressing Nick back, and down. . . . Nick lost his concentration, blinked, and Mibbs drew close; he lifted a hand to touch Nick. . . .

With a huge effort, Nick launched himself forward and tackled Mibbs, knocking him off his feet. They crashed to the ground, and the breath left Mibbs’s body with a harsh gasp; Nick felt that hot breath wash his face as he heard the carriage horses spring to life and Jemison shout, “Your money or your life!”

Beneath him, Mibbs was writhing like a serpent, his face mottled. Nick put his hands to the man’s fleshy throat and shouted to Jemison. “You were frozen in time! Secure the team and whatever you do don’t look in this man’s eyes!” As soon as he saw Jemison leap from his horse, he turned his attention back to Mibbs.

He lay still now beneath Nick’s choking hands, not fighting for breath. He seemed more like an apparitional snake than a man; even as Nick choked the life from the limp body, those flat eyes glared up at Nick with the same expressionless despair that Nick had seen each time Mibbs had crossed his path.

Nick opened his hands and drew in a gasping breath, as if he were the one who had been strangled.

“Where is the baby?” Mibbs said it again, without struggling to rise, without any change in demeanor—as if nothing had happened, as if Nick hadn’t just been crushing his windpipe.

“There is no baby,” Nick said, a hand going to his own throat.

Mibbs reached up and touched Nick’s face in a fatherly gesture. “Who is the Talisman, buddy? Is it the girl in the coach? She is unconscious. I could not reach her emotions.”

“There is no such thing as the Talisman,” Nick whispered. But he felt a bursting urge to tell. Nick knew, somewhere back in the heart of him, that he was feeling Mibbs’s feelings. That his own emotions would have sent his fist smashing into Mibbs’s face. Instead, he was enthralled to hideous rites, unable to remember anything except the truth: Julia is the Talisman.

“Tell me, buddy,” Mibbs said, and Nick opened his mouth to say he knew not what.

But it was Jemison’s voice he heard, speaking from just behind him. “I am the Talisman. I am the child, now grown.”