The River of No Return Bee Ridgway (best free ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Nick?” Alice’s voice became even more quiet. “‘Cry “God for Harry, England, and St. George”’? Is that it?”

“No.” Nick pointed a finger at the two of them together, safe in their blasted Rolls. “Damn you to hell for that.” He saw Arkady’s body tense, ready itself, and his own body shifted in response, his senses sharpening to encompass the man across the car. “I am not that man anymore,” he said, his voice husky. “Not that soldier. Everything changes.”

“Nothing changes,” she said. “Look at you, your fists are clenched. Look at my husband. He is coiled like a spring. You are who you are. The river flows to the sea.”

“I want out.”

“There is no out.”

The car purred to a halt and the chauffeur tapped on the window with his big sovereign ring. They had arrived at the gates.

* * *

Half an hour later they were tucked behind a snob screen in the Lamb, a pub at the top of Lamb’s Conduit Street that had been there in Nick’s time—though it looked different now, with its cubbyholed Victorian interior.

“It isn’t a scar,” Arkady said. His eyes were red. He had stood in front of the gates with his arms spread, looking like a saint, tears spilling down his cheeks. Alice had ignored the passersby who stared and allowed her husband his time. After a few minutes he had stepped away and then stood with Nick across the street in the shadow of the statue of the woman with the urn. They had watched as Alice padded back and forth in front of the gates like a bloodhound, nose twitching, as if she could smell the past.

“It’s something, though,” Alice countered.

“Yes,” Arkady said. “But there are too many feelings, and a lot of them reach outward to the future. Misery. Excitement. Longing. Crashing over one another.”

“I couldn’t tune in to the mystical vibrations,” Nick said. “But I was there once, in the late eighteenth century—”

“Hush!” Alice looked around, but the snob screen shielded her view. “For God’s sake, Nick.”

“Sorry.” He dropped his voice. “I was there with my mother when I was a kid. And if it helps, I know we were feeling smug.”

Alice smiled at Nick and sipped her half of bitter. “Smug, huh? I bet you were a cute little lordling.”

“If you say so.”

She pushed her beer away. “So it isn’t a scar. But what does that mean about today? Arkady, were you overwhelmed with despair when you stood there? Because I wasn’t, not at all.”

“No.” Arkady shrugged. “But all those babies. It made me weep.”

“Yes,” Alice said gently. “Yes, my tea cake.” She put her hand on his.

Nick put his pint to his lips and let the good, bitter beer wash down his throat. Arkady was really just a big baby himself, he thought, watching as Alice comforted him. “Why did you cry?”

“My tears were old tears. Tears I have cried before and will cry again.” Arkady freed his hand from Alice’s and steepled his fingers under his chin, his ruby ring glowing like an ember. “I do not believe that the emotions Nick felt at those gates today were the emotions of the Foundling Hospital,” he said to Alice. “I think they were the emotions of Mr. Mibbs himself.”

“Yes,” Nick said. “That makes sense. And he put fear into me earlier, at Euston Road. That wasn’t some deep historical fear I felt. Unless you can tell me that there was a hangman’s tree at the corner of Judd Street and Euston Road at some point.”

Alice glanced at him. “There might well have been. There is a scar at Marble Arch for that very reason.”

“Tyburn.”

“Yes.”

Arkady spread his hands. “But Nick said it earlier. The man controlled him with emotions, not thoughts. It is only by accident that this happened near the Foundling Hospital.”

“That’s an interesting possibility,” Alice said. “It could be a new development. A new way to use the river. They’ve discovered it, and they are testing it out on Guild members.”

“They?” Nick raised his eyebrows.

Alice and Arkady regarded him soberly for a moment. Then Alice took a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “The reason we need you, Nick . . . the reason we are taking you back to your natural time, is that a war is about to begin in that era. It will be a war over the fate of the past, over history itself.”

And so here was the other shoe, dropping at last. He had been right all along. He was here to kill.

Alice continued. “I told you there were others. People who aren’t in the Guild. They don’t agree with the Guild’s principles. They think we should intervene in history. Try to change it. They are experimenting with the talent, working to learn more about it. Some of the things they have discovered recently in . . .” Alice glanced at Arkady. He nodded. She continued. “The things they have discovered in Brazil are alarming.”

Brazil! So Meg had heard Alice talking that day in the bathroom. She had been telling the truth. And Nick was, after all, an asshole who deserved to have his friends desert him. But Nick’s heart lifted. Maybe Meg and Leo were alive, in Brazil. Maybe they had made it.

Alice was looking at Arkady, and Nick followed her eyes. The Russian was staring into some grim distance that only he could see. “Arkady, my darling. Come back to us.”

The Russian focused again on the little table. Then he wiped his eyes with the back of a hand. “Yes, yes. Brazil. Beautiful Brazil.”

Alice spoke softly, stroking Arkady’s thick white hair. “I was about to tell Nick about the orphan.”

“The orphan! Bah.” Arkady spoke with loathing in his voice.

Alice turned back to Nick. “The orphan are a thorn in our side,” she said. “And they have been, oh, forever. But things are changing. We can’t just continue on, with little skirmishes here and there over nothing. The stakes have become too high. The orphan have found something. A new skill, or maybe even