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

Nick waved a hand. “Lead on! You see, I have realized that I am but a humble pawn. I play on several different chessboards, it’s true, but I am always a pawn.”

“What other chessboards? There is only one. The Guild’s.”

Nick smiled. “You have brought me home, Arkady, to this sunset of the aristocracy. You have given me back my name, however temporarily. So unless you’re going to tell me that the Prince Regent is a time traveler, I’m afraid I’m bound to play on his chessboard, too. Did I not tell you? He sent me a Writ of Summons. I am to appear in the House of Lords tomorrow.”

“Was that what you were going on about at dinner? My priest, how dreary!” He laughed. “Maybe it is the sunset of the aristocracy, but money—it is always high noon with the money! That is why the Corn Bill—it passes. People suffer. Decades later it is struck down, but oh dear—it is too late to save the Irish!” Arkady yawned. “This is the foolery of Naturals. It has nothing to do with you, and there is nothing you can do that could change it.”

“I was planning to vote for it.”

That wiped the smile from Arkady’s face. He stopped walking and stared. “What? But you know it is terrible, this bill!”

“Ah.” Nick twitched his cuffs. “I thought you said it didn’t matter what I did. I thought you said the bill was boring.”

Arkady’s stare softened. “You are pulling the leg! You trick me!”

“Perhaps.” Nick smiled. “You’re afraid that things can be changed, Arkady, admit it. That the Ofan can change things. That I might change things. You don’t want me to think for myself in case I screw up the future.”

“Is that what you think?” Arkady set out walking again with a jaunty swing of his stick. “That you could change the world? I laugh at you.”

“All right, but if I can’t change anything, why do you care? You clearly don’t want me to play even my small role in British politics. Why?”

“I do not care. I only tell you, it makes no difference. Vote for the bill and stain your immortal soul, or vote against it and make the saints smile. How you vote? It tells me if you are a good man, but it does not matter. The Corn Bill will pass. People will starve. The barons and earls will be rich for another generation. But you? You are bound to the Guild. This is why I do not want you distracted by these small turnips.”

“Potatoes,” Nick said, absently. He dug his hands into his pockets and found the acorn. They were walking around St. Clement Danes. Nick glanced up at the fairy church, its tiered steeple standing black against the slightly less black sky. Oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clement’s. Arkady was right, of course. Turnips and potatoes. Oranges and lemons. Apples and oranges. What did Nick’s little problems—his prince, his unsavory ex-friends, his sister, his onetime comrade in arms—have to do with the River of Time? And yet the Writ of Summons, Kirklaw, Clare, and Jem Jemison—they were real. He couldn’t just ignore them.

Arkady ranted on. “Say that somehow you convince one hundred other lords to vote against this bill that protects their money and their power. Say the bill does not pass. You, Nick Davenant, have changed history! But what happens? Do the poor get rich? Do the hungry eat? No. If bread is cheap, factories pay lower wages. Your Corn Bill? It is a fight over who gets to use the poor as a golden goose.” Arkady jerked his head toward the Thames. “They are down there now, the poor, picking through the bones. They will be there forever.”

Nick looked down the crooked street to their right and caught a glimpse of the river. “That’s your precious eternal history, then? A riverbed of bones and garbage?”

“Bah!” Arkady gripped Nick’s arm and spoke, hot and angry, in his ear. “The river flows to the sea, Nick Davenant! You are a servant of the Guild. Act like one.”

Nick wrenched away. “Well then, can the Guild write a note to my other master? ‘Dear Prince George: Please excuse Master Nick for not participating in historical events today. He had to defend the River of Time from angels with four faces who want to take it over.’ I hope that will work, Arkady, because otherwise I’m expected in the Lesser Hall of the House of Lords tomorrow.”

Arkady threw up his hands. “Go, then! Go and be damned!”

Nick made Arkady an elaborate leg. “Thank you, Lebedev. I am grateful for your permission. Now, may I push your beneficence an inch further and ask where we are going?”

The Russian glowered at him and ground the words out like sausage meat. “To a ball.”

Nick was shocked into silence for a moment, but then he laughed. “A ball! Who does that make me? Cinderella? Or Prince Charming? I suppose you are the fairy godmother?”

“There are other characters,” Arkady said. “The unpleasant sisters. The pumpkin.”

“I do have big feet. . . .”

“But your head . . .” Arkady considered him. “It is also big. And your hair. It is red. I think you are the pumpkin.”

“My hair is not red. It is light brown.”

“It is . . . what do they call it? The strawberry yellow.”

“It most certainly is not!” Nick was horrified. His hair was not as dark as he would have liked, but it was not strawberry blond, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Arkady laughed. “My priest! I have discovered your vanity!”

“Hair is your vanity, Arkady, not mine.”

“Yes.” The Russian stood tall. “My hair is very beautiful. Always it has been beautiful. When I was young, it was the shining black. Women, they loved it. Now it is the bright white and still, women—”

“Yes, yes, the women. I know. Tell me about this ball.”

They were walking now along Fleet Street, coming up upon the debtors’ prison; a few voices called out from behind the barred windows, begging alms to