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

“I care,” Arkady said, finally looking up from his clasped hands. “Do it for me, Nick!”

“It must be you, Mr. Davenant,” Penture said.

“Ah.” Nick turned and pointed at the Frenchman. “Now we are getting somewhere. This isn’t about sex, and it isn’t about killing. It isn’t even really about Alva. It’s about me. Why? Why must it be me? Why drag me out of my happy complacency to do this small job for you, a job you could get anyone to do? Why me?”

Penture’s eyes flickered. “Because,” he said, softly. “Just because.”

Nick shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Don’t push it to this, Nick,” Alice said.

“To what?” Nick rounded on her, his anger finally taking over. “Empty threats and noninformation, that is all you have offered me. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just join the Ofan myself.”

Alice thinned her lips as she looked at Nick, her own beautiful face grim with disappointment. Then she turned to Penture with a weary sigh. “We are in your era, Alderman. Not mine. How do you want to proceed?”

Penture narrowed his eyes. “There are times, Nicholas Davenant, when you must choose sides. Times when, even though you do not have all the information, you must decide to act for one cause or for another. Now is one of those times. I am going to help you make your decision. The right decision.”

Penture nodded to Saatçi and the tension in the room mounted. They were all suddenly anxious—he could feel their shared emotion spread like an oil slick through the room. And then it changed, moved . . . shimmered from simple feeling to a fully active manipulation of time. The air around him seemed to be thickening—it was the depth and breadth of time compacted into space. The others were all getting to their feet. What were they doing? Ah—Saatçi had an ornate silver pistol in his hand, worthy of a Hollywood cowboy. He passed it to Penture, who calmly raised it and aimed between Nick’s eyes.

“Oh, my God.” Nick scooted back in his too-small chair and spread his hands. “This is a farce. What is that thing, something out of a Wild West show?”

Penture pulled the trigger.

In the same instant, time hardened around Nick. He was frozen, but he was horribly conscious. The others stood beside their chairs, and he could feel the force with which they were each directing their talent at him, keeping him motionless. The gunpowder flashed as it ignited, and bright smoke mushroomed slowly. Then the bullet emerged and began to move through the air toward Nick’s head. Penture laid the gun down on the table and spoke. His voice was chillingly regular in its speed. How did he do that?

“As you can see,” he said, “this bullet is traveling toward your head, Mr. Davenant. If we do not pluck it from its course, it will kill you. You will experience your death quite slowly, as the bullet first touches you, then pierces your skin, and begins to flatten out as it bores through your skull. By the time it blows off the back of your head you will of course no longer be able to experience what is happening to you. I suggest that you choose sides now. Blink if you agree.”

Alice spoke with embarrassed urgency. “Nick, my good friend. I’m very sorry it had to come to this. We like you very much, and admire you. But you don’t have a choice.” Nick listened to her and watched the bullet crawl toward his head. He was curiously unafraid.

The bullet began to deform as it sped, slowly, through the air. Fascinating.

So many conflicting loyalties. The Guild, his sisters, Julia . . . even Kirklaw and Jemison. And now there was Alva. They were right about her—she was an enchanting woman, and she had already staked a claim in his affections. It wasn’t her beauty, and it wasn’t even the fact that she had rescued him from that moment when the river had rushed through him, dragging him back to that memory of group rage, that collective desire. It was because she had offered something—sex—and stepped away, unfazed, when he had refused. Like a gentleman. She hadn’t slandered his sisters, or reminded him of all that he owed her, or pointed a damned gun at his head. She hadn’t tried to tie him down with duty or debt. Instead, she had told him that, if he wanted one, he had a friend. And then, for no reason other than that she seemed to like him, she had revealed her greatest secret. She was Ofan. Instead of warning him that he must keep his mouth shut, or telling him that he was now bound by some blood brotherhood of shared knowledge, she had put her finger to her lips and twirled away. As if she trusted him—he, who was so obviously a Guild spy.

The bullet was close enough now that, had he the use of his limbs, Nick might have plucked it from its course himself. But apart from his eyelids, his captors wouldn’t let him move a muscle.

Well, he thought, as the bullet got so close that he couldn’t focus on it anymore, there is nothing like staring your own slow-motion death in the face to bring clarity to a situation. He had no intention of being the Guild’s good soldier and vicarious lothario, but the time for argument was at an end.

He must pretend to do their bidding. He must learn everything he could about the Ofan and tell none of it to the Guild. He blinked. Yes, Bertrand Penture, he would choose a side. The side of the angels.

When the bullet touched his forehead, as lightly as the kiss of a raindrop, Penture reached out, took it, and put it in his pocket. With a rush of blood in his head, Nick felt time resume its normal course. The air in his lungs came out in a whoosh, and he