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

her ear like a thunderclap. She peeked around the curtain.

Thank God. Down in the street three men stood looking up at the house, as still as statues. Two of them were strangers to her, workingmen in rough clothes, one with a paper in one hand and a stub of graphite in the other. The third was dressed like a gentleman. Julia’s heart started beating again. Three men, frozen stiff, and none of them were Nick or Arkady.

She put her hand to the glass and leaned closer. But the gentleman—she knew him. His eyes shone in the glow of a dark lantern that he held up high, its shutter open. The thin cheeks, the saturnine brows.

It was the Falcotts’ steward, Mr. Jemison.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I believe we all need a drink after that,” Marjory Northway said, and there was laughing agreement around the table.

Saatçi got up and did the honors—“Since tonight I am dressed as a footman,” he said.

As he worked his way around the room, the Guild members talked eagerly about what they had just done in controlling the bullet. Each wanted to brag about the part he or she had played; no one wanted to listen to anyone else.

“You talk as if this is the first time you’ve done this,” Nick said into the clamor of voices.

Silence fell.

“Ah.” Nick put his hands behind his head and grinned at them. “This is the first time you’ve done this.”

“You remember, Nick,” Alice said. “We talked about it.”

“Talked about what?”

“It was when you were being followed by Mibbs. We wondered for a moment if he had used some new Ofan skill on you. Arkady said it might be group time control, and I told you about what they’ve been up to in Brazil. The Ofan have really been making headway with it and we’ve learned a few of their tricks. So you were perfectly safe. We practiced last night.”

“On a living subject?”

No one said anything. Saatçi came past with the bottle and Nick pushed his glass forward. “Better make it a large one.”

Ahn got to his feet. His gold clothing shimmered in the candlelight, and as he raised his drink, supporting his right arm with his left hand. “Nick, in Korea we turn our backs to those of higher rank when we drink. Here, among these comrades from around the world and across time, it is impossible to say who ranks the highest. But tonight you have shown yourself to be a prince.” He turned his shoulder to Nick. “Gun bae! To courage!”

“To courage!” Everyone drank. Nick drank too, although what he had endured had not required courage; he’d had no choice but to face the bullet.

Arkady got to his feet and raised his glass. “I give you a Russian toast. To Father Frost and the Snow Maiden!”

“Make a toast that’s about Nick, Arkady,” Alice said. “Not about you.”

“Wait.” Nick got to his feet. “If we are toasting women, I have one.” He cleared his throat. “‘Here’s to the charmer, whose dimples we prize . . .’”

Alice groaned.

Nick smiled at her and carried on. “‘Now to the maid who has none, sir. Here’s to the girl with a pair of blue eyes, and here’s to the nymph with but one, sir!’”

Everyone laughed, and drank.

Except Penture. The Frenchman sat back in his chair, swirling his brandy in his glass. When the laughter was done he got to his feet. “To our once-beloved sister who has turned against us, and against whom we have turned. Alva Blomgren!”

“To Alva,” Nick echoed, and clinked glasses with the Alderman, and then with the others, who toasted as if to a dead friend: “To Alva.”

Penture put his glass down but remained standing. He leaned over the table and waited until he had everyone’s attention. “Now,” he said, “I’m afraid we must tell Mr. Davenant about the future.”

It was as if a cold wind had blown through the room. People shifted in their chairs, and Nick watched as Alice transformed from a relaxed friend among friends to a tightly controlled Alderwoman among colleagues.

He glanced back at Penture and found that those flat green eyes were bent on him. “What do you know about the future, Davenant?”

Waterloo? The scramble for Africa? Hoover Dam? The Cultural Revolution? The Beatles? AIDS? “A great deal,” he said. “Mostly useless.”

“No. Not what’s coming. What is. What does the future mean to the Guild? What does the Guild mean to the future?”

“The Guild protects the future from the past,” Nick said. “You protect the flow of history from the Ofan, who think it is possible to change the river, and change the future.”

“That is the theory. If history is a river that flows to the sea, the Guild is the guardian of that flow. But recently . . .”

The Alderman paused and looked down at his hands, which rested on the table. He wore a heavy golden ring with a polished purple stone. It looked very old, almost crude. Nick twisted his own ring on his finger. Arkady had his hand around the stem of his glass, and that enormous ruby winked in the dim light. And Alice’s pale yellow stone; Nick couldn’t see it, for her hands were in her lap, but she wore it always. Ahn’s hands were on the table; he wore what looked like a plain gold wedding band on his ring finger. And Saatçi? Marjory Northway? Their hands were out of sight.

Penture covered the fingers of his left hand with his right, obscuring his ring. “The Guild has always protected the river of history, Davenant, since time immemorial.”

“Can time be immemorial for the Guild? Surely you know everything, back to when we were hunting wooly rhinos in the Dordogne.”

“Have you ever met a caveman?”

“Yes.” Nick pointed to Arkady. “There he sits.”

Arkady nodded, accepting this as an accolade.

Penture smiled thinly. “I mean a real caveman. I know the answer; you have not. Any single person’s window of travel is about a thousand years back, give or take a century or two. If you were to jump back to the