The River of No Return (43 page)

I
tell you, Nick, she is not here.”

“Your godforsaken dog thinks she’s here.” Nick yanked at Solvig’s lead; the dog was pulling away from him, straining down the front steps of Alva’s house. She was fascinated by some spot in the street.

Solvig turned resentful eyes on Nick and barked, then with one strong yank of her lead she broke free and bounded down the stairs, to stand over that spot on the pavement, her nose pushing back and forth in the dirt.

Alva was wearing a silver wrap over not very much, and her hair was piled on top of her head in a complicated confection of loops and curls. Now she watched her former pet, a furrow between her brows. “Perhaps she didn’t follow the trail at all. Perhaps she just led you home to me.”

“She was following some sort of scent,” Nick said. “She dragged us up and down every street in Soho, her nose down and her tail up like a flag.”

Alva pursed her lips, then turned to Jemison. “Who is your friend, Nick? Are you going to introduce us?”

“Miss Blomgren, Mr. Jemison,” Nick said, gesturing impatiently from one to the other. “I’ve told him about the Ofan and the Guild, Alva, so you’ve no need to be secretive.”

“Oh, have you.” Alva tipped her head on one side and gave her full attention to Jemison. “And you believe his lordship, Mr. Jemison?”

Jemison bowed. “I have reason to trust what he says.”

Alva nodded, once. “That is high praise, indeed.” She turned back to Nick, who was almost quivering with impatience. “That was a remarkable decision you made, Nick, to tell a Natural about the River of Time. You must trust Mr. Jemison, in return.”

“Obviously.” Nick punched his fist into his open palm. “Now can we stop caring and sharing and get on with finding a young woman who might well be in mortal danger? Why, for instance, would Julia come here of all places?”

Alva glanced down and fingered the fine texture of her garment. “I’m not sure.”

“That is not the truth,” Jemison said.

Alva’s gaze flew up and Nick watched as the courtesan and the ex-soldier locked eyes.

“You are an observant man,” Alva said.

Jemison bowed his head.

“Your friend is correct.” Alva turned to Nick with a half smile. “Or at least, he is not wrong. I don’t know why Julia would come to me. But she was here yesterday. She came with your sister.”

“They visited you? A prostitute?”

Alva put her hand on Nick’s arm. “Please do not play the marquess with me, Nick. I met your sister on a harmless walk a week or so ago. She did not inform me of her rank, and we chatted quite naturally. Then she and Julia turned up yesterday hoping to extend the friendship. When I learned who they were, I sent them on their way with a flea in their ear.”

“I find that not at all comforting.”

“The young lady is missing,” Jemison said, “and the dog led us to you, Miss Blomgren. You know her, Nick knows you. There must be some reason she came here.”

“The only reason I can think of is no reason at all,” Alva said in answer. “The poor child thinks I am Nick’s mistress.”

“And how,” Nick said with contempt, “did she come to think that?”

Alva’s eyes warmed. “The icy resolve of a man in love,” she said. “How lovely for Julia. But I’m afraid you can’t blame me. She arrived fully aware that you had a mistress and what she looked like. When she saw me, she put two and two together.”

“This was yesterday? Yesterday morning?”

“Yes.”

The icy resolve melted like a snowflake. Nick sat down on the step, not caring if it cost him his dignity. So Julia had come directly from Alva’s house, called for him, and then she had simply . . . made him her lover. What must she have thought when he told her he loved her? No wonder that strange expression had flitted across her face. No wonder her reply had been so flat.

Alva stepped out of her doorway and sat down next to him, her garment shimmering in the light of the flambeaux that flanked her steps. “I felt I couldn’t explain,” she said gently. “Given everything.”

“No, you couldn’t.” Nick propped his elbows on his knees and pushed his fingers into his hair. “But it seems so unlikely that she would run to you, knowing what she thinks she knows.”

“Especially since I stood on this very step and told them in no uncertain terms that they were never welcome here again.” Alva shook her head. “It was hard. Your sister feels trapped by her sex and her class, she is hungry for knowledge, and she wasn’t wrong to think that I have found a way to be free. But it is not a way that she can emulate.” She stretched her arms down between her knees and clasped her hands. “I had to freeze them while they were here. I hate doing that—it is such a violation of human dignity. But Peter came back. You remember, the girl who wasn’t on duty? She jumped right into the midst of us without warning and I had to freeze your sister and Julia in order to deal with Peter. She was full of some crazy theory about the Talisman. She . . . why are you looking at me like that?”

Nick held up a hand, his thoughts tumbling over one another. “Wait . . . I’m thinking.” He counted to three in his head, and when he was done, he knew. “She heard everything you said.”

“What?”

“Julia is one of us, Alva!” Nick felt something like hope unfurl in his chest. “I’ve only just learned it, from Arkady of all people.”

“Arkady! How does he know?”

“Oh, God, he’s figured everything out, Alva. He even knows about Ignatz.”

Alva raised her eyebrows. “He does?”

“Yes. And he’s convinced that Julia is Ofan, or at least that she has the talent. It must be true, because the only reason she would know to come to you is if she knew you were Ofan as well. She wasn’t frozen at all while you were talking to Peter—she was pretending. Thank God, because it means she knows you can help her, knows that you are safe.”

“Except,” Alva said gently, “that she is not here.”

At that moment Solvig’s bark broke the night’s stillness like cannon fire. Nick shot to his feet and went down to her. She was scrabbling in the dust at the edge of the road, trying to pick something up in her teeth. Nick dragged her away by the collar and bent to pick it up himself. It was dirty and it was wet with Solvig’s slobber, but he could see the badly stitched
J.P
. even in the flickering light.

It was Julia’s hussif.

He charged back up the stairs. Jemison and Alva bent over the sorry little bag. “Is it hers?” Alva asked.

“Yes. I saw her with it just the other day. It was in the gutter . . . why?”

“Did she know you had seen it?” Jemison plucked it from Nick’s fingers and looked at it closely. “Might she have dropped it as a sign to you?” He untied the ribbon that secured the square pouch and unfolded it.

“That’s exactly what she must have done,” Alva said. “A way of saying ‘I was here!’”

Jemison pulled out the tangle of red thread that Julia had been working on that glorious morning of the paper airplanes. Then he came up with a small ring stuck on the end of his forefinger like a crown. “Look at this twisty piece of trash. I wonder why she carries it.”

Alva reached out slowly, as if she were pushing her hand through sand. “Please,” she breathed. “Oh, please!” She plucked it from Jemison’s finger and fumbled in her bosom for her glasses. She popped them on her nose and examined the ring as tears slipped unnoticed down her cheeks, like raindrops on a window.

“What is it?” Nick tried to keep the desperation from his voice.

She held the ring out on her open palm, for Nick to see. “Eréndira,” she said. “It is her ring.”

“The Talisman!” Nick snatched it up for a closer look. At first glance it appeared cheap, for it was only copper. But the craftsmanship was flawless. The ring looked as if it were made of several intricately intertwining cords. The motif of the eye within the circle was so abstract as to be almost indiscernable; if Alva hadn’t described it to him in the transporter, he never would have seen it as representational at all. “This looks . . . either very old or very modern,” he said.

“Why is it important?” Jemison reached out for the ring, and Nick handed it over.

“It is a talisman,” Nick said. “Something both the Ofan and the Guild are seeking. We hope it has the power to change the future.”

Jemison frowned and turned the ring over in his hand, then gave it back to Alva. “Are you saying it is magical?” Jemison cast a doubting glance at Nick. “This little thing?”

Alva folded her fingers over the ring. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have never believed in magic; to my mind the things we do with time aren’t supernatural. They don’t rely on incantations or spells or potions; we simply have a talent. But . . .” She looked up at Jemison. “Ignatz Vogelstein, our great teacher and visionary, sent me a letter, Mr. Jemison, with a hint enclosed about the Talisman. The hint was the symbol that is worked into this little ring.” Alva looked from Jemison to Nick, her eyes alight. “Tell me now, Nick. How is Julia connected to Ignatz Vogelstein?”

“She is his granddaughter.”

Alva stared at him. “Oh,” she whispered. “Of course! Why didn’t I realize it when I saw her yesterday? Her eyes reminded me of his; I even told her so. And yet I didn’t put two and two together. Even though she was there with your sister . . . he never let me meet the child, you know—”

Jemison interrupted. “So either the ring is the Talisman, or her grandfather gave her the ring as a sign for her to show others that she can be trusted. She holds the secret.”

Nick shook his head. Something was tickling his memory. “I don’t think she does know,” he said. “I don’t think she has any idea that this ring is important at all. There was something she said . . .” He gestured toward Jemison. “May I have that hussif?”

Jemison handed the pouch over and Nick held it in his hand, remembering Julia talking to him about it. She’d said she didn’t keep sewing notions in it, but rather some keepsakes. . . . He opened it again and found a fossil trilobite. “This is a memento of her grandfather,” he said. “And that . . .” He pointed to the ring in Alva’s hand. “She thinks that is a trinket, the only memento she has of her mother, who died when she was three months old. She called it a ‘fairing.’”

Alva reached for the trilobite and held it in her palm beside the ring. “Ignatz,” she whispered. She sighed. “When I saw Julia’s gestures, and when I saw those dark eyes . . . Ignatz used his hands in just that way when he talked, and he had dark eyes, too. Like good, strong Assam tea. A redder brown than Julia’s. I almost wept right there in my kitchen, surrounded by half-pickled beets. . . .”

“Alva.” Nick touched her shoulder. “Julia is lost. We need to stay focused.”

But Alva held the ring up and contemplated it with that same misty expression. “It is beautiful, isn’t it,” she mused. “Crafted before the fall of Mesoamerica by a P’urhépecha metallurgist—did you know that their work was even finer than the Mexicas’? It is priceless.”

Nick pushed his fingers into his hair and sighed. “I beg of you, Alva—”

“No—follow me, Nick. Something doesn’t make sense here. The ring is a treasure in two ways. The Spanish melted down every piece of metal they could lay their hands on, so almost no pre-Conquest jewelry remains, and yet here is this ring. Second, this ring was Eréndira’s inheritance from her mother, but Arkady doesn’t have it—Julia does. And Julia thinks it is a trinket of no value except a sentimental connection to her own dead mother. Why?”

“It must have been Ignatz’s way of making the ring significant to her,” Nick said. “He passed the ring off as her dead mother’s so that she would carry it around with her all the time. But why would he make her the keeper of the Talisman, and yet not tell her what it was? We’re back where we started.”

Alva shook her head. “No, we’re not back where we started. It’s clear! The ring itself isn’t the Talisman, it marks the Talisman. It is a sign.” She turned those eyes, glowing like a bluebell wood at dusk, on Jemison and then on Nick. “Ignatz told Julia the ring was her mother’s so that she would always have it near her, but he didn’t want Julia to protect the ring. He wanted the ring to reveal the truth about Julia. Julia Percy is the Talisman.”

“That’s mad,” Nick whispered.

“Why else would she carry that ring of Eréndira’s close to her all the time and yet not know what it is?”

“From what I’m beginning to understand about your boyfriend,” Nick said, “he kept Julia in the dark about everything. His lies don’t prove anything about either the ring or Julia. They only prove that he was a pig-headed old man—”

But Alva wasn’t listening. She was staring at the ring, and she looked as if she might faint.

“What? What is it?”

“Oh, dear God,” Alva said, and raised her still, shocked face to Nick’s.

“Tell me!”

“It was not Ignatz Vogelstein’s eyes I recognized in Julia’s,” Alva said, her voice a trembling thread. “I was led astray by the brown color of them and the familiarity of her gestures. The ring
did
belong to her mother, Nick. Julia is not Ignatz’s granddaughter. She is Arkady’s.”

* * *

The marquess rose up like a wall of fire at Alva’s words, enraged by the suggestion that the woman he intended to marry was not legitimate, was not English. But Nick met that rage with his own, and he simply reached inside and pinched the marquess out like a puny candle flame.

He knew in his bones that it was true. Julia was Eréndira’s daughter.

It made Julia’s isolation, her danger, and his own fear for her more tangible. She was alone, and she had no idea who she was. The man she had loved as a grandfather had tried to protect her by wrapping her up in a tissue of lies, and her blood grandfather, Arkady, was hell-bent on . . . Nick swallowed. He was hell-bent on harming her, perhaps even killing her.

“All right then,” Nick said, taking a deep breath. “Julia is Eréndira’s daughter. She is the Talisman. Can that new information shed any light on what might have happened to her?”

But Alva was frantically trying to make sense of the new revelation. “Eréndira had no children when I knew her,” Alva said. “She was young. She took on lovers like she took on ideas: fully, passionately—and then she moved on. But when she returned to us, dying of wounds I could not see? She had aged in her time across the Pale. She must have had a child and given it to Ignatz. And he must have hidden it. An hour after her death Ignatz disappeared to Devon, only to return to London now and then, and only as the Earl of Darchester. It wasn’t long after he left that we heard he was raising an orphaned granddaughter.”