The River of No Return (47 page)

“Does Mr. Mibbs want to take me back across the Pale?” Julia sent her question out into the crackling silence. She felt a wave of some complicated emotion travel around the pool of light. Fear, sadness, hope, and anger.

“We don’t know,” Leo said, after a moment.

“You really don’t know, or is that your way of saying ‘don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow’?”

“‘Don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow,’” Bertrand murmured. “Ignatz said that almost every day.”

“Yes, every day,” Julia agreed, and heard the bitterness in her voice.

“You have every right to hate him for what he hid from you,” Bertrand said. “It enrages me, too. But still, he was a great man. He saved my life and taught me how to live it once he’d saved it.”

“Tell me about him.” Julia leaned in. “About Ignatz, not Ignatius.”

Bertrand leaned in, too, so that Julia felt it was just the two of them, their faces red in the light of the dying fire. “You have a great deal of Ignatz in you, Julia Percy, for all that you are not related to him by blood. He gave you many gifts.”

“I have his temper,” Julia said.

Bertrand smiled. “That is a gift and a curse.”

“I know.”

Bertrand poked the fire. “Ignatius Percy was the second son of the Earl of Darchester. He jumped when he was nineteen years old, in the aftermath of the Massacre of Devil’s Hole. Something to do with Seneca warriors behind him and Niagara Falls in front of him. Very dramatic.”

Leo snorted. “It wasn’t a massacre,” he said. “It was a battle. And the battleground is at least three miles from the falls.”

Bertrand inclined his head in Leo’s direction. “Battle,” he said, then turned back to Julia with a smile. “Whatever the truth of his story, Ignatius jumped, and he found himself in the state of New York of the 1930s. The Guild never detected him. Soon enough he connected with the Ofan and learned how to return to his era. His elder brother died and he became the earl. He lived his life half in his own natural time and half in late-twentieth-century Brazil, working with the Ofan host there. But he traveled all up and down the river. I first met him in England in the late 1530s, when he was around twenty-eight years old. I later got to know him better in Brazil, when he was in his forties. For me, it had been only a difference of two years.”

“Is that when you’re from? The sixteenth century?” Leo sounded eager for the answer, but Bertrand merely glanced across at him before returning his focus to Julia.

“As I was saying, I spent time with him in Brazil in the twenty-first century. But the twenty-first century is a bad time for Ofan activity. The Guild is very strong in the computer era, and it is difficult to hide. And once Eréndira—your mother—disappeared over the Pale, Ignatz fell apart. He was a passionate man. Swayed by his desires, his loves, his griefs. He lost control.”

“I cherished that in him!” Julia felt the fire hot on her face and realized she was leaning ever closer to Bertrand. “Do not say that his passion was a weakness.”

“I do not say it.” The Frenchman’s green gaze cooled her, and she leaned back. “It takes all kinds, Julia. All kinds. Do you think that because I am one kind of man, I judge other kinds?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you.”

“No one really knows Bertrand Penture,” Leo said. “Ofan or Guild? Friend or foe? Man or machine? When is he from? What does he believe?”

Bertrand’s eyes never wavered from Julia’s. He had said that Ignatz taught him to live. Grandfather had taught her to be blind to life. They had learned very different lessons from the same man. They both loved him, and they both felt the enormity of his betrayal. But for all that they shared so much, and for all that she had seen him laugh and even sung with him, there was nothing in Bertrand’s beautiful face that suggested that he could be a friend. Julia was grateful for the warmth of Nick’s arms around her, his legs on either side of hers. Grateful for the way his breath matched hers.

Bertrand continued. “Ignatz’s vision was a beautiful one. A community of Ofan working together to learn about the talent, to pierce the Pale and learn its secrets. But he could not keep it going. Alva and I are working to establish a similar community here, in England, in 1815. Alva’s catacombs beneath Soho Square are known as a safe space all up and down the river, but because they are known by the Guild and Ofan alike, we cannot build on them. I am the Guild Alderman and therefore I will be able to obfuscate our activities. But to expand, we need property.” His eyes caught the light and flashed. “A very specific property.”

For a moment there was silence, except for the faint crystalline music of the dying fire.

Property. Julia thought about Castle Dar. The home she had loved . . . the place where she had been made a fool. She thought of Grandfather’s stone that had caught and preserved the impression of a bird. Her life had been nothing more than an impression at Castle Dar. A hollowed-out trace. Now she was flown.

Here in the open, around a fire, in a barn with a broken roof—here was where she had woken up. Here and in this place and in this moment she knew what she could do, who she was. “Is Castle Dar mine?” Julia asked after a moment. “Now that Eamon is dead? Or did Grandfather neglect to adopt me?”

Bertrand smiled. “You are very intelligent, Julia. Like your mother. Ignatius spent a great deal of energy trying to disinherit Eamon so that he could establish Castle Dar as an Ofan stronghold. But he never managed to destroy Eamon’s claim. Which means that with Eamon’s death the property does, indeed, descend to you, his granddaughter. He had no need to adopt you, because from the very beginning he made sure you were his real granddaughter in the eyes of the law. He forged papers proving that his son had married a Scottish woman. You will find that your father’s wedding and your legitimate birth is on record in a little church in Prestonpans. For all intents and purposes, you are Lord Percy’s lawful descendant.”

“And Castle Dar is mine.”

Bertrand nodded.

“Then you may buy it from me.” As she said the words she felt a final weight lift from her shoulders. “I don’t want it.”

Bertrand smiled at her. “Thank you, Julia,” he said. “But it is not Castle Dar we need.” She watched as his eyes lifted from hers to Nick’s. “We need Falcott House.”

Julia felt Nick’s body, wrapped so comfortingly around hers, tense. “Pardon me?” he said softly. “I think I just heard you demand my home of me.”

“Indeed,” the Frenchman said. “Falcott House is perfect for our needs.”

“Julia has just offered you Castle Dar. It is twice the size of Falcott House.”

“Nevertheless. Yours is the house we need. And no other.”

“Why?”

Bertrand looked at Nick in some annoyance. “That is none of your concern. Give me the Blackdown estate, Davenant.”

Nick’s body relaxed, but not back into inattention. “I recommend to you a certain document, Penture,” he said, a laugh in his voice. “It is called the Magna Carta. It was designed expressly to keep upstart kings from demanding property of their lords.”

“But I am not a king,” Bertrand said silkily. “And in the eyes of the Ofan, you are not a lord.”

The laugh broke through. “Ah, but there’s the rub,” Nick said. “If I am not a lord, then Blackdown is not mine to give. It is entailed to the Blackdown marquessate. And if I am a lord, then I cannot give you Blackdown, for exactly the same reason. I am only the brief tenant of the title, which must descend from me to my eldest son, should such an unfortunate child ever be born. And if Lord Blackdown dies without an heir, the lands descend to my sister Clare. Believe you me, I know her plans for the estate, and they do not involve the Ofan.” Nick put his hands out, palms up, on either side of Julia’s body. “And so you see I have nothing, Alderman. I am a man of means by no means.”

The Frenchman stared across the fire at Nick. Julia watched him closely—something was boiling up in him. Was it rage that made his mouth twitch, or was it . . .

Bertrand’s stern face broke into a ruffian grin, and he put his head back and laughed to shake the rafters. “You are cleverer than you look, Nick Davenant!” He smiled at Julia. “I accept your offer, Julia Percy,” he said. “I will settle for second-best and buy Castle Dar for . . . shall we say fifteen thousand pounds?”

“I prefer twenty-five,” Julia said.

“Done.”

Julia felt herself hugged fiercely by Nick. She turned to smile at him and was kissed on the mouth.

Bertrand leaned back out of the firelight and shook his head. “‘In love the heavens themselves do guide the state,’” he said, speaking up and into the darkness. “‘Money
buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.’”

“For God’s sake, Bertrand,” Leo said. “Do you have to drop ice cubes down the back of every human feeling?”

J
ulia sat, her expression bland. Bertrand leaned against the mantel, and Nick stood with his arms folded in front of him. Leo was nowhere to be seen. The Russian—her grandfather, though she couldn’t admit that truth to herself for more than a second at a time—was eyeing her with distaste. “I suppose I am convinced that she is innocent,” he said. “But someone was at Castle Dar that day, Nick. An Ofan.”

“I assure you, Arkady,” Bertrand said smoothly, “we will continue the investigation. You may return home to Alice and leave it in our hands.”

Arkady glowered. Julia could feel his frustration, but she didn’t glance up. The past hour had been an ordeal to say the least. Pretending. So this was what it felt like, to really hide the truth, a truth you actually knew. She was breathless and tense, because she understood what she was hiding. She knew the stakes.

The Russian had questioned and cross-questioned her ruthlessly, and she had given him answers that made her seem like a sheltered young woman, confused by the attention. She had run away from him that day in the London house because she was afraid of ghosts. She didn’t know anything about priests’ holes. Was it a kind of biscuit? The biscuit comment had made the Russian bark with derisive laughter, and for just a second, Julia thought she would get off easily.

But then the Russian had performed the ultimate test. He had frozen time, and Julia had to freeze with it.

She had practiced this trick with the Ofan, during the three days’ ride from the medieval barn where they had spent that first night. They had left the carriage in the barn, sold the extra horses, and ridden west, sleeping in the open like brigands. At every stop they would practice. One or another of them would freeze time, and her task was to let herself freeze, too. It was a terrifying thing to do; simply allowing time to end felt like dying. She finally managed it late on the second afternoon, somewhere near Sherborne. She had come back to consciousness to the sight of Leo and Bertrand congratulating each other, while Nick stared at her, as white as a sheet. He caught her up in a hug the minute he saw her blink, and kissed her. Then he set her away from him, straightened his cuffs, and congratulated her on her achievement in a stilted, formal voice.

The Ofan assured her it was a sign of her great talent, that she could let herself into and out of the river in whatever way she chose. They had her practice again and again, until it felt like second nature.

So when she felt the Russian slow time to a halt, she let herself go with it, felt her consciousness fade and wink out into nothingness.

When she blinked back, the Russian was pulling on his gloves. Nick surreptitiously held up three fingers—she had been out for half an hour while they discussed her. But she had passed the test; Count Lebedev believed her to be nothing more than a silly young lady from Devon, where it rains six days out of seven.

She tamped down the urge to dance around the room and instead sat still, her insipid smile pasted on her face. She had tricked him. She was almost free.

“Miss Percy.”

She looked up and met Lebedev’s blue eyes. They were melting with tears. The force of his emotion—grief—hit her like a blast of wind.

“Did your grandfather ever . . .” His tears spilled over. “Did he ever talk to you of another child, a brilliant child? A child of incredible gifts? Once he was her teacher, far away. She was unlike you, this girl. She was . . .”

Before Julia knew it, his grief for her mother had pulled her to her feet and he was hugging her close and sobbing into her hair. His pain flooded her. His tears were wet on her forehead and temple, and tears were streaming down her own cheeks. She was becoming this Russian, this man named Arkady, her mother’s father . . . this man who had lost his daughter and would never be whole again. When he finally stumbled away from her, apologizing and drying his eyes, she gathered herself just enough to flee the room, throwing open the double doors into the hallway and shutting them with a bang behind her. She leaned back against the doors, gasping for breath. She could still feel him in the room behind her, dragging at her soul.

Someone grabbed her hand. It was Leo, who had clearly been listening through the door. “Hold on to me,” he whispered fiercely. “Hold on!”

Julia stared blindly at him, and clutched first at his hand and then at his shoulders. Now she could feel Leo! Sense the terrible pain that lay at
his
core. She shrank, terrified.

“No!” He gathered her up into his arms. “Stop it, Julia. Don’t reach out to me. Reach in. Find your mooring. Reach in.”

She closed her eyes and breathed. She turned her attention to herself. Leo’s arms around her, which had at first felt as if they were grabbing at her very soul, were now stabilizing her like a scaffold. She felt her heartbeat. Slowing. Her breath. Slowing. She felt the pull from the other room weaken. Then, like water falling away as the swimmer climbs up from the river, it left her altogether.

She raised her face to Leo’s, and he stepped away from the embrace, smiling at her. He held a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he whispered. “You’re all right now. You’re fine.”

“Yes.” Julia was whispering too. “I was in his feelings!”

Leo shook his head. “And I felt you entering mine.”

“Is that part of the talent?” she asked.

“No. It isn’t part of the talent.”

“But . . . I can put my feelings into people. I’ve done it once to Count Lebedev and once to Jemison. I can make them feel what I feel. You can’t do that?”

“No.” Leo frowned. “No one can. Except . . .” He stopped, his lips folded.

“Except who? You must tell me.”

“Mr. Mibbs.”

“But . . . ,” Julia whispered. “What does that mean?”

Leo looked at the ground, then up again at Julia. He took her hand and squeezed it. “That is what we will have to find out.”

* * *

It was raining. Leo and Bertrand were playing hazard, and Bertrand was winning. Leo was talking, a steady stream of nonsense. Hazard was such an interesting game. So complex . . . and yet it could be more complex, didn’t Bertrand think so? It rather reminded Leo of a Pocumtuk gambling game that took a lifetime to master. Perhaps Bertrand would like to learn? It was played with stones instead of dice, but if you just imagined that you had a stone in your hand . . .

Bertrand told him in a dry tone to shut up.

Julia sat staring out of the window, her spirits low. It had been a full day since Arkady had left, and Nick and Julia hadn’t had a moment alone together. And now it was raining.

But then Nick was standing up, stretching, and announcing he was going to walk over to Castle Dar, the rain be damned, and would anyone like to join him? He looked directly at Julia.

“I will,” Leo said from the card table. “I’m losing anyway.”

“You will not.” Bertrand handed him the dice. “You will continue to gamble away your fortune.”

“But I want to get out of the house.”

“Roll the dice.”

Leo glanced at Nick and then at Julia. “Oh,” he said. “I see. Yes. All right, then. I’ll raise you ten, you evil Frenchman.” He rolled the dice with a practiced flick of the wrist.