The River of No Return (7 page)

Julia closed her eyes. It was her fault. No wonder Grandfather had drilled her in secrecy after that. She sighed and opened her eyes again. “Be that as it may, Cousin, Grandfather is dead now. His talent died with him.”

Eamon traced his finger along the edge of the desk. “Ah, but did it?”

“Of course it did.”

Eamon traced his finger back. “I’m not so sure, kitten. After that interesting afternoon I demanded that he tell me how he stopped time. He must have felt shame at his treatment of me, I think, for he revealed it was a power he gained from an instrument of some kind. He called it a talisman.” Eamon spoke dreamily, watching his finger as it stroked the desk. He looked up at Julia. “What is the talisman, Julia?”

“I have no idea,” Julia said. Nor had she. She had never heard Grandfather mention a talisman, not once.

Eamon narrowed his eyes and searched her face. “It must be an ancient or a strange object, one of these stones of his perhaps. Something that carries a spell locked up inside. I spent years trying to get it out of him. Again and again I pressed him for the information. But he never told me, damn him. I even thought that maybe he had lost it since that day that he whipped me. But you have just told me differently, with your tale of that housemaid’s apron.”

So she
had
already told Eamon more than he had known. She had to gather her wits, and fast. Eamon believed there was more to the secret, and perhaps there was. But a talisman? Julia didn’t believe it. Grandfather’s talent had been vital, a part of his body, his spirit. It didn’t rely on some trinket. He must have spun Eamon a yarn about a talisman in order to lay a false trail. Keep him from the truth. Whatever that was. If only Grandfather had trusted her with more information—or told her nothing at all. Other people played spillikins or fox and geese with their granddaughters. Would that he had amused her that way and kept his time games to himself.

She looked up to find Eamon watching her. “You have been informative this morning,” he said. “I told you that you could keep no secrets from me. Now.” He leaned forward over the desk. “Sit down, Julia. No more balking. You started to tell me the secret when you were four years old. Now you are going to finish what you began. You are going to tell me what your grandfather’s talisman is, where he has it hidden, and how to use it.”

“And if I cannot?”

“Oh, but you can and you will, kitten, I am sure of it.”

T
he huge jet plane overflew London, banked through 180 degrees, and followed the Thames. In the early-morning light Nick could see the Isle of Dogs sparkling with tall glass buildings, the New Globe, St. Paul’s scrubbed clean and white, the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, Battersea Power Station. He traced out the river’s ancient, familiar shape through all the new developments, Kensington, Wimbledon, the gargantuan sprawl of the City. He was returning to England, breaking a cardinal rule of the Guild at the express command of Alderwoman Gacoki herself. He had with him a few changes of clothes, a blue U.S. passport, and tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket, his Summons Direct. He didn’t intend to stay long.

The Alderwoman was waiting in arrivals with Arkady Altukhov, her enigmatic and seldom-seen husband.

“This is an honor, Alderwoman Gacoki,” Nick said as he took Alice’s cool fingers in his own. He had last shaken her hand at the fish market in Santiago. Leo had been beside him. He felt a brief sensation of falling backward. It had been almost ten years. Where was his brilliant, uncompromising Pocumtuk friend now? What would he look like, at thirty? Or was he dead? Nick let himself remember that last night, fighting in the car. Nick had been a stubborn fool—but still. Leo would surely have forgiven him by now; found a way to make contact if he were alive. And what was Nick doing, shaking hands with the woman who may well have ordered Leo killed?

“Thank you for coming,” Alice said, as if the Summons Direct had been a party invitation. “And please, call me Alice. You know Arkady . . .” She gestured to the man beside her.

The Alderwoman’s husband shook hands as if handshaking were a contest of strength. He was a tall, white-haired Russian of few words. Nick had seen him at conventions but had never spoken to him before and knew almost nothing about him. Altukhov’s accent was thick: “Welcome back to England, Mr. Davenant.”

Alice looked at the canvas and leather bag slung across Nick’s shoulder, then let her gaze skim down his body and up again. “Is that all you’re carrying?”

Nick patted the bag and looked lightly around him at the shifting crowds of travelers. “I don’t plan on staying.”

Arkady snorted, but Alice took Nick’s arm and began steering him toward the escalators. “We have much to discuss. Come. Have you ever ridden in a helicopter before?” She flashed Nick a white smile, as if he were a child and she were taking him on his first pony ride.

He had to admit that it was exhilarating, buzzing like a wasp over the city, headphones clapped to his ears. Nick stared down at the streets, at the people hurrying along, the traffic. It all looked normal to him now. The cars and buses, women in trousers, electric lights, and tall buildings. The helicopter dropped and landed on top of a building on the South Bank, and soon enough he and Alice were zipping up the elevator of the skyscraper known as “The Shard.” Arkady had disappeared.

The elevator doors opened onto an elegant reception area of stark white marble walls and a black marble floor. A beautiful young man sat behind a huge black reception desk.

“Hello, Badr,” Alice said. “Water for me, please, and a pint of bitter for Nick.

“It’s not even noon,” Nick protested.

“Ah, but I want to see you taste your first English beer again. We keep traditionally brewed ale on tap here, always perfectly cellared. I believe today we’re pulling Theakston’s Old Peculier, isn’t that right, Badr?”

The beautiful youth flashed an even more beautiful smile of assent, but Nick shook his head. “No, thank you.”

“Have it to please me. It’s been ten years, hasn’t it, since you tasted the real thing?”

“Thirteen. I was in Spain for three years before I jumped, you may recall.”

“Ah, yes. Spain. Thirteen years. Surely the small matter of the time of day won’t hold you back.”

Nick couldn’t help but smile at her absurd manipulations, all to get him to drink a beer. “A half then, please.”

Badr nodded and disappeared. Alice led Nick down a long hallway and into a vast boardroom. A long table set about with chairs filled the room. In the center of the table, a crystal vase holding at least fifty white tulips was clearly intended to relieve the corporate severity of the space but served only to heighten it. One entire wall of the room was glass. Nick went to look out at the city.

Badr reappeared with a glass of water for the Alderwoman and what was, truly, a beautiful beer for Nick. Nick took a sip. It tasted marvelous. In fact, nothing had tasted so good in his entire life. “Has ale improved across the last two centuries?”

“Many things have improved. Please. Take a seat, Nick. And thank you, Badr, that will be all.” The young man left them alone.

Nick sat, and the Alderwoman took the first chair along the table’s long side. “There is more to the Guild than you know.”

“Ah.” Nick allowed some sarcasm into his voice. “You mean that it’s more than what we tell the kids? More than a swanky social club?”

The corners of Alice’s mouth twitched. “Much more.”

Nick sipped his beer and regarded the Alderwoman. She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. He decided to try to take control of this extremely strange situation. “Why am I here? In London, where I’m not allowed to be?”

“Give me your hand,” Alice said, reaching for it. She wore that same ring he remembered from Chile, the one set with a large yellow jewel. She turned his hand over and contemplated his palm.

“Are you going to read my fortune?”

Alice smiled and traced his lifeline with a short, perfectly manicured fingernail. A tremor extended up his arm to the base of his skull. “Time,” she said. “It is like a river. It always flows in one direction.” She placed her finger at the intersection of Nick’s heart line and his fate line. “Or does it?”

“I’m losing respect for you, Alice. Next you’ll be pulling out a crystal ball.” It felt like her finger was resting at the crossroads of him.

“This hand has done many things.”

“Do you see my past deeds written in the creases?”

“No.” She tapped her finger twice at the center of his palm. “I know very little about palmistry. But I do know about you.” She leaned back, releasing his hand. “I know because as the Alderwoman of the Guild I have more information at my fingertips than you can possibly imagine. I also know because I am a good reader of men and women. You wear your past in your body and your face. We all do.”

“When you say I’ve done many things with my hands, do you mean killing?”

“You have killed, haven’t you? In Spain.”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve done many other things as well.”

Nick lifted his glass. “Drinking,” he said.

Alice nodded. “And loving women.”

Nick took a sip. He wasn’t going to respond to that one.

“Writing letters and sealing them with that ring.”

Nick glanced at his ring. Its crest gleamed in the morning sun. “What are we talking about, Alice? Why am I here? Am I to become one of your hit men?”

“You think the Guild has hit men?”

“Of course it does.” He thought of Meg and Leo. “Don’t treat me like a child.”

Alice let her breath out slowly, looking over Nick’s shoulder at something. Her dark eyes seemed curiously blank for a moment. Then they snapped back to his. “Look outside, Nick,” she said.

He raised his eyes and gasped. The sky had changed. The sun was well risen now, and there were a few clouds where before there had been none. As much as an hour might have passed. He scanned the room. On the table under the tulips there was a fallen petal that had not been there before. He leapt to his feet. “What did you do to me?” He looked down at his beer, picked it up, sniffed it. It had the flat, unappetizing smell of a drink left sitting too long. “Damn it! I was enjoying that.”

Alice leaned back in her chair and favored Nick with a smile. “I stop time and you worry about your beer.”

“You stopped time? What do you mean? What the bloody hell do you mean by that?”

“Sit down, Nick.”

He sank back down into his chair. He felt like throwing up. But he clenched his jaw and stared at the Alderwoman, waiting for an explanation.

She reached over and pushed his flat beer away, down the table. “I stopped time,” she said, and her voice was crisp and businesslike. “Though only in this room, and only for you. For almost an hour. I did various things during that time. Wrote a few e-mails. Made a phone call. Then I started time up again and you started up, too. It is much like pressing pause and then play on an iPod.”

“But . . . I thought—” Nick stopped. He could tell before he even finished his sentence that much of what he had believed a few moments ago—an hour ago, apparently—was about to be revealed as infantile nonsense.

“You thought what the Guild wanted you to think,” Alice said. “You thought that you’d jumped in time ten years ago and that was the end of that. But now, Nick, the Guild has cleared you for Level One security. We need you, and we need you to know a little more.”

He swallowed. “Why me?”

Alice waved her hand as if shooing away a mosquito. “Don’t worry about that. We need you for reasons that have to do with your past. But to be of use, you will have to learn more about the Guild, about yourself and of what you are capable. Some of what you learn might disturb you, or make you angry.”

“I can handle it,” Nick said gruffly. “For God’s sake, I’ve jumped two bloody centuries and remade my life from the bottom up.”

The Alderwoman touched a drop of water that was running down her glass and drew a wet, undulating line on the tabletop. “Indeed you have. Admirably.” She looked up. “Do you remember the first rule of the Guild? And the second?”

“There is no return.”

“That is, indeed, the first and also the second rule of the Guild. But rules . . .” She paused. “I believe they say that rules are made to be broken.” She smiled at him, waiting for him to understand.

Nick stared back, not wanting to know what he suddenly did know. When he spoke, he spoke slowly and softly, to keep from screaming. “You have brought me here to London, thus breaking the second rule of the Guild, in order to tell me that the first rule is also a load of bollocks.”

“In a nutshell, yes.” Alice smiled at her own witticism. “Unless it is the other way around. I always considered the first rule to be about place and the second about time. But I suppose the order doesn’t really matter.”

Nick stared at her, not hearing her words. “So it is possible to go back in time,” he said, when her voice died away.

“Yes.”

Nick lost it then, and said a great deal that, later, he wasn’t proud of. There was a lot of cursing, and the vase of tulips ended up smashed against the window.

After a few minutes, Nick stood looking out at the city, struggling to regain his composure. Finally he turned back to find Alice quietly texting someone on her iPhone.

“What are you going to do to me?”

Alice finished tapping at the screen, waited until the soft shush told her the message had been sent, then looked up. “We’re not going to
do
anything to you. We’re extending an invitation. Wouldn’t you like to see your mother again? Your sisters?”

“They are dead.” Nick heard the gravel in his voice. This woman, twice his age, was calmly skewering him with a red-hot poker, right through the heart. Ten years he had lived here on the edge of time, ten years of mourning his family, of berating himself, of blaming himself, of hating himself.

“They are dead now,” Alice said, “but they aren’t dead then. Are you telling me you don’t want to see them?”

“Damn you.” Nick squeezed his eyes shut, balled his fists.

“This is a happy thing,” Alice said gently. “I’m telling you that you can go back.”