The River of No Return

by Bee Ridgway

  She had gone too far. She could see it in his eyes. They were almost popping from his head. Then suddenly everything flew into motion. Eamon was charging down the table, gripping the carving knife, his teeth bared. She scrambled to her feet, but he was upon her, throwing her across the table, sending the china shattering to the floor. She looked wildly around, but the room was empty of servants. She screamed, but his hand was over her mouth and the knife was at her throat. She could feel it pressing into her flesh. His face was inches from hers, his mouth wet and floppy. “I should have killed you that day in the study,” he hissed, his breath smelling of wine and fish. She stared into his bulging eyes, focusing on the black, blank depths of his pupils. The knife pressed with terrible slowness—it was taking so long—and there was a rushing in her head as a single drop of blood began to trickle down her neck. Why was it so quiet? Why were his blue eyes so fixed? Then she caught sight of the wall sconce behind him; the flames were entirely still. It was Grandfather. He was saving her from beyond the grave, stopping time. “Grandfather,” she whispered, afraid to move lest the knife be pressed further. “I am here.”

  But there was no answer. She was alone. With infinite care she reached up and turned Eamon’s unresisting hand so that the flat edge of the knife rested against her throat. Time had stopped still, but Grandfather was dead and gone. She took a slow, deep breath and exhaled it, her mind and body flooding with sudden understanding.

  “It is me,” she whispered into Eamon’s frozen face. “I am the Talisman.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Soon Nick could feel it whenever Arkady or Alice stopped time. It became impossible for them to catch him unawares, though they tested him constantly. He could even feel it when he was in another room or far away across the house. At that distance he was not caught up in the aura of their manipulations, but he knew that somewhere close by someone had altered the flow of time. It felt like swimming in a river and sensing a different current a few feet away without actually being in it.

  He described it that way over dinner one night, and Alice lit up.

  “Yes. Remember when I held your hand and said that time is like a river?”

  “You held his hand?” Arkady shot a look at his wife. “When was this?”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said. She leaned over the table and gestured at Nick, a leaf of lettuce speared on her fork. “This River of Time. It seems to flow in one direction, steadily, inexorably. But there are countercurrents and eddies. Ultimately, and in the big picture, it doesn’t matter; the river flows to the sea. Those who know the river, and who use it, know that it moves in complex ways, ways that we can use and even change. Our very bodies swimming in the river alter its flow. But we cannot change it for long, and we cannot change the ultimate truth: The river will run to the sea.”

  “That is a pretty image, Alice,” Nick said. “But what are you trying to tell me?”

  “And what about this hand holding, I want to know,” Arkady muttered.

  Alice rolled her eyes at her husband, then shook her head at Nick. “I tell you,” she said, cocking her head in Arkady’s direction. “He is hardly worth it.”

  Nick leaned back in his chair and twisted his ring on his finger. “Yes, your wife held my hand,” he said to Arkady. “What are you going to do about it?”

  The Russian shrugged. “I kill you.”

  Nick raised his glass in a salute, and Arkady raised his. They drank.

  Alice, meanwhile, was chewing her lettuce with a bored look on her face. She swallowed, dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin, and propped her elbows on the table. “If you two gentlemen are finished with your little male-bonding ritual, I would like to continue my lecture about time and rivers.”

  Arkady grunted and dug into his salad.

  Nick spread his hands. “I’m all ears,” he said.

  “Such handsome ears,” Alice said, cutting a look at her husband over the rim of her glass as she drank.

  Arkady glanced up from his troughing. “Tonight, you pay for that.”

  “Goody. Now be quiet.” Alice turned the full strength of her attention on Nick, her flirting clearly at an end. “Human history is like a river,” she said. “Billions of souls all living and loving and working and fighting and dying down through the ages, pushing history before them in a powerful flow made up of tiny particles. They make their choices, have their passions. Some are brilliant or powerful or rich or simply lucky enough to make a change for good, a little bend in the river, a slight deviation. Or for bad. Perhaps more often for bad. But ultimately, it is the vast power and flow of the river that carries them forward.”

  “I’m following you,” Nick said.

  “Then there is the strange, unexplained fact of us. The Guild. The people who can jump the river’s course. Move backward and forward along it, more like . . .” Alice paused, thinking. “More like a water bug, perhaps, than a drop of water.”

  Arkady snorted. “I am not a bug.”

  “No,” Alice said. “You would say that time is like a harem of beautiful women and you are like a thief who steals in by moonlight. But this is my account, and in my account we are like water bugs. We can skate here and there on the surface of the river, but nothing we do can really change its overall course, its powerful drive toward the sea.”

  “But we all start with a jump,” Nick said. “Right?”

  “Yes. Every single person who can manipulate time begins by first falling out of time. Jumping. We jump and emerge again somewhere further along. Usually it is something drastic that happens to cause the jump. Our lives are at stake. Mostly it’s war. We are fighting, like you were, or we are caught up in war somehow. Less often we are consumed by an unbearable grief or a drive toward suicide. We lift the knife. But instead of the great courage it takes to plunge the knife into our breast or face death, we tap into this ability, this talent. And we leap forward decades, centuries. Even sometimes a thousand years.”

  “So it is a talent.”

  “Yes.”

  Nick thought about that for a moment. It was inside him, this thing. But he couldn’t find it. Arkady and Alice could use it, but he could not. He spoke again, watching Alice carefully. “Then that’s it for most of us. The Guild gives us a pile of money, life is cushy, and we can never manipulate time again.”

  Alice pushed a toasted pecan across her plate. “Most of us don’t ever manipulate time again. We can. We just don’t know that we can.”

  “Because the Guild makes sure we don’t know.” Nick remembered the Frankish butcher’s insistence that there was no way to go back. Nobody could. It was impossible, he had said. Nick remembered the old man’s sympathy for his first spasms of grief. “Does Ricchar Hartmut know that we can go back?”

  “Ricchar Hartmut?” Alice put her head on one side, searching her memory. “The Frankish greeter. Was he the man who met you when you jumped?”

  Nick nodded. “Does he know?”

  “No.” Alice looked gravely at Nick. “He doesn’t have security clearance. And I know what you’re thinking.”

  “That you have an honest, well-intentioned man telling your lies for you.”

  “Ricchar is a good man. And yes, he is telling lies for us.”

  “How do you live with that?”

  “Easily. It’s about preserving the safety of our members, and the safety of history itself. It’s politics.”

  “Politics.”

  She nodded.

  “Was it politics when you had Leo Quonquont and Meg O’Reilly killed?”

  “Who?”

  Nick narrowed his eyes. Was she lying? “Two people who were with me in Santiago. You met them. Remember when you saw me and Leo in that market? We were waiting for Meg to come out of the bathroom?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t remember that. My life is very full.”

  “Right.” Nick glared at his untouched salad. It was drizzled with raspberry vinaigrette, a modern concoction that he’d found he simply couldn’t st
omach. “Well, it doesn’t matter whether or not you remember. The point is that the next day they were gone.”

  Alice exchanged a quick glance with Arkady. “Leo Quonquont and Meg O’Reilly. Was he the Native American who learned languages so quickly? And she was the hungry Irishwoman? Yes, I remember them now. I remember hearing that they’d left the compound. I’m sorry.”

  “You heard that they’d left. And that was fine with you? You didn’t kill them?”

  “Of course not.” Alice held his gaze, and her face seemed composed and confident. “This isn’t really about them, is it? You thought the Guild killed them, and yet you didn’t yell about it back then. You’ve taken Guild money for years, lived your comfortable life. What are you really upset about?”

  Nick leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. She was right, damn it. He wasn’t upset about Leo and Meg, or at least not more than usual. He was upset that the Guild had disturbed his peace and quiet. He wanted nothing more than to go back to that comfortable, uncomplicated life he had built for himself on Guild money. His house in Vermont, Thruppenny Farm, his loft in SoHo, his series of lovers. He wanted to forget Leo, forget Meg, forget the Guild. Forget these new revelations, forget the possibility that he might return. He wanted to forget his past, forget . . .

  But there was no forgetting the war. Those dreams followed him across the centuries. And the girl with the dark eyes. She was always there, too. Wherever, whenever he was.

  “How did your estate, the marquessate, make its money, Lord Falcott?”

  Nick dropped his hands from his eyes and looked at Alice in some confusion. “Tenant farming. What does this have to do with the Guild?”

  “Tenant farming? Really? You were a very rich man, my lord. You made all your money from your land?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been years since I thought about it.” Nick shrugged. “The years of war were good for the landed gentry. Corn prices were high since we were shut off from the rest of the world. But other than that? Investments. Trade, I suppose.”

  Alice laid her fork down with a clink. “Investments where? Trade in what? Sugar, perchance?”

  Nick sat up straight in his chair. “I had no slaves, Alice.”

  “Are you sure of that?” She raised her eyebrows. “You had no investments whatsoever in the West Indies? Come now, my lord. How far away is Falcott House from Bristol? Are you telling me you were a Devonshire marquess and an abolitionist? Don’t lie to me, because I already know everything about you, both past and present. You profited, if only indirectly, from slavery. You know it now, but more importantly, you knew it then.”

  “The slave trade was abolished in 1807,” Nick muttered. “Everyone knew British slavery itself would end soon. . . .”

  “Because of you? Because of your labors?”

  “It’s not a fair argument.” Nick twitched his cuffs into place and laid his hands on either side of his plate, ready to push up and away. “Believe me, I have suffered over my failings. Besides, what does slavery have to do with the Guild? Are you trying to tell me that the accident of my birth makes me more guilty than you of perpetrating lies? You are the Alderwoman. You can choose to tell us the truth.”

  “You were a marquess. You could have chosen to divest your investments. You could have chosen to take your seat in the House of Lords instead of rushing off to a war that didn’t need you. You could have worked with Wilberforce and the abolitionists to make a difference. Instead . . .”

  Nick sank back into his chair and put out a hand. “Please.” He sat in silence for a moment. “Allow me to pronounce my own guilt. I was an aristocrat. It was an inherited burden, and I was not equal to it, Alice. I was not equal to it. I fucked it up. I ran away. I ran away from war, too, when I jumped. Like a coward. I ran away to this barren future. I’m sorry I wasn’t an abolitionist. I’m sorry I’m not your man now. And I’m not, Alice.”

  Alice pursed her lips, then picked up her fork again and ate her final bite of salad. When she had swallowed, she wiped her mouth with her napkin and looked Nick straight in the eye. “Perhaps when you go back and are the Marquess of Blackdown again you will have a chance to be our man. A chance to . . .” She paused. “Unfuck it up in some small way? But remember. The river runs to the sea. You won’t be able to change the things that will now seem abhorrent to you. You won’t be able to avoid eating sugar made by slaves. You won’t be able to avoid wearing shirts sewn by women who are going blind to make those tiny white stitches in your fine white linen. You won’t be able to give your sisters the vote or send them to university. You won’t be able to halt the march of industry that will destroy the livelihood of your tenants, nor will you be able to prevent the pollution that will kill the fish in your streams. You will know about these things, and you will do what you think is best with the knowledge you have. You will try to protect that which you love and those whom you love. But you will also make choices that go against your principles. You will—yes, you will—you will tell lies, my lord. Just as I do.”

  Alice held Nick’s gaze for a long time. Then she turned to her husband and pointedly changed the subject.

  Nick ate a few bites of his nauseating salad, spiraling into misery as he listened with half an ear to Alice and Arkady’s laughing conversation. They had seen a revival of School for Scandal last week and they couldn’t stop rehashing the best bits between them.

  * * *

  Julia lay for a few breaths beneath the knife. She was the Talisman! She had been the thing that enhanced Grandfather’s power. Now it turned out that she could stop time all on her own. If he had known that, perhaps he would have told her more. She swallowed, feeling the flat side of the knife against her throat. Pretend, Grandfather had said. Pretend not to be the Talisman, the Talisman you don’t know you are.

  Grandfather had left her alone and in wretched ignorance. Grief and anger and panic rose like the three furies in her breast.

  She had no idea how to start time up again. And once it did so, she had no idea how to avoid having her throat cut by Eamon, who would simply pick up where he had left off.

  She could slip out from under the knife and run away, leaving time to start up again on its own accord. But then he would know that she was the Talisman. And once he knew, Julia doubted she had enough control of her power to freeze him in his tracks every time he came at her.

  She could take his purse. This instant. Take his purse and enough of the family silver to sell. Take a horse from the stables and flee. Perhaps she could somehow gather enough money to leave the country. She could go to live in America, or Italy.

  But why should she be the one to run? She had done nothing wrong.

  She could kill him. Here and now. Take the knife and plunge it into his heart.

  She turned her head slightly and looked out of the window, into the dusk. The treetops were moving in the wind. Time was only stopped here, in this room, and indeed, that was how it always was when Grandfather did it. A local pause or acceleration, of only a few moments’ duration. How long could she hold time back? Perhaps it would simply start up again on its own, at any second, and she would die after all.

  Think, Julia, she told herself fiercely. Think about what to do. Grandfather had stopped time, and he had sped it up. He had sped it up and made his own death come more quickly. But was it possible to make it run backward? Perhaps she could wind time back, like yarn onto a ball, to the moment before she had so rashly aggravated Eamon. Perhaps it couldn’t be done. Grandfather had never done it before, at least not in her presence. Perhaps it wasn’t possible. But it was worth a try.

  Julia took a deep breath and focused again on Eamon’s frozen pupils. Go back, she whispered. Go back.

  Nothing happened. She let her breath out and tried to remember how it had felt when Grandfather had played with time. He had always focused on something inconsequential, like dust motes. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. Then she opened them and let her eyes rest on a l
ittle pagoda in the Chinese wallpaper, under the wall sconce. Grandfather, she thought, recalling his smiling face. Winking roguishly before doing his trick.

  There it was. There was the rushing at the back of her head, and time began to reverse, ponderous, reluctant, like a team of oxen being made to back up in a furrow. But it was happening. It was like looking out through misty, rainy window glass. Eamon pulled away and melted down the table to his seat.

  Julia closed her eyes in relief and time resumed its forward push. She reached up and touched her throat. The wound was closed over, with no trace of blood. She opened her eyes. Eamon was pushing his food around with his fork. He looked up and caught her eye. “Penny for your thoughts, kitten,” he said. “Are you thinking of the talisman?”

  “No,” she said, and quietly sliced a medallion of pork in half.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Nick woke fighting with his sheets, the dream tearing away from him like a cat’s claws, leaving its thin, raw wounds. The room was dark and close, overheated. Nick cursed and kicked the sheets aside, then went to the window and hauled it up. He leaned out into the night, gulping in cold winter air.

  The house was in St. James’s Square, almost the only residence among embassies and corporate headquarters. The park itself, filled with mature trees, was unrecognizable to Nick. Back in 1813 the square had been treeless. In fact, it had been entirely cobbled over in white Purbeck stone. There had been a pool at its center, protected from animals and bathers by an octagonal iron fence. On that last night, Nick had sauntered away from this house across the stones, the ripe full moon following him in reflection across the pool. He had walked away into London, a free man. Now the Guild wouldn’t even let him out of this blasted house.