The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (mobi ebook reader .txt) 📗

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.