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

“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.”

“But how does it follow that Julia is a human talisman? What does that even mean?”

“It means Peter was right.” Alva scowled. “Which she usually is, damn it. She told me that the Talisman would have a jagged edge, that it was broken. That it was one half of a desperate promise with the unknown.”

“There is nothing broken about Miss Percy,” Jemison said.

“Her terrible birth—that’s what I’m thinking of,” Alva said. “What if she was born across the Pale? Or born in her mother’s violent transition back? She was torn into this world, don’t you see? Torn from another world. An orphan, a foundling . . . her very brilliance a threat to her life.”

Jemison shrugged. “Sounds like the human condition.”

“If you’re right,” Nick said, “Julia was conceived, or carried, or born in a world where time is moving backward. Perhaps she has some hidden knowledge about the Pale, hidden even from herself? Or some power? Something so powerful that Ignatz decided to bury it away and hope it never surfaced?”

“Yes,” Alva said musingly. “Eréndira brought her back here, back to this forward-moving time—a talismanic connection to that other world, torn from one time and given to another. Eréndira died of the effort it took to return, or of complications from childbirth—and she put little Julia into the arms of her teacher, not her father. Ignatz went to great lengths to hide Julia from Arkady. Which must mean that Eréndira and Ignatz both feared what the Guild would make of Julia.”

“But the Guild wants to turn the Pale back, too,” Nick said. “For all that you hate them, they are more misguided than evil. And how different was Julia’s life with Ignatz from life in the Guild? The Guild relies on ignorance to keep their power. They lie to us and keep us happy with money. Well, isn’t that what Ignatz did to Julia? Raised her as an earl’s granddaughter and told her nothing at all? He might have been a great Ofan teacher, but he used Guild methods to control her. I think . . .” Nick took the copper ring from Alva’s fingers and turned it so that he could see the motif of the eye in the circle. “I think there must be something bigger, something more at stake than just the old feud between the Guild and the Ofan.”

All three were silent then, under the weight of this revelation and the possibility that they might never find Julia.

Nick closed his eyes. He had no idea where to even start. She was lost. Lost, perhaps, because Ignatz had lied to her. Julia was truly orphaned—orphaned even from herself—and Nick was powerless to help. He felt despair well up in him, deep and cold.

Despair . . . a spider held over a flame . . . the Foundling Hospital! “Orphans,” he said, his voice rough. “Stolen children!”

“Yes?” Alva’s voice was threaded with confusion.

Nick turned to her, but it wasn’t her eyes he saw. Flat, blue eyes. Despair. The terrible nothingness sucking at his soul . . .

“Nick? Nick!”

He looked at his palm and found that he was holding the acorn, in addition to the copper ring. “Mibbs,” he said, and closed his fingers around them. “He is here, in London. A man accosted my mother the other day about a baby . . . it must have been him.”

“A baby?” Alva frowned. “The Foundling Hospital . . .” Her eyes flew to Nick’s. “Oh, God, and what he said to Leo!”

“Exactly.” Nick got to his feet. “Everywhere Mibbs has been, and every question he has asked, begins to make sense. He is looking for Julia. He was looking for her in America, among indigenous people, because he must know about her mother’s connection to the P’urhépecha. But now he is also looking for her in Europe. He has been looking up and down the River of Time, always searching for an infant.”

“Yes,” Alva said. “Babies. It is always babies. He’s not thinking that she might be grown!”

“That must be it. And thank God she is grown, in this time, for it might keep her from him. But Mibbs is getting close. He knows now that Julia is connected to Arkady, because he asked for Arkady the other day.”

“What if he is now looking for her as a grown woman?” Alva whispered. “Perhaps he followed her from Berkeley Square today.”

“If that is the case,” Nick said, “then we have lost—”

The sound of running feet and a shout interrupted him. A little old man came careering around the corner of Carlisle Street, a Bow Street Runner in tow.

“It was right here,” he said breathlessly, pointing with his stick. “Right where that great dog is now. It was a grand old traveling coach, sir. As the girl walked past it, a big, pale man got out brandishing a club. She seemed to know him, for she laughed at first and said something. But the man hit her over the head, tossed her into the carriage, and then the coachman whipped up the horses and drove away. I saw the coat of arms on the coach door then, sir. Very simple, sir, a red field with a silver shield, and three weasels on