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

an object of some kind that enhances their power. Whatever it is, we must get it.”

“Wait. You’re going too fast. Who is this orphan? Sounds like Oliver Twist.”

Alice laughed. “Not orphan! Ofan.” She spelled the word. “The name is a contraction of a Hebrew word—Ophanim.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Have you heard of Ezekiel’s vision? Of the angels who transport the throne of God?”

“Ezekiel . . .” Nick cast his mind back.

“Ezekiel had a vision of strange angels. Each angel had four faces and many wings. They saw all, could travel in every direction, and they never slept.” Alice closed her dark eyes and quoted: “‘And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host.’”

“Okay,” Nick said. “So these Ofan, these bad guys. They are deformed angel creatures?”

“Of course not. They are humans, like you and me. It’s only a name. It signifies that they are watching, that they can travel the river in whatever direction they like, that they have righteousness and truth on their side. Et cetera, et cetera. Of course we . . .” She smiled. “We think righteousness and truth are on our side.”

“And Mibbs is one of these Ofan?”

Alice glanced at Arkady. “What do you think?”

“Maybe,” the Russian said. “But . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem right to me.”

“But he must be,” Alice said. “It’s really the only explanation. Maybe those things he could do with feelings—maybe that’s their new skill. What else would he be? A lone gun?”

Arkady drank deeply from his pint and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t know. The Ofan, they are cowards. But this? This control of feelings? It does not describe what they are like. They are stupid, careless. Smashing what is good for no reason. Always they chase a fantasy. A fantasy that things can change. Idealists.” He scowled into his beer. “They do not have enough of the balls to be like this Mibbs.”

“Wait, your enemy is a bunch of idealists? Time-traveling hippies? That doesn’t sound very scary.”

“Oh, they are scary,” Arkady said. “They steal our children. They teach them unspeakable things. They fill their heads with dreams.”

“Arkady.” Alice shushed him. “Please.” She spoke to Nick. “Arkady really doesn’t like them,” she said with a little smile. “But it is like this. They are a loose affiliation of people who disagree with the Guild and who believe our talents are greater than we know. At various points in time they are very powerful. At other points, they are more disorganized. There are some places in history where we even work in close association with them, where people are both Guild and Ofan at once. But now we have reason to believe that the Ofan have changed, drastically, and are becoming a very real threat. Like I’ve said, they’ve found something. They’ve managed to alter . . . well. You will learn about that from the Alderman—” She lowered her voice. “In 1815. This is more his business than mine.” She looked at Arkady. “I think Mibbs is a clue to what the Ofan can do. Even if he isn’t Ofan himself.”

“They have not changed that much, Alice.” Arkady sneered. “They are still scrambling to find—” He closed his mouth with a snap on whatever he was going to say. Then he drained his glass. “But we!” He held his empty glass aloft. “We are the Guild. We will squash them. We have not worked so hard, for so long, to protect the river, only to have them ruin it!” He slammed his empty glass down on the table.

“Yes, my ructious darling.” Alice stroked her knuckles down her husband’s cheek. “And whether Mibbs is Ofan or not, his days of secrecy are over. The Guild is watching for him. I’ve sent that clip to Chile and soon enough I will send it around the world, and send his description down through time. I’m sure he’s hiding somewhere, but when he turns up again, we’ll find him.”

Nick leaned back against the carved screen and half closed his eyes, letting the golden glow of the pub’s electric lighting shimmer into a semblance of candlelight. The Ofan. He let that name sink into his head. Not orphan. Ofan. Fearsome, many-faced angels. Beautiful, androgynous bodies, wings of shadow and light, eyes bright with visions. Voices rising together like the rush of waters. Straining up, reaching—but cast down by an implacable hand. Down into eternal flame.

Nick closed his eyes completely.

Badajoz.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Two weeks later Arkady and Nick were in Arkady’s 1972 MG Midget. (Nick had teased him about a Guild car that wasn’t a BMW, but Arkady explained somewhat defensively that MG had been owned by the German manufacturer for a few short years in the 1990s.) Now they were driving through Devon on the A396, and Arkady was bellowing Russian folk songs at the top of his lungs. They had left London at dawn, Alice standing on tiptoe to kiss them both soundly on the cheek, like a fond aunt. “Is that all I get?” Arkady had asked.

“It will have to hold you until you return.” Alice patted her husband’s stomach. “Perhaps it will make you be good.”

“Never.”

Alice turned to Nick. “He’s all talk.”

“That’s not what you said last night.” Arkady twitched his scarf rakishly over his shoulder.

Alice ignored him. “Now, as for you, Lord Blackdown. You are to be very, very good.” She was smiling, but he saw the grave intention in her eyes.

“Yes, my lady,” he said, sketching her a perfect bow.

For two weeks he had been in an immersion course, with Arkady serving as tutor. The task was to suppress everything he’d learned at the Chilean compound and the years following. He had to remember his old self and step back into the Marquess of Blackdown’s shiny black boots. From dawn to dusk in Arkady’s study it had been 1815: every word they said, every gesture they made,