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

own finger. His finger was bare. Bare of the ring he had worn since the day his father died. Nick looked and saw that his hand was sun-bronzed except where the ring had been.

His finger was real. His ring was real. Why wasn’t his ring on his finger? How had the butcher come to have it? Nick groped his way back to the bed and sat down. “You are . . . telling me the truth,” he whispered. As he said it, he knew, for the first time he really knew, that it was true.

“Yes.”

“This is the year 2003.”

“Yes.”

Nick closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. “May I have my ring?” he said quietly.

The butcher handed it to him, and Nick held it in his palm for a moment. It felt heavy, just as it had the day his mother removed it from his dead father’s hand. She had turned from the body where it lay, broken by a fall from a horse, and looked into Nick’s eyes for a moment. She wore a riding habit, and the train was swept over her arm. She curtseyed almost to the ground, the train rising to her wrist like a wing. Then she held out the ring for him to take. Nick, fifteen years old, had pushed the still-warm metal down over his knuckle as he stared at the top of his mother’s bent head.

Now he slipped the ring onto his finger again. This was the sign of his privilege, his belonging. And yet no one living had ever known him.

“I’m afraid that is the only trinket you will be able to keep from your former life,” the butcher said. “Most of us aren’t lucky enough to have anything at all, but instructions from the Guild headquarters here in London are clear—you will be allowed to keep the ring.”

The butcher sounded faintly jealous, and a ripple of pride washed over Nick. “I’d like to see them try to take it from me,” he said, and was mortified to hear how childish he sounded.

Those hazel eyes regarded him levelly for a moment, then dropped to his hand. “You must be careful with that. No one must guess its meaning. Or perhaps I should say, its former meaning.”

Nick rubbed his ring with the thumb of his other hand and vowed that no one would ever take it off him again. “What is your name, butcher?”

The man gave him a wan smile. “Thank you for your interest,” he said. “But it is rude to ask a Guild member his or her real name. Never do it; no one would tell you anyway. My Guild name, and the name I go by now, is Ricchar Hartmut. Your Guild name is up to you. It can contain only one of your original names. I chose to give them all up. It was easier that way.”

Nick’s thumb stilled on the broad, flat surface of his ring. The man before him had jumped more than a thousand years forward in time. His face was patient, but his eyes were bleak. “Gracious God,” Nick muttered under his breath.

“Yes.” Ricchar nodded. “Now you begin to have the feelings. It is a hard road.” He stood, suddenly all business. “But you have no worries. The Guild will take care of you, educate you, give you all the money you need to build a comfortable new life. We want you to be happy.”

Happiness was a feeling Nick couldn’t imagine experiencing ever again. Already he could tell he was trembling on the edge of an abyss of grief so deep he might never reach its bottom. He said nothing.

Ricchar continued. “Once you choose your Guild name, which you must do before you leave this room, no one will ever call you by the name you were born to, or by your title, again.” He paused, then said, as if the words left a bad taste in his mouth, “My lord.”

So he was to be nameless and nationless. He considered for a few seconds, then chose. “Nicholas Davenant.” His own first name and his paternal grandmother’s maiden name.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Davenant,” Ricchar said, and held out his hand.

“Call me Nick,” Nick said, shaking the hand, and he felt the change begin to happen. I am shaking hands with a Frankish butcher, he thought. I have just told him to call me Nick. And then: By rights we should both be dust.

CHAPTER TWO

Nick awoke in a luxurious bed made up with red sheets and blankets. The walls of his room were of golden polished wood, and although the lighting was the electric kind he had learned about during his two weeks in the hospital, it was mellow, and seemed to emanate from around corners or behind panels. Nick stretched, remembering the long flight to Chile, which had terrified and then thrilled him; the late-night arrival in Santiago; the warm welcome to the Guild compound from many happy strangers. He had fallen into bed exhausted, without exploring his new home, and had slept the whole day.

Now Nick swung his legs out of bed and stood. A fire burned in a copper stove that was built directly into the wall. Dark-blue curtains were pulled across the far wall. He crossed an intricate oriental carpet to the curtains and pulled them aside.

The entire wall was one impossibly large, smooth panel of glass. Outside, a square sheet of water the size of the room he stood in reflected mountains that eclipsed any he had ever seen. They climbed the sky, their razor-sharp peaks capped with snow that was pink with sunset. He put his hands against the glass, then noticed that there was a handle on the far edge. Fiddling with it, he established that the wall of glass could slide aside.

He stepped forward, out into the cool air. Now he could see that the square of water was a pool. He dipped a toe in, expecting it to be icy, but it was as warm as