The River of No Return

to Leo, and how Leo had warned Nick away. Alva was fascinated. Had Mibbs really pressed into Nick’s emotions? Had he really used despair? Why did Nick think he had asked Leo about stolen children? Alva had even wondered if there was a connection between those questions posed in Chile and the incident outside the Foundling Hospital. Nick had shrugged, and said that he thought the Ofan and the Guild should know more about Mibbs and his obsessions than Nick himself did. After all, Mibbs clearly had the talent in spades, while Nick only knew how to hold on to his present moment by thinking about an acorn.
    And now Arkady was back, and Nick hadn’t learned anything more. Did Arkady know, somehow, that Nick had turned firmly against the Guild?
    Arkady smoked. Nick might as well not have been in the room.
    Nick took a sip.
    Arkady exhaled, slowly, a series of smoke rings.
    Nick took another sip.
    Arkady drew again on his cigarette.
    Nick sighed. So he was going to have to push the issue. Fine. “Are you going to tell me why you’re angry?”
    The Russian said nothing at first, and Nick noticed that his white hair was lank, his clothing less than crisp. Then he turned, and Nick saw that his eyes were bloodshot. “Give,” he said, and reached out a hand imperiously for Nick’s glass. Nick handed it over. The Russian tipped his head back and drank the brandy down in one gulp. “I have learned a great deal in Devon,” he said. “A very great deal. About your little mouse, Julia Percy. About her cousin, the imbecile earl. And about her grandfather. Her precious grandfather, Ignatius Percy, who is so recently and conveniently deceased.” Arkady hurled the brandy balloon into the fire and watched impassively as it shattered.
    Nick stiffened, shocked by Arkady’s dramatics. He didn’t like this new, splintering mood of the Russian’s. “What did you learn?”
    “The question is more material than that, my priest. What did I find ?”
    Nick shrugged, impatient. “I have no idea.”
    “Look.” Arkady pointed to Nick’s desk. “I’ve left them there for you to see.”
    Nick walked over to his desk. There, cluttered together, were some papers he had been working through, a photograph, a quill and inkwell, a Rubik’s Cube . . . it took a moment for his time-addled eyes to be shocked by the mix of old and new. “What the hell?” He picked up the photo. It was a somewhat battered snapshot of a beautiful young woman’s laughing face. Her blue eyes were Arkady’s. “Is this . . . ?” He turned to look at the Russian, to find him sitting with his eyes closed. “Is this Eréndira?”
    The clock on the mantel ticked. Finally Arkady opened his eyes and slowly focused on Nick. “Is that my daughter? No. My Eréndira was a living human being, a brilliant and passionate woman. That slip of paper you hold there? That is a photograph. A trick of the light. It pretends to capture a moment in time.”
    Nick looked at the photo. So this was Arkady’s daughter, Arkady’s lost, dead child. “Where did you find this?”
    Instead of answering the question, Arkady flung his hand toward the Rubik’s Cube on the desk. “Have you ever played with one of those?”
    “Not recently.”
    “Try. You’ll find you can solve it in under a minute.”
    “Yes. I remember doing it once or twice before, in the future.” Nick picked it up. He had not touched anything plastic in many days. Its particular slickness, its strange lightness, set his teeth on edge. Nick put it down beside the photo. “You found these things in Devon? In 1815? What do they have to do with each other? What do they have to do with Castle Dar?”
    “Ignatz Vogelstein.” There was pungent loathing in Arkady’s voice.
    Nick took a shallow breath. So Arkady now knew that old Lord Percy had been that famous Ofan.
    “I went to Castle Dar,” Arkady said, “expecting to find a crazy Ofan. This Eamon, this new earl—he is crazy, yes. As crazy as that water bird, you know, the one that laughs.”
    “A loon.”
    “Yes. He is crazy like that. But he is not the Ofan I thought I was going to find. Instead I found another Ofan. Very powerful. But . . . dead. Ignatz Vogelstein. The leader of the Ofan investigations in Brazil. The killer of my daughter. The man I have waited so many years to strangle with these, my bare hands!” Arkady held up his long white fingers, his cigarette clamped between his teeth. “Always I have hoped to find him, so I could