The River of No Return

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 it. I called and tried to run after them but . . .” He broke down in frustrated tears. “Please believe me. A young lady is in grave danger.”
    The little old man, the runner, and Solvig now stood together, looking at the blank cobblestones of the street. Nick felt a laugh of relief bubbling up in his throat, and Alva clearly understood, too, for her eyes were sparkling. Mibbs didn’t have Julia. Eamon did.
    * * *
    “Why can’t you just go back in time and catch Miss Percy as she leaves your house? Why do we have to go chasing after the coach? For that matter, why can’t you go back before Vogelstein’s death and ask him about Julia?”
    Alva pressed her seal into the hot wax on the last of three notes she had written. “Because we can’t,” she said simply.
    A servant had been dispatched to Berkeley Square and to Jemison’s house in Camden Town for their things, including pistols and horses. Jemison had been peppering them with questions as they waited. Nick was jumping out of his skin with impatience, now that there was something he could actually do. He paced up and down in front of the fire like a caged animal, listening to the conversation with one ear and to the pounding of his heart with the other.
    “But why?”
    Alva answered patiently. “Because we move back and forth in time on streams of human emotion, Mr. Jemison. Big streams. We have the ability to use those streams of feeling, but we ourselves—we are just bit players, and our own feelings, our own life stories, they plod forward day to day. So if I’m here today and in 2029 tomorrow and in 1580 the next day, I