The River of No Return

like a serpent, his face mottled. Nick put his hands to the man’s fleshy throat and shouted to Jemison. “You were frozen in time! Secure the team and whatever you do don’t look in this man’s eyes!” As soon as he saw Jemison leap from his horse, he turned his attention back to Mibbs.
    He lay still now beneath Nick’s choking hands, not fighting for breath. He seemed more like an apparitional snake than a man; even as Nick choked the life from the limp body, those flat eyes glared up at Nick with the same expressionless despair that Nick had seen each time Mibbs had crossed his path.
    Nick opened his hands and drew in a gasping breath, as if he were the one who had been strangled.
    “Where is the baby?” Mibbs said it again, without struggling to rise, without any change in demeanor—as if nothing had happened, as if Nick hadn’t just been crushing his windpipe.
    “There is no baby,” Nick said, a hand going to his own throat.
    Mibbs reached up and touched Nick’s face in a fatherly gesture. “Who is the Talisman, buddy? Is it the girl in the coach? She is unconscious. I could not reach her emotions.”
    “There is no such thing as the Talisman,” Nick whispered. But he felt a bursting urge to tell. Nick knew, somewhere back in the heart of him, that he was feeling Mibbs’s feelings. That his own emotions would have sent his fist smashing into Mibbs’s face. Instead, he was enthralled to hideous rites, unable to remember anything except the truth: Julia is the Talisman.
    “Tell me, buddy,” Mibbs said, and Nick opened his mouth to say he knew not what.
    But it was Jemison’s voice he heard, speaking from just behind him. “I am the Talisman. I am the child, now grown.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
    S omeone was stroking her hair, carefully avoiding that throbbing spot, the spot that felt like a crack in her skull. She seemed to be curled up against him, and her ear seemed to be pressed against his chest. His voice was rumbling in the most comforting way as he murmured words she couldn’t quite make out. . . .
    Julia’s eyes fluttered open. She was in a coach—in Grandfather’s coach. But it wasn’t moving. Why was she in Grandfather’s coach? This wasn’t Grandfather who was holding her so gently in his arms. Grandfather was dead. She knew that. This was a younger man. He was leaning his head back against the cushions, his eyes closed, and he was simply stroking her hair and murmuring to himself. He should shave, Julia thought. But if he started shaving, then he would stop talking and his voice would stop rumbling so deliciously in her ear. His stubble was darker than his hair. Quite dark. Like his eyebrows. She liked his eyebrows. They were strongly drawn. Somehow she knew the shifting colors of his eyes. And he smelled good. He smelled familiar. Who was he? She searched her memory. Somebody nice. He was somebody very nice.
    Pale dawn light filtering in, and she could see trees outside the coach, and a hint of pearly sky . . . why weren’t they moving? Julia let her eyes close again, and she drifted away to the sound of that rumbly, murmuring voice. . . .
    * * *
    Nick opened his eyes. He could hear hoofbeats growing louder beneath the nonsense he was murmuring to stay awake.
    He gently disentangled himself from Julia. She moaned but subsided again into sleep. He kissed her forehead, then picked up a cleaned and reloaded pistol. Not that he could stand a chance against anyone who could stop time. He glanced again at Julia, then opened the coach door and climbed down to defend his little fiefdom: one carriage, six horses, a drugged woman, and a dead man.
    He stood blinking in the dawn light. There was a horseman approaching, and well behind him on the road, another. Nick’s six equine charges whinnied their welcome, and the horseman’s mount—a flashy white beast with a pink nose—raised its head and neighed.
    Well, shit.
    It was that iceberg of an Alderman, Bertrand Penture, sitting astride the white horse like a prince. So it was to be the Guild who found him waiting here by the side of the road, not the Ofan.
    Nick thrust his hand into his pocket, searching for the acorn. He might as well throw it away. But instead his fingers closed around it. He would have to play along, invite them to join him at Blackdown, and then hope and pray the Ofan got there quickly enough to help him get Julia away. To another time, probably. A hiding place somewhere up- or downriver. They