The River of No Return

day, this had been the city home of the Duke of Kirklaw. Nick had smoked cigars and quaffed illegal French brandy with the young duke in this very room the night before he left for Spain. The room and its décor were only slightly different now, and it gave Nick a decidedly vertiginous feeling to be sitting here again, another well-aged brandy in his hand and another well-cured cigar sitting half-smoked in another ashtray. But he shoved that distraction out of his mind and tried once more to concentrate. “Describe the feeling to me again,” he said.
    Arkady twirled his cigar between his thumb and forefinger. “Time slows down around you. It stops. Unless you can feel it happening, you will slow down and stop, too. That is bad. That is what happens to Naturals. You are not one of them. You must learn to feel it. You must learn to know when time is slowing down. If you feel it, if you know, you will never be caught. You will stay awake and not be frozen.”
    “But how can I know how to feel it if I don’t already know how to feel it?”
    “You English! You have no imagination. I describe it to you so you understand. Do you recall the first time you desired a woman?”
    Nick sighed, half amused. He had learned across the course of the afternoon that the older man was very fond of sexual metaphors. “Yes,” he said. “Of course I do.”
    “Describe it to me.”
    Nick cast his mind back. “I was ten,” he said.
    “Such a big boy.” Arkady pulled on his cigar.
    Nick resisted the urge to roll his eyes and continued. “I was hiding in the creamery, crouched down behind a mess of pails that needed mending. My sister Clare and I were playing hide-and-seek. It was a hot day, but the creamery was cool and dark. The door opened, and I peeked out, expecting to see my sister. But it was a dairymaid, coming in with two pails of milk hanging from a wooden yoke she wore over her shoulders. She wore a tight-fitting bodice. . . .”
    “Yes, yes,” Arkady said, leaning forward. “It was so in Russia at that time, with the dairymaids and their tight bodices.”
    “Are you of my time, then?”
    “Yes.” Arkady sharpened his focus on Nick. “And of your class as well, Lord Blackdown.”
    Nick started. No one had used that title or that name since the butcher, in the Guild hospital. Now Arkady used them with, if not exactly respect, then some sort of acknowledgment. Nick coughed. “What . . . what am I to call you, then?”
    “Are you asking me my name? The name to which I was born?”
    Impatience pricked him. “I know that’s against Guild etiquette. But for God’s sake, Arkady, I’m sitting here in London waiting for the Guild to send me back to my time. I’m breaking cardinal rules every way I turn. I’m simply asking you to tell me whatever it is that I need to survive this escapade. Perhaps your blessed birth name is one of those things.”
    Arkady blew a smoke ring. Nick watched it rise tremblingly and then dissipate. He puffed on his own cigar but performed no smoky tricks. He was in no mood for them. Arkady took another puff, then spoke, the smoke boiling out with his words. “You were allowed to keep your signet ring when you jumped.”
    “Yes.” Nick glanced at his hand.
    “I too. I kept my ring.” Arkady held his hand out to display his ruby ring. The jewel was huge and looked like a wound on Arkady’s bony hand. “The Guild chose us early on.”
    “But how could they know?”
    “We are aristocrats. Power likes power. The Guild is always happy to welcome a leader.”
    “But I gave up my title. My land. My name.”
    “Yes, yes.” Arkady waved his hand and the ruby glinted like an eye. “In your mind, yes, you became the simple man of the people, the commoner Nick Davenant. But the Guild has always known. You are Blackdown . The Guild let you believe it was forgotten. But the Guild did not forget.”
    Nick had been happy to be allowed to keep his ring. Was he still? “And you? What manner of aristocrat are you? How noble, Arkady? Are you a prince? A czar?”
    “I am Count Lebedev.”
    Nick nodded his head in the old gesture of respect between equals. “Lebedev.”
    Arkady smiled thinly. “Nice to meet you, too, Blackdown. But do you think I believe in this thing, this aristocracy? I know the future. I am not the fool. I am merely happy to be the count when it is good for the Guild. And you will be happy to be the marquess.”
    “If you say so.” These old titles, these old