The River of No Return

to protect the river of history. I just want to live my own life, and I want to spend it having my own private fucked-up little emotions. I have a new home now, and I would like to return to it. Not through time, but across space. In an airplane. Preferably Virgin Atlantic.” He sneered at his own pretension. “Upper class.” He looked down and twisted the ring on his finger, watching it catch the light. “I refuse the Summons Direct.”
    “You cannot refuse,” Alice said, gently. “You know that.”
    “But I do refuse.”
    “You cannot.”
    “I will return the money. Somehow. I want out.”
    “The money is a token, Nick. Come now. The Guild needs you.”
    Nick shook his head. “I do not care about the Guild, Alice. I am to be dragged back to a time I have already grieved, to kill and perhaps die for the Guild, the same Guild that has kept me from my own God-given abilities? I won’t.”
    “Why did you kill the French in Spain, Nick?” Alice’s voice became even more quiet. “‘Cry “God for Harry, England, and St. George”’? Is that it?”
    “No.” Nick pointed a finger at the two of them together, safe in their blasted Rolls. “Damn you to hell for that.” He saw Arkady’s body tense, ready itself, and his own body shifted in response, his senses sharpening to encompass the man across the car. “I am not that man anymore,” he said, his voice husky. “Not that soldier. Everything changes.”
    “Nothing changes,” she said. “Look at you, your fists are clenched. Look at my husband. He is coiled like a spring. You are who you are. The river flows to the sea.”
    “I want out.”
    “There is no out.”
    The car purred to a halt and the chauffeur tapped on the window with his big sovereign ring. They had arrived at the gates.
    * * *
    Half an hour later they were tucked behind a snob screen in the Lamb, a pub at the top of Lamb’s Conduit Street that had been there in Nick’s time—though it looked different now, with its cubbyholed Victorian interior.
    “It isn’t a scar,” Arkady said. His eyes were red. He had stood in front of the gates with his arms spread, looking like a saint, tears spilling down his cheeks. Alice had ignored the passersby who stared and allowed her husband his time. After a few minutes he had stepped away and then stood with Nick across the street in the shadow of the statue of the woman with the urn. They had watched as Alice padded back and forth in front of the gates like a bloodhound, nose twitching, as if she could smell the past.
    “It’s something, though,” Alice countered.
    “Yes,” Arkady said. “But there are too many feelings, and a lot of them reach outward to the future. Misery. Excitement. Longing. Crashing over one another.”
    “I couldn’t tune in to the mystical vibrations,” Nick said. “But I was there once, in the late eighteenth century—”
    “Hush!” Alice looked around, but the snob screen shielded her view. “For God’s sake, Nick.”
    “Sorry.” He dropped his voice. “I was there with my mother when I was a kid. And if it helps, I know we were feeling smug.”
    Alice smiled at Nick and sipped her half of bitter. “Smug, huh? I bet you were a cute little lordling.”
    “If you say so.”
    She pushed her beer away. “So it isn’t a scar. But what does that mean about today? Arkady, were you overwhelmed with despair when you stood there? Because I wasn’t, not at all.”
    “No.” Arkady shrugged. “But all those babies. It made me weep.”
    “Yes,” Alice said gently. “Yes, my tea cake.” She put her hand on his.
    Nick put his pint to his lips and let the good, bitter beer wash down his throat. Arkady was really just a big baby himself, he thought, watching as Alice comforted him. “Why did you cry?”
    “My tears were old tears. Tears I have cried before and will cry again.” Arkady freed his hand from Alice’s and steepled his fingers under his chin, his ruby ring glowing like an ember. “I do not believe that the emotions Nick felt at those gates today were the emotions of the Foundling Hospital,” he said to Alice. “I think they were the emotions of Mr. Mibbs himself.”
    “Yes,” Nick said. “That makes sense. And he put fear into me earlier, at Euston Road. That wasn’t some deep historical fear I felt. Unless you can tell me that there was a hangman’s tree at the corner of Judd Street and Euston Road at some point.”
    Alice glanced at him. “There might well have been.