The River of No Return

There is a scar at Marble Arch for that very reason.”
    “Tyburn.”
    “Yes.”
    Arkady spread his hands. “But Nick said it earlier. The man controlled him with emotions, not thoughts. It is only by accident that this happened near the Foundling Hospital.”
    “That’s an interesting possibility,” Alice said. “It could be a new development. A new way to use the river. They’ve discovered it, and they are testing it out on Guild members.”
    “They?” Nick raised his eyebrows.
    Alice and Arkady regarded him soberly for a moment. Then Alice took a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “The reason we need you, Nick . . . the reason we are taking you back to your natural time, is that a war is about to begin in that era. It will be a war over the fate of the past, over history itself.”
    And so here was the other shoe, dropping at last. He had been right all along. He was here to kill.
    Alice continued. “I told you there were others. People who aren’t in the Guild. They don’t agree with the Guild’s principles. They think we should intervene in history. Try to change it. They are experimenting with the talent, working to learn more about it. Some of the things they have discovered recently in . . .” Alice glanced at Arkady. He nodded. She continued. “The things they have discovered in Brazil are alarming.”
    Brazil! So Meg had heard Alice talking that day in the bathroom. She had been telling the truth. And Nick was, after all, an asshole who deserved to have his friends desert him. But Nick’s heart lifted. Maybe Meg and Leo were alive, in Brazil. Maybe they had made it.
    Alice was looking at Arkady, and Nick followed her eyes. The Russian was staring into some grim distance that only he could see. “Arkady, my darling. Come back to us.”
    The Russian focused again on the little table. Then he wiped his eyes with the back of a hand. “Yes, yes. Brazil. Beautiful Brazil.”
    Alice spoke softly, stroking Arkady’s thick white hair. “I was about to tell Nick about the orphan.”
    “The orphan! Bah.” Arkady spoke with loathing in his voice.
    Alice turned back to Nick. “The orphan are a thorn in our side,” she said. “And they have been, oh, forever. But things are changing. We can’t just continue on, with little skirmishes here and there over nothing. The stakes have become too high. The orphan have found something. A new skill, or maybe even an object of some kind that enhances their power. Whatever it is, we must get it.”
    “Wait. You’re going too fast. Who is this orphan? Sounds like Oliver Twist.”
    Alice laughed. “Not orphan! Ofan.” She spelled the word. “The name is a contraction of a Hebrew word—Ophanim.”
    “What the hell does that mean?”
    “Have you heard of Ezekiel’s vision? Of the angels who transport the throne of God?”
    “Ezekiel . . .” Nick cast his mind back.
    “Ezekiel had a vision of strange angels. Each angel had four faces and many wings. They saw all, could travel in every direction, and they never slept.” Alice closed her dark eyes and quoted: “‘And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host.’”
    “Okay,” Nick said. “So these Ofan, these bad guys. They are deformed angel creatures?”
    “Of course not. They are humans, like you and me. It’s only a name. It signifies that they are watching, that they can travel the river in whatever direction they like, that they have righteousness and truth on their side. Et cetera, et cetera. Of course we . . .” She smiled. “We think righteousness and truth are on our side.”
    “And Mibbs is one of these Ofan?”
    Alice glanced at Arkady. “What do you think?”
    “Maybe,” the Russian said. “But . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem right to me.”
    “But he must be,” Alice said. “It’s really the only explanation. Maybe those things he could do with feelings—maybe that’s their new skill. What else would he be? A lone gun?”
    Arkady drank deeply from his pint and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t know. The Ofan, they are cowards. But this? This control of feelings? It does not describe what they are like. They are stupid, careless. Smashing what is good for no reason. Always they chase a fantasy. A fantasy that things can change. Idealists.” He scowled into his beer. “They