The River of No Return

do not have enough of the balls to be like this Mibbs.”
    “Wait, your enemy is a bunch of idealists? Time-traveling hippies? That doesn’t sound very scary.”
    “Oh, they are scary,” Arkady said. “They steal our children. They teach them unspeakable things. They fill their heads with dreams.”
    “Arkady.” Alice shushed him. “Please.” She spoke to Nick. “Arkady really doesn’t like them,” she said with a little smile. “But it is like this. They are a loose affiliation of people who disagree with the Guild and who believe our talents are greater than we know. At various points in time they are very powerful. At other points, they are more disorganized. There are some places in history where we even work in close association with them, where people are both Guild and Ofan at once. But now we have reason to believe that the Ofan have changed, drastically, and are becoming a very real threat. Like I’ve said, they’ve found something. They’ve managed to alter . . . well. You will learn about that from the Alderman—” She lowered her voice. “In 1815. This is more his business than mine.” She looked at Arkady. “I think Mibbs is a clue to what the Ofan can do. Even if he isn’t Ofan himself.”
    “They have not changed that much, Alice.” Arkady sneered. “They are still scrambling to find—” He closed his mouth with a snap on whatever he was going to say. Then he drained his glass. “But we!” He held his empty glass aloft. “We are the Guild. We will squash them. We have not worked so hard, for so long, to protect the river, only to have them ruin it!” He slammed his empty glass down on the table.
    “Yes, my ructious darling.” Alice stroked her knuckles down her husband’s cheek. “And whether Mibbs is Ofan or not, his days of secrecy are over. The Guild is watching for him. I’ve sent that clip to Chile and soon enough I will send it around the world, and send his description down through time. I’m sure he’s hiding somewhere, but when he turns up again, we’ll find him.”
    Nick leaned back against the carved screen and half closed his eyes, letting the golden glow of the pub’s electric lighting shimmer into a semblance of candlelight. The Ofan. He let that name sink into his head. Not orphan . Ofan. Fearsome, many-faced angels. Beautiful, androgynous bodies, wings of shadow and light, eyes bright with visions. Voices rising together like the rush of waters. Straining up, reaching—but cast down by an implacable hand. Down into eternal flame.
    Nick closed his eyes completely.
    Badajoz.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    T wo weeks later Arkady and Nick were in Arkady’s 1972 MG Midget. (Nick had teased him about a Guild car that wasn’t a BMW, but Arkady explained somewhat defensively that MG had been owned by the German manufacturer for a few short years in the 1990s.) Now they were driving through Devon on the A396, and Arkady was bellowing Russian folk songs at the top of his lungs. They had left London at dawn, Alice standing on tiptoe to kiss them both soundly on the cheek, like a fond aunt. “Is that all I get?” Arkady had asked.
    “It will have to hold you until you return.” Alice patted her husband’s stomach. “Perhaps it will make you be good.”
    “Never.”
    Alice turned to Nick. “He’s all talk.”
    “That’s not what you said last night.” Arkady twitched his scarf rakishly over his shoulder.
    Alice ignored him. “Now, as for you, Lord Blackdown. You are to be very, very good.” She was smiling, but he saw the grave intention in her eyes.
    “Yes, my lady,” he said, sketching her a perfect bow.
    For two weeks he had been in an immersion course, with Arkady serving as tutor. The task was to suppress everything he’d learned at the Chilean compound and the years following. He had to remember his old self and step back into the Marquess of Blackdown’s shiny black boots. From dawn to dusk in Arkady’s study it had been 1815: every word they said, every gesture they made, all their food and drink and clothing. Nick had disappeared in 1812, but was traveling back only as far as 1815 because, Arkady said with maddening reserve, 1815 was when the Guild needed Nick’s services, and no sooner. But those three missing years were a problem. His excuse was to be a bump on the head and a spell of amnesia. Whatever he didn’t remember he could blame on his injury. The trouble was more likely to be what he remembered rather than what he forgot: the