The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (3 page)

And a lowly wordweaver like Christopher Buckley wouldn’t argue with the intuition of a Deathsniffer. “I’ll get Maris.”

An hour later, under the oppressive heat of a white-hot summer sun, Chris, Olivia, and Officer Maris Dawson stood outside a rundown little house while Mary Trask
n.
Clifford was lead down the front steps in cuffs. She wept quietly while he father called from inside the police car that she shouldn’t worry, the Deathsniffer would stand for them both, she’d sworn to it. One of the officers guiding the murderess along gave Maris a tight salute, and the stout little policewoman returned it. “So,” she said, not turning to look at either of them. “How the hell did you know it was the wife?”

“It’s always the wife,” Olivia said.

Maris shot her a flat little glare. “It wasn’t the wife in the val Daren case, you might recall.”

Chris clearly remembered how Olivia had looked the night Duchess Evelyn val Daren died. But none of that showed on her face now as she waved Maris off and made a little
psh
noise. “Oh, jilted male lover-who-wasn’t is close enough, don’t you think?” And before Maris could interrupt, which she would, saying that it was not close, which it wasn’t, Olivia hurried on. “Truth told, it was only a suspicion.”

One of Maris’s orange eyebrows raised. Chris gaped. “
What
?” he demanded. “But when we went into Clifford’s flat, you said―”

“I said that I knew his daughter had stuck her husband, yes.” Olivia rubbed her hands together greedily as Maris’s officers threw open the door to the carriage and helped Mary Trask in beside her sobbing father, who pulled her into an embrace. “You see why? It’s right there in front of you.”

“It’s your job to
tell
us why, Faraday,” Maris said. Chris was glad for her quick interruption. He’d have played the game Olivia was offering in an instant.

“You aren’t any fun,” Olivia pouted, and when Maris only met her gaze with a long, bemused stare, Olivia sighed and dropped her hands. She pointed to the father and daughter as the door slammed behind them. “He adores her! He’d do anything for her. I knew that if I went in and said that I ‘knew’ something, he’d immediately show his own hand and share what
he
knew in an attempt to save her.” One of Maris’s officers jumped up into the driver’s seat of the police car. The other got up beside him. “Of course,” Olivia went on, a bit rueful, as the driver snapped the reins over the backs of the unicorns that pulled all police cars. Chris couldn’t help but note their usually pristine white coats looked a bit rangier than usual. Were budget cuts affecting even the conveyances now? “I didn’t expect him to try and shoot us.”

“You are bloody insane,” Chris said, and Maris actually laughed.

“You and I are getting on the same wavelength, Buckley,” she said, elbowing Chris affectionately. “I was about to say the same thing.”

Olivia planted her hands on her hips and shook a finger at both of them. “Oh, none of that! Bah! I really must applaud my own truthsniffing!
This
is the real reason I’ve never kept an assistant so long! I knew it intuitively! I prevented it from happening, this, this
collusion
!” She pointed right at Chris. “You’re fired,” she proclaimed.

Chris grinned. “Very well, though I don’t know who’ll write up what happened in there, in that case.”

“Oh, bother,” Olivia sighed and turned away. “Fine. You’re hired again with a raise of one royal an hour if you can have that on my desk tomorrow morning.”

Chris snapped to attention, nodding even though she couldn’t see him, “Oh, yes, ma’am,” he agreed. That was at least eight more royals a day… forty a week… He might actually be able to afford Rosemary a pony, after all.

Olivia began walking toward the street, and after exchanging a quick glance, Maris and Chris hurried after her. “In any case,” she continued, her skirts snapping around her legs as she marched, “it all went swimmingly in practice. Daddy Clifford admitted that Mary had told him everything right after it had happened, and he’d used his steelcutter’s skills to make the knife disappear. A confession right from his lips, and by the time Chris had you on the mirror, I had him convinced that testifying Mary had done the deed in court was the only way she’d make it out of this alive.” She fluttered one hand dramatically.

Chris cleared his throat.

She looked back at him, saw the look on his face, and gave a little frown and a sigh. “Ah―but, that is, Maris―”

“Officer Dawson,” Maris corrected.

“Ooh, but you let
him
call you Maris!”

“
He
was given
permission
.”

“Stop distracting me! I just―well, I really do think that it could be considered pure self-defense, what Missus Trask did.” She gave Chris another look, and he nodded encouragingly. “That is to say, she probably deserves some sort of sentence, but certainly not hanging and no longer than… oh… ten years, perhaps?”

Maris fixed Chris with a little nod of approval. “I think we could do something like that,” she considered, her voice a little
too
deep in thought. Chris tried not to sigh. Maris’s skills in dissembly were almost as poor as Olivia’s. “If you’re willing to stand for her and say it.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll stand for her, fine,” Olivia said, and then, quickly, abruptly changed the subject. “And speaking of standing for someone, has
anyone
come forward to do so on behalf of the good doctor?”

Chris’s heart rose.

“Wh―” Maris began, but Olivia stopped in her tracks, and the three of them came to a halt.

She had led them to the local schoolhouse. The ramshackle building was a tiny little thing, and twenty very dirty, tired, angry-looking people were sitting on the steps in front of it. One man held a sign.
DOKTIR LIVINSTUN IZ A KILER
, it read.

“Oh, dear,” Olivia said. “I hope he didn’t actually go to school here. That wouldn’t speak well for this place’s reputation, would it?”

Maris grunted. Chris dared shoot her a look to try and read her expression. Carefully neutral. “I don’t know much of anything about the Livingstone case,” she said. “It’s above my head.” Her tone said she hoped that would be the end of it.

“It seems strange, doesn’t it?” Olivia mused, looking at the small mob. They stared back like a crowd of unruly stray cats that would hiss and scratch if approached, but would keep their distance otherwise. “No consensus as to whether the notorious former leader of the reformist movement is a butcher or a patsy. I’ve seen throngs just like this, only their signs say things like, oh, you know…” She shrugged and cast her eyes skyward. “‘Free Livingstone,’ or such.” She raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow in Maris’s direction. “All those people saying he’s innocent… and not a person to stand for him.”

Maris’s face hardened and she spun on her heel. “I’m not doing this,” she said, starting back the way they’d come, to the rundown Trask household and the second police carriage that waited for her in front. “The Livingstone trial is in a week. If
you
want to stand for the man, Faraday, you’re welcome to. But I won’t discuss details of an unrelated case with
either
of you.”

Chris shrank a bit as she looked over her shoulder to shoot him a glare.
I know this is all about you
, her eyes seemed to say.
Don’t think that just because you’ve made Faraday do the heavy lifting that I don’t know this was your idea.

Olivia sighed and started after Maris. Chris followed, dragging his feet. The mob watched them go with wary eyes.

“Well,” Olivia said brightly after a long and awkward silence. “You can’t fault me for trying, I suppose. The Francis Livingstone trial is all
anyone
is talking about. Every truthsniffer in Darrington is frothing to put together just what actually happened on the night of the Floating Castle.”

“If my
opinion
is what you want,” Maris said, “I think he’s―”

“It’s not,” Olivia said, her voice suddenly gone flat.

Maris shrugged. “Have it your way, then,” she said. “But leave me the hell out of it. This is your last warning.” She stopped before the second police car. “Come on,” she directed, indicating the front seat to Chris. “We’ll get you two down to the station to make that arrest good and official.”

Olivia stomped a foot and pouted. “Why must
I
sit in the back with the rattling chains like a criminal?” she asked.

“Because,” Maris grunted. “You are considerably less
delicate
than poor Mister Buckley.” She grabbed Chris’s hand and helped him up into the seat. While Olivia groused and climbed in back, Maris wrapped the reins around her hands and then, unexpectedly, leaned over to Chris. “Neither your charms or her games will work on me,” she said, eyes stormy with disapproval. “Francis Livingstone stands accused of murdering over a thousand people by orchestrating the Floating Castle incident. That on its own is reason enough for any sane person to stay out of it.”

She stared at him as if waiting for a response. He couldn’t meet her eyes and focused on his hands, instead. “He wanted to help me,” he said quietly. It was all he
could
say. “To take me and my sister somewhere where we could be―”

“And that has nothing to do with me. If you want someone who’ll lose their footing over your smile, pester William Cartwright. Otherwise, leave it.”

Before Chris could say anything―and there were so many things he wanted to say in response to that―Maris flicked the reins, and the unicorns set off down the street at a brisk trot, leaving the little house where murder had been wrought behind them.

There was a man Chris didn’t know sitting on the bench across the street from the Buckley manor.

There was
always
a man Chris didn’t know sitting on the bench across the street from the Buckley manor. Four different ones, rotating daily. Chris recognized each of them now. The man who always read yesterday’s paper. The man who always brought along birdseed. The man who always brought the same battered novel. And, of course, the man who did nothing but stare. He was the one present today, and Chris was glad. He liked him the best. It was so much less insulting to have those dark, probing eyes staring directly at his face with no pretense.

Chris tipped his hat to his afternoon visitor. He saw the man’s jaw tighten, but otherwise, there was no reaction.

Fine.

His hair stirred in a faint breeze as he passed the barrier that kept the sounds of the city from the manor. He was aware of his visitor’s eyes boring into his back as he approached the front door, where heat radiated outward. A soundshield was a convenience he’d always enjoyed, but recently it had become more of a necessity.

Chris held his hand an inch away from the door’s surface. The skin of his palm begin to grow tight. At first, it had frightened him. One wrong move, and he could find himself charred to cinders, a pile of ash on his own doorstep. But it had been three months since the day Rosemary and Miss Albany had left for Summergrove and Chris had installed the salamander alarm. He’d changed his view. This intense heat protected him, and, more importantly, it protected Rosemary. The Buckley manor was filled with all manner of evidence detailing exactly where the younger Buckley had gone, who she was staying with, how much money Chris sent her a month, and what route it was sent by.

That blistering heat was comforting now.

Chris whistled a set of notes. Pitch was important, as it was with all things spirit related. Seven notes, a sequence he’d practiced until his dry lips cracked. When he reached the last note, the heat retreated until he could press his hand against the doorway and feel only mild warmth.

He could
feel
the man on the bench leaning forward. But with the soundshield between them, there was no way he could overhear the code. Chris turned, tipped his hat again, and went inside.

Silence greeted him in the foyer. He hung his hat and then, after a moment’s thought, his coat. The heat still felt oppressive despite having shed the layer. He pulled off his tie, tossed his cufflinks onto the table beneath the magic mirror, and rolled up the sleeves of his starchy white shirt until they were at his elbows. He was dressed only in waistcoat, trousers, suspenders, and shirt. It wouldn’t have been appropriate if there were any ladies present, but no lady had walked across the threshold of the Buckley estate since the day Miss Albany and Rosemary had left.