The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (35 page)

Chris nodded. “Well, Benji is a spiritbinder now,” he said. “And Bea just had her coming out ball. And Georgie…” He sighed. “Georgie was murdered. By a serial killer, a rogue spiritbinder who’s killing Maidens and Youths in Darrington’s churches.”

It had the expected effect. Rosemary had just been too young to remember vivacious little Georgiana Edison as anything other than an annoying, know-it-all teen, and knowing someone who’d been murdered but not well enough to grieve for them was a universal thrill. Rosemary’s eyes lit up. “No! Really?
No
! Georgie was a Maiden? Oh, poor Georgie! Oh, but Chris, that sounds just like one of Abigail Tremaine’s cases! Who did it? Why? Were they mad? Did they only have one eye? Or only one arm?” She gasped. “One eye
and
one arm?”

Going over the details of the current case with his wide-eyed, far too excited sister didn’t give Chris any bright ideas about what might have happened. He skirted the topic of Sister Elisabeth Kingsley and her cavernous grief, but he
did
find it interesting how Rosemary wrinkled her nose and said that the way he described Grandmother Eugenia made her sound just like Elouise Faraday. He supposed that to Rosemary, not quiet fourteen, fifty and eighty were barely steps apart. Or was there more to it than that? Could that be why Olivia seemed to dislike and respect the woman at the same time?

An hour later, Chris had exhausted all the salacious details and Rosemary was yawning. She barely protested when he told her she should retire. When the mirror faded into mist, and the sound of the chimes was still ringing in his ears, Chris sat back in his chair.

Gods, he was so lonely.

He missed her, too. It didn’t matter that she’d occasionally driven him to madness. Rosemary had been the focal point of his life from the day the Castle had fallen. Fernand had guided him through it, but Rosemary had been the goal. What got him up every morning. Life without one of them was bad enough, but without either…

He considered mirroring William. Or perhaps he could connect Rosemary’s frequency again, and talk to Miss Albany. But strangely enough, despite having spent the whole day with her, Olivia was the one who filled his mind. He wondered if she’d be there if he mirrored the office, still plugging away. Getting a head start on tomorrow’s paperwork marathon. Maybe she’d had a breakthrough already, and was tearing off around Darrington without him.

Or she could be ignoring this case altogether. She could be investigating Livingstone, desperately hoping to come up with some last minute miracle to save the good doctor. For him. Because for all her insistence that the matter had gotten under her skin, that it had been the connection to Evelyn val Daren that had caught her attention, Chris thought he knew why Olivia was really making an effort to rescue Livingstone from his seemingly inevitable fate.

He rubbed at his eyes. Maybe he should just go to bed. What else was there to do?

There were papers strewn about the desk from his adventure spelunking into church spiritbinding receipts days ago. He sighed and gathered the detritus into a pile. He opened the top drawer to deposit them out of sight.

My dear sweet Rosemary.
His father’s handwriting stared up at him.

Mechanically, Chris pulled out the pages. He’d weaved them himself, a perfect copy of the documents that he’d found at Fernand’s murder scene―no. No, not a murder. Fernand had killed himself. The sooner he got that through his skull…

He remembered, as if the words just floated past his ears, something Fernand had said the day before he and Olivia had found him in the scarlet water of his tub.
“Michael saw only one sort of strength, but he was a short-sighted blighter to the very end. You’re as strong now as Rosemary will ever be.”

This letter, this list, had been meant for Rosie, not him. And perhaps Rosie was who they should have gone to, because Chris hadn’t been able to bring himself to really look at them since the day he’d brought them home, shuffled into this room, and stashed them away. He scanned the letter and his lip curled.
“Your brother is a delicate creature.” “The last thing you want to do is incite one of Chris’s jealous fits.” “They don’t have the strength.”
That was right. Michael Buckley had decided his son was a worthless, sniveling cream puff the day his baby daughter’s humming had made silver sparks fall from her mobile. Michael Buckley had never given his son a chance. Michael Buckley would rather wait eleven years for his final words to be read than entrust them to his oh-so-
delicate
son.

He flipped the page.

Only eight names had survived the water and blood that had covered the paper. Most weren’t names at all, just some sort of code. Chris scanned the list. Katie, Dorothy, and Wil sat beside Boathouse, Maiden, and Panther. There were two spiritbinders listed without names attached. Two lifeknitters. The name Panther, a spiritbinder, had been underlined and circled multiple times. It had been the last readable name on the list.

Chris flipped back, brow furrowing.

He’d tried to put it from his mind. Fernand leaving him nothing but an insulting letter from his father and an enigmatic list had been bad enough. But he’d also had nightmares about “a list,” and sometimes he was sure that one of those nightmares had just maybe been real, someone in his room, his body paralyzed, a voice whispering in his ear,
Where is the list?
Too strange to consider. Not his problem.

Was it?

“I have left you in some way that did not seem entirely natural.
”

He flipped back to the list.

Part of what had made the Floating Castle such an accomplishment was the stability of elementals woven together. Theoretically, no sylph in the net could have been unbound, because her leash was being held by five ‘binders at once. The one who had summoned her and bound her, and then the ones who had done the same to her neighbors in the net. The narrative of Doctor Livingstone’s trial had presented several possible methods of sabotage. Even to Chris, they sounded far-fetched, but as there was no one alive who could bind a net anymore, there was no way to test any of the theories. And there was no shortage of spiritbinders lining up to testify whatever would convict the good doctor.

What if, Chris wondered. What if there
had
been a conspiracy? What if his father had found these names, and they hadn’t been the result of his paranoid hatred of the reformists? What if they meant something?

A conspiracy needed a leader. Who would that have been?

As Chris stared at the list, and then the letter, and then the list. His eyelids began to droop. The letters swam in front of his eyes. Reality blurred, and suddenly he was walking up the steps to the courthouse, the documents in hand. He delivered them to the barristers working the Livingstone case. The men didn’t have faces, just swirling pools of authority where a face would be. They thanked him for his assistance. Francis Livingstone, murderer of thousands, would burn for his crimes. Chris stood to one side and smiled and sighed with relief. He’d done the right thing. Two guards headed down the stairs, holding Livingstone between them, and Chris joined the chorus of rioters screaming for blood and vengeance.

The good doctor turned and the ground opened beneath Chris as he realized that it wasn’t Livingstone being lead to his death at all.

It was Fernand.

He snapped awake.

His neck ached and his back was painfully cramped. The papers were still on the desk before him, and Chris gathered them up, thrust them back into the drawer. He had no interest in his father’s
fucking
conspiracy theories. He was not going to be part of
anything
that Michael Buckley had left behind. Olivia believed that Livingstone was innocent, so―

Chris slammed the drawer shut so hard the entire desk rattled.

He sat panting in the silence that followed. In a certain cruel irony, he was freezing. He shivered, stumbling to his feet, partially to look for a blanket, and partially to just… get away.

He made it into the hallway before he realized that something had awoken him.

There was someone pounding at the door.

Chris cursed and hurried down the stairs. He was in his shirtsleeves and had kicked off his shoes, but the night was so advanced there was no protocol to follow. Whoever was at his door in the middle of the night, they were wise enough not to try and open it with the salamander alarm.

“One moment,” Chris called. He grabbed his waistcoat from where he’d left it slung over the table before the mirror, pulling it on and buttoning it. There. That should fulfill the absolute basics of propriety. He threw open the front door. Heat rushed in, immediately oppressive.

Rayner Kolston stood there. He gave Chris a once-over. “Not so finely put together now, are we, mate?” he asked.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Chris asked. He tucked his hands into his armpits. Cold air blew at his back, hot deadness radiated before him, and he was half-asleep and shaken to the core.

“Fine sort of gratitude,” Kolston grouched, but Chris knew feigned crankiness when he saw it. Three months of Olivia Faraday and a lifetime of Rosemary Buckley. He opened his mouth to demand an actual answer, but Kolston was reaching for something, and a moment later, he cracked open a long, thin velvet case.

There was a fountain pen nestled inside.

Chris’s lips parted. “You work bloody fast,” he murmured.

Kolston shrugged. “I like satisfied clients.”

I’m not a client
, Chris wanted to say, but that was exactly what he was. And he’d paid with something dearer than money. Dearer than anything. He reached for the pen, but Kolston pulled away, giving him a sharp look. “Why do you want this thing so bad?” he asked.

Chris cracked a grim smile. “You broker information, Mister Kolston,” he said tightly. “I’m not telling you a blasted
thing
that might be resold later.”

Kolton laughed. “You ain’t no plonker, Buckley,” he allowed. “But you can’t blame a man for trying.”

“Give me the pen,” Chris said, already tired of this. He needed to sleep. He felt terrible. Was he coming down with something? Gods, he hoped not. He’d hate to disappoint Olivia for Godsday. He raised his hand to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead. “And I swear, Mister Kolston, if this is a fake, I
will
find out, and you will be so sorry…”

Kolston looked, if anything, charmed by the words. “I daresay you’re not such a prat as all that, then, Buckley,” he said. He snapped the case closed and he handed it over to Chris. “Good evening, then, mate,” he said, and he tipped his little crooked bowler. “I’ll be calling on you when I’m in need of my favour.” Chris nodded, and Kolston turned and walked off into the night.

Chris wrapped both hands tightly around the case. The velvet pressed into his skin, and he took a deep breath, and he flexed his fingers around it. It was real. And maybe, just maybe, it could save Livingstone.

He didn’t think he’d be free of the image of the good doctor wearing Fernand’s face for a long time.

He turned and went back inside.

hris awoke to the bustling sound of the city.