The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (39 page)

Losing friends was something he was getting very good at.

At a corner in a sad, dirty area of the city, he saw a woman crying on a street corner, holding a sign begging for work. He stood still, staring at her.
Be happy
, he commanded her, but if anything her sobs only grew louder, and he moved on.

Two streets over, he found a protest.
LIVINGSTONE DIES MAERDAY
, the closest sign read, held by a sneering woman with raggedly, crispy curls she’d probably burned trying to use an iron on. Chris laughed again, quietly, choking when it turned into a sob. Yes, the good doctor
would
die Maerday, because Christopher bleeding Buckley had paid for a miracle with his own soul and then chased it out of his life. Chris stared at the woman. Her shaking sign.
Livingstone is innocent,
he told her.
Leave him alone
. She showed no reaction.

Well, didn’t that figure?

He started seeking out the protests, looking for people who seemed vulnerable to persuasion. Perhaps that’s what Will and Grey had been that made them different. Already conflicted. But he told a balding man whose sign dangled at his side to
go home and see your wife
, and it didn’t seem to make a difference.

This
thing
that he could do, what the hell even was it? And what
good
was it? He couldn’t make it work. The more he tried, the less it seemed to actually do. It was all in his head after all. It had to be. He’d imagined the way Will had staggered as if hit by a bag of flour. His encounter with Grey had been so traumatic that he remembered it wrong. The salamander that had almost killed Olivia had dismissed itself, without any input from him.

A large man with a five o’clock shadow that was verging on a nine o’clock shadow shoved him in the shoulder. “What the bleeding hell are you lookin’ at?” the tough asked, his voice so thick with a West Vernellan accent that Chris could barely understand him.

Chris looked up at him. “Your fat fucking mug,” he said tonelessly. The first time he’d ever said the ugly word aloud. He thought it might make him feel better, but it didn’t.

The brute punched him square in the jaw, which was about what he’d expected. He balled up a fist and struck back, feeling as if he’d assaulted a brick wall, but on his second swing he went for the nose and felt it crack under his hand. The brute howled and grabbed Chris in both arms, pulling him close, squeezing him so tight that Chris felt his breath leave him. He fought to get away, but his
delicate
body didn’t do him much good, and he felt his vision start to go black. Stars flashed in front of his eyes. He’d have laughed if he had the breath, because it was very funny that he was being embraced so tightly by another man after all.

“What’s this? Break it up! Break it up! Eadwyr help me, if that’s you, Tom, you’re off to the chokey. This time I’m holding you for charges, so
help
me―”

The brute released Chris. Chris staggered forward, his knees slamming against the paved footway, sucking in air. Fireworks erupted in his vision and he coughed wildly. The stern beat officer peered down at him, concern in his eyes. “Stay there,” he ordered. “I’m going to deal with old Tommy, here, and then I can bring you in to see if you’re hurt.”

His jaw felt like it had been broken in two, but the pain made him feel strangely alive. While the officer led Tom the Tough off, Chris just… wandered away.

He stopped trying to take control of his gift, if it even existed. He stopped paying attention to his surroundings at all. He passed through a Livingstone support rally, hearing their cries without really
hearing
them. What was the point? Will had the pen. Will had the pen and Chris had dug himself a bloody fine hole he couldn’t get out of. Sold Rosemary like a commodity for a chance. Given the chance to his only friend. Chased his only friend out of his life, probably for good.

All alone again.

Was this how it had started for Ethan Grey? He’d said as much while he’d held a pistol to Chris’s back and forced him to walk. A few little mistakes, and then, before you realized it…

I’m not like Ethan Grey
.

His hands caressed the lines of a wrought iron fence and he blinked. He’d stopped. He was standing in front of a beautiful house, rich and fine, but its lines were straight and bold, without any old-fashioned flourishes. It couldn’t have been built more than thirty years ago. His eyes scanned the edifice. Something tickled at the back of his mind. Bottomed out as he was, he’d come here for a reason, hadn’t he? He’d never been here before, so why…

Mother held his hand. They strolled up the front walk. There was a woman standing beside the carefully pruned bush, a delicate, beautiful angel of a woman with chestnut hair, dark eyes, and a willow-switch figure. “All right, Christopher,” the angel said. “It’s time to remember.”

He blinked. He knew this house. He knew this woman. She was the doctor’s wife, and this was where the doctor lived.

The front door flew open. A boy a few years older than him spilled out of the house and ran down the walk, throwing himself into Chris’s surprised arms. “Chris!” the boy squealed. “You’re here!”

“Will!” he said, because he did know this boy. This was his friend, William. The best friend he had, better than Georgie or any of the others. He always played with William when he came to see the doctor. The doctor and Mother spent time before and after his sessions behind closed doors. While they were gone, William danced while Chris indulged in the forbidden swing music he loved on the pianoforte, his fingers flying across the keys. Sometimes, they played trains.

There was someone else there. Chris looked up from William’s embrace to see a tall, broad, handsome man filling the door frame. His smile was warm and kind, not at all like Father’s. It was Doctor Cartwright, and this was the best place in the world.

“Do you want to come inside, Christopher?” Doctor Cartwright asked, his voice strong and gentle all at once. Christopher nodded, and tried not to trip over William as he stepped forward
―

Confusing images, like a thousand memories being played out at the same time, compressed into a second. An hourglass. A pocket watch. “Try it again.” Doctor Cartwright smiling, his mother turning away, his father screaming, Chris screaming back, and
―

Agnes Cartwright’s angelic face. “All right, Christopher,” she said. “It’s time to forget.”

He gasped and stepped back.

This house…

He clung to the fragment of memory, confusing as it was. Will.
This
was where he’d met Will? They had been childhood friends? No, that wasn’t―possible, he’d never been here before in his life. He’d never seen Will before that day they’d met at the police station. He didn’t―he didn’t…

He stared at the front door. He pictured the man with the broad shoulders and warm smile. Doctor Graham Cartwright. He closed his eyes for a long moment and then let them flicker open again. He’d been here. He had to have been here, because where else would those images have come from? He focused on that moment. His mother at his side. Missus Cartwright running her fingers through the manicured shrub and humming. William wrapped around him. What had happened next? Doctor Cartwright had stood in the door, and then…

The door opened. For a moment, Chris was sure that Doctor Cartwright was going to step into the frame, his broad shoulders almost blocking the light from inside. Instead, a pinched older woman appeared. She stared at Chris. She looked him up and down. She made a shooing motion.

He almost laughed. With his dusty pants and haggard, soulless look, she probably thought he was a vagabond.

He saluted her jauntily, like he imagined Olivia might have, and then he floated away.

He knew where he was headed, in a way. So he wasn’t surprised when he arrived.

A small group of young people were clustered in a corner. An old man was walking away. Chris ignored all of them, his eyes straight ahead.

He put his hands on the railing. It had been built three years ago, when the city had finally been forced to admit that there was no way to move the ironically named Floating Castle from where it had crushed an entire neighbourhood, skidding along the ground, sending up sparks like a horse’s shoes. Fires had started. Panicked riots had erupted. The sylphs and all the other elementals bound into the Castle had run wild and merry, destroying any human being they saw. Chris clenched his fists around the rail. All of that horror had left debris, and that debris had been cleaned. There was distance between the railing and the castle itself. But it was close enough that the sheer size of the thing, the details of the twisted metal, the shattered marble, all seemed so… real.

William’s father had been there, that night.

It all came back to this blasted thing, didn’t it? The Floating Castle. Chris took a step back and to the side. (
Step, side, together,
Will’s voice had murmured, barely audible.) He ran his hands down the memorial stone, his fingers catching on the little letters and numbers that tried to do justice to the hundreds dead, and didn’t. His parents were there.
Julia Buckley nee Lockwood. Michael Buckley.
His fingertips trailed down, past the army of Bs, until they found the name he was looking there.
Doctor Graham Cartwright
. His mother had known William’s father. His mother and William’s father had died in the same place, at the same time.

Ultimately, everything was tied up in that night, wasn’t it? Everything ended there and began there again.

Chris closed his eyes. Played back the last few hours. He’d been the one who’d initiated the kiss. No matter how many times he played it over in his head, nothing changed that. There was a moment there, so small he couldn’t even remember it, when he’d made a choice.

Why?

Because what he felt for William Cartwright was―

No. No, absolutely not. His father’s voice seemed to echo in his ears.
Delicate
.

He should go home. Mirror Will. Apologize.

And then what?

Chris shook his head. His eyelids flickered open. Daylight was waning, and everything looked strangely blue. “Blast,” he whispered. He didn’t know. He had absolutely no idea. He barely knew what was happening right
now
.

He’d completely ignored the gaggle of young people about his age standing nearby until suddenly, something one of them was saying made his head jerk up and penetrated his fog.

“Say―isn’t that the Deathsniffer’s assistant?”

“
Shh.
Margaret! Hush!”

Chris turned. He squinted. Eight young faces peered back at him, five young ladies and three gentlemen. The tallest fellow looked quickly away while the shortest lady’s gaze shot down to her feet. She had long brown braids, thick spectacles, and a round, red-cheeked face…

“Sister Margaret?” he asked.

She looked up. She peered at him from above the rims of her thick eyeglasses. “Mister Buckley,” she said in her heavy Northern accent, and she ducked a terrible mockery of a curtsey. Chris went to make the gesture of the Three and Three―and then realized just why he hadn’t recognized the Maiden. She was dressed in normal, plain, simple daily clothing.

They all were. Chris scanned the group. There was little Calum Rowe with his shock of orange hair, with Penny Daniels standing protectively at his side. There was lanky Tibault Horne and his unfortunate mole. There were three other young people he didn’t immediately recognize. And there was pretty, swollen-eyed Sister Elisabeth. They made eye contact, and immediately, Chris felt her grief pulling him in. He forced himself to look away, turning his attention to round, plain, flushing Sister Margaret, instead.

“What are you all―doing here?” Dressed like that, he didn’t need to add. Brother Calum shrunk into Sister Penny’s side. Tibault Horne reached up and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Don’t tell our Mothers,” Elisa murmured.

“Don’t tell our
Fathers
,” Penny added. “Old Daddy Abner would tan Calum’s hide if he knew about this.” Calum nodded silently.

“Look,” Tibault said, “if someone should get in trouble for this, it’s me. Everyone knows I’m the ringleader of this… of this…”

“Bollocks you are!” Margaret snapped, twisting about. “Tibs, I swear by Maerwald’s perky little tits, if you keep trying to take care of me―”

“Margaret!” Penny gasped, reaching up to cover Calum’s now bright-red ears.

Margaret’s hands went to her ample hips. “He’s older than you, you know. And I’ve been appreciating my patron’s ladybits in his earshot for longer than you’ve been in her service, Pen.”

“We sneak out,” Tibault interrupted. “Sometimes. It’s… bloody hell, Mister Buckley.” His eyes pleaded for understanding, and Chris had to look away. He was reminded, like a stabbing pain piercing his godsdamned heart, of Will begging him not to throw him out. “You have no idea what it can be like in there.”

“Th-they say you can’t choose y-your family,” Calum murmured, so quiet Chris had to strain to hear. “B-but it would be nice if you could get some say the s-second time around.”