The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (41 page)

Three months was a long time for a girl her age. Rosemary looked very much like a young woman.

Her head turned in his direction. Across the platform, their eyes met. Miss Albany stepped up behind her, but even knowing he would be dancing the waltz with the governess this evening, Chris couldn’t take his eyes off Rosie’s face.

He saw her big, blue eyes light up. Watched her take in a gasping breath.

He held his arms out.

Rosemary threw herself into the crowd. She shoved people aside, all her adolescent poise vanishing in an instant as she dropped her carpet bag to give herself two arms to push with, and she burst out of the crowd in front of him and threw herself into his arms. “Chris!” she exclaimed, and he swept her up and whirled her around and she was laughing and crying and there were tears on his face, as well. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, her feet kicked out behind her as he held her. “Chris, Maerwald’s Sigh, I’ve missed you so
much!
”

He swept off her hat and buried his face in her hair. She smelled completely different, country air and apples. “Rosie, gods,” he said. “Has it only been three months?”

“Take me home,” Rosemary said, her voice muffled by his collar. “I want to go home, Chris. I want to see home so
badly
.”

“It might be difficult,” Chris said, smiling faintly. “You dropped your bag.”

“It’s no problem at all, Mister Buckley,” a third voice chimed in. Slowly, Chris lowered Rosemary to her feet. His sister seemed as if she’d grow up tall, like he had, but Rachel Albany was still a head above her. The governess was very much the poorly dressed, prim, tight-laced woman who’d first appeared at his door. Her thick brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and unlike his little sister, no cosmetics touched her cheeks. She had a long, wrapped burden over one arm. In the other hand, she held Rosemary’s bag aloft. “I managed to find this in the crowd.”

Rosemary ducked her head and had the courtesy to flush. Beneath her enamel, her face didn’t seem nearly so blotchy as before. Miss Albany had made the right decision. “Thank you, Miss Albany,” she said, taking the bag.

“A young lady never runs, Miss Buckley,” Miss Albany said, but there was a sparkle in her eye.

“Yes, Miss Albany,” Rosemary agreed, bobbing her head, and Chris could barely believe this was his strong-willed, precocious, argumentative sister. He opened his mouth to make a jape of it, but Miss Albany caught his eye. She shook her head slowly. He closed his mouth, understanding. Rosemary’s sense of being a young lady was easily bruised.

Once they were in the hackney that Chris had paid to wait, however, Rosemary’s veneer of propriety disappeared. She began to chatter excitedly about Summergrove, about her dear friend―bitter rival?―Lillian Witherspoon, and the entirely unseemly―or was that strangely charming?―stablemaster’s daughter, Mabelle Greene. She counted off on her fingers all the things she had learned about management of money in an estate as large as the Faraday orchards, lessons that Missus Faraday had insisted on. And she bounced up and down in her seat as she babbled about how Missus Faraday promised she’d learn the basic box step of a waltz after her fourteenth birthday next month. Chris’s cheeks coloured and he looked away from Miss Albany.

The carriage rolled to a stop in front of the Buckley estate. Rosemary blinked and looked up, as if shocked that they had stopped moving, and then she squealed and threw aside the curtains on the cooled hackney window. The chilled air rushed out, but Rosemary only squealed again, louder. “Oh!” she cried, as she saw their home. “Oh, we’re here!”

Her hand went for the latch.

“Wait,” Chris murmured.

Rosemary sat back immediately. Her wide eyes stared at him across the way. “Is there someone watching?”

The change in her was astounding. Three months ago, she’d have growled at him for daring to tell her what to do, especially when her safety was concerned. Chris nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “I just need to have a look, all right?”

“Come sit here, by me, Miss Buckley,” Miss Albany said, patting the seat beside her, and Rosemary rolled her eyes but did as she was told.

Chris opened the door and stepped out into the heat. If anything, this was the hottest day of the summer so far. He raised a hand to press it against his forehead, gathering his bearings. He glanced at the cabbie. “One moment,” he said, and raised his hand to show the royals he’d prepared. The cabbie gave him a nod of acknowledgment.

Chris had purposely opened the door that faced the estate, not the one that faced the bench. He walked around the carriage, praying to all six gods that he wouldn’t see any of his friends sitting there.

The bench was empty.

Chris closed his eyes and sighed in relief. No trap, then. Miss Albany had been right after all―with the Livingstone trial tomorrow at noon, there wasn’t any time for little things like the most powerful spiritbinding wizard to have lived since ancient times. He handed the roll of royals to the driver―he had earned it―and threw open the door closest to the bench. Rosemary met his eyes, hopeful.

“All right,” he said, holding out his arm to hand her down like the little lady she was. “Let’s go home, Rosie.”

Rosemary stopped at the door. “Wait,” she said.

Miss Albany laid a hand on Chris’s upper arm to stop him from stepping forward. He felt a little thrill where her plain leather gloved fingers touched him. “What is it, Miss Buckley?” she asked.

Rosemary cocked her head. And then she shook it. “This salamander is bound wrong,” she said. “He’s unhappy. He’s an alarm, right?”

“Rosie…” Chris said. First thing on a Godsday morning, the streets weren’t
quite
as packed as they had been yesterday on Healfday, but there were enough passersby that without a soundshield…

“Wait!” Rosemary said again, with more force. She turned slightly and dropped her carpet bag in shock.

“I hope there’s nothing breakable in there,” Chris said, wincing.

“What
happened?
” she demanding, kicking off her fine shoes to run, sock-footed, across the lawn. She stopped in front of the torn up line where the sylph had gone mad in its rampage. She turned back, shock on her face. “The shield is gone!”

“There was… an accident,” Chris admitted. He raised a hand to rub the back of his neck. “Don’t worry!” he amended when both Rosemary and Miss Albany fixed him with stricken looks. “No one was hurt! Just the fence. I have a fine to pay. It’s―it’s no problem. It’s my own fault. I let it go too long. I didn’t actually know how often the sylph needed to be replaced, and she wasn’t flickering―”

“Chris!” Rosemary scolded. She
actually
raised a hand and shook a finger at him, her little face scrunching into consternation. The chastising gesture coming from his little sister was so absurd that despite the seriousness of the conversation and the impolite attention from the street, he almost let out a startled laugh. “I left you here thinking that you could take
care
of yourself! This is what you do without me? I’d never have left knowing you’d put yourself in this kind of situation!”

The utter ludicrousness of this combined with the discomfort of the growing attention swirled together and Chris actually did laugh, sitting down on the front step and throwing back his head and laughing and laughing until his stomach hurt. It had the unexpected benefit of being
too
interesting for the outside viewer. The passersby turned to politely ignoring them in the face of Chris’s moment of insanity. Rosemary’s small fingers touched his face.

“Oh no,” she was saying to Miss Albany, and Chris blinked up through tears, still shaking from laughter. “Has he completely lost his mind, Rachel?”

“I think he’s just a bit overwhelmed, Rosie,” Miss Albany said. She reached under his arm and tug him to his feet. “Come, let’s get him inside. Whistle the passphrase, won’t you, Mister Buckley?”

He did as he was told, somehow, and Rosemary fiddled the door open with the key she stole from his pocket while Miss Albany helped him inside. The moment the door shut behind them, Rosemary turned to him with her hands on her hips. “Are you going to be all right, Chris, or have you gone all barmy on me?”

He wiped tears and swayed on his feet. His dying laughter echoed off the cavernous architecture of the foyer, but it no longer felt quite so alone. “I suppose you’re right,” he admitted, gently pushing Miss Albany away. “I suppose I haven’t been taking care of myself.” Not at all. Drinking, swearing, wandering dangerous areas alone. Letting himself get involved in Grandmother Eadwyr knew what. Bargaining Rosemary’s services for pens. Giving them to men he’d kissed. Gods. He’d rather lost control of himself completely, hadn’t he?

“Or your spirits,” Rosemary muttered. She turned away from him, and she raised her hands above her head. Her voice raised in song. Chris stood up straighter, shaking off some of his madness. He hadn’t noticed at the station or in the taxi, but Rosemary’s voice had subtly changed. Her clear soprano had deepened into a fuller mezzo-soprano, beautiful and melodic. He could only stare as she sang in arcane tones, speaking a language that he didn’t know and never would, that Rosemary only knew by instinct. All the auras in the room―the magic mirror, the alarm on the door, the puzzle lock, the chandelier with its salamander and fiaran bound in different parts―all began to flicker. Only it wasn’t a flickering. It was a vibration. All the auras pulsed in time with Rosemary’s song, and as she sang, the song took on different, new layers, one atop another, building high until it sounded as if she was singing a dozen different songs at once, juggling different melodies and harmonies together into something… beyond amazing.

All at once, every one of the auras burst in a shower of sparks. A tiny crystal fairy with a giggling voice like ice crystals danced down to swirl around Rosemary, whipping her skirts and blowing her hat to one side. She was followed by a long, rainbow-scaled, sinuous reptile, coals pulsing from deep within as it traced the fiaran’s trail and turned the mist into hissing steam. The gnome from the mirror waddled around her feet, dancing from one foot to the other, clapping its little hands in tune with her voice. Green buds sprouted from Rosemary’s blouse and then burst into pure white balls of fluff as the dryad that swirled around her taught her cotton shirt to remember to be alive.

In all his years with her, he’d never seen anything like it. A dozen elementals joined in, swirling around her, and finally, they burst into song, matching Rosemary’s voice with theirs. Chris took a step back, and Miss Albany touched his arm. She leaned in very close, close enough that her voice stirred the hairs behind his ear. “Since White Clover and Grapevine, her abilities have… matured.”

“I see that,” Chris breathed, afraid to move. Any one of those creatures could kill them all.

“But she’s more careful than ever. She can actually command far more than this. I’ve seen it. And stopped it, of course.”

“How?” he asked. He’d never even heard of such a thing. At Grapevine, he’d seen Rosemary control three elementals at once. It had been historic. This? “How can she do this?”

“She’s a very special girl,” Miss Albany said quietly.

Rosemary’s voice swelled. She stretched out a hand. The little fiaran landed on her open palm, and it seemed… joyous as it knelt, knees beneath its tiny body and hair swirling in an unseen blizzard. Spiderweb frost crackled along Rosie’s skin, but before Chris could be concerned, the salamander darted in close, melting the frost and then swirling away, turning figure-eights.

“She called you by your given name,” Chris whispered, remembering. “And you called her Rosie.”

His gaze quickly darted from Rosemary to Miss Albany, and he saw that she was flushing. “I’ve said before, Mister Buckley. I find unnecessary layers of courtesy… dishonest. It became incorrect to continue being proper with one another, considering our new relationship, and so…”

“I don’t disapprove,” Chris said quickly and found that he was telling the truth. What did it matter, if Rosemary called her governess by her given name, when she had grown so much in the meantime under the woman’s care?

“Then,” Miss Albany said, after a brief pause, “would it be unwelcome of me if I suggested that you may call me by my given name, as well?”

Considering everything, it didn’t seem unreasonable.

Rosemary’s song hit a high note, and all of her rainbow-hued friends burst. Snow rained down from the fiaran’s perch while sparks trailed after the ghost of the salamander’s trail, and a shower of tiny autumn leaves fluttered to the ground where the dryad had danced. Rosemary’s skirts, blouse, and torn open hair all descended around her, and the room seemed deathly quiet.

His sister turned on her sock-footed heel to him. “All right,” she said, planting her hands back on her hips. “I’m rebinding every single elemental in this house, and don’t you dare try to tell me otherwise!”

Chris managed a smile. “I wouldn’t dare,” he said. He turned to Miss Albany―to Rachel―and saw her wearing the same expression.