The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (50 page)

He, on the other hand, had done far from his best. He’d decided what mattered more to him when he let William walk away into the crowd last night.

“I do like your dress,” he said.

She grinned. “Why, thank you, Mister Buckley,” she said, and maybe there was something to the way Olivia lived, only caring about those closest to her, and only as much as she found comfortable. Surely she never seemed as miserable as he did. “Now, I really do want to talk about the―”

There was a knock on the door.

Both their heads swivelled together. Chris stood up from behind the desk. He gave Olivia his most solicitous assistant smile. “It’s probably the milkman,” he murmured.

It wasn’t.

He barely had time to register the presence of Maris Dawson before she grunted something at him and pushed bodily past. Standing behind her, waiting for permission to enter, was Emilia Banks. She inclined her head graciously to Chris. Stunned, he stepped aside to allow her into the office.

Olivia jumped to her feet. “Maris?” she gaped. “
Emilia
? What the devil?”

“We read your reports,” Maris said. “And the next time you tell me they’re useless, I’m pointing to this exact moment, when Em cracks
your
bloody case wide open.”

All their eyes swung to Miss Banks. She cleared her throat delicately. “I believe I know how those spirits are coming unbound, Olivia,” she said. “I think it’s because of me.”

Five minutes later, Chris was pouring tea.

Chris watched Miss Banks out of the corner of his eye while she arranged her skirts, which were cut from serviceable wool cloth and a plain brown-grey colour. She wore no gloves to cover her bronze hands, and she wore a simple starched blouse done up to the neck where a cameo lay against the hollow of her throat. On her head perched a beautiful straw hat covered in simple white flowers and a plume of rich brown gryphon feathers. Her sharp, simple garb made her look quite professorial, and she wore it well. The ensemble was accentuated by a pair of half-moon spectacles, which he’d seen no sign of at the gala last night.

The most remarkable thing was that her hair was unbound. Unlike Olivia, it didn’t fall about her shoulders and down her back. Rather, it seemed to float around her head and shoulders, tight little corkscrews of curl that quivered every time that she moved. It had its own natural shape, one that disobeyed basic laws of gravity. There was something mesmerizing about it.

She caught his eye and raised a brow. Chris blinked hard and blushed, turning back to the tea, which he’d spilled a bit of on the trolley. Miss Banks sighed.

“Ignore him,” Olivia said airily. “He’s consistently flummoxed by anything he’s even mildly unused to. Leave him to embarrass himself dramatically and do elaborate as to how
you
could possibly have resulted in the deaths of four priests. I trust it has something to do with our overzealous gardening friend last night and the fact that you swore up and down that you weren’t a spiritbinder after all?”

Miss Banks picked at her skirts. Her jaw was set. “If I tell you this, Miss Faraday, I need full discretion. Not your usual form. You’re not good at it, but this―this is extremely important.”

“Yes, yes,” Olivia waved her off. “I―”

“No. I want your word. You promised Maris to keep this case quiet, and yet it was in the papers all weekend. This will never leave this room. Your
word
, Olivia.”

Olivia sighed. She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Gods, fine. My word, then, for whatever you think it’s worth.”

Miss Banks nodded. She took a moment to gather herself. And then: “I want to make it clear that I chose a dryad intentionally. They certainly can cause chaos, but they rarely go for intentional kills. They seem to delight more in destruction of man-made objects than man herself.”

“Well, that one certainly hated floors,” Olivia quipped. “But I feel we’re still skipping over the part where you somehow summoned an elemental despite not being a spiritbinder.”

“I didn’t summon that dryad,” Miss Banks said, and then she sighed. She reached inside her clutch bag, adorned with white flowers to match her hat, and pulled out a wadded handkerchief. Slowly, she peeled back the swaddling layers, revealing a small device against the white fabric. It fit easily into her small hand. She held it up. It looked like an egg cut in half, with one side curved and the other perfectly flat. “I unbound her.”

Olivia reached for the object, but Miss Banks drew it quickly back. “No,” she said firmly. “Most certainly not. I’ve already let one of these get out of my hands. I can’t possibly risk another.”

“Emilia,
please
, I’m not going to
steal
it. I only want to―”

“Absolutely not,” Miss Banks repeated, and quickly wrapped the object back in its careful swaddle. She tucked the bundle back into her bag. “It is extremely dangerous and you are far too curious.”

“Oh, for―this is getting just exhausting!” Olivia threw her hands into the air. “Enough with the cryptic horseshit! What the bloody hell
is
it?”

Miss Banks exchanged a quick glance with Maris. The policewoman raised her eyebrows and shrugged helplessly.

Olivia folded her arms. “Don’t think I didn’t see that,” she grumbled. “Christopher! Where is that tea?”

Chris clattered in his hurry to put Maris’s four lumps into her cup.

“I call it a disruptor,” Miss Banks said. “An invention. A failed one, more or less, but it had a… fascinating side effect.” She sighed. “Before I aimed to invent technology that worked without proficiencies―without
spiritbinders
―my goal was to somehow… automate the process.”

“Of invention?”

“Of spiritbinding. Yes, I know Lowry doctrine: only the ordered will of a human mind can overcome the chaotic will of an elemental one. But was that necessarily true? Or was that just something we believe despite it being untrue, because it fits into a narrative people want us to believe?” Her full lips thinned. “Like the ‘Southern Continent’ being an untamed, savage wasteland.”

Olivia nodded consideringly. “All right. I assume you had a counter-theory? I don’t care about any of this, by the way, but I know how you love to talk.”

Maris snorted. Miss Banks cast her eyes heavenward. Chris looked back and forth between Miss Banks and Maris. How could they be so easy together? Didn’t they know that everyone who even suspected was looking at them and… judging? Including him. He gave Miss Banks’ tea a splash of milk and a single lump before loading everything onto the tray.

“Music,” Miss Banks said. “Or more specifically, sound waves. There’s a direct tie between the clarity of a spiritbinder’s voice and the strength of their ability. And even a layman can control a spirit in simple ways by using sound. We do it every day, every time we use a mirror. I thought that I could create a technology that would allow control over the whole process. From summoning to dismissing, binding to unbinding.”

Chris handed the cup down to Miss Banks. He tried not to notice how much the liquid looked like her skin. He must have failed quite blatantly, as Olivia gave a disgusted snort and shook her head as Miss Banks accepted with thanks.

“But it didn’t work,” Olivia said, after fixing him with a long and chastising look until his ears burned. “Or you wouldn’t have turned to engineering technologies that don’t need proficiencies, like the poor departed automobile.”

Miss Banks took a sip of her tea as Chris distributed the rest of the cups. “Not exactly. I had no luck with summoning, with dismissing, or with binding, it’s true. But unbinding… yes, I managed to make that work.”

Olivia frowned, taking her cold coffee out of Chris’s hands. She raised her eyebrows at him in a silent question. He shrugged. He knew what she was asking, but he couldn’t imagine how it would work. His father had believed strongly in the Lowry way―order overpowered chaos, and that was what ‘binding was. All of what it is.

But then a light dawned on Olivia’s face. “Oh, yes,” she murmured, waving Chris out of the way. He complied. “Oh, yes, you’re so clever, Em. Mirror-gnomes. That’s where you started, isn’t it? And the simplest command a mirror-gnome follows is when the chimes all clang together. Drop the connection.”

Miss Banks nodded, hiding a small smile behind her cup. “Truthsniffers,” she said. “You make it look so easy for the rest of us.”

“You’re not a truthsniffer, then?” Olivia leaned forward, her voice like a bear trap springing closed.

“You know that my proficiency is something active, not passive, Olivia,” Miss Banks shot back immediately. “Otherwise, how could I choose not to use it?”

“Bah,” Olivia said, waving her off. “But that’s how it works, isn’t it? That disruptor thing, it just―makes noise.”

Miss Banks nodded. “Noise too high-pitched for our ears to make out,” she said. “But it’s very loud, very irritating, and there are several frequencies that create a perfect discordant tone…” She shrugged one shoulder. “If you press the flat of it into
anything
containing a spirit and release the mechanism…”

“The elemental pops out with its ears ringing and no ‘binder to tell it to go right home and not bother anyone.” Olivia nodded slowly.

“I…” Miss Banks averted her gaze. “I lost track of one, this last spring. I’ve been certain all along that it came into the possession of Albany and his thugs, and that they’ve been using it for their own purposes since the good doctor went away. Albany taunts me constantly, sending me messages, trying to get in contact. He always says the same thing. ‘I want to negotiate, Miss Banks.’ I’ve assumed that he means he wants to trade for the return of the disruptor, but… there is another possibility.”

“It better be good,” Olivia murmured.

“Oh, you won’t be disappointed.” Emilia sighed, her shoulders drooping. “I’ve been working on a paper. The Realities of Categorization and the Brutality Shrugged Aside by the Average Tarl.”

Olivia threw back her head and cackled. “Of course you are. Oh, that’s bound to be published in all the big Lowry journals!”

“I want to expose how savage the system is!” Miss Banks looked between them, from Olivia to Maris to Chris. When her eyes met his, he dropped his gaze, unable to stand the accusation there. “We all went through it! Every single Tarlish citizen has experienced that cruelty, except the wizards and those who had the power to say they’d never let themselves be tortured and tested! And mark my words, it’s only a matter of time before the Old Blood fall low enough that they’re all marched to the nearest categorization office en masse!”

“If this is all just an excuse for another of your stump speeches, I
swear
, Em.” Olivia rolled her eyes. “I am very bored now. Please get to the point.”

Silence. Then: “I interviewed a group of priests. I had a secret connection to the church. I thought their experiences would be most valuable in exposing the darkest realities of the system. She put me in touch with a group who meet once a month, the Maerday following―”

“Hallowed Godsday,” Olivia breathed. She reached out and took Miss Banks’s gesturing hand, pumping it excitedly. “Oh, all right, all
right
, this
is
good!”

“I thought the young ones would be more willing to speak of their experiences, not yet fully a part of the system they were exploited by,” Miss Banks said. “I staged interviews. That same day, I had a meeting with Albany. I noticed the disruptor was missing the next morning.”

“I knew it,” Olivia breathed. “I knew it. I
knew
it happened from inside. It just didn’t make sense any other way! How else could they all be connected if it wasn’t? Chris! Get this down―” She closed her eyes briefly and then they snapped back open. Chris scrambled for his notebook, thumbing to the first open page. “Eugenia,” Olivia said, and Chris weaved, “Gre―no. She connected it; she wouldn’t have reported it if it wouldn’t have come under scrutiny otherwise. Harriet, though. Sister Elisabeth. Yes. The quiet one. Rowe? Calum Rowe. The lovebirds, Sister Patricia and―and handsome prince-fellow. That one who was asking all those questions, pretending to be scared―the big glasses. Braids. Northern accent.”

“Margaret?” Chris supplied.

“Right, her.” Olivia considered. “More, too, but those… those for now. We need to―”

The mirror began to pulse brightly, the chimes blowing in an invisible wind, ringing tunelessly. Olivia growled and climbed to her feet. “No one move!” she commanded. “No one move a muscle! I don’t want to lose this, just―stay!” Her ridiculous ball gown floated around her as she practically ran across the room, tapping at the mirror like it was an annoying neighbour on a train. “Yes, yes, wake up, come on, let’s―yes! Hello! Officer?”

Maris sat up in her chair, brow furrowing.

“Is this the office of―”

“O. Faraday, Deathsniffer, yes, make it snappy.”

“Is Officer Maris Dawson present?”

“Obviously you know that she is!”

Maris stood up. She and Miss Banks exchanged a glace. Something cold turned figure-eights in Chris’s stomach.

“We need both of you at The House of Holy Family’s Peaceful Rest as soon as possible. There’s been another body dropped in your case. A Youth, name of Jason Billingsly. Or at least, we think. Body was in his quarters, but a salamander got him good, ma’am. Not much to see.”