The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (45 page)

It stung. He went to retort, but caught himself at the last moment. The poisonous words hovered just behind his tightly clamped teeth. He took a deep breath. “Where is your brother?” he asked, pleased at how calm and composed he sounded. “I’ll find him and I’ll tell him that―”

“Gods, Chris, no, that’s a terrible idea!” Rachel interrupted, shrugging out of his grasp. She wrapped her arms around her middle. “Don’t trifle with him! He’s more dangerous than you can imagine! Do you have any idea at
all
what you’ve let us wander into?” She bit her lip. “If I hadn’t been so focused on country affairs while I was in Summergrove―”

A great sound, like a thousand tea kettles going off at once, jerked them both to attention. Rachel turned deathly pale, whirling toward the door, and Chris followed her gaze, troubled by the fear in her voice.

The portly little man who’d announced them stepped forward. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he called, and his voice boomed to all corners of the ballroom, instantly halting any conversation. He was a hymnshaper, augmenting and changing the sound around him, and the reverberating bass notes of his voice quieted the room and drowned out even the tea kettle sounds. With a flourish, he swept his hands toward the door. “Allow me the honour of presenting the reason why we’re all here, the prototype developed by Miss Emilia Banks over years of work, the brand new, world-changing
automobile!”

And―
something
lurched into the ballroom.

It looked like―like a carriage. Like a closed-top carriage without the closed top, only the seats were all facing forward, and there was no driver and no horses. The construction was all copper, brass, and steel, bright shiny red, and it belched up smoke like it was on fire.

And it… moved.

It moved on its own!

Chris could only stare. So could everyone else.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please stay out of the way of the hot steam!” the announcer continued. “Stand away from the route marked on the floor!” Chris looked down, and he saw the black lines sketched into the marble floor. He blinked and moved away with the rest of the room, and immediately focused his attention back on the―the automobile.

The thing chugged forward, belching smoke―steam?―like it was coughing up its last lung, but it didn’t go up in flames or explode. The kettle noises faded. The automobile fell into near-silence as it cruised into the room, past the gaping attendants of the ball, and Chris was finally able to pick out the rider.

She had on a pair of goggles like steelcutters wore, but it couldn’t be anyone but Emilia Banks, with her hippogriff feathers waving proudly from her tiny top hat.

The hymnshaper jumped into the back of the strange contraption and he turned his attention to magnifying her voice rather than his own.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Miss Banks announced, and beside him Olivia clasped her hands before her heart like a little girl, “this is the steam-powered automobile! If you are very attentive, you will notice something remarkable about this piece of machinery!”
Something
? Everything about it was remarkable. A carriage that drove itself! That could change so much, if it was possible to find enough spiritbinders to mass produce―

Chris’s mind stopped short. A gasp went up around the room as others seemed to realize it.

Absolutely
nothing
on the automobile glowed.

No yellow. No orange. Even the lantern that dangled by Miss Bank’s head from a pole jutting up toward the ceiling had no black alp nimbus. “Indeed,” Miss Banks continued, her voice flushed with pride. “The steam-powered automobile uses
no
bound elementals in its workings! Not only that, but
no
proficiencies were used in the construction of this vehicle! Everything was done by human hands and human will!”

Rachel had been right.

This
would
change the world.

Miss Banks’s leather gloved hands were clasped around a wheel. As she turned it slightly to one side, the wheels of the automobile turned with it. Another belch of steam went up. Some people gasped while others shrieked, but the automobile smoothly turned along the track that had been laid out for it, like a train with a pilot. “The water inside the steam engine is heated to the boiling point!” Miss Banks continued. “When the water turns to steam, it is trapped within the mechanisms of the automobile! The pressure builds and builds until it can be used to run machinery, like an old windmill! That machinery rotates the wheels of the automobile, propelling it forward.”

The automobile passed close enough that Chris could see his and Rachel’s reflections in its shiny red gleam. Miss Banks turned and shot a smile in their direction, a smile that was full of emotion and love and promise. He flushed.

“I have full control from the cockpit!” Miss Banks continued, and Chris heard both her normal voice and the echo that the hymnshaper spun to fill the room. “With a touch of a toe, I can brake”―the automobile slowed to a crawl―“or accelerate!” And the contraption surged forward, making the crowd jump back again. Excited chattering had started to break out, but Miss Banks’s honey-sweet voice drowned it. “The only fuel needed for the steam-powered automobile is water and peat to boil it. Yes, peat! That simple bog-moss from the North! A very dear friend of mine hails from that corner, and she showed me the hidden wonders that we’ve forgotten down here in categorized Darrington!”

Chris shot a quick glance at Maris. She was covertly wiping a tear from her cheek. As if she sensed his eyes, she turned and glared furiously at him. He looked away.
Can you guess how they know each other
? Research partners…?

“The truly remarkably thing about the automobile is not that it is driving itself,” Miss Banks said, and she reached a plank that had been laid as a ramp at the base of the dais where the band had played and was now empty. The automobile started uphill, climbing as if it didn’t even notice the incline. “The truly remarkable thing about the automobile is that it can be driven by
anyone
. It can be
made
by anyone. The people we’ve shunted into the dark corners of Tarland because they ‘failed’ their categorization in one way or another―
those people
can create and
did
create this!” She did something with her hands, and a great gout of steam blasted upwards from the back of the automobile. That kettle-boiling noise kicked up again, and the automobile slowed to a stop.

Miss Banks slipped out of the cockpit of the automobile. She was beaming so hard Chris imagined that her cheeks hurt. “The automobile, and what it represents, is the future of Tarland,” she said. The hymnshaper left her voice alone, and it fell, in its natural tone, onto the hungry ears of the room. “I am happy to present that future to you tonight.”

Silence, and then the room erupted into thunderous applause. Chris didn’t even realize that he was joining in until his hands started to hurt through his gloves. His heart soared. This was―amazing. This really did change
everything.
Doctor Livingstone had been talking about theoretical alternative technologies for a decade, but this was the first time anyone had actually
presented
one…

And it worked.

“Are you going to go congratulate her?” Olivia asked at his side. “Go up and give her a―”

“Olivia Faraday, I swear I’ll shoot you.”

“Tsk, now, we both know Emilia never lets you wear a firearm off duty!”

Maris growled and started off with purpose in the direction of Miss Banks, who was now crowded with people shouting questions.

Olivia turned to give him an arch look. “Can you guess
now
?” she asked sweetly.

Maris successfully pushed through the crowd around Miss Banks and wrapped her in a hug. Miss Banks’ face split into a joyous smile, and Maris was laughing and smiling, too. Miss Banks beat her hands at Maris’s back, who released her abruptly. They bent their heads together, talking so quickly Chris could barely follow their lips. The crowd melted away and Chris narrowed his eyes. Something about the way they held themselves, about the looks on their faces―

Oh, gods.

Chris’s eyes went wide. They shot to Maris. To Miss Banks. Back to Olivia. His mouth opened. “They’re―” he gasped, and Olivia shook her finger at him.

“Well, don’t say it
out loud
, Chris,” she scolded. “That’s the deal. They’re allowed to be whatever they want so long as no one ever says it
out loud.
”

So Maris was―which meant that Miss
Banks
was―Chris swallowed. The feeling of holding William in his arms flashed back into his mind and his stomach tightened. Miss Albany swayed at his side, stuck by the force of his emotion. “They’re…”

Oblivious to the storm inside of him, Olivia just shrugged. “It’s a shame, really,” she said. “Maris is one of the best coppers serving Queen Gloria today, but thanks to people being ignorant and terrible, she’ll never make it above holding the leashes of stubborn investigators like me. Middle management, the worst curse of them all.” She sighed. “Ah, but she’s happy. And I suppose some people would rather that than a career.” She turned and smiled at Chris. “Though I can’t imagine why. You understand?”

There was a gleam in her eye. Chris swallowed. He nodded. He didn’t want to talk about it. He laid a hand on Rachel’s shoulder.

“Christopher―” the heartreader began.

“I really didn’t mean to cause a stir with this case,” Olivia said, sighing. “I do feel a bit badly about that. That damn Edison woman must have gone to the press.” She snorted in derision. “Lodging a complaint about
me
. I say. Ugh.” She shook her head. “Maris said that half the Maidens and Youths in Darrington vanished from their posts after that story ran. I suppose I gave them such a scare they all just fled for the North.”

Except they hadn’t. “No,” Chris said, remembering in a vivid flash of colour his encounter at the Floating Castle memorial. “No, actually, I know exactly where they went. They were meeting. Together.”

“
Together
?” Olivia demanded, her gaze sharpening.

“Christopher,” Miss Albany repeated, tugging at his arm. “I’m sorry. I really am, but―but I want to leave. This isn’t what I expected it to be. I don’t feel well.”

Christopher turned to Miss Albany. “What?” he asked, a little dazed by all the different things going on.

She gripped his forearm so hard her knuckles started turning white. “I want to leave,” she repeated. “My brother is here. I don’t want to see him, or the woman with him, so I would―I would really like to leave.”

“Rachel, I hardly see how we can just―”

“What do you mean, they were all meeting together?
All
of them?” Olivia asked, stepping in front of him. “Did you
see
them? Did they see
you
? What were they saying?”

“I have a headache,” Rachel said.

“How many were there? Were they from the churches that had been hit?”

“
Please
, Christopher.”

Chris stepped back, pressing a hand to his temple. Their voices buffeted against him like angry winds. He’d never performed well under pressure from more than one source. “I need a moment to think. You’re both―”

There was no time to think.

Down the stairs, through the door, from the antechambers―they erupted. Men and women wearing nothing but white shirtsleeves, black pants, and full-faced black ceramic masks. They boiled up like a nest of kicked ants, appearing from everywhere at once, all hefting pistols glowing every colour of the rainbow.

Someone screamed.

The crowd began to collapse on itself. Figures streamed for the doors. A shot rang out. Something cold touched the back of Chris’s neck. He gasped and twisted.

There was one behind him, a woman, her curves accented by her men’s clothing, her face hidden behind her mask. She pointed a pistol at him, cold air misting off of it and a white aura pulsing around it. “Don’t try anything,” she said. Her accent was toff, not rough like he would have expected.

Behind them, someone began to sing.

For a moment, Chris thought it was Rosemary. Somehow, once again, Rosemary had come to save them. He almost wept with relief―but it wasn’t Rosemary’s voice.

He spun.

One of the men stood in the centre of the ballroom. His arms were raised above his head and above him the aura of the chandelier began to spark and flicker. His voice was a smooth tenor, but it didn’t have Rosemary’s clarity. Real fear crept up Chris’s gullet as heat started to exude from the fixture, expanding outward until, in a shower of sparks and a burst of flame, a massive salamander spilled out into the world.

It kept coming and coming, coil after coil, until it shook itself free, a salamander five times as long as Chris. It turned in knots, rubbing its scales together and stoking its embers until the heat pulled at the skin of Chris’s face. Its coils were deep orange and angry crimson, glowing sullenly from within, and without the chandelier, it was the only light in the room.

The song took on a different tone. The ‘binder pointed forward, and the salamander streaked through the crowd, toward the automobile.

“No!” Miss Banks shouted over the song, and surged forward, but Maris grabbed her and pulled her back. The salamander threaded with the automobile, wrapping around it like a great snake, and with a command from the ‘binder, its scales all erupted at once.

The automobile went up in flames. The salamander coiled and coiled, stoking and stoking, until the copper, the steel, the brass all began to melt.

Miss Banks shouted wordlessly, but she didn’t try to approach. She moaned, turned, and buried her face in Maris’s shoulder.

When the singer dismissed the salamander, the ballroom was plunged into darkness. A cry went up. The only light came from the dim auras surrounding the remaining bound objects in the room, and from the half a hundred firearms held by the invaders, looking like menacing little will-o-the-wisps in the darkness. Chris pulled Miss Albany close to his side, and he felt Olivia move. He at the feeling of her breath at his neck, and she whispered into the black. “Be careful. This isn’t over yet. I’m not sure it’s even begun.”