The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (54 page)

Chris could only gape.

“William was pulled from his cell at the local youth prison and put through categorization. He was supposed to be shoved right back inside. He had five more years to serve for all manner of crime. He ran with the pretty young blunts on Black Canning, you see. Prostitution, robbery, or whatever else. He’d been taken in with a group of his
friends.
So Lowry had a problem on their hands. A delinquent with the most valuable proficiency in the books.” She stepped closer. “
I
told them that I could reform him. That he was too valuable to just toss back inside. That he was young enough to change. And they listened to me.”

“Officer Burke,” Chris murmured.

“What do you think is going to happen to him, once he becomes the most useless person in Darrington?”

“He
is
reformed!” Chris protested.

How had he not known about any of this? But he could have guessed, couldn’t he? Will pulling him through backstreets and saying he knew the ways from his misspent youth. The easy way he handled the weapons Olivia brought him to walk the memories of. His card tricks and knife tricks and sleight of hand. William may have spent his childhood as the privileged son of a Lowry doctor, but not everyone had generations of wealth to fall back on when the Castle dropped out of the sky.

Gods, how must Chris’s sob stories of not having fine clothes have sounded?

“He is reformed, as you say,” Officer Burke agreed. “And I doubt they’ll throw him back inside, not after two years of reliable service. That is, not until he turns back to his old ways. Darrington is worse than it was five years ago, Mister Buckley, and William will do
anything
to have money for his mother. Do you not think you’ll find him selling his pretty face on Black Canning in a year?”

The emotion that filled Chris was something worse than pity or disgust―irrational, crippling jealousy. Another man, a stranger with his collar pulled up and his hat pulled down, wrapping Will up in his arms on a shadowed corner…

“That’s not going to happen,” Chris snapped.

“You’re
ruining
him,” Officer Burke shot back. “I have done
everything
for that boy and you are dragging him along by the bollocks and tearing his life apart!” Her eyes flashed. Her fingers flexed on her pistol. “He’s been rogue since the moment you met last spring. And if you have any respect for him at
all
, you’ll leave him alone. Is that perfectly clear?”

A knock on the door made them both jump. Officer Burke’s hand caressed the butt of her pistol, but she didn’t draw it. She turned gracefully and opened the door. “Ah,” she murmured, and stepped back, gaze lowering. “Miss Faraday.”

Olivia stepped into the room. “Are you done shouting at my assistant?” she asked, giving Officer Burke a disgusted once-over, and then turned to Chris. “There are suspects waiting to be questioned. Are you coming along, or not? Deal with this mess you made later.”

Chris nodded, avoiding her eyes. He followed her out of the antechamber, through the crowded, boiling courtroom, and out into a Darrington that was reeling from having the rug pulled out from under her.

It was raining.

ain hammered on the roof of the carriage. The streets ran like rivers. The world was a cacophony of shouting people and pounding rain. Olivia hung half out the window, howling at the traffic.

“Gods, never mind!” she yelled, sitting back down in her seat and reaching for her reticule. “Christopher,” she commanded, and he started out of his haze in the seat across the way. “Get up. We’re walking the rest of the way!”

Chris glanced out the window. “Olivia,” he said weakly, his entire self still shaken up and poured out from the trial. “It’s
hellish
out there.”

As if to underline his point, the entire world lit up in blinding light. The sky cracked in two, blue-white light pouring into the space between. The carriage shook on its wheels and the horses let out panicked, whinnying screams.

“Get up!” she repeated. “I
refuse
to sit here for five more
hours
and wait while our killer could be hopping the last train to Vernella!” She waved her reticule in his face, the beads on it rattling in front of his eyes, and he pushed it out of the way irritably. “I asked Emilia’s assistance with this, but if Miss Montgomery decides to bolt, there isn’t much she’ll be able to do about it!”

“I don’t understand how Sister Patricia could be responsible for all of it!” Chris protested, but he allowed Olivia to drag him to his feet. They practically tumbled out of the hackney and into the street, and in just moments Chris’s hair was dripping water. He brushed it out of his face, wincing at the feeling of the rainwater pounding against the wound on his cheek, as Olivia argued with the cabbie.

“No!” she exclaimed. “I’m not paying you anything, we’ve barely made it half a block!”

He scanned the road. The lanes were packed―with taxis, private conveyances, and carts, of course, but also with people. Shouting at once another, at nothing in particular. Signs proclaiming that Francis Livingstone was a murderer were running with ink and paint everywhere the eye could see. No one seems to notice that it was storming, except the horses and unicorns, which panicked and threatened to trample every time another roll of thunder sounded.

Another splintering clap of thunder seemed to crack the very air in half. Chris flinched and raised his hand instinctively as if to protect himself. His knees were weak. No matter how ordered a man considered himself, some things could always turn him into an animal. The storm must be right above them. He turned. “Olivia, please, we don’t―”

She was there, looping her arm with his, tugging him onwards. “Stubborn tosser!” she exclaimed. “He was going to come after us with that crop if I didn’t give him
something
. Come on, hop to it, Christopher, we’re on a
clock
right now. That went on much longer than I thought it would, Emilia is waiting for us, and we were behind schedule
before
you flounced off to canoodle in a back room!”

“You enlisted Miss Banks’ help?” Chris asked faintly. The mystery of poor dead Georgie Edison and her peers felt a thousand miles away, and the Livingstone affair felt very, very close.

“Indeed. I need to speak to my suspects without raising their alarm, and thus, Emilia is calling them in for follow-up interviews. Brilliant, isn’t it?”

“And who, exactly, is she calling in?” Chris demanded. Was she still not going to tell him?

“Just one for now,” Olivia said, and tapped her nose. “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want you―ah, distracted, during the trial. And I’m not telling you now, because…” And she grinned. “Because I’m rather enjoying your frustration.”

He gritted his teeth.

They were both dripping water like undines when they reached Olivia’s office. The road was packed even here, and Olivia shooed two arguing adolescents holding ruined signs that could have been for or against the good doctor off her property. In this night-at-noon storm, the dark fog that clung to the building almost seemed invisible.

Miss Banks stood up from her position in Olivia’s favourite chair when they entered. “Olivia!” she exclaimed, and her face was stormy. “What did you
do
? Maris just mirrored here, barely
sensible
, spitting about how you’ve ruined the police!”

Olivia shook herself like a dog. Water sprayed in all directions and the sparkling sequins on her drenched ball gown rattled. She nudged Chris forward. “Oh, not me,” she protested. “It was him, I swear!”

“What could your
assistant
possibly―”

“We can talk about this
at length
later, Em, I swear, but right
now
―
is Sister Patricia still present?”

Miss Banks folded her arms over her professorial garb and reached up to push her specs up her nose. She blew out a stream of air that made her tightly coiled curls dance. “She is still present,” she said finally. “But very confused. I asked her some questions, but―”

“I don’t suppose she’s the one who took the disruptor?” Olivia interrupted.

Miss Banks shook her head. “The honest truth, Olivia, is that there’s one very unique thing about Miss Montgomery when compared to the other priests and priestesses I interviewed. She’s one of the only ones who still seems in full possession of her sanity.”

Olivia blinked. “One of the
only
ones?” she asked.

Miss Banks nodded unhappily. “What do you expect, Olivia?” she asked, her voice curiously sad. “Can you imagine going through what they have? Most of them hide it very well, but some of them were under the tests for
weeks
with no reprieve! They’ve all been so thoroughly
traumatized
… they’ll never be the same again.”

“But
all
of them…” Olivia ran a hand through her soaking hair. It almost looked brown. “Were any
particularly
unsettled?” she asked.

“More than I can name,” Miss Banks replied. “And it’s not just the young ones, either. Some of the older positions I spoke to had made some peace with their lives. Like Brother Lachlan’s Crone, Grandmother Harriet.” Chris remembered the pleasant woman offering him tea, begging him to soothe Sister Elisa. “But others have
never
forgiven the system that’s done this to them. Some of the oldest are actually a bit mad with it―with the need to change things before they pass and leave the world worse than they came into it.”

“Like Grandmother Eugenia,” Olivia murmured.

“The ringleader of them all,” Miss Banks agreed.

Olivia made a thoughtful sound, and then, suddenly, turned on her heel. Water flew in all directions. “Chris,” she commanded. “Follow me. We’re going to have a talk with Miss Montgomery, and I want you to record
everything
she says.”

“If you know who did it,” Chris said, “what is the point of all this?”

“Because it’s all in here,” Olivia said, tapping her head. “Not a piece of evidence. I doubt Maris would even let me order an arrest. Not unless I get a confession… or the disruptor.”

“Wait,” Miss Banks said, leaping to her feet. “Olivia, what are you planning?”

Olivia turned. She gave Miss Banks a toothy smile and shrugged airily. “Oh,” she sang. “Just hoping to get a look at your most dangerous invention.”