The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (14 page)

“Now just what…” The man studied the young girl in her Godsday finery, fourteen at the very oldest and talking about things no child should know. Chris could see the wheels in his mind turning, moving towards the inevitable conclusion. He wanted nothing more than to step between them and shield her from view, as if that would hide their secret. He waited for the questions to come. The silence grew so long the air thrummed with it.

Finally, “Move along, little girl,” the attendant said, voice gruff with what he’d chosen not to say. “Or you’re going to waste your whole day. That doesn’t sound like much fun, now does it?”

Before Rosemary could say another word, Chris
did
move between them, blocking her from view. “I’m so sorry.” He all but prostrated himself before the man. “She’s―she’s very precocious. And very young. And has―a very vivid imagination.” Chris turned and seized one of Rosemary’s hands in his own, tightly this time. She struggled in his grasp and protested as he ignored her distress. The attendant watched with wary consideration. “We’re leaving,” Chris said firmly. “Have a nice day. I’m so sorry.” He yanked Rosemary after him.

“You’re going to be sorry!” Rosemary called over her shoulder at the man, fighting against Chris’s grasp every step. “He needs to go back to the plane! It’ll be nobody’s fault but yours if he breaks free!”

“Stop it,” Chris hissed down at her as soon as they were out of the attendant’s field of vision.

“What they’re doing is dangerous, and you don’t know anything about it!” Rosemary dug her heels in, and there was still enough muck from the rain the night before that she got purchase and anchored herself.

Furious, Chris whirled to glare down at her. “You’re one to talk about dangerous,” he hissed, keeping his voice as quiet as possible. “How many times do we have to have this conversation? All it would take is one person believing you, Rosie,
one
! If Lowry finds out about you…” He stopped, growled, and tried to reign in his temper. A deep breath. Another. He forced a smile, reached out and tucked one of her curls behind her ear. “Rosie,” he murmured. “Let’s just forget about it and go see the unicorns.”

But she rejected his offer of peace and jerked away. Her expression had not a trace of affection or respect. “What do you know?” She glared up with venomous disdain. “Maybe I want them to find out about me. You’re someone’s secretary. What do you know about
anything
?”

He saw white. Without thinking about the mud or his trousers, he dropped to his knees, seized Rosemary by the shoulders, and yanked her close against his face. “I know you’re a child, an insolent little child, and I’m an
adult
,” Chris spat. “I know I’m your legal guardian—which isn’t a job I
ever
wanted, by the way, and I’d give back in a heartbeat if I had the choice.”

The scorn in Rosemary’s eyes washed away in a torrent of alarm. “Chris―” she started, but he wasn’t done.

“If you have problems taking orders from a mere wordweaver, maybe you’d rather take them from a nun in a children’s home. Do you like that idea?” She shook her head. “I didn’t think so. So when I say that’s enough, it means that’s
enough
. Do you understand me?”

Her eyes had gone very wide and they glimmered in the grey, clouded light. Her lower lip protruded slightly. She drew a long, shuddering breath, and cringed away from him.

Guilt washed through him then, flushing out everything he’d felt so strongly only a moment before. As if recalling a fading dream, he replayed the words he’d spoken and wondered, in a daze, where they’d come from. He didn’t resent Rosemary. Of course he didn’t. He did everything he could for her, so much that Fernand always warned him it was too much. He ached for her, how young she’d been when the Floating Castle had fallen, how little he could do to give her a normal life.

Why had he said any of that? What had summoned it to the surface?

Dizzy with shock and shame, he struggled against his instinct to back pedal and further confuse her. With deliberate care, he changed his expression from angry to stern. “I only want to protect you, Rosie.”

“I was just…” she said, and then, to his surprise, she threw herself into his arms. “I’m sorry, Chris. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to you. You’re right.”

She buried her face into the crook of his neck. Dazed, he raised his arms and encircled her with them. “Rosie, no. It’s fine. I forgive you. Of course I do.” He pulled away. He tried to disguise his own feelings with a comforting smile as he straightened her hat and her curls. He pulled out his carefully pressed handkerchief to wipe the tears from her rosy cheeks. “There, now, it’s all right,” he said. She didn’t look convinced. “It’s all right,” he repeated, and she sniffed. “I know you’re sorry. I forgive you. Blast it, I’m sorry, too. I never―can’t we just forget all about this and have a nice day? No crying on White Clover days, isn’t that a rule?”

She managed a smile. “Well…if it’s not a rule, I think it should be.”

“It is now.” He climbed to his feet and offered Rosemary a hand. He tried not to notice the curious, disapproving eyes that had turned to watch them, or wonder how much they may have heard.

Sometimes, he felt like he was living in a fishbowl, and it was only a matter of time before someone came at it with a cricket bat.

As they roamed the park, things between them were awkward at first. He’d never lost his temper with her, and the fear in her eyes haunted him. But by the end of the first hour, they had given themselves over to their haven of childhood memories. The ghosts of their parents walked along the trails beside them, but for once, they were a comfort and not a torture. Chris swore he could sense Michael’s glowing charisma, feel Mother’s soft, small hand on his shoulder. When he glanced down at his sister, she seemed younger than her years, a six-year-old girl once again, happy and carefree. Lost in the winding paths of White Clover, surrounded by the green glow of dryads and creatures both exotic and mundane, they were transported to a simpler time.

By noon the weather had turned mild and Chris was glad he hadn’t worn a heavier coat. Rosemary clung to his side, chattering away. She’d heard one of the keepers say they might be getting monkeys from the southern continent. Tales of those wild lands, so far away from Tarland and its neighbours, captured her sense of adventure.

“Miss Albany says their language is completely different from ours,” she prattled, “and they’ve been building amazing tombs and temples and cities since we were still living in mud huts and dingy old castles! I always thought they’d be dreadfully primitive, but Miss Albany says I was wrong! And they did all of that without categorization! They don’t even have wizards, here! Isn’t that amazing?”

“…actually,” he mused, “yes, it is.” He’d read a bit about expeditions to the southern continent in the papers, but those publications had always painted the place as savage and dangerous. “That seems an odd topic for Miss Albany’s lessons.”

“Miss Albany says we can learn a lot from somewhere so far removed from categorization! She says being so close to us has actually made Frelia and Girvane and Denlar develop much slower than they would have! It’s interesting! I like her lessons better than any of the other tutors you’ve hired for me. At first I just thought she was—hey!”

While she’d chattered on, Chris had reached down and pinched her cotton candy between thumb and forefinger, pulling away a knot, dangling threads like angel hair.

“Chris!” Rosemary protested, shooting him a pointed but playful glare. “That’s mine!”

“But I bought it for you,” he reminded her.

“You should have just bought your own!”

“But then I wouldn’t have to steal yours.” He popped the candy into his mouth, closing his eyes in pleasure as it melted on his tongue. If he could have afforded the purchase, he
would
have bought his own. Though it was just as well, he thought with a sigh, swallowing the melted sugar with relish. He’d be twice his size and cut a horrible figure if he could afford all the sweets he wanted.

“You are absolutely the worst brother ever!” she declared, but she pressed her face up against his side with a happy murmur, and he felt like not quite the worst brother ever after all.

Rosemary stopped in her tracks. She stared up over the pulsing green glow of the dryad-tended trees and he followed her gaze, up and up until it connected with the massive steel contraption looming over White Clover like the staring eye of the Elder. “Oh, Chris,” Rosemary gasped, heart on her sleeve. “Oh, Chris, could I
please
ride the wheel today?”

Chris winced.

The observation wheel had been the main attraction of White Clover when it had first been built. It was a recent idea at the time and eager children crowded to it in a way they never had for the cloud drakes. But now it was one of six wheels in Darrington alone, and most of the others dwarfed it embarrassingly. It was no longer a new idea, but that didn’t stop the zoo from charging twenty royals a spin.

“I…I don’t know, Rosie…” he said. He could actually see money circling the drain. “It costs more than admission to the whole zoo.”

“Oh,
please
, Chris?” She turned to look at him, eyes large and begging, hands clasped before her. “I never ask! And I would only go for one spin, just one! How much can it be, really? Is it more than your taxi to work every day? You could always walk for once and make it up!
Please
?” She seized one of his hands in both of hers on the last word, drawing it out so long he wondered how she had enough breath in her lungs.

She was manipulating him outright. He had learned to tell; she certainly did it often enough. The big eyes and fluttering lashes, the platitude in her voice, the entreaty on her upturned face, the
pained
pinching around her mouth. The performance of a smart little actress and nothing more.

He sighed and reached for his wallet inside his coat. “One spin,” he said. “
One
.”

“
Thank
you!” Her face lit up and she darted forward to wrap him in a tight hug before pulling away and skipping off down the path. He hurried after her at an only slightly more sedate pace, knowing from experience she’d find it all too easy to leave him behind and then scold him for tarrying when he caught up.

He was winded by the time they reached the observation wheel, but Rosemary seemed bright-eyed and energized as she gazed up at the towering structure. This close, its size was dizzying. Chris could only glance up before looking away, heart somersaulting in his chest. He’d loved the wheel as a little boy, loved being up at the top and seeing the whole world stretched out before him like a patchwork quilt. He’d been so high, high enough to see all three heavens. It had been thrilling, amazing, absolutely brilliant.

It had also been before the Floating Castle.

The wheel was halfway through the turn it was already taking, and Chris could see three small figures waving down from higher than he wanted to consider. Two men standing together near the fence gave him and Rosemary polite smiles before turning back to their conversation. Fathers and their children.

The attendant tipped his hat. “Got to wait a minute, there, love,” he said to Rosemary, voice thick with a West Vernellan accent. “Put you on when the others reach the bottom, eh, and you can do a nice full spin just on your own, how’s about that?” He gave Chris a look. “You going along?”

“Ah, no,” Chris said quickly. He fished about in his coat pocket for his handkerchief to wipe his forehead.

“Right then, just hold a tick, won’t be long,” the attendant said. “Twenty roys, it is, if you want to be giving it now. Save time when they come down.”

Grateful for the excuse to cover his distress, Chris pulled the notes out of his wallet. Smiles and money were exchanged, and then he and Rosemary walked a bit away.

“You never used to be scared of it.” Rosemary looped her arms through two rungs of the fence, leaning back and looking up at him. It was not a ladylike pose, but he didn’t scold her.

“Things change,” he said, hoping that would be the end of it.

This was Rosemary, however, and so it wasn’t. “You’re not scared of the winged carriages,” she persisted. “Weren’t you just telling me about how grand it was to ride in the Duchess’s, and how amazing the city looked from the sky?”

“That’s…different.”

She giggled. “Why?”

“It just is. I can’t afford it anyway,” he said. He shot another quick look up at the wheel to see the position of the children already on it―and then back down, ignoring the twist in his stomach. The winged carriage
was
different. Falling didn’t scare him. The height was not what tightened his chest and shortened his breath. Rather, all he could picture was the wheel breaking free of its steel restraints, rolling about, crushing, screeching and squealing and― “It looks like it’s just about your turn, Rosie.”

She shot him a sly look. “Are you going to watch me?” The question was stated with practiced innocence, but he knew that glint in her eyes.

“Absolutely not.”

She laughed. “Father would say you were being such a baby.”