The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (16 page)

“They’re all old families,” Chris mused. “And all reduced to menial ‘binding.” There was something to it, but he wasn’t sure just what.

Olivia, as usual, was two steps ahead. “Now,” she said, “look at
this!”
She crossed to where she’d placed her reticule when she entered the office and produced from it another folded paper. It opened into another map of Darrington, this one with four circles marked on it. Notes were scribbled near them, far too messy for Chris to make out anything even if he hadn’t had a splitting headache. Olivia’s handwriting could be used to pass secret messages past border guards and never be found out.

But he didn’t need to read the notes to recognize that one of the circles was nestled comfortably into the Lowry District, right in the middle of that cluster of Xs like a mother goose surrounded by her goslings.

“What am I looking at?” he asked. He tried to sound bemused, but knew there was excitement in his tone.

Olivia tapped the center of the circle that had caught his attention. “I’m shocked you don’t remember!” she said playfully. “This is the residence of Theresa Edison, widow of Edward Edison―”

“―and Georgie’s mother,” Chris finished for her. He looked from the cluster of Xs to the incriminating circle drawn right in their midst. He’d never have recognized the location from the bird’s eye, but now that it had been pointed out, it did seem right. “What does it mean?” he asked.

“It means,” Olivia said, “that you’re going to have to drag yourself out into this blistering day, because we need to have a conversation with Missus Edison.” She winced. “
Without
Maris. I hope you’re ready to charm, Mister Buckley! That’s what you’re here for.”

But it seemed Olivia had additional plans for the day. As Chris pulled back the curtain, looked out the window of the carriage, and tried desperately not to incur another vomit-related fine, the buildings decreased in quality rather than increased. They left the comfort of their usual neighbourhood and the shops, offices, and residences slowly transformed to factories, work yards, old houses and crumbling tenements.

Olivia was peacefully resting across the way, eyes closed, a little smile on her face, and hands folded in her lap. Chris hated her a little bit for how content she seemed when he was actively fighting against dying, but he was savvy enough to realize that she was doing it on purpose. Olivia Faraday had such skill with baiting people that she elevated it nearly to art.

“We’re not headed for the Lowry District,” he murmured.

“Well,” she replied easily, not opening her eyes or straightening her posture. “I thought that since we were visiting one
actual
family of a victim, we may as well handle the other three while we’re out and about.”

Chris flipped back in his notebook. He’d weaved that Timothy Lane had been a steelcutter’s son, rough around the edges with a poor upbringing, but no more detail than that. As for Virginia Lane and Lachlan Huxley, he had no information about their backgrounds at all. He glanced up at Olivia. “You were busy last night.”

Olivia cracked open her eyes. She looked like a sleepy cat as a smile pulled across her face. “Well, Christopher,” she murmured. “We can’t all spend our evenings boozing, dancing, and flirting.”

Chris actually snorted at that. Olivia teased him with absurdity, not knowing that his night had included all three. His mind skipped like the cylinder in the gramophone shaking off the needle, and he rationalized that he had most certainly flirted with Miss Albany, and that was most certainly what he had been thinking of. “Of course,” he said mildly. “You save that for Godsday.”

Olivia threw back her head and laughed delightedly, and Chris broke into a grin. He admitted it; he loved to make her laugh. He shook his head, looking at her across the way, this strange woman who he supposed would be as much a friend as William was, if not for the fact that she signed his cheques. And, of course, was bribing him to spend time with her. “Really, Olivia,” he said. “What
do
you do on Godsday?”

Olivia waved him off. “Well, certainly not church, I’ll tell you that!”

“I gathered,” Chris responded sardonically. He’d never quite known what Olivia had thought of the gods. The last few days had been quite enlightening. “But honestly. I’m curious. Do you do
anything
other than work?”

A curtain fell over Olivia’s open, amused face. Her lips folded to a line and she shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“You’re not everyone. You’re Olivia Faraday.”

He’d hoped that a bit of flattery, acknowledgment of her uniqueness, would melt the layer of ice that had frozen over his employer, but it didn’t. She gave him a long-suffering look. “Christopher, honestly.”

And he was… hurt. Despite himself, he was hurt. He turned away from her, staring out the window again. They were truly in the badlands now. Men and women stood in the street with signs begging for employment, listing their categorizations. Especially pathetic was the man holding a sign that said “spiritbinder,” wearing clothes with tattered cuffs and a face that hadn’t seen a razor in weeks. He imagined that man’s voice was hoarse and unpleasant, and all he could manage was to perhaps create some sparks or the scent of freshly cut grass as he tried to ply his will to bring a cloudling or dryad across from the spirit plane.

“It’s not very fair,” he said finally.

“What? The state of the world?” Olivia laughed bitterly. “It is what it is, and complaining about what is and isn’t fair is even less productive than separating into camps and yelling about which ideology is―”

“No,” Chris interrupted her, turning back to stare at her across the way. “Insisting I stay here with you, extorting me to do it, cutting me off from my family, and then refusing to actually open up at all.”

Olivia blinked. For a moment, he thought she would smile. The next, he was fairly certain he was about to get bodily thrown into the street, thoroughly sacked. The way a whole parade of emotions auditioned for Olivia’s face and failed was almost funny.

She settled on breaking eye contact and looking out the window.

And it was Chris’s turn to be speechless. Three months, and never once had Olivia Faraday backed down from an altercation with him without a snippy final word to make it clear that she considered herself the true victor and was simply bored of the discussion. Chris didn’t know what to say in response, so he said nothing.

The carriage pulled to a halt in front of an old tenement building.

Moments later, they were standing before the door of a flat on the third floor. Chris was brought back to one of his first days out in the field with Olivia, visiting a suspect in an old tenement much like this one, with flickering alp-lights and exposed plaster. It
had
lacked the sound of shouting behind closed doors. That added a new character to the place, he had to admit.

Olivia knocked on the door.

They were grudgingly let inside by a woman in a patched dress and a suspicious expression. Hair floated around her head like a madwoman’s halo, and a horde of screaming children who all contributed to Chris’s misery were shooed out of the foyer.

Laurence “Larry” Lane was busy down at his job at the steelworks, but his wife was at home with five of their six children, not that she could find work, anyway. The sixth, of course, was Timothy Lane. No, she hadn’t seen him since he’d been categorized. Timmy was supposed to get a good, strong categorization to bring some income to his family, not leave them and live a humble priest’s life with a new one. Yes, she’d attended the funeral, what sort of mother did they think she was? No, he’d never sent her a letter or even a note. Timmy had been happy enough to leave this life behind and wash his hands of all responsibility helping raise his siblings, something his mother clearly hated him for. Her face was as hard as granite as she delivered her verdict on her son’s fate: one less mouth to feed, one way or the other.

At Olivia’s request, Missus Lane provided a copy of Brother Timothy’s categorization papers, the full report, and then she shut the door in their faces. Olivia flipped through the pages on their way down to ground level and handed them to Chris as they climbed back into the carriage.

Chris pulled all the curtains closed to shroud the carriage in pleasant dimness, settled across the way and began flipping through the papers himself. He’d never seen a categorization report other than his own. They were documents that were tucked away, far away, and never looked at again. It was illegal to tamper with or destroy them, but certainly not to forget about them entirely and hope you never had to read them again. Chris bit his lip as he squinted down at the words on the last page.
Subject was given the last resort test five separate times at the end of each day after the fifth, looking for some sign of truthsniffing. The test failed ten times of ten repetitions in each case, showing that subject not only lacks the truthsniffing proficiency, but also exhibits lower than average intellect and problem-solving skills.

At the bottom of the last page was the damning sentence:
All categorization tests failed. Subject recommended for placement with the church.

In the heavy silence of their hackney, Chris copied the relevant excerpts to his notebook, mimicking the typeset from the official report. The details were graphically disturbing, describing various tests and measures, the core of which was always the electric current run through the mind, just as it had been for him.

Olivia cleared her throat.

Chris jumped.

“I think that Livingstone might be innocent,” she said. “But I have no idea how to get evidence to prove it. I’ve asked Maris to assign me to the case, but she refuses outright. She knows that you have a special interest and she thinks I would let that affect my investigation.” She shrugged one shoulder. “She may be right. I am notoriously fond of you.”

Olivia should be better than such transparent tactics, really. She was as worthless in actual social politicking as she was skilled in being intentionally subversive with it. Chris sighed. He was far too red-eyed and fuzzy-tongued to handle her. “You’ve told me at least twenty times that you don’t care a whit about the Livingstone case. This is very lazy, Olivia. I’m disappointed in you.”

“I’m being
entirely
serious right now, suspicious timing or not!” Olivia protested, actually drawing herself up to give him an indignant look. She looked so entirely sincere, which was so entirely unlike her, that Chris had to fight down a smile. “I’ve been saving the admission for a time when it’s valuable currency, and I judged that my time had come!” She shook her head, raising a hand to press dainty fingers to her temple. “You heard me asking Maris about the case last week, when we wrapped up the Mary Trask affair!”

“You did,” Chris allowed.

“I really am loath to admit it, but you’ve planted a seed in my mind that will just not stop growing,” she continued. “It’s obviously a conspiracy that arrested him. We established that during the val Daren case, right from the mouth of the beast. Which lead me to question, is the conspiracy operating on actual evidence, or fabricated? Likely a mix of the two, I decided, which lead me to the infuriating, unanswerable question of whether the fabricated evidence is framing an innocent man using the real evidence to legitimize it, or whether the legitimate evidence is implicating a guilty man using the fabricated evidence to put sorely needed wheels on the carriage of justice.”

Chris was interested despite himself. Until the news about Fernand, the Livingstone trial had been almost all he’d thought about. Doctor Livingstone had been the only person in Darrington who’d reached out to Chris with the intention to help Rosemary rather than take advantage of her, and Chris hadn’t decided to trust him until he’d been brought in for conspiring to sabotage the Floating Castle. Nothing he could have done would make a difference, and he knew it, but part of him still felt irrationally responsible. If nothing else, the good doctor could have clung to the knowledge that someone had believed in him. “And you decided it’s the latter?” he hedged when Olivia didn’t elaborate.

She held up a lace gloved finger. “I think it
might
be the former,” she corrected. “And consider it slightly more likely. Because if there was enough legitimate evidence, I think the fabricated would have been conjured up earlier than six years later, and cost considerably less than we know it did.” She smiled at him archly. “And for one other reason.”

“What reason is that?” Chris asked. He knew that he was being drawn into her web, but she was just so good at spinning it.

Olivia opened her mouth to reply, and the carriage pulled to a halt again. Olivia paused dramatically, and then slowly closed her lips, folded them down, and tapped her nose. Annoyed, Chris stood up and pushed out before her, not playing her game, but he desperately wanted to know what she would say next.

He winced as the sunlight hit him full on. They’d been driven to a neighborhood which once would have been called upper middle-class. That day was gone, and it wasn’t just the depression that had driven it down in quality. Chris’s stomach did a backflip as he saw the steel, marble, stone, and gold bulk of the fallen Castle behind the row of houses. Six years later, and they still hadn’t been able to dismantle and remove the damned thing from where it had crashed down to the earth below. It was only a short jaunt from the block where they were standing to a spot where one could place a naked hand on the shattered towers of the Floating Castle.