The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (47 page)

“Like what, exactly?” Rachel asked.

“I have something in mind,” Miss Banks replied.

Maris’s head snapped toward her. “Em.” That one syllable seemed to contain a thousand meanings.

Miss Banks laid a hand on Maris’s forearm. She glanced about, and then leaned in to press a gentle kiss against her lover’s round cheek. Chris flushed, looking away, and he honestly and truly hated himself. How could he be so petty? Why did he let it matter so much? In
this
moment, with
these
two women, he was still judging them. Them, and himself.

Beside him, Rachel flinched, and Chris cursed. He wasn’t used to being around a heartreader anymore. He had to keep a better cap on his emotions, lest he spill all his secrets.

“If we can get an opening,” Miss Banks said finally, “believe me, I can give us one
hell
of a distraction. I just need a bit of room to move in.” Her black eyes glittered in the dim light.

“There seems to be a pattern to the patrols…” Olivia mused, her eyes scanning the room, squinting to pick the black-masked invaders out of the shadows. “Rehearsed, like Emilia said. But I haven’t been able to―”

“They move in star patterns around the room,” Kolston interrupted smoothly. “The dames move clockwise. Gents go opposite. One of them passes by us once every six minutes and two seconds to six minutes and fifty-three seconds. Alternating gender and direction, obviously. The women are slowing as they move and appearing a little more infrequently. Men are keeping roughly the same interval. The best time to move would be three minutes and six seconds after the last patrol passes.”

Olivia gave him a long, appreciative look. “Oh, well
done
, Mister Rat.”

He showed her his straight teeth in a grin and doffed his stupid little bowler hat. “Thought you might need my figuring, Liv, so I’ve been working at it in the background here.”

“I―
might
be able to tell you if anyone is looking our way,” Rachel murmured. “It’s difficult to translate interest into emotion when reading, but if attention is diverted away from the… distraction… there may be a spike of curiosity I can warn for. We―” She suddenly tilted her head to one side, as if listening for something. Fear crossed her face, and her eyes swung up to meet Chris’s. “Like right now,” she gasped. “Please, please no one do anything foolish!”

They had been so involved in their plans that they hadn’t even noticed that the woman from before had come back.

Somehow, he knew it was her. He just… knew. Her tall, thin figure, the way her breasts barely rounded the fabric of her starched shirt. The way she met his eyes directly. He knew those eyes. His heart completely stopped. He was suspended in midair, trapped in a moment. She folded her arms, squared her stance, and she stared down at him. “I recognize you,” she said.

His tongue was a lead weight in his mouth. He stared up at her. He wasn’t breathing. He was a statue. Go away and leave me alone; I’m just a statue. His lungs started to hurt, but he couldn’t remember how to get breath in.

“You’re Michael’s boy,” she continued. “Christopher. Isn’t that right?”

It was impossible to tell how old she was when all he could see was her eyes. Was she one of the wives of the ‘binders who’d sat in the parlour while Chris and Georgie played noddy with the younger children? Or had she been one of
those
? His childhood playmates who had chosen to forget his existence after the Floating Castle―like Georgie herself?

“Your father had something for us,” she said. “He didn’t give it over when he died.”

“How could he?” Chris felt his mouth move, heard his voice, and somehow, his tone was defiant. Angry. “He was bloody
dead
.”

Her eyes hardened. It was all the warning Chris had before she brought her hand up, and then the frigid, glowing steel of her icepistol smashed the side of his face in. Hot iron exploded in his mouth, pain, and he had to be dying, shot dead like those poor men in the middle of the floor.

“Stop it!” someone cried. “Leave him alone!” A different voice. He fell back, head cracking against the marble, and his hands curled protectively around his head. There were hands on him, pulling at his shoulders. “Chris! Mother Deorwynn, are you all right?” He moaned in return.

He heard the woman’s voice. “Your father was hard at work on an assignment from Sir Combs himself.” She was so cold, like her pistol. He prodded the side of his cheek with his tongue and gasped in pain. It felt like raw meat.

“I don’t think he’s paying attention, dear,” Olivia snapped. Her hands were on him. He felt her long, graceful, small fingers at his face. “Chris, can you hear me?”

His eyes flickered open. Her face swam above him. A concussion? Maybe. But maybe it was just that his fine golden spectacles seemed to be missing. Olivia shook her head, but when he managed to focus his gaze on her face, her icy blue eyes softened. “You always end up getting that handsome face of yours bashed in when you’re with me,” she murmured.

“I think you’re right,” their captor mused. “He’s not paying attention at all, is he? Well.”

There was a scuffle. A woman’s cry. The sound of crinkling fabric. Chris forced himself up on his elbows, Olivia at his side, and Rachel was wrapped in the woman’s arms, the blistering cold of the icepistol pressed against her temple.

Chris stopped breathing.

The woman’s eyes glittered. “Oh, yes. Paying attention now, aren’t you?”

“Christopher,” Rachel pleaded, her eyes locking with his. They were wide and wild with terror.

“What do you want?” Chris whispered.

“I want to know who was on your father’s list.”

His stomach dropped out. The list. Of course. Three and Three! He’d never even thought―but obviously! Michael leaving the list to Rosemary meant that he hadn’t left it to his own compatriots! Images swam up in his head. Last spring. The day Livingstone had been taken in to the police. He’d dreamed someone in his bedroom, in his bed, pressing him down, and he couldn’t move, and they’d asked about the list, before he’d even known there
was
a list. Had it been real? Was
this
real? Suddenly it seemed most likely that it wasn’t. That this was a dream. But did blood ever taste so much like a copper penny in a dream?

“List?” Chris asked weakly.

The woman’s jaw bulged beneath her mask. She pulled back the safety on the pistol. Cold air steamed up into the darkness. Rachel began to cry. “Mister Buckley, Gods, whatever she’s speaking of, she
means
it!”

And Rachel would know. She could read everything in their assailant’s heart.

“Christopher,” Olivia murmured warningly against his ear, but Chris couldn’t―he couldn’t not.

He raised his hands in front of him in surrender. “All right. All right, I―I only came by it recently. And it was damaged. I only have a few―it’s not the whole list. Please. Please, let her go.” Speaking hurt his mouth, his head, his whole body. Had she knocked a tooth loose?

The pistol never wavered. “I want names.”

“There barely were names!” Chris’s hands shook in the air. “Codenames―question marks―I swear!”

“Give me what you have.”

“Chris, whatever that list was…” Olivia whispered, but Chris just closed his eyes tightly. He almost laughed. Fernand had thought that Chris could be trusted with his father’s final words. The letter. The list. But Fernand had been wrong, hadn’t he? Rosemary would stand here, defiant, and let the whole room be shot dead before giving up that information, but Chris?

He was just too bloody delicate.

He closed his eyes, because he couldn’t watch her gaze at him triumphantly as he began to tonelessly recite. “Katie. Sumfinder. Maiden. Categorization unknown. Boathouse. Truthsniffer. Wil the Fourth. Lifeknitter. Name unknown. Lifeknitter. Dorothy. Categorization unknown. Panther. Spiritbinder.” And then he laughed and opened his eyes, looking up at the monster who held Rachel captive. “And the last―name unknown. Categorization unknown. Maybe a heartreader. My father’s list was woefully pathetic.” He laughed again. Gods. Fernand had made one hell of a mistake, hadn’t he?

The woman’s cold eyes stared down at him. Tears streaked through Rachel’s cosmetics. Olivia sighed against his ear and sat back.

“Please,” Chris said, because what harm was there in begging, too? “That’s all I know.”

She nodded.

She set the safety and released Rachel.

Miss Albany fell to the ground.

The woman in black saluted them jauntily and turned on her heel, walking off.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel gasped. “Gods, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Olivia murmured. “Thanks to that fuss, Emilia had room to move unnoticed. Our distraction is about to come. Hold tight.”

Chris knew he should reach out to Rachel, but his head throbbed and he felt like―like he didn’t have any right to touch her, go near her, when he was so―Olivia had her arm around him, he realized, and he leaned into her. “Olivia,” he murmured. “Gods, what’s happening in the world? Why did they want that damn list? Why did Fernand give it to me? He should have known. He should have known I’d never be able to―”

“Stuff it,” Olivia commanded, and Chris obeyed on instinct. She sighed and rested her forehead against his. “There weren’t a lot of options there, Christopher. I only delayed you to give Em her window.”

Chris looked up into her eyes. “You always say that. I told you to call me by my first name, but you always say ‘Christopher.’ Never Chris.”

The tiny wrinkles in the corner of her eyes, only visible this close up, crinkled. Olivia Faraday could find a smile anywhere. “It’s my crippling sense of propriety.” She chucked him under the chin. “It gets me into so much trouble, you can’t imagine.”

He managed a weak smile and she slid his glasses back onto his nose for him.

Chris pulled away from her to gaze at Rachel, blinking to focus his eyes. He was relieved to see Maris attending her, checking her for injury, and the terror in her eyes had faded a bit. Olivia followed his gaze. “She’ll be fine,” she soothed. “Now, brace yourself. This is about to get… fascinating.”

It was rather an understatement.

A great sound echoed through the eerie hush of the ballroom, like the rustle of leaves in a forest, and then a mighty
crack
as if an ancient tree were splitting down the middle. A flash of verdant green light blinded Chris, stealing his night vision. He stared up at the ceiling, desperately and foolishly searching for the clouds and sky creatures and seeing nothing, just black. A throaty woman’s chuckle echoed after the sound of nature’s power, and a short, round, chubby girl swirled across the dance floor. She was naked, primal, and her skin was green-brown, cracked like tree bark. Glowing through those cracks was an emerald light.

The dryad smiled, and her eyes glowed with pure chaotic malice.

“As promised,” Olivia breathed.

The ground rumbled. The dryad laughed delightedly, her hands outstretched, and spun about in a circle. Leaves drifted out from her hands, littering the ground. There was a sound like the grinding of a millstone, a high whine as something strained, a crack, a
deafening
crack, and the marble floor split open.

The dryad’s spell shattered. Guests and captors alike shrieked and scrambled to their feet, moving out of the way as a massive apple tree sprouted forth from the broken floor. Chris surged up. His head whirled and he fell back. Olivia caught him. Rachel was crawling toward him. Maris was on the move, disappearing into the crowd. “Where the hell is Gregor? We need that thing bound!” a voice cried, but whether Gregor was the spiritbinder who’d controlled the massive salamander or not, he didn’t appear.

A second building, whining groan filled the ballroom and people shrieked and scurried. The ground split open. Someone screamed in undeniable pain. A cluster of birches unfurled from the crevice, growing from infancy to adulthood in seconds. The dryad laughed delightedly. The apple tree spun, hurling its fruit everywhere. An apple splattered against the wall a hair from Kolston’s head and he swore, jumping toward them, brown pulp covering his hair and bowler. “Maerwald’s tits!” he shouted into the chaos. “That thing hit hard enough to knock a bloke on his back!”

The slender limbs of the birches lashed out, snapping like whips. There were more screams, terror and pain, and the floor groaned yet again―

―right below them.

For a moment, they all froze. And then Olivia’s voice snapped through the air, as much a whip as the birch branches. “
Move
!” she cried, and they did.

The ground
heaved
, and Chris stumbled forward; he almost lost his footing. There were hands at his back, pulling him up, helping him onwards. Kolston’s voice was slimy and hot against his ear as they ran. “Owe me two, now, pretty boy,” he drawled, and it took all of Chris’s self-control not to shove him back into the marble cracking behind them.

Chris could
feel
the monstrosity of the thing that grew behind them, big enough to block the thin light from around the room. He gasped, unable to stop from turning. An oak towered above them, shaking with energy barely held back, and the dryad was in the branches, staring down at them―at
him
. Her eyes met his. She kicked her feet like a girl and she smiled, waving. She shot into the air as the oak grew and grew and grew, a hundred years of growth in moments, gnarled branches bursting out. Roots surged up, ripping the marble to pieces, and Chris was lost in her gaze, pulled along by Kolston―

The ground split beneath their feet. A root, questing for water like a living thing, rose up out of the depths, and Chris tripped and fell, pulling Kolston with him. He gasped, remembering to move, to roll, and he hit the ground curled up on his back. The wind rushed out of his mouth like someone had popped a balloon. He gasped, staring up at the ceiling. No clouds. No gryphons. How did breathing work again?

She was above him.

He choked, remembering how to draw in air, but the dryad’s curious eyes stared right down at him. She tilted her head to one side. There were no whites, no irises, and no pupils. Just green. She drifted down, feet kicked up behind her in the air. She placed a finger to the tip of his nose. It smelled like sap and freshly cut grass.