The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (28 page)

He followed Olivia down the hallways. Instead of looking like a laboratory, or a hospital, like one would expect, categorization facilities were set up to give the impression of a pleasant, non-threatening university hall. The floors were polished hardwood, the walls covered in diplomas and certifications, the doors dryad-cultivated oak. If Chris ignored the bright lights that flickered beneath the doors, he could almost manage to avoid thinking about when he’d been here almost two years ago.

Olivia seemed to know exactly where she was going. She stopped outside of a door and rapped her knuckles against it.
DOCTOR A. PRITCHARD
, the engraved plate on the door read. When there was no response from within the room, Olivia knocked again, a little harder.

Still no response.

“Ugh,” Olivia said. “Where on earth could he be? It can’t even be nine-thirty yet! Unless he’s just late, or―”

“Excuse me?” a voice called from down the hall, and Olivia turned toward it with her smile armed and ready.

“Yes! Hello! Are you Doctor Pritchard?” Her voice was a perfectly arranged disguise over how she usually sounded, sweet and unassuming and helpless. “I’ve been waiting for you!”

The man who approached them was hunched and stoop-shouldered, though he could be no older than fifty. He wore a pair of spectacles with thick rims that almost took attention away from his weak chin, and he doffed his homburg as he approached. “Miss?” he asked faintly. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry!” Olivia fluttered her eyelashes. “I don’t! Do I need one? Oh, I’m so very sorry. I’m here to do an article about categorization professionals for the Daily Herald!” She indicated Chris. “This is my assistant! I was told you were the best man to ask about this?”

Doctor Pritchard looked back and forth between them. “Ah,” he said, clearly not sure whether to be suspicious or flattered. “I don’t think an article about categorization would be… proper, for polite company, Miss…”

“Faraday!” Olivia supplied helpfully. “And no, don’t worry, nothing―
untoward
. It’s a piece on the realities of categorization. We’re hoping to put to rest a little of that
hysteria
about how categorization is a failing process, and establish that people like you are as human as any other Tarl!” She indicated around them. “After all, it seems as if you’re still a very busy man in this facility!”

“Ah,” the doctor said. “I… yes, I see how that could be… just one moment, Miss, Sir.” He nodded at each of them in turn and pulled out a glimmering puzzle key, which he inserted and turned. The door to his office popped open. “Come right in,” he said with a smile, indicating the room. “After you, please.”

Olivia waltzed in and Chris followed her. Pritchard followed them, closed the door, and turned with a smile on his face. His weak chin trembled as he held out his hands. “Well, Miss Faraday,” he said. “Shall we get started?”

“Absolutely!” Olivia chirped. “First of all, Doctor, have you ever met a woman named Evelyn val Daren?”

The doctor jumped like he was the one getting a cloudling’s full charge run through his body. “I―” His mouth opened and closed. “I―what?”

“It sounds like the name of an Old Blood Noble, doesn’t it?” Olivia pressed. “My sources have lead me to believe that you and she were not acquainted, but then I have it on good authority that you drove what appeared to be a cabriolet to her estate outside the city on the day of the Grapevine disaster? Which struck me as odd, because why would a spiritbinder of talent, a categorization specialist, be driving a―”

“What is this about?” the doctor demanded, having apparently made up his mind about this situation. He trembled, fists balled at his sides. “What is the name of your supervisor at the Herald, Miss Faraday? Is it Carter? It’s Carter, isn’t it? It’s been communicated to him on absolutely no uncertain terms that the events of that day are
not
available for publication, or their funding will be―”

Olivia had pulled her billfold out of her reticule while he’d been speaking, and now she brandished her categorization card to him with a small smile. “All right, you’ve got me, Al,” she sang. “I’m not a reporter. I’m a Deathsniffer. And a murder took place at the val Daren estate the day you drove that conveyance out there.”

“I did not―”

“You absolutely didn’t. I believe it. You, hmm”―and she opened the file she’d bargained with Kolston over―“you have basically no capacity for spiritbinding other than with cloudlings.” She looked at him with a smile. “You shouldn’t feel badly about that, Al. Richard Lowry himself was just a mere stormbinder! Of course, he was a wizard, but we all have our strengths and weaknesses. It’s good news for you, though, really! Evelyn val Daren had wounds clearly inflicted by salamanders and sylphs, that makes you most certainly not the hand that killed her.”

Pritchard actually sagged with relief as she said those words. “Ah,” he said. “I’m―well, I am very glad that I won’t have to―”

“But the person―or people―who was in the car of that cab?” Olivia snapped the folder shut. “
They
killed Duchess val Daren. She was flapping her gums about some
very
confidential matters to the son of Michael Buckley, after all. And to a truthsniffer investigating the death of her husband and daughter. So something really had to be done about her.”

The doctor’s mouth opened and closed.

“You couldn’t hire a cabbie to drive a killer to a murder scene. That would be
categorically
stupid.
But
no one in your damned conspiracy to have Doctor Livingstone tried and executed for orchestrating the Floating Castle had any staff that they trusted, so someone from
within
was chosen to drive the conveyance, someone who
didn’t
have any capacity for the cause of death…” She clucked her tongue. “It’s only a shame they chose a categorization officer. It’s a
massive
oversight. A lot of people have seen you, Al. In fact, your face haunts their nightmares. Did you really think
no one
would recognize you if you just wore a cabbie’s cloak and pulled your hat down low?”

Olivia said nothing else. Chris was holding his breath, unable to truly believe what had just happened.
This
was what Kolston and Olivia had been working on together? They really
had
been investigating the Livingstone case. And this pasty, weak-chinned man had been responsible for the dying woman who had been wheeled into Deorwynn’s Heart Hospital that fateful day.

Finally, the doctor opened his mouth to speak. “What is this?” he asked faintly. “What do you want?”

Olivia smiled. “I’m glad you see how this is,” she said. “You’re right. I do want something.” She reached into the folder and pulled out the categorization reports, one at a time. Virginia Landon. Timothy Lane. Georgiana Edison. Lachlan Huxley. She handed them over to the doctor. “You categorized all four of these young people.”

The doctor flipped through the reports. “Yes,” he said faintly. “Yes, that’s my signature on these reports. I must have…”

“Well,” Olivia said. “All four are dead.”

The doctor’s gaze shot up. “No!” he gasped.

And Olivia furrowed her brow. She chewed at her lower lip, studying the doctor closely. Finally, she closed her eyes tightly, let out a huff of air, and opened her eyes again. “Dammit,” she breathed. “You actually didn’t know.”

“These four have all been recommended for service to the Three and Three,” the doctor said, looking through the papers. “Were they all actually ordained?”

Olivia folded her lips. “Tell me about them,” she commanded. “I’m going to get
something
out of you. How long were they under the cloudlings before you ‘recommended them to the church?’ How badly were they affected? Tell me about their personalities. Especially Lachlan Huxley, I want to know what he said when you printed that card for him…” She looked at the doctor. He was staring at her helplessly, and she let out a bark of entirely unamused laughter. “Oh Gods.” She laughed. “Oh, Gods! You don’t even
remember
these people, do you?”

Pritchard held up Georgie’s report. “I remember this one,” he said. “Miss Edison was a disappointment, to say the least. I continued the testing perhaps longer than is…standard, but I was certain
something
would emerge. I was well acquainted with her father, after all. He was a brilliant spiritbinder, and I couldn’t believe―”

“Yes, fine. But the others?”

Pritchard shrugged helplessly. “I am sorry!” he practically pleaded. “I wish I could help you! Obviously! You can make my life very difficult, Miss Faraday, but the simple truth is that
most
of my categorizations are recommended for service, nowadays! How am I supposed to remember these individual names, or… or anything about them, really?”

Olivia growled. She snatched the reports back and stuffed them in her file. “Useless!” she snapped at him, and he cowered back. “Gods, I can’t believe this! I find enough skeletons in your closet to field a whole clattering chorus line, extra naked, and you can’t give me
anything
useful?”

“Miss Faraday, please, I must ask you―”

She stuck her finger in his face. “I own you,” she snapped.

He nodded hard.

“When I need a favour from the categorization offices―
any favour
―you are going to give it to me. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Miss Faraday!”

A thoughtful look can over her face. She pursed her lips. “Hmm. I don’t suppose… the name of the person who was in your cab, that day?”

“Ah.” Pritchard hung his head. “N-no, Miss Faraday,” he murmured. “I…”

“You’d end up just like the poor departed Duchess if you did, yes, yes, I understand. Gods, this is
blasted
annoying.” Olivia shook her head and moved for the door. “Come along, I suppose, Christopher. Unfortunately, we’re done here.”

“Chris―” Pritchard’s eyes widened. “
You
were the Deathsniffer investigating the Duchess!” He gasped. “And this is…” He looked at Chris with new eyes.

Why not use the opportunity? “Tell Sir Combs,” Chris said softly. “To stay the bleeding hell away from my sister.” He followed Olivia out into the hall, letting the door fall shut behind him in Doctor Pritchard’s plain face.

Chris hurried to keep up with Olivia as she stalked down the hall. “You’re just going to let him go? He’s complicit in a murder!”

Olivia growled. “Not my case.”

“It
was
.”

“And it’s lovely to have some satisfaction and closure on it, but the case itself is most certainly marked as quite firmly shut. Mister Ethan Grey was tried postmortem for Duchess val Daren’s murder.” She glanced over at him. There was a line between her eyebrows. “
You
testified in court. As I recall, you told them when asked that you considered it ‘very likely’ that Grey was responsible for the murder of the Duchess.”

“I…” She was right, of course. Grey had fallen to his death from the roof of the Buckley estate, with Chris the only witness. His testimony had been necessary, not only to legally convict Grey, but to clear Chris of any malicious intent in Grey’s death.

“If I reopen the Duchess’s murder, you go back in front of a barrister and have to recant that testimony and it’s a grand mess, Christopher.” Olivia pushed open the door, and the sun hit them like a brilliantly shining anvil. She reached up to shield her eyes and she finally slowed her frenzied pace as they made their way toward the cab.

Chris shuffled his feet after her. “But Livingstone…”

Olivia sighed. She slowed and turned around to look at him. “Christopher,” she said firmly. “Even if we open this, make a fuss, and convict the Duchess’s killers, it won’t help Livingstone. In fact, it would
hurt
him. The main body of the conspiracy will cut off its limbs the second they see a hint of gangrene. They’ll throw the Duchess’s killers to the wolves, stir up a lot of dust, and squeeze up into their shell like a turtle until Livingstone is good and dead. In fact, it might already happen. They might go after Doctor Pritchard just because we
spoke
to him.”

Chris’s stomach sank into his feet. “Then the doctor could already have no hope? Because you did this?” He didn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but he knew it did.

Olivia’s eyes flashed, and for a moment, he thought the knives were going to come out. She could cut him deep if she wanted to, and they both knew it. He held his breath.

But then she shook her head and started back down the walk. “Livingstone already has no hope,” she said. “I’m half sure he’s innocent, but full sure he’s going to be found guilty. It’s all just too airtight. The evidence they have against him is mostly fabricated, but the forgeries are so
bloody
good that even I can’t tell what’s real from what isn’t.” She sighed. “Time is mostly run out. The trial is three days from now, Maerday morning, and I’ve tried my best, Christopher, really I have. For you! But I can’t afford to be splitting my focus right now, and I know well enough to choose my battles.” She sighed. “I think it’s time for Rayner and me to give up on Livingstone.”

“Livingstone will
die
,” Chris begged, grabbing her arm desperately. “He has a family, Olivia! People
need
him. Did you know his granddaughter was born just weeks before he was arrested?”

Olivia shook him off, shooting him a warning glance. “You’re right,” she said. “But I have a
serial killer
on my hands here. People are going to die if I don’t do
this
job, too. Young people, fresh-faced and―”

“Bloody hell, Olivia, don’t pretend you care about them!” Chris snapped, stopping in his tracks. “Every corpse is just something new and exciting for you to puzzle over! You were
thrilled
to get assigned a serial killer!” She stared at him impassively, face like granite, and he balled his fists. “None of them matter to you, so―so can’t you just focus on Livingstone, please. You can do it. Olivia, three days is nothing for
you.
He can’t die yet! He can’t just
die
and leave them without him, needing him, wondering if there was anything they could have
done
, and―” His voice broke.