The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (37 page)

When Will’s face appeared on the mirror, Chris broke into a smile. “Will!” he said, happy beyond all reason to see his friend, who was glowering as usual. “Are you working today?”

William brushed a hand through his long hair, which wasn’t tied back. He looked a little unkempt. “Hannah wants to bring me in for a seeing in the evening,” he said. “But until then, no, for once I am
actually
being given the privilege of a Healfday.”

Will’s sour tone and pinched expression somehow cheered Chris. It made things click back into place. The world stopped seeming quite so unreal. Before he’d met Agnes Cartwright, he’d mirrored Will every time he’d felt lonely. Why should that change? Will had always seemed willing to come, touched mother or not. It didn’t
need
to be different just because Chris knew about her, did it?

He smiled and held up the wrapped package. “My finery is here!” he exclaimed. “A man can’t try on clothing by himself. And, ah, I need your help with something else.” Two something elses, in fact. He didn’t want to deal with one. He had to, or his sacrifices were for nothing.

Will glanced behind him. Chris held his breath. “Well,” William said eventually. “Fine. But only because you’re looking so damned… hangdog. And because your fiaran is particularly effective and it’s
blistering
hot here.”

Chris’s shoulders slumped in relief. He bobbed his head. “Right,” he said, smiling, “good, perfect. You’ll be here soon? Do you need a hackney? Do you need―”

“Healfdene’s beard, Christopher.” William rolled his eyes. “Just try not to go completely loony while you wait, all right? This is really quite pathetic, even for you.” He rang the chimes and vanished.

Chris stared at his reflection in the mirror and he managed a chuckle. He reached up and ran his hand through his hair. No wonder Olivia had seemed flummoxed by him. He looked like hell. He’d forgotten to shave, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his necktie was askew. He was also, to his horror, wearing cufflinks from two separate sets. He looked like a man with one foot into a brown bottle. Olivia had
probably
thought he’d been up all night drinking. Again. Pathetic, indeed.

“Gods, young master,” Chris murmured to his reflection in the familiar cadences of Fernand’s beloved voice. “You’re a damned mess.”

It had been kind of Olivia not to say anything, but Will would never miss the chance to tease. Chris went back up to the water closet, which no longer seemed quite so malevolent as it had, and he took time getting a close shave that left his face smooth and clean. He powdered beneath his eyes to even out his complexion. He even took time to apply pomade to his hair, carefully slicking it back at the temples and above his ears while leaving the rest of his lazy near-curls to fall becomingly around his head. He polished his eyeglasses. He fixed his tie and chose a new pair of cufflinks. Finally, heart beating erratically, he slipped the small case that held the pen he’d bought so dearly into his trousers’ pocket.

The reflection that looked back at him now was much, much more dignified. He looked, once again, objectively
handsome
, something that he very much did like to be. He turned his head to one side, studying his profile. Did others notice it? His looks? Did Miss Albany? Did―

The doorbell rang.

When Chris opened the door, he was immediately struck again by the full force of the high summer heat. “Oh, gods,” he gasped, “come in. Mother Deorwynn, it’s blasted sweltering out there.”

Will gave him a look that was purely grateful and stepped inside. Chris quickly shut the door behind them before more of the fiaran’s cool air could escape out into the hellish day.

“What the bloody
hell
happened to your yard?” Will demanded, leaning back against the door, closing his eyes, and fanning himself. “It looks like a sylph tore through it!”

Chris flushed. “Ah,” he said. “Well, funny you should say…”

Will straightened and gave him a look. “Are you
serious
? Gods, Christopher! Are you―” Something flickered deep in his eyes. “Are you all right? Did anyone―”

Chris shook his head. “No injuries, just the normal fines. And the need to have my hedges regrown.”

Will gritted his teeth and started to shrug off his greatcoat. “No wonder you looked like death warmed over. This is what happens when I don’t come around for a week!” he groused. “You go all to seed, and―” He paused, one arm out of his coat, and he looked at Chris, colouring a little. “Ah. I hope you don’t mind if I put this aside? There are no ladies present, and I think I sweated it through.”

“Oh―yes, of course, Will, it’s quite all right.” Chris stepped behind to help him with the coat, feeling bad that he hadn’t offered. “Did you walk?”

Will shook his head. He’d carefully arranged his hair, pulling it back into a long tail tied with a velvet ribbon. As Chris helped him out of his coat, he was strangely aware of the way the tail fell down Will’s slender neck. He turned his face away, finding himself flushed. “The only cab I could find was covered, though, with no fiaran service.” Will’s voice dripped of lemon and pickle brine. Chris folded his coat over one arm and took it to the rack. “Honestly, I’m glad that you mirrored,” he continued. “Black Canning reeks like a sodding privy in this heat. Sometimes, I almost envy Mother’s ability to be so nebulously sad that such worldly things barely even affect her.”

“It
has
to rain soon,” Chris said. He straightened Will’s coat on the rack. He already felt worlds better. Being near someone, talking about something,
anything
, slid the world back into alignment. Some people, he reflected, weren’t meant to be alone. “When it does, this heat will break, just wait.”

“When it does,” Will said, and when Chris turned back he saw his friend wearing a rueful smile, “the thunder will be loud enough to crack a house at its foundations.” He scanned Chris’s face, and his smile widened. “You look… better.”

“Less pathetic?”

“Well, I was going to say that,” Will said. “But I’m making an effort to be less of an ass.”

“But how will anyone recognize you?” Chris asked in mock concern, and Will’s gaze turned as flat and surly as ever. Chris laughed. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere more suited to a fitting.”

There was a room in the Buckley estate that hadn’t been opened or used for anything but storage since long before the Floating Castle fell. The slow decline of the Buckley fortune had been taking place for generations, not just in Chris’s lifetime. The potency of their line had failed slowly, and they been pushed more and more to the edges of spiritbinder society. They would always be the fruit of Reginald Buckley, Richard Lowry’s most trusted lab assistant and eventual partner, but as their ‘binding grew weaker, their prestige translated less and less into royals. No one had been able to afford to host a ball at the Buckley Estate since decades before Michael Buckley even met Julia Lockwood.

But the old ballroom stood.

When Chris had been a child, the room had been a dangerous, forbidden, irresistible maze of old furniture, clothing, and other sundries. He’d found chests of centuries-old dolls, gowns from the reign of King Quentin, and, in one forgotten corner, the blasted and charred testament to someone having forgotten to unbind some odd artifact before shuffling it back into the ballroom. They were all lucky that the estate still stood.

As Chris let Will into the pitch black room, carrying his carefully wrapped package with him, he took a moment to breathe in the scent of dust and stale air. Despite it being illogical, the scent comforted him. The ballroom had been his favourite place as a child. A sanctuary of sorts. Little Rosemary hadn’t known about it, Mother was too afraid to come in after him, and she never told Michael that their son had been in that most forbidden of places because she couldn’t bear to see him punished. The smell of old, forgotten things reached back to a young version of himself discovering treasures and pathways and adventure.

He tapped the faintly glowing orange box just inside the door, the only illumination. That orange light bloomed. It chased itself up the wall, going up a full story, and then it raced along the ceiling high above before igniting the massive, glorious chandelier with the warm light of a powerful salamander. It bloomed and illuminated every corner of the room, even the charred and blasted one.

Cavernous emptiness met them.

Will breathed out in slow wonder. He spun on his heel, stepping farther into the ballroom. “By the Three and Three, Chris,” he said, and his voice echoed back eerily. “I had no idea there was anything like this in your estate.”

“Reginald Buckley designed the estate himself. He needed it to show his status.” Chris had overseen the sale of every last one of this room’s artifacts himself. Some had proved extremely valuable. Others had barely sold for two royals. But every last copper had counted in those years, and he hadn’t had a real choice. They weren’t using it. It had to go.

“Look at these floors,” Will breathed, squatting to study more closely. He pulled a handkerchief out of his waistcoat pocket and used it to scrub away the dust. “Is this mahogany?”

“Imported from the savage jungles of the southern continent.” Chris couldn’t help but puff up slightly.

“Mother Deorwynn, Christopher, this place would look absolutely bloody
amazing
if it were maintained…”

“But maintenance costs money.” Chris sighed. “And actually holding a party large enough to make use of this place costs even more.” It always broke his heart a bit. If he’d been born generations in the past, it wouldn’t have mattered that he was a wordweaver. He could have hosted fabulous parties in this amazing room, under this glittering, glowing chandelier. He smiled wistfully, imagining this place filled with the highest members of society, swirling about on the polished floors…

“Wait.” Will’s voice had gone suspicious.

Chris snapped out of his reverie.

Will was staring at him with scrunched eyebrows. “Why is this a good place for a fitting?” he asked.

“Well,” Chris said delicately, “there are no windows.”

Will glared at him. “What was that
other thing
you wanted my help with, after all?”

“Ah.” Chris flushed and looked away. He shrugged helplessly. “You
can
dance, William.”

“I know that we were both quite thoroughly pissed at the time, Christopher, but I seem to recall telling you very definitively that I would not teach you how to dance.”

“How to
swing
dance,” Chris corrected. He was aware that his tone was almost comically pleading. “All I need to know is a basic waltz, and I’m sure that’s much easier.”

“It’s not the difficulty I’m concerned about,” Will muttered.

“Please, Will, gods, I―I don’t know how to dance at all. I was too young to start lessons, and then the Floating Castle happened, and now I’m going to this fancy party without any idea of how to dance and it’ll be all your fault when I look like an utter buffoon in front of Olivia, and―”

“Oh, stop.” Will held up a hand. He looked up at Chris from under his thick lashes, eyebrows still knitted together, and Chris gave him his most hopeful look. Will made a disgusted sound. He threw up his hands. “Fine,” he said. “You’re―ridiculous, fine. We’ll fit you with these fine clothes, and then, the basic waltz. No tricks. Just the basics.”

Chris’s giddiness at having convinced Will of anything at all lasted as long as it took to realize that there was no area in the barren ballroom to duck behind to disrobe, only a single rickety chair to drop his clothing onto. Not that it would matter, because he would need assistance in any case to dress in such fine things. His hands reached for the buttons of his waistcoat, and he looked at Will, and they both quickly glanced away.

Heat in his cheeks, Chris tried to reason with himself. He and William were friends. Very close friends. And both male. Thus, there was nothing especially strange about this. With that carefully in mind, but still avoiding Will’s gaze, he opened the buttons on his waistcoat and pulled it off, carefully folding it and setting it on the chair. He undid his carefully selected cufflinks and unbuttoned his shirt. He folded it atop the waistcoat, feeling entirely exposed in his undershirt. He ran his hands down the buttons of the garment, assuring himself that they were well and truly secure.

“That should do for now,” Will said sharply. “You should try the trousers separately. No need for you to dress down to your under-drawers when it’s surprisingly chilly in here.”

Chris sighed gratefully. He nodded and let himself look back at William, who was quite red as he pulled aside the wrapping on the delivered clothes.

And then he whistled low.

“Cwenraed and Maerwald,” he murmured, brushing a hand over the brilliant cornflower blue of the waistcoat. “Look at this fabric. Luxurious doesn’t even begin… and look. It really is the exact shade of your eyes.” He gave Chris an arch look. “I think Olivia will be
very
impressed, Mister Buckley.”

He couldn’t bring himself to correct William about his own assumption. He found it embarrassing enough that he’d be attending his first true social event as an adult without accompaniment. If Will knew, he’d never hear the end. Instead, he stretched his arms out to either side. “Well, are you going to help me or not?”

Will extracted the white shirt and gave him a long-suffering glare. In short order, he had Chris outfitted quite expertly in the fine shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and he was sliding the long coat over Chris’s shoulders. Chris felt Will’s fingers, strangely cold, brush against the crook of his neck as he carefully arranged the coat. He shivered and tried to get his bearings as Will stepped behind him to arrange his coattails.

“All right,” Will said, stepping back into view and then taking a full stride back. “Turn.”

Chris did as he was told. When he was back in his starting position, Will was nodding, eyebrows raised in approval. “Well,” he said. “I have to admit it, it’s flawless. It fits you perfectly, every stitch.”

“It looks nice?” Chris asked.