The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (52 page)

She already shared so little with him, and now she was holding back case information, too?

Olivia gave him a look. “Christopher,” she said, uncharacteristically soft. “I’ll explain it all―soon. After we do something first. I don’t want you to have your mind filled up with all of this when―” She sighed. “It’s a courtesy, really.”

The carriage rolled to a sudden stop. Not nearly enough time had passed for them be back at the office.

“Can I at least know where we are?” Chris asked, and didn’t mean to sound so sour. He flushed and looked away, waiting for Olivia to either snap at him or tease him relentlessly. Instead, she was silent, and he realized that the hum that had filled Darrington all day was more pronounced now, a droning sound just outside the carriage.

He glanced back at Olivia. She gave him a sad sort of smile and twitched away the curtain. Outside, under the darkly clouded sky, hundreds―
thousands
of people were gathered in front of the largest, finest building in the city other than Lowry itself. The Darrington City Courthouse.

“I thought you’d like to attend,” she said, shrugging, and he swore there was colour on her cheeks as she brushed the curtain closed again. “My credentials can get us a seat in the galley, and… well, it shouldn’t take very long. Should it?”

“No,” Chris murmured, and the crowd burst into a tumultuous roar as a unicorn-pulled carriage rolled up beside them. Through the bars on the window, he could make out the haggard, thin, pathetic shape of Doctor Francis Livingstone.

Close enough to touch, and a thousand miles away.

Something rumbled. For a moment, Chris thought for certain it was another loose elemental. What an appropriate end to the whole farce of the Livingstone affair. The courthouse devastated by rogue spirits, reduced to rubble. But after the rumble faded, he realized it had been distant thunder.

Olivia was right. It seemed as if it was finally going to rain.

“No,” Chris said again. “I suppose this shouldn’t take very long at all.”

he last time Chris had seen Doctor Francis Livingstone, they had met in a back room of the Darrington Police Station. William had stolen his overseer’s credentials and used them to schedule the interview. The good doctor had looked terrible. He’d lost weight. A shoddy beard clung to his aging face. His hair had been limp and dull. The worst of all had been his eyes. They’d gleamed and sparkled when Chris had seen him last, but in that back room, they were completely without hope.

It was almost… quaint, that he’d imagined that to be the lowest a good man could go.

Good to her word, the seats Olivia had found them were fantastic. There was a section of the courthouse reserved for law enforcement and investigators to sit, before the gallery. Watching court cases helped truthsniffers stay sharp, and surely that was the excuse all the others were using to observe the trial that had now completely stopped Darrington in its tracks. Olivia was more honest about it: simple curiosity. They’d been seated only two rows back, and Chris had a clear line of sight to Doctor Livingstone where he sat manacled to the seat for the accused.

The good doctor looked like a skeleton had grown some flesh, donned some clothes, and gone for his final day of work. He barely seemed to recognize anything around him. Occasionally, he flinched when a particularly vile accusation was thrown, a horrible document or letter that he’d signed his name to, glorying in the atrocities he’d supposedly wrought. But mostly, he sat.
Completely without hope,
Chris had thought last spring. Quaint, indeed. This…
this
was completely without hope.

Yet another witness to one of the doctor’s nefarious deeds left the stand, and Chris didn’t realize he’d quietly moaned until several glances were sent his way.

Olivia leaned over to whisper in his ear. “If you want to leave, we can.”

He shook his head. “You were right,” he said dully. “I do want to attend.”

It seemed like an act of basic human kindness, to sit here and witness the end of Doctor Francis Livingstone, a man who’d reached out to help Chris and Rosemary, a man who’d done so much for Rachel Albany, a man whose eyes had sparkled when he’d talked about his newborn granddaughter. Someone had to be here who wasn’t family or friend, who wasn’t politically affiliated, who wasn’t a follower or anything of the sort… but still believed in his innocence. Who still cared if he died.

He’s not Fernand
, Chris told himself. And he believed it, mostly. But he was Fernand to
someone
. His children. His wife. His grandchildren. Someone, right now, loved him the way that Chris had loved Fernand, and they were about to lose him just as Chris had lost.

The barrister speaking in defense of Livingstone stepped forward. He was a young man, some buck who thought he could make a career for himself if he successfully defended the good doctor. He was clearly regretting it. His face ran with sweat, his handkerchief was soaked through, and he couldn’t quite make eye contact with the Crown Prosecutor, who stood with arms folded, watching him climb to his feet.

“Oh,” the Crown Prosecutor said. “Counselor. Do you have something to contribute? I thought the two witnesses you managed to find stepped down.”

The young barrister mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “I―ah, there’s been one more―offer of defense, a character witness. A police officer who spent time with Livingstone during his imprisonment.”

“Ah,” the Crown nodded graciously. The gesture could not possibly have been more condescending. “A single character witness!” He turned to the crowd. “That sounds promising!”

The crowd erupted, half into boos, half into laughter. He found it hard to tell if the boos were for the Crown, or the doctor. Doctor Livingstone gave an almost imperceptible flinch. His opinion on the matter was clear.

Chris closed his eyes. This was harder to watch than he’d imagined. If only he’d done things differently. Olivia may have done all she could, but he hadn’t.

The judge’s voice boomed through the cacophony. “That’s enough, Prosecutor,” he said. He sounded tired. “The grandstanding is wasting all our time. Counselor, call your witness.”

“Thank you, Lordship.” The poor barrister bowed at the waist and motioned to someone off in the defense antechamber. No one had exited that room since the court had been called to order.

Chris honestly, truly thought he was dreaming when William Cartwright walked out of it.

“Well,” Olivia murmured, and she sounded every bit as shocked as he felt as William walked with great purpose and pride to the stand. “Slap me upside the head, but this is a twist.”

Chris couldn’t respond. Words had completely fled. Will settled into the stand and nodded toward the hymnshaper standing off to one side. “Test,” he said, his alto voice for once not full of bile, but soft and pleasing. “Test,” he said again, and it boomed to all corners, carried by the hymnshaper’s touch.

And Chris let himself hope.

“What the bloody
hells
is he doing here?” Olivia demanded under her breath. “You just stopped breathing, Christopher. Do you know something about this?”

The Crown Prosecutor nodded to Will. Will nodded back. “Could you please state your name, occupation, and categorization plus credentials for the record, Officer?” the Crown asked, sinfully solicitous.

Will nodded again. “Ah, yes,” he said, and he smiled his most charming smile. It was
very
charming. “My name is Officer William Cartwright. I serve on the Queen’s Policing Force, out of the Darrington station. And as for my categorization―would you prefer my actual credentials, or my falsified ones, sir?”

Chris’s heart leaped all the way up his throat. He swore he felt it hit the backs of his teeth.

“Oh, no,” Olivia breathed. “Oh,
no
.” But her voice didn’t sound like “oh, no.” It sounded much more like “oh, yes.”

“Falsi―” the Crown caught himself and turned to the barrister, who was now shaking his head furiously and holding up his hands. “Oh, Mason,
really
, this has just not been your day! Did your witness just admit to having illegal credentials? What
is
this, right now?”

“Excuse me,” Will said, still sounding mild and non-threatening, which didn’t seem to suit his usually acerbic voice. “I didn’t state that my credentials were illegal. I said that they were
falsified
. I received both sets with the assistance and full knowledge of Lowry Academy and all need-to-know branches of government. My true categorization is classified, you see. My unique abilities have been much more effective if kept secret from the general populace. Think of it as… having a spy in an enemy camp.” His smile was helpful. Kind. Chris adored him. “It isn’t much use if the enemy knows the spy is present. The same applies to me.”

“What exactly is this?” the Crown demanded.

“Since you’re not clarifying, I’ll give both my false and true credentials. My proficiency―the one that I do not in fact have, but am instructed to state that I do―is truthsniffer. As I am not
actually
a truthsniffer, the amount of true police work I’m authorized to perform is strictly limited. Specifically, I can take witness statements, write and file reports, and other low-level work. The actual task I perform as an officer of the law is much more important.” And William produced a categorization card. “In actuality, I am a timeseer.”

The room
erupted
. Chattering, cheers, boos, incredulous laughter―it filled the courthouse to the rafters, drowning out even the hymnshaper’s control over Will’s voice.

“You did this!” Olivia gasped.

“I… no,” Chris said. How had he misjudged Will so badly? He hadn’t needed to make any promises, to bargain or plead. Will had seen what to do and just… done it. A smile slowly spread across his lips. “No, this wasn’t me.”

“Order!” the judge shouted, banging a gavel. “I will have order!” Slowly, the room settled, and the judge nodded to the Crown. “Continue. I―continue.”

“Of course, Lordship.” The Crown turned back to Will. He sneered. “This shouldn’t take long, now that we know this witness is lying, and all of his testimony can be thrown out.”

“I don’t see why,” William said mildly. “I presented my credentials?”

“Credentials can be falsified―
illegally
falsified, wisearse!” the Crown snapped when Will began to smile. The sound of the room rose to a hum again.

“They are not falsified,” William said.

“Timeseers are a legend.”

“Yes. Just as all proficiencies once were, before Richard Lowry proved the existence of many. Of course, there were some that Lowry himself didn’t prove. For example, gearsetters. It’s a well-known fact that it was Lowry’s successor at the Academy who finally devised a test to reliably test the engineering instincts of a gearsetter and proved their existence. It’s also true that Lowry, as a cloudbinder rather than a full spiritbinder, didn’t believe in the existence of fiarans, theorizing that salamanders were more likely elementals of heat than fire, and they could remove as well as add heat, in the same way that alps are elementals of both light and darkness. Of course, we now know that Doctor Lowry was wrong about fiarans, which he believed were, ah… legends.”