The Deathsniffer’s Assistant (The Faraday Files Book 1) (15 page)

Chris looked away before she could see his face turn stormy. “He certainly would,” he muttered, a sour taste on his tongue.

She might have noticed but at that moment the wheel squealed to a halt and the clamour of excited children interrupted them. Two boys and a girl called to their fathers from the seat, demanding another ride, and Chris watched one man laugh and hand the attendant a handful of notes. He felt a stab of envy. Why couldn’t things be that simple for him? The men were finely dressed in the newest fashions, no darning or patching. They probably had useful categorizations and were providing tangible benefits to society, with salaries to match.

“Well, lovey, you’re up!” the attendant called to Rosemary.

Rosemary rushed past Chris and toward the gate where the attendant stood. “I won’t be long!” she called back. The fellow opened the gate for her and escorted her to the waiting seat. Chris watched to ensure that he strapped her in well, but had no complaints. The man was careful and thorough and knew his job.

Life could be worse, Chris reminded himself. People working that sort of job had proficiencies so weak they were authorized only for such menial positions. The money they took home was considerably less than what Chris managed wordweaving for Olivia Faraday. And even they weren’t the worst off—some had nothing at all awaken in categorization.
They
were sent to the church and were forced to leave all their worldly possessions behind. What would he have done if he’d been in
that
situation?

He should be more grateful.

The wheel’s control pad and levers all shone bright yellow with the light of bound cloudlings. Sparks and waves of energy cascaded off the engine in bursts as the attendant approached it. The cloudlings didn’t operate the machinery; they were needed only for the power. Most of the more impressive advances categorization had brought were a result of their electric currents and the things they could fuel with them. Richard Lowry himself had been a wizard stormbinder before he’d developed the categorization initiative. But cloudlings were also the most volatile and dangerous spirits, more so than even salamanders. They had the instability and wildness of striking lightning. The feedback sparks of the spirits fighting their bonds were always more evident with a cloudling.

The wheel creaked and squealed, and then it was off again, beginning its turn. Rosemary waved to him, face glowing, and he returned the gesture. He watched her until she went out of his field of vision, and he didn’t tilt his head back to follow her.

He leaned forward against the fence. Tomorrow, it would be back to the office of Olivia Faraday. If Vanessa Caldwell was back from the capital, they would be going to speak to her. That might provide some insight. Idly, he wondered how long it usually took to find a murderer, and whether this feeling of an aimless lack of direction was normal.

His mind wandered. He closed his eyes, drifting, enjoying the feeling of the sun warm on his back.

He didn’t realize he’d begun eavesdropping until the conversation became interesting.

“…with the val Gerthins, you know how it is,” one of the men was saying to the other with a wince in his voice. “I’ve been after Duke val Gerthin to pay back his last loan for three months now, but the bastard is always full of excuses and platitudes. Always the same, with the blasted Old Blood.”

“Oh, I bloody well know,” the other man said with a chuckle. “Old Debts.” Old Debts, not old debts. The distinction was plain. “The val Brennans aren’t any better. And I’ve been chasing Duchess val Cander for an update on the books for a week, now. But I have it in hand. The only way to clear up Old Debts is to not let them get away from you. Some of the boys will give that speech about not sending good money after bad, but you can break the rules with Old Debts. They all have money lying around somewhere. You lend, you wait, and then you take it back.”

“Sure, when they deign to
give
it back. I swear, old val Gerthin is holding out on me. I sent my best man there last week, and―”

“Push harder. Threaten to escalate it. All Old Debts are the same. Scare them enough, and they’ll find the money
and
the interest. Old Debts are new profits.” It was said like a proverb, and accompanied by laughter.

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Just find the sweet spot, and then it is. None of them have got a single tangible copper, all of them are desperate for our credit, and I’ve never met one who couldn’t liquidate enough to buy the clothes off your back.”

Interesting. Better than interesting. Fascinating, in fact. Chris furrowed his brow.
All
Old Blood were the same? What about the val Darens? Olivia might be interested in this. If the Duke’s creditor had decided he’d never get his investment back, couldn’t he have been killed to send a message? Of course, that didn’t explain the one particularly…unique aspect of his corpse, but the way he was strung up and mutilated was certainly consistent with someone trying to say something to fellow debtors.

Chris was so focused on those thoughts he didn’t notice what was happening until it was already too late to intervene.

A
crack
and sizzle in the air started him out of his considerations. He came back to himself and glanced about, confused. What was…

The attendant let out a stream of panicked curses, jumping back in alarm, and blue arcs of electricity snapped and crackled around the console.

Where before they had come only in short bursts, now they were shooting sparks and bolts in all directions. The steel frame of the observation wheel arced with the currents, and, most horrifyingly, the bright yellow light that had haloed the machinery so consistently just minutes before was now flickering in and out.

All of Chris’s thoughts froze. Headlines flashed across his mind. Elementals breaking loose and wreaking havoc. Entire blocks destroyed. People dying. Families in mourning. ‘Binders in demand. Doctor Francis Livingstone advocating alternative technologies.

The Floating Castle.

He shot his gaze up the observation wheel. Rosemary was near the top, he saw, with a sick twist in his chest. Much, much too high to jump and save herself. The very thought of her splattering on the ground below made his stomach heave. The children of the sumfinders were shrieking and waving their arms, and the men had ceased their conversation and were bellowing at the attendant to do something. But the man wasn’t a spiritbinder, and he only cursed and spit and ran from the console.

“Get away!” he shouted. “There’s nothing I can do, run, get away!”

Chris couldn’t run. He couldn’t
move
. And neither could the fathers standing beside him. No matter how foolish it was, no matter the certainty that the cloudlings would speed towards the closest humans they saw and fry their bodies to charred sticks, they couldn’t leave the children on the wheel. How could they?

“Rosemary!” Chris called up, his voice cracking. His heart raced and pounded. Gods, what was happening?
How
was this happening? At any second, the cloudlings would break loose of their bonds. The wheel would conduct the electricity, turning it into a crackling circle of death. Rosemary would be killed as surely as he would. “
Rosemary
,” he called again, feeling a ragged sob in his throat. There was nothing calling to her could do, but he had to do
something
, even if it was the most useless thing imaginable. The wheel had stopped turning, the cloudlings no longer powering it as they struggled against their bonds. There was no way for the children to get down.

He was about to lose his sister.

Gods, he was about to lose his
life
.

A sickening
pop
almost deafened him, and there was a
snap
in the air. All the hair on his body stood up straight. His spine tingled.

And then the cloudlings broke loose.

Ethereal and insubstantial, bursting with barely restrained energy, the formless beings of pure electricity sizzled into being in a blinding cascade of arcs. Lightning bolts flickered within their barely visible bodies, dark and shapeless as the clouds they were named for. They spiralled together, exulting in their freedom, and then, without pause, they shot towards Chris and the other two men with single-minded fury. They were pure rage and no reason, and all they wanted was to punish the humans who had bound them to service.

Chris had only time to take one step back, squeezing his eyes closed and raising his arms in useless defence against his inevitable end.

The first clear notes of Rosemary’s song reached his ears.

He cracked open his eyes to see the twin cloudlings sizzling with energy only inches from his face. His body shivered with the electricity, gooseflesh raising and power thrumming along his skin. A sharp, pungent smell hung in the air.

The cloudlings trembled, shuddered, but they did not move forward.

Chris could barely breathe. Slowly, he took one step back, and then another. The cloudlings did not follow. Rosemary’s song filled his mind and ears, that ancient song in a dead language that she knew the words and cadences to only by instinct. Chris tried to calm himself, tried to gather his wits, but he could find only snatches of panicked thought. Rosemary was too far away, surely, and the spirits were too wild and too angry and she hadn’t been the one to summon them. They had faltered, but they hadn’t stopped. They couldn’t be stopped. Even as he watched, he could see them struggle and fight against Rosemary’s binding song, straining towards Chris, seething with chaotic rage at the knowledge of an enslaver so close…

The children on the wheel still screamed in terror, their fathers called their names in hoarse voices, and Rosemary’s song was so difficult to hear. Chris wanted to shout at them to be quiet, to not distract her, to let the song ring clearly. Her focus was the only thing keeping them all alive. He took another step back, another. It would do no good to put such little distance between them if the cloudlings broke free again, but he couldn’t help but want to be as far from them as possible.

The cloudlings shuddered and struggled, but, slowly, to Chris’s utter disbelief, their positions solidified. They stopped moving but for tiny twitches in the air, and Rosemary’s song resonated all around them. It rose in tone, higher and higher and faster and faster. Slowly, the cloudlings floated back to the console, fighting against the compulsion with all their energy. Rosemary’s voice entranced them, commanded them, the mathematical rules of music overpowering their anarchy. The very air churned with power, the raw power of the elementals and the ancient power of Rosemary’s song. Chris allowed himself to hope, allowed himself to breathe.

The song climaxed, and the cloudlings burst into a blinding shower of sparks that sent spots across Chris’s vision.

And when it cleared, the console was glowing bright yellow once again.

“
Gods
,” Fernand gasped breathlessly.

Chris looked up, keeping his arm protectively wrapped around his sister. She shook against him, both from shock and exhaustion. His father’s financial adviser stood over them, his face haggard and terrified, his body trembling. He’d run here, Chris saw immediately, probably run all the way from the zoo gate, and he had never looked so frail or pained. There was no sight of his cane.

“Fernand.” No matter how much he’d gone through to get here, Chris couldn’t describe how happy he was to see him. “I’m so glad you were home. We had the emergency workers mirror you as soon as they arrived.”

“I came the moment they did.” Fernand limped past Chris, feeble and panting, and settled onto the bench on Rosemary’s other side. “Rosie. Rosie, dear, are you all right?” he asked, voice trembling.

Rosemary shivered, but nodded. “Fine,” she said in a tiny voice. Chris had never seen her so subdued.

The song had drained her. She’d never done anything so intensive or so difficult. Singing down not one, but two cloudlings at once, from so far away, when she hadn’t been the one to summon them. The ‘binder with the emergency dispatch had been beyond incredulous, even after the story was verified by the three crying children and their terrified, pale-faced fathers. But a quick examination of Rosemary by the lifeknitter had confirmed it. She’d exhausted herself completely, pulled strings of energy from her very life to weave the song and bind the rogue spirits, and she would be drained of all vigour for days.

“Gods, I was terrified. When I heard—you both scared the damned hells out of me,” Fernand said. He sounded as if he were letting out a breath he’d been holding for an hour. “I assumed the worst. They gave me platitudes over the mirror, but you know how they can be.”

“We really are fine,” Chris assured him. Rosemary shuddered weakly against his side, and he amended with a pang in his stomach, “…mostly.”

“Gods,” Fernand said yet again.

“I wish we could go home,” Chris murmured. “The police officers keep coming and asking so many questions. I don’t see what else they can learn that they don’t already know.” He shook his head. “Rosemary is exhausted. She needs rest, not an inquisition.” He didn’t add that he was near falling asleep, himself. He’d sit by Rosemary’s bed tonight; no matter how tired he was, there’d be no rest while he was so worried for her.