The Translated Man

by Chris Braak

  The sun had not yet risen, and would not for two or three hours. Winter nights in Trowth were long. The sky overhead was black, but the street was already filling up. Westbridge, while not as important a thoroughfare as High Street or the Mile, was in a densely populated neighborhood. Street vendors had brought their carts, and begun hawking onions and leeks, selling meat pies, eggs, and milk. Men sick with scrave, or the fades, or simple poverty had left the relative shelter of archways and alleys in order to eke out a meager living as beggars.

  Valentine was waiting for him, sitting behind the wheel of his ridiculous horseless carriage. It was almost the same shape as a regular carriage, but longer, and with smaller wheels. The thing was powered by a great phlogiston engine that looked like a brass pot-bellied stove. It clattered noisily and pumped little clouds of bluish smoke into the air. The burning phlogiston smelled like blood, cloying and metallic, but it was a smell that all of Trowth had long since grown used to. Valentine himself wore the driving goggles and white scarf that were apparently requisite attire.

  “What’s this?” Beckett shouted over the noise of the engine. “Where’s Skinner?”

  “She’s at the scene already!” Valentine shouted back. “I’m to take you there immediately! Come on, I’ve got a meat pie for your breakfast!” He handed Beckett something wrapped in parchment. It smelled like meat and onions, and Beckett found his mood, if not soaring, at least picking itself up out of the gutter, and maybe dusting itself off a little. His nose might be gradually fading away, but at least it still worked.

  “How can you stand to drive this thing?” Beckett shouted, as he unwrapped his pie. “It sounds like someone murdering a hundred suits of armor with a wrench!”

  “What?” Valentine shouted back.

  Beckett resisted the urge to punch him, and instead began to eat the pie.

  Three: The Crime

  Valentine drove them at a reasonable, if stinking and shuddering pace, to North Ferry, a neighborhood close to the clean end of the Stark, farther up from where the collective sewage and offal of the city began to run into it. It was home to mostly merchant-class families, and some of the less-esteemed Families. The houses were done in Feathersmith-Daior style, which favored simple, peaked roofs tastefully accented with bronze metal work, but they were gradually losing ground to the innumerable gables and the armies of grotesque gargoyles that the Wyndham-Vies were putting everywhere.

  Outside of the house at 612 Bynam Lane was a carriage with the crest of the Coroners on the door: the silhouette of a two-headed eagle on a bronze shield. The cab was parked directly in front of the small bridge that led to the house; the front door had clearly once been a third-storey window before Bynam Lane had been built above the crumbling Thurgood Street. There was a gap between the Bynam and the fronts of the houses that it faced. The gap was fenced off by tall, greening bronze pickets. Leaning against the pickets were half-a-dozen rough-looking gendarmes, more than a few sporting the facial brands that marked them as “reformed” thieves or perjurors.

  “Well, who invited the goon squad?” Valentine cut the engine on his carriage, and coasted to a stop about twenty feet from the gendarmes and the coach.

  One of the gendarmes, a tall man with a large, drooping moustache, was standing at the coach and shouting at someone inside. Like his fellow hooligans, he wore a long black coat with several torn strips of dark blue cloth tied around his right arm. He had a truncheon in his right hand and, Beckett suspected, at least a sword at his belt, possibly a revolver.

  “—don’t care who you work for, you silly twat—” The man shouted.

  “—I will not permit you to disrupt the crime scene—” came the muffled reply.

  “—I’m going in there—”

  “—you have a responsibility of service to the Crown—”

  Harry, the coachman, a rail-thin man with grizzled mutton chops, sat tensely in his seat during the shouting. Beckett could see how much he wanted to take a shot at the gendarme, and found himself sympathizing.

  It was Skinner’s voice in the cab. Beckett recognized it as they approached, and his temper flared. Like many men of his generation, Elijah Beckett took it poorly when he saw slimy, malodorous, tobacco-chewing thugs shouting at young, blind women. Furthermore, he liked Skinner. “Gentlemen!” He called, putting a reasonable amount of effort into making his voice friendly, and still failing miserably. “Beckett” and “friendly” could only under the best of circumstances by the kindest of observers be called more than passing acquaintances. “What’s the problem?”

  The gendarme whirled on Beckett, took in his leather tricorn and his long coat, and eyed the red scarf around his mouth, then spat sullenly. “Who’re—“

  “Detective Inspector Beckett. Coroners.” Beckett brushed past the gendarme and opened the door of the coach. Skinner sat primly in her seat, lips pressed together in a thin line.

  The gendarme muttered something unintelligible, then, “I’m Captain—“

  “I don’t care.” Beckett interrupted. “Take your men and cordon off the street. They’ll have to stay until at least noon; we may need them to canvass the homes around here for witness statements.”

  The captain snorted. “Folks around here like their privacy…” He trailed off in the face of Beckett’s icy glare, then spat again. “If the sharpsies broke into a man’s home, I’ve a right to know—”

  “You’ll be updated regarding our investigation when and if we deem it appropriate.”

  The captain’s face was red and he was practically foaming at the mouth. The red number five branded into his cheek had flushed a dark crimson. “North Ferry is my territory, Inspector. I don’t care who called you but you’ve no business in my town.”

  “The entire empire is within the jurisdiction of the Coroners, captain,” Beckett told the man very quietly. “Valentine.”

  The young man stood behind him; he’d pushed the driving goggles up on his head, but at least he’d had the foresight to take off that ridiculous scarf. “Sir?”

  “What does ‘coroner’ mean?”

  “Sir,” Valentine began unbuttoning his heavy coat, then shook it to reveal the pearl-inlay handles of the revolver in his belt. “Literally ‘coroner’ means ‘agent of the crown.’ In our case, ‘Coroner’ refers to an elite division of the Imperial guard given a mandate by the Emperor both in his capacity as secular and religious commander of the Imperium, and answerable only to him and the Minister of Internal Security.”

  Beckett turned to his companion and feigned surprise. “Really? Answerable only to the Emperor?”

  “And the Minister of Internal Security.”

  “But not to any filthy militia-man that stumbles into my crime scene and can’t keep his truncheon in his pants?”

  “Not that I am aware of, sir.”

  There was a long pause, as the captain looked from Valentine to Beckett, and clearly mulled over some choice words. Words about what they could do with their mandate, about what he’d do to them given half a chance, and, perhaps, a few words about their mothers. Words that he was prepared to deliver to devastating effect. Finally, he leaned forward and pulled his coat aside, revealing the walnut grip of a heavy revolver. “I’m not afraid of you and your coroner bullshit.”

  Beckett said nothing, just stared right in the captain’s face, letting the tension build. There is an art to the intimidating glare, and thirty years of working for the coroners had given Beckett plenty of practice. The captain’s mouth began to twitch. Beckett, his face concealed by his scarf, appeared as still as a bronze statue. The stillness made him even more intimidating, and the captain began to feel that he was trying to stare down a stone. The man narrowed his eyes, only by the tiniest fraction, and dropped his shoulder a quarter of an inch. It was enough.

  This is it, thought Beckett. The captain took a swing at the old coroner, a right cross aimed straight for Beckett’s invisible nose. Though age and illness had sapped much of the strength and mobility from the
body of Beckett’s youth, there were still a few things he knew how to do.

  One of those things was what boxers call a slip. He shifted to the side, bending from the waist, and moving his face just barely out of the way of the oncoming blow. Then, without missing a beat, twisted with his hips and threw a left hook right into the captain’s mouth. At the same moment, he reached out to grab a hold of the man’s revolver. The whole thing from rightcross to left-hook took less than a second, and suddenly Captain Whoever of the local gendarmerie found the inside of his mouth shredded by his own teeth, and the pain erupting from his lips sending him to the verge of unconsciousness.

  The gendarme staggered to the side, crashing against the bronze fence, blood pouring from his mouth. There was a stunned look on his face. He clutched uselessly at his belt, trying to draw his gun, only to find that Beckett had it now. The other gendarmes rushed forward to come to their captain’s aid, but were forestalled.

  Valentine had drawn his pistols. The gendarmes found themselves staring down the barrels of two gleaming silver-plated revolvers. “Don’t,” the young coroner told them, with the wry, malicious grin that said he’d probably really enjoy it if they did.

  “Clean him up,” Beckett told the men. “Then set up my cordon. I’m keeping this,” he added, and stuffed the revolver into his pocket.

  With what was unquestionably a great reverence for Beckett’s authority, the captain spat a wad of blood out onto the snow. One of his men helped him to his feet, and the captain began shouting orders.

  As the gendarmes began to set up their cordon, a young boy approached Beckett and his companions, carrying a letter. He looked at Beckett wide-eyed, then thrust his arm out, offering his missive. Beckett took it, and tossed a copper to the boy, who snatched it greedily from the air, and promptly sprinted off down the street.

  “Who’s it from?” Valentine asked, as he held Skinner’s cane while she climbed out of the cab.

  Beckett opened the yellow envelope, marked with his name in neat, block print. “Letter shows up for me at the precise moment I get here? It’s from Stitch.”

  “Mr. Stitch? Is…is he here?” Valentine’s eyes widened.

  Skinner shook her head. “He was. Looked around inside for a little while, then left me here, told me not to let anyone in.”

  Valentine tried to glance over at the letter, as he passed Skinner her cane. “What’s it say?”

  Offering the letter to his companion, Beckett told him. “It says ‘Not Sharpsies.’”

  “That’s it?”

  Beckett looked back at the letter. “It says ‘Not Sharpsies.’ Space, dash, ‘Stitch.’” Beckett shuffled around the cab and started across the bridge. Skinner followed directly behind him, her cane waving precisely back and forth in front of her.

  “Well,” Valentine came last. “Well, what the hell does that mean?”

  The parlor of 612 Bynam Lane was comfortably small, clean and neat. The walls and floor were dark wood, there was a dark red rug with a complex pattern on it, and a small mat by the door on which travelers could wipe their feet. The hall was lit by old-fashioned candles that gave the place a yellow glow. The candles had melted nearly down to the nubs.

  “Who lit the candles?” Beckett asked as he and his companions entered.

  “Unless it was Stitch, it must have been the family.”

  Beckett nodded. “Valentine, put them out. Don’t knock any of them over.”

  It was not uncommon for Valentine to receive orders whose purpose he didn’t quite understand. Was it easier to examine a crime scene in the dark, for instance? Would smoke from the candles corrupt . . . something, somehow? Maybe the light hurt Beckett’s eyes. Valentine found a little brass candle snuffer and immediately began snuffing the candles in the parlor.

  “Where are we looking, Skinner?” Beckett asked the Knocker.

  She shrugged. “I haven’t been inside, yet. Stitch said the bodies were in the sitting room.” A sharp rapping sound at about shoulder height worked its way along the walls; this was, Beckett knew, a Knocker’s way of ‘looking around.’ “Probably downstairs. These old houses have all the living rooms at the bottom.” She pointed at a door. “Stairs are behind that one.”

  “What’s his name?” The dead man was sprawled on a red couch. Thick, sticky puddles of blood were congealing around him. A woman and two children, presumably his wife and children, lay in tangles of limbs around the room. They looked as if they’d been picked up and just tossed haphazardly about, like a lazy child with its dolls. Blood pooled around them, and stuck to Beckett’s shoes as he entered.

  “Herman Zindel. Wife Isabel, children…” Skinner swallowed hard. “David and Michelle.”

  “Who called us?”

  Skinner shrugged. “I don’t know. The milkman found them. He said they hadn’t put their old bottles out, so he rang the bell. When no one answered, he got worried. Door was unlocked. He said he didn’t touch anything, just ran out into the street, screaming about the sharpsies. Mr. Stitch must have gotten word of it, somehow. He was the one that called me down here.”

  “We’ve got a statement from the milkman?”

  “Not yet. But I’ve got his address.”

  Beckett nodded, and then turned his attention back to the corpses. Somehow, the fresh blood made them more nauseating than the dead flesh of the Reanimates. A twisted, hollow feeling thrummed in the coroner’s stomach, accompanied with a buzzing behind his ears. He badly wanted another veneine injection. “See anything, Valentine?”

  The young man had just come into the sitting room, studiously snuffing candles on the way. “Uhm. Throats are…torn out, I’d say. Shredded, like with something sharp. Lots of blood. Hm.” If anything, the young man was understating the fact. The entire lower half of each corpse’s face had been torn away, all the way down to their collarbones. The woman and children had their bones picked clean, but someone had simply torn out Herman Zindel’s entire lower jaw. Valentine turned away from the bodies and looked at Beckett, who met his gaze. They took a long moment to avoid looking at the corpses. “Could be sharpsies.”

  Beckett watched Valentine make the exchange. Beckett had been doing it himself for years, ever since he first saw a dead body hacked apart by a greedy necrologist. The exchange was this: you learn a little bit more about what the world is really like, and in exchange, you give up a little bit of your ability to feel. Beckett had been surrendering tiny bits of himself to the job for three decades. He knew a lot about what the world was really like. He could see the change happening on Valentine’s face, an exchange prompted by necessity. The young man’s face goes pale, his eyes widen, he starts to feel a little sick. Then he swallows and sets his jaw, determined not to let the mess get to him. When Beckett was a young man, he’d always thought that it was a good thing, being able to grit your teeth and look right down onto a broken, bloody body like Herman Zindel’s without feeling that knot in his stomach. Valentine probably thought it was, too.

  “Stitch says no, and I’m inclined to agree with him.” Beckett turned back to the corpse of Herman Zindel, and knelt beside it. “Look at his arms. What’s wrong with them?”

  Reluctantly, Valentine followed Beckett’s attention. “Uhm. Nothing?”

  “Right.”

  “So?”

  With an exasperated groan, Skinner filled in. “So, if a sharpsie comes into your house and wants to bite you in the face, or something, what do you do?”

  Valentine looked at her, then back at Beckett. “I don’t…uh…I guess, shoot it?” He looked around the room. “But there’s no gun. He could have grabbed that poker, by the fire, for a weapon. Handsome piece of ironwork there, too.” Blinking quickly, the young man looked around the room again. “Hey, that’s funny. There’s a lot of nice things here. The gramophone over there, it’s still got all its cylinders, even. It’d fetch a few coppers, at the least…”

  “Valentine.” Beckett struggled to keep his voice even. “Focus.”

  The y
oung man shook his head. “Right. So, no gun, let’s say he couldn’t reach the poker. I guess, I guess he’d try and fight them off with his hands, right?” There was a long pause. “But…but if he did that, how come there’s no marks on them? There’d have to be bruises on his wrists at least, where the sharpsie held him down, marks from his fingernails. Bite marks, probably, too.”

  Beckett stood. “Not sharpsies.” A twinge of resentment slithered around in his voice. It’s not like I wouldn’t have figured it out. “My guess is that these people were dead before their bodies were…mutilated.”

  “And someone wants us to think it was the sharpsies?” Skinner asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Beckett added that question to the list of Several Other Things He Didn’t Know, but Would Really Like To: namely, who killed Herman Zindel and his family? Why did they do it? How did they do it? How did they get into and out of the house without breaking a lock or a window? And, perhaps most pertinently, why had the coroners been called in to investigate?

  Questions needed answers, answers needed information. The three coroners began a thorough search of the house. They found no unusual footprints, broken windows, broken locks, dirt that happened to only come from one part of town, or matchbooks with a tavern’s name stamped on them that had been conveniently dropped by the murderer.

  In fact, while Beckett and Valentine gingerly made their way throughout the house, searching through cabinets, checking underneath tables and desks and beds, they found nothing at all of note. Skinner was a different story. While Beckett and Valentine examined, Skinner simply followed them from room to room, her telerhythmia bouncing off the walls with a consistent knock-knock-knock, and listening closely to the sound, trying to parse out whatever meaning was hidden in those hollow raps that all sounded the same to Beckett.