The Translated Man Page 11

  Edgar Wyndham-Vie blanched. “This…this isn’t…”

  Mr. Stitch limped slowly down the hallway towards the two men. The steel braces on his lower legs clanked loudly on the stone. His eyes, which looked like microscope eyes, brass mounts with clear glass lenses in them, were utterly expressionless as he stared at Wyndham-Vie, and practically dragged his seven-foot-tall frame towards him. A trolljrman, at least as tall as Stitch, followed close behind. Its gold feather crest was flat, and it wore a shapeless gray robe over its leathery shell.

  Stitch drew a long, terrible breath. “Beckett will be. Released into. My custody.” His dead muscles creaked as he turned his head towards Valentine. “Valentine. You have. Your orders.”

  Mr. Stitch was a Reanimate. He’d been built over a century and half ago by Harcourt Wolfram himself, and was the only Reanimate in the history of the heretical science that hadn’t eventually gone insane and started randomly murdering people. His brain was an ingenious combination of ichor-invigorated human brains and a whirling, nickel-steel difference engine of such brilliance and complexity that its construction had never been replicated. By some uncertain means, nearly a hundred years ago, Mr. Stitch had secured an official royal pardon for himself as an Abomination before Science and the Word. He not only commanded the Coroners Division, but it had been Mr. Stitch, along with Adelwulf Vie-Gorgon, that had created it.

  Mr. Stitch was the only other agent in the Coroners that wore the regulation tricorn hat. Dead muscles creaked and rasped again, as Mr. Stitch handed Valentine a folded piece of parchment. It was not uncommon for Stitch to communicate by written missive; his lungs had seen little use since he’d died. They had, in fact, rotted away. Wolfram had replaced them with a kind of billows sewn into his chest.

  “You’re interfering…” Edgar Wyndham-Vie took a deep breath as he took in Stitch’s huge form and the dead, leather skin on his face. The stitches from which he took his name were black roads that crisscrossed his face. “You’re interfering with an investigation by the Committee for Public Safety.” The Adjunct managed to gather some fortitude. He pointed imperiously at Beckett. “That man assaulted…he…” his courage seemed to falter. “He was…he stole my coach.”

  Stitch drew in a long, painful breath. “I wonder. Why. Was he so interested. In you?”

  Edgar Wyndham-Vie’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You are standing very close to treason, Mr. Stitch.”

  Another breath. “I am. Precisely aware. Of how close I. Am standing. To treason.” His voice was without nuance, and deeply frightening, like the tortured sighs of a dying man.

  Wyndham-Vie’s complexion went from white to red as the implications of Stitch’s statement became clear. “Him. Arrest him. Arrest them all! I am officially declaring the Coroner’s Division a threat to the safety of the public of Trowth.”

  “No. You. Are not.”

  “Do it!” Wyndham-Vie screamed at the Lobsterman. “Take him, now!”

  The Lobsterman grabbed Mr. Stitch’s arm, and reached for a revolver at his waist. The chemically-modified ichor that pulsed in his veins made him stronger and faster than an ordinary human. But Mr. Stitch was not an ordinary human, and if the Lobsterman had some diluted ichor in his system, Stitch had been pickling in the stuff for a hundred years.

  He drew his arm across his body, yanking the Lobsterman off-balance then swung, hard, his great dead, leathery fist hammering into the Lobsterman’s chest. The blow pinned the Marine against the stone wall with a crunch and a hollow-sounding boom. The Lobsterman slid to the ground, a spider’s web of cracks on his bone breastplate. He made small choking sounds, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  Wyndham-Vie went for his gun, but Valentine was faster. He pressed the barrel of one nickel-plated revolver just below Edgar’s ear. “No. Drop it.” Wyndham-Vie pulled the gun from his belt with two fingers, then dropped it on the floor. Valentine kicked it away.

  Stitch made a languid movement to the trolljrman, who squeezed by to Beckett’s cell. The huge Reanimate took another ragged breath. “We will take. Beckett. He gave you. An address.”

  Valentine stared. “How did you know?”

  Mr. Stitch slowly raised his dead hand, and tapped his forehead, where a hundred thousand tiny gears were spinning. “Go.”

  Skinner was waiting in the coroner’s coach when Valentine emerged from beneath Montgomery Station. “What happened in there?” She asked, as Valentine climbed in.

  Valentine looked at her. “You weren’t listening?”

  She shook her head. “A weird echo. It made it hard to hear anything. It happened with Edgar before.” She paused, thoughtfully. “And before that, with his cousin.”

  “You think there’s a connection?”

  “It’s not important now. What happened?”

  “Wyndham-Vie wanted to hold Beckett. Mr. Stitch intervened.” He unfolded the parchment Stitch had given him, and read it. “We’re meant to investigate eighteen-twenty Corimander Street. Beckett thinks Wyndham-Vie took something important from it.” He shouted the address up to Harry, the driver.

  “What’s that?” She’d heard Valentine fussing with the parchment.

  “Stitch gave it to me. It’s a Writ of Search. For any and all holdings of…the Royal Academy of Sciences?”

  There was a long pause, as the coach rattled off.

  “How…” Skinner’s voice was very soft. “How was he?”

  Valentine grimaced, and was glad that the knocker couldn’t see his expression. Still, he supposed she could hear it in his voice anyway. “Bad. I don’t…I don’t know if it was the disease or the drug…” He took a deep breath and unknowingly let a small piece of himself dissolve away. A tiny vein of iron replaced what he lost. “Stitch will see to him. We’ve got work to do.”

  Sixteen: The House on Corimander Street

  Paper money was introduced to Trowth in the late seventeenth century. Until that time, gold, silver and copper had been the most widely-used currencies, and an individual coin was, literally, worth its weight. The coins were kept in a variety of banks in the neighborhood that was, at the time, called Bankhouse. The banks competed with each other to offer the most secure storage of their patrons’ wealth: huge subbasements were dug beneath the buildings, and impregnable vaults constructed. Towards the end of the century, more than sixty banks had built over a hundred thick-walled vaults with great iron doors to store piles of gold.

  When Owen I Gorgon took the throne, he immediately had all of the wealth in Bankhouse seized. Patrons were first issued promissory notes, which were gradually replaced by printed bills set to the store of gold in the newly-built Imperial Reserve. Ostensibly, this was because the Reserve was more secure even than the vaults in Bankhouse. In fact, it was because Owen’s predecessor, James Agon I Daior, had emptied the Royal Treasury.

  The consequence of Owen Gorgon’s actions, which would be known later as the Great Forfeiture, were numerous: firstly, Trowth once again had a viable treasury to fund government projects. Secondly, all of the vaults in Bankhouse were suddenly empty. Thirdly, all of the wealthy families that had made their homes in the district gradually relocated to the district called New Bank, where the view was better and the houses were much nicer.

  The district was still technically called Bankhouse: a pedestrian would be able to see the name written on every verdigris-covered bronze street sign, had they still been legible. The citizens of Trowth simply referred to it as Old Bank. In the wake of the Forfeiture, a variety of both public and private interests found uses for the extremely secure Vaults in Old Bank. The Vaults under Montgomery Station, for example, would eventually find use with the Committee for Public Safety as holding cells. Some would be used by the Ministry for Internal Security, others by the War Powers Ministry, which was responsible for funding the pressgangs.

  The Vault at eighteen-twenty Corimander Street was not marked. It didn’t even look like a vault so much as it looked like the town-house of a moderately wealthy family,
able to afford to purchase the property but not to invest very much money in its upkeep. The stone walls were dirty, the heavy wooded sills and shutters were black and rotten from salt air. The entire upper stories had a disused look about them, which may have been appropriate; if the building was used solely as a Vault, most of the interest would be invested in the lower-level floor-space.

  “Come with me,” Valentine implored. He climbed out of the coach, brandishing his Writ.

  Skinner didn’t move. “I can hear fine from out here.”

  “Please. I…” The young man tried to bite his tongue, but couldn’t. “I’m not…you know I’m not as smart as you or Beckett. I need you with me.”

  The knocker threw up her hands. “Fine. But if I get shot, or something, you’ve got to explain how you lost the Coroner’s only knocker.”

  “Heh. I’m sure I could afford to hire a new one.”

  “You wish.”

  Valentine helped the young lady down from the coach. “Besides, I can’t understand your damnable tapping code anyway.”

  “It’s easy,” she said, resting a hand on his elbow and waving her cane precisely in front of her. “There’s a heavy tap and a light tap. The sequence of taps will stand for a letter, except when they stand for numbers. Then they’ll be preceded by a single simultaneous tap. A simultaneous double tap means yes, a simultaneously triple tap means no…”

  “See, you’ve already lost me…”

  “And then it counts. Four light taps followed by a heavy tap is one, or ‘A,’ three light taps followed by one heavy tap and then one light tap is two, or ‘B,’ three light taps followed by two heavy taps is three, or ‘C’…”

  “La la la, I don’t understand, la la la…”

  “Valentine, you’ll never learn if you don’t pay attention.”

  Inside the address on Corimander Street, the two coroners found a heavy wooden desk, behind which sat a young man of rather ordinary features. Valentine estimated that he was a gentleman, owing to his youth and bearing—as a more common young man would have surely been sent to the war already—and that he was of Rowan or Czarnecki relation, owing to the long, straight nose. Behind the desk was an iron door with a little window in it. Standing next to the door were two blood-and-bone armored Lobstermen.

  “Hallo, chum,” Valentine said to the young clerk. “Can you tell me, what’ve you got behind that door?”

  The clerk looked at Valentine, then at Skinner and the silver plate across her eyes, then back at Valentine. “Well…no. I’m afraid I can’t.

  “Robert?” Skinner asked, suddenly.

  “You two know each other, splendid!” Valentine exclaimed. “Skinner, have him open the door for us.”

  “I don’t…” the clerk seemed confused. “I don’t think we do know each other.” He shook his head. “This is a highly-restricted area. I’m afraid that if you don’t have authorization from the Academy, I’m going to have to ask you both to leave. Immediately.”

  “Huh,” Valentine said. He unfolded his Writ. “The Academy? You mean, the Royal Academy of Sciences? Because it just so happens I have a Writ here…well, you can read it just as well as I can explain it.” He handed it to the clerk. “I suppose that’ll do. Open the door, chum.”

  The clerk read the Writ and swallowed nervously, then gestured to one of the Lobstermen, who used an alarmingly dense array of keys to open several locks on the iron door.

  “I hope they don’t decide to lock us in,” Valentine whispered to the knocker, as the door creaked open and the two coroners began to descend a steep, stone staircase. They passed through another iron door at the bottom of the stairs, this one thicker and stronger-looking, but ajar.

  Beyond it was a very large, round room. At its outside edges burned small phlogiston lamps. They failed to cast enough light on the huge, still shape in the center. Whatever it was, it was nearly two storeys tall and at least fifty feet long. It was covered by a white sheet, and loomed menacingly in the dark.

  “That…” whispered Valentine. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “What?” Skinner asked. Her telerhythmia moved quickly along the walls before it found the shape in the center and began rattling on the sheet. Each rap threw up a tiny cloud of dust and made a faint, metallic ringing sound.

  “The Excelsior,” the clerk told them, his voice hushed. Valentine hadn’t even realized they’d been followed.

  “He took something…” Valentine said to himself. “The cylinders from the flight recorder. Where are they?”

  The clerk gestured to yet another iron door, set into the curving wall. Valentine ran to it and threw it open, only to find that it was indeed full of etched copper recording cylinders.

  “Instrumentation is on the right. Those,” the clerk pointed to five neatly stacked cylinders, “are the audio recordings.”

  Valentine turned to him. “You keep a record, right? A list of everyone that comes in? They have to sign a…a book, or something…”

  “The logbook, yes.”

  “I’ll need to see it.”

  The clerk shook his head. “I can’t.”

  Valentine started waving the Writ around. “You misunderstood me. By order of the Crown, I am seizing your log books.”

  “No, sir,” the clerk said. “You misunderstood me. I can’t give you the logbook. It’s already been taken.”

  “By whom?”

  “The Committee for Public Safety,” Skinner said, her face thoughtful. “Right, Robert?”

  Robert Rowan-Harshank nodded.

  With a growl, Valentine grabbed the young man and threw him against the wall. He drew his revolver, and pressed it against Robert’s cheek. “Someone came in here and copied those recording cylinders. Who?”

  “If you shoot me, the Lobstermen will be down here before you can draw a breath…”

  “I’m sure that’ll be a great consolation to you when you’re dead. Who copied the cylinders? Was it Wyndham?”

  Robert Rowan-Harshank shook his head. “No. I can’t tell you…”

  “I. Will. Kill. You.”

  “Valentine,” Skinner interrupted. “We need to go.”

  Robert’s face was deathly serious. “If you kill me, you’ll never find out.”

  Valentine paused, then thumbed back the hammer of his revolver. He removed the gun from Rowan-Harshank’s cheek, and pointed it at the man’s crotch. “I can keep questioning you after I’ve shot your balls off.”

  “You’ll hang…”

  “Valentine!” Skinner shouted.

  “Not me,” Valentine sneered. “I’m a Vie-Gorgon. I won’t even get Transportation.”

  Robert Rowan-Harshank snorted. “A Comstock Vie-Gorgon. You might as well be a Wyndham. Or a Crabtree.”

  “Who made the copies?” Valentine screamed at him.

  Skinner grabbed his arm. “Valentine. We need to leave. Now.”

  For one long, desperate moment, Skinner was afraid that Valentine was going to shoot the young man in front of him. Then, he took a deep breath, gently lowered the hammer back into position, and put the revolver in his belt. “You may think you’re doing someone a favor,” the coroner told him. “But right now, you are in. Over. Your. Head.”

  He led Skinner back up the staircase. “What is it?”

  “Gendarmes. A lot of them. I can hear them coming up the street.”

  “Oh. Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”

  Skinner was quiet as they passed the Lobstermen, who stood at their posts with the placid disinterest of career sentries. Then: “No. I don’t.”

  The street, when Valentine and Skinner arrived, was empty. “Skinner, I don’t see anyone. Are you sure…oh. Never mind.” The young man practically threw her into the coach. “In, get in. Go back to the office. Wait for me, or Beckett, or someone. I don’t know. Go.”

  “Valentine—”

  “Listen, I really feel that, of the three people investigating this situation, at least one of us should not be in prison.
I nominate you. Second! All in favor, aye! Good!” He slammed the door of the coach, and shouted to Harry. “Go! Back to Raithower!” Then turned to meet the approaching gendarmes.

  These were ordinary human beings, outfitted only with the same riot armor that the pressgangs wore: boiled leather breastplates and collars, greenglass goggles. They carried swords and cudgels. One man rode a horse; a big draft horse that he probably used to stomp on criminals.

  There was little question that these men had been sent by Edgar Wyndham-Vie in his capacity as Adjunct to the Vice-Minister of the Committee of Public Safety. His authorization for deploying Lobstermen was no doubt quite limited. Unquestioningly loyal fanaticism was expensive, after all.

  There were half a dozen different organizations with Imperial mandates to operate in the city of Trowth. The management of these organizations was a delicate balancing act, all designed to keep the major Families constantly at each other’s throats. The organizations all had different jurisdictions, and limited budgets. The Imperial Guard, and the Coroners Division by extension, for instance, was responsible directly for the protection of the Emperor. The Committee for Public Safety was technically only responsible for the safety of the city of Trowth. The War Powers Ministry was empowered only to act within the city limits when it came to recruiting. The Ministry of Internal Security was empowered to override the jurisdiction of the Committee for Public Safety in circumstances when the larger safety of the Empire was at stake.

  This made determining priority a tricky business, especially when it came to the Coroners, which were technically a joint venture of the Imperial Guard and the Ministry of Internal Security. The Committee for Public Safety could override the activities of the Coroners, and even arrest its members, if their actions didn’t directly protect the Emperor or the Empire but were endangering the safety of the city. None of this included the gendarmerie, either: they were commissioned and employed by individual neighborhoods and were essentially autonomous, unless they were conscripted by one of the government agencies.