The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [18]
Alan shook his head. “No. Not yet, anyway. Just hypersensitive, like…like my father’s.”
The man nodded. “Alan Charterhouse. I’m Beckett. I work for the coroners. Do you know what that is?”
I’m thirteen, Alan thought. I’m not stupid. “Yes, sir. You catch people that practice heretical sciences. Like necrologists and oneiricists, and that.”
“Yes. Do you know anything about geometry, boy? Have you ever done psychometry on a crime scene?”
“Uhm. Well, I’ve been an apprentice mapmaker since I was seven, sir, so I know a fair bit about geometry.” He could not hide the indignation in his voice. “I’ve never been…to…to a crime scene, sir. But I can read objects by touch better than my father.” He dropped his hands and held his chin up defiantly.
“Good,” Beckett said. “You’re going to come with me. The coroners have put you on retainer. Go get whatever things you need for psychometry, and a change of clothes in case we have to keep you overnight. Bring something to read, too.”
“Uhm. What?”
Beckett cocked his head to the side. “You. Are. Coming. With. Me. Go get your things.”
Trying to read while the coach bumped along George Street was making Alan Charterhouse nauseous. He looked up from his book—a yellowed, dog-eared copy of Ted East and the Canthi Chanteur—and considered the man and woman sitting across from him. Beckett sat still as stone, looking out the window. Skinner, a pretty young woman with a silver plate fixed across her eyes, was idly tapping her foot. Alan chose to take the foot-tapping as a sign of a friendlier nature than her partner’s.
“Do…” his voice was startlingly loud in the relative quiet of the coach. Alan lowered his voice to practically a whisper. “Do you know Ted East?” Alan held up his book, then lowered it sheepishly when he remembered that Skinner couldn’t see it. “It says…in my book it says he’s a real coroner, that all these stories are true.”
Beckett snorted loudly, and Skinner tried to hide a small smile behind her hand. “Well, Master Charterhouse, you shouldn’t believe everything you read.”
“Oh, I know…I mean, I know it probably never happened like this. Like in the books. I mean, I’m sure it didn’t. There’s a spot in…I think it was in Ted East and the Ectoplasmatists where he shoots eight people without reloading his revolver.” Alan folded the book in his lap. “I just thought that...maybe, you know, maybe it was based on a real person, you know? Like maybe he sold his story, or something.”
Beckett snorted again.
Alan leaned away from him and towards Skinner. “Have you ever seen…I mean…have you ever met a cult of ectoplasmatists?”
“There are no cults,” Beckett cut in. “Of ectoplasmatists. And they can’t do any of that nonsense like in your penny-books, like conjure knives and axes and things out of the air.”
“You’ve read about Ted East?” Alan asked, his voice suddenly brightening.
Skinner struggled to keep her face neutral. “Oh, Elijah,” she said, softly. “I didn’t know you could read.”
Beckett glared at her. “I know about things. All kinds of things.” He turned back to Alan Charterhouse. “Real ectoplasm isn’t hard at all. It’s kind of like thick smoke, or glue. And there’s no such person as Ted East.”
“Oh.” The young cartographer’s voice was glum.
Beckett did not add that the seemingly limitless series of cheap, two-penny books about Ted East, Coroner, which were making a fortune for their author, actually were based on a real person. Beckett also did not add that he’d sold the stories to that same author so that he could buy more fang.
There was a long silence in the coach after that, and Alan Charterhouse spent the rest of the trip looking out the window.
George Street skirted the River Stark for about a mile before it crossed the St. Edmund’s Bridge into North Ferry. The Imperial Palace loomed high on Alan’s left the whole time; it was a great mountain of a building, and the most vicious battleground of the Architecture War. Every Emperor since Agon Diethes considered it his personal