The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [3]
Albert Wyndham’s voice had gone from a self-righteous scream to a ragged whisper as he looked at his fallen creation struggling in the filth of the gutter. “What have you done?” Wyndham whispered.
Rage filled his voice again, and it grew. “What have you done?” Wyndham screamed wordlessly; the necrologist raised his sword and charged at Beckett.
Unlike most things in the world, the smallsword is a weapon that had been perfected by man. Humans had invented them, and had made them thinner and lighter to improve their speed. A modern smallsword was essentially a long, thin spike; it had no edge, and was meant primarily for inflicting deep, deadly puncture wounds. Albert Wyndham’s sword was pointed right at Beckett’s heart.
Beckett stood very still as the man rushed towards him; at the very last possible second he turned, slapping the slender point of the smallsword away. He didn’t turn it quite far enough, and the Coroner felt a hot sting in his shoulder as the tip of the smallsword pierced his heavy coat and tore a narrow runnel in his skin. Beckett grunted and brought the weight of his revolver to bear against Wyndham’s head.
Becektt’s gun was an old-fashioned Feathersmith model, and much heavier than its name suggested. There was a dull crack as the butt of Beckett’s revolver met Albert Wyndham’s temple, and the man crashed insensate into the alley wall at full speed. He bounced off the dirty stone, leaving a smear of blood, and collapsed in a heap next to his Reanimate.
Then, because Albert Wyndham was a Heretic, and because it was expected by the Coroners Division, and because it was his prerogative, Detective Inspector Elijah Beckett shot the necrologist between the eyes.
Beckett left the bodies where they were, one dead and struggling, one just dead, and began to work his way out of the maze of dark, covered alleys that the city people called the Arcadium. He double-checked to make sure that he’d wound his watch.
It was almost evening when Beckett emerged from the depths of the Arcadium. The sky had turned from a dull, dark, sooty gray to a duller, darker sootier gray, redeemed only by the fact that looking at it no longer caused migraines. The perpetual cloud of thick, puissant smoke, spewed out by factories that burned phlogiston and flux and coal, hung low over the stony war of parapets, crenulations, buttresses, towers and arches that composed Trowth’s skyline.
Beckett’s companions in the Coroners were waiting for him in Daior Court, a medium-sized cobblestone courtyard that half-resembled a small island of civilization, floating above and partially-enclosed by the chaotic madness of the lower city. Skinner was there, waiting in a coach that was virtually swallowed by the lengthening shadows. Two trolljrmen, whose names Beckett had never learned and probably couldn’t pronounce anyway, thrummed their bone-rattling basso language to their ambulance tarrasque. The giant, two-headed tortoise had a palanquin bolted to its shell. The palanquin would hold medical supplies, and would eventually provide transport for Albert Wyndham’s corpse, as soon as someone bothered to retrieve it.
An old man was slumped by the entrance to the narrow stairwell into the Arcadium, and he emitted an alarmingly wet, hacking cough as Beckett walked by. The trolljrmen met the coroner as he approached the coach, baring their huge,