The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [36]
“Rowan-Harshank. I suppose the name doesn’t mean anything to you?”
They emerged into the lobby. “Nothing. Elijah, we need to leave before Eddie calls the authorities.”
“We are the authorities.”
“You know what I mean.”
Beckett nodded, and took her outside into the cold night air. Their coach waited with a long line of carriages by the side of the road. “You’ll have to miss the play,” he told Skinner as he knocked on the coach’s door. Harry, the coachman, was asleep inside.
“It’s all right. I’ll see the whole thing some other time. Beckett, why did you hit him?” Skinner waved off his arm as she climbed into the coach.
“It was extremely satisfying.”
“Elijah . . .”
“Stitch. He didn’t want me to see the play.”
“Right. That’s why he sent you theatre tickets.”
“No. He wanted me to see the booth. The man with Wyndham-Vie.”
“The man that neither of us recognize.” Skinner paused. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”
Skinner heard the certainty in his voice, and nodded. “Tomorrow, though. We’re both tired. Let it wait until tomorrow.”
“Right.” Beckett agreed. “No, wait.”
“What?”
“Do you have any money with you?”
She produced a small roll of bills from a pocket in her skirt. “Some. Why?”
“Lend it to me. Have Stitch pay you back. This is a business expense.” Beckett took the money and closed the door. Skinner could hear his footsteps receding in the distance.
Eleven: The Assassin
The bullet nailed the coachman right through the chest, and his assassin rolled away from the window. He leaned against the wall in a dark room in an abandoned house and began counting. The idea was to stay down for a full minute, in case the coachman’s death caused some kind of ruckus.
The assassin didn’t need to count. He could hear the effects almost immediately. There were pistol-shots, and someone started shouting. The only word the assassin caught was “Coroners.” Shit, he thought. He worked the slide on his rifle, and loaded another round, then slowly leaned over to look out the window.
A filthy man was standing in the middle of the street, a few yards from the coachman’s corpse. He was shouting at someone, the assassin couldn’t see whom, and waving a pair of shiny revolvers around. Doesn’t see me. Just wait it out, the man thought to himself too soon; the filthy man in the street abruptly turned towards the assassin’s window.
He thought Shit to himself again, because his inner monologue did not have an expansive vocabulary. He aimed at the man in the street, fired, and missed. The man jumped as chips of stone flew from the wall behind him, and started shouting again. The assassin started to load another round, when he heard something.
There was a crash in the room next to his. Someone had broken a window. They’re coming in, he thought. The assassin made a break for the door, his stomach fluttering as he realized he’d have to cross in front of the window to get to it. There was nothing for it though, and he was relieved when no hail of gunfire shattered glass and perforated his skin.
He made it out into the hall. There was a room directly across from him, one of the three escape routes he’d planned in case things got tight. A door opened at the end of the hall, and a tall man lurched from behind it. Things had gotten tight. The assassin dove through the door across from him, across the dusty, empty room it led to, and climbed out the window that he’d left open. Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, he quickly shimmied down the rattling drainpipe into a small courtyard.
The courtyard had been built on top of an arch that covered another street below the house; it had maybe once been covered with grass, but the grass was all dead. The assassin sprinted across it to a gap between the next house and the top of the arch, then jumped down into the swirling fog in the Arcadium.
The blue lamps barely cast any light. The assassin could only just see them through the dense fog, but he’d prepared well. Fifteen paces, then right. Keep your hand on the wall, then left. He maneuvered through the