The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [37]
After a moment, he heard footsteps slapping the cobblestone street. “I said, don’t move!” Someone shouted.
The coroner. How the hell did he find me? The assassin put his shoulder against the door and pushed hard. It gave a little, but stayed closed. The footsteps got closer. He tried again, and this time the lock gave way. The assassin practically threw himself inside.
He found himself at the top of an iron balcony, stairs leading down into an enormous factory of some kind. Heavy metal machines hung silent overhead. The floor was filled with people.
The assassin gasped, and almost had a heart-attack. There were hundreds of them staring right at him. He struggled to make out details in the gloom. Why was no one moving? He could hear the coroner practically outside the door. The assassin leapt down the stairs and into the factory.
The figures he’d thought were people on the factory floor were mannequins. Or, at least, they were the heads of mannequins. Row after row of bald, plaster heads stared at him with thoughtful eyes that had been painted on. The assassin moved as far in as he could, then hunkered down to wait. There was a plaster head right by his ear and, after a moment, he turned it around backwards. Its false eyes made him nervous.
“I know you’re in here,” the man shouted. His voice echoed off of the machinery and bounced around in the dark. “It’s no good hiding. Surrender, and I’ll go easy on you.”
Not likely, the assassin thought. The coroner stood in the doorway, framed in silhouette by the blue light seeping in from the street. The assassin, as quietly as he could, loaded a bullet into the breach of his rifle, and slowly closed the slide. Stay there, moron. Just one more second…he lifted the rifle.
A faint, dry rustle reached his ears, and the assassin quickly turned. A tall man in black had somehow got behind him. He fired his rifle into the tall man’s chest. The flash from the muzzle was bright enough to blind him momentarily, and the sound of the gun was like a cannon, resounding over and over in the factory.
The man before him was unmoved. He stood silently for a moment, and then lunged forward, fast. He was too fast, faster than anyone the assassin had ever seen. The rifleman found himself snared by arms that wrapped around his wrists like chains and confronted with…teeth…
Small white teeth, glittering in glistening red, meat . . . the thing had a mouth that stretched and stretched and drew in air with a painful, ragged gasp…
The man felt like he was choking, like someone had reached down his throat and made a fist in his lungs, and was dragging everything up, ripping his life out by his lungs. He kicked out at the thing but its flesh flowed like water. It clamped an iron hand around his jaw and brought its gaping red mouth closer, breathed deeper.
Like someone had flipped a switch, the light abruptly vanished.
Twelve: The House on Corimander Street
Edgar Wyndham-Vie and Robert Rowan-Harshank left the theatre while the actors were still doing encores, in order to beat the rush. They climbed into the coach with the Wyndham-Vie crest, Edgar holding a handkerchief over the bruise on his face.
“The Windmill,” Edgar called to the coachman. “Then knock off. We’ll get a hansom back home.”
“Sir,” the coachman replied, his voice muffled beneath his red scarf. The scarf was new, but Edgar Wyndham-Vie and his friend didn’t notice it, because rich people very rarely look at their servants. The coachman clicked his tongue at the horses, and drove them towards Sara’s Windmill, the oldest duetti club in Trowth. He guided the carriage out of Red Lanes and along the Royal Mile, which led from the Imperial Palace to the Stark.
Traffic was not heavy, this late at night, but there were still plenty of coaches on the road, still women and old men trying to sell flowers or sausages or coal. Topside, the fog was light: just a swirl of dingy yellow-gray clouds around the ankles. Downside, in the Arcadium, people