The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [4]
One of the trolljrmen gestured with its thick finger to the blood dribbling from Elijah’s coat, and thrummed a deep hollow sound to his companion in the virtually incomprehensible language that the trolljrmen used. The second trolljrman shrugged, and produce a hypodermic needle that he proceeded to fill with veneine.
Beckett, who had forgotten entirely about his injury through the twin effects of adrenaline and the heroic amount of veneine already in his system, waved the two trolljrmen off. The wound wasn’t so bad. If it turned out to be worse than Beckett thought, he could always stitch it up himself. If he was going to get another injection, he’d inject it himself. The trolljrmen never gave him enough, anyway.
Skinner leaned out of the coach. The fading light glittered on the silver plate she had to wear over her eyes. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Beckett grunted, and began to reload his revolver.
Skinner sighed. If he’d been able to see her eyes, Beckett suspected they’d be rolling. “Is he dead?”
“You couldn’t hear it?”
Skinner shook her head. “Something was messing up my clairaudience. I don’t know what, a weird echo or something. I heard about a hundred gunshots.”
“Four.”
“That’s it?” She pursed her lips. “Four? That’s weird.”
“Three for the monkey, one for the grinder.”
“Uh. Getting old. Time was, you could have taken a reanimate out with two.”
“Not this one. It was huge.”
“Sure it was.”
Beckett gave his Knocker a hard look.
“You know your scary looks are wasted on a blind girl, Beckett.” Skinner was grinning from ear to ear.
“It’s the thought that counts.” Beckett jerked his thumb towards the old man who was slumped in the gutter, still coughing furiously. “Do you want to tell Valentine he can stop playing ‘old Scraver’?”
“Is that what he’s doing over there?” Skinner shouted across the courtyard. Her voice rang out on the cobblestones. “Valentine! Valentine Vie-Gorgon! Come over here right now!”
The old man stopped coughing, but otherwise didn’t move.
“We know it’s you, Valentine,” Beckett growled.
After a moment, the old man stood up and crossed the courtyard to Skinner’s carriage. He had a resigned air to his walk, which was decidedly not the walk of a sick old man. Once he got closer, Beckett could see the lines where the young Valentine Vie-Gorgon had glued the beard onto his face.
Valentine was crestfallen. “How could you tell?”
“Shoes,” Beckett replied. “Regulation spit and polish. Sick old beggars don’t have clean shoes.”
“’Sword,” Valentine smacked himself in the head, then began pulling off his beard. It came away in chunks, still connected to his face by long, sticky strands of glue. “I knew I was forgetting something. I just got very excited. I’d been walking down High Street the other day and I thought to myself, ‘you know, Valentine, have you ever really looked at a beggar? I mean looked at them?’ And I started looking around and I realized that hardly anyone ever looked closely at the beggars, especially the ones coughing like they had the Scrave, so, you know, I just thought…” he trailed off, and idly picked at the glue still on his face. “I fooled Skinner, anyway.”
“You didn’t,” Skinner shot back. “I recognized your footsteps right away. I didn’t even know you were in disguise. Thought you were just being distant.”
“Fah, you never did,” said Valentine, as he tossed off the filthy blanket that had covered his regulation, charcoal-grey Coroner’s suit. “Miss ‘I can tell the color of someone’s hair by the sound of their combing.’”
“Enough!” Beckett rubbed his temples. The veneine high was wearing off, and the dull ache of his illness had begun to creep in around the edges. “Valentine, I need you to conscript a couple