The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [51]
“Oh!”
“Yes?”
“No,” there was a sound of more clinking teacups. “Burned myself.” He paused. “I did find…well, something. I was going to wait until I could tell Beckett, too…” He cleared his throat. “So, I was setting up the cordon around Zindel’s home…”
“Like you were ordered to.”
Valentine groaned. “Fine. Right. Like I was ordered to. And after about an hour, I see this coach pull up. The driver looks at the house, looks at the cordon, he seems like he’s confused. Then he goes real pale, and he turns the coach around and drives off. So, naturally, I followed him.”
“You followed him? Valentine, the cordon was important. Public Safety took the bodies…”
“He was acting suspicious!”
“That’s—” Skinner got a hold of herself. “Never mind. What happened?”
“Well, I recognized the livery stamp on the coach. Tanner’s, it’s called. We used to send them after my brother when he’d been out debauching himself, so as not to sully the name and that…”
“Valentine. Focus.”
“So, I knew where the livery stable was. I took the autocarriage there and parked it in an alley. Then I put on my disguise.” She could practically hear him grinning. “I remembered what Beckett said, about my shoes being too clean, so I found . . . well, there was this filthy gutter. I mean, really filthy. There was all this black sludge, you know? I don’t even know what it was. And I just covered myself in it. Head to foot. I took special care on the shoes.”
“Is that why you smell like piss?”
“Probably. So, I’m all covered in filth, I’ve got my scrave tobacco—that’s this custom tobacco I had made. They…I don’t know how they do it, something with flux and gametes, or something, they make the tobacco bright green and luminescent, so it lights up your spit like you’ve got the scrave. There I am, all covered in filth, spitting my green spit, and I follow this man. I think that he was supposed to meet Zindel at the house. Anyway, he doesn’t have any more jobs. Just errands, and things. Buying groceries, right?”
“That’s it? You left your post and covered yourself in filth so you could follow a coachman while he went to the grocer?”
“No! I followed him when he went into the Arcadium. He was dropping something off at Printer’s Close. When he came out of Backstairs, there was somebody waiting for him. In the street. I thought it was a man, at first. He looks like he’s about to do something. Then…bang!”
“He shot the coachman.”
“No, right, that’s what I thought. No, someone else shoots the coachman. Coachman falls to the ground, and this man in the street, he turns and runs up the wall of a house. I don’t know what’s going on. I pull out my guns, tell everyone to stay still, and someone from the house takes a potshot at me from the window. Misses. But the man from the street…I’m thinking he’s a Reanimate, at this point, crashes through the window. I think…I don’t know what he was going to do. I head around the back, I think maybe he’s going to come out the other side, and I see him dropping down into the Arcadium.
“So, I followed.”
Skinner almost choked on her tea. “Naturally. There’s a man with a gun—you don’t know where he is—and a Reanimate that can run up walls. What does Valentine Vie-Gorgon do? He runs after them into the darkest, foggiest place he can find. It makes perfect sense.”
“Oh, all right. It was stupid. But listen. I chase the Reanimate, I keep yelling at him to stop. Nothing. He ducks into this factory…I don’t know what kind of factory. There were these plaster heads everywhere. The Reanimate is doing something, I yell at it again, it doesn’t listen. So, I shoot. A lot. Nothing.”
“You missed.”
“Oh, no. I hit him. Hips, shoulders, base of the spine, just like Beckett says. Nothing. And I don’t mean it didn’t go down. It didn’t even flinch. Like I was shooting air. I get to thinking, ‘Maybe this isn’t a Reanimate.’ Anyway, I can’t hurt it with bullets, so I run. I’m not sure if it chased me, I wasn’t thinking about it. I just ran towards the river, and hid in an open sewer until the sun came up. Then I went back.”
“You went back? Valentine…”