The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [56]
“Do you need help…?”
“No.” Skinner got to her feet and went upstairs, using her knocks to find her way.
Because Raithower House had first been the home of one of the wealthiest families in Trowth, its construction was exceptionally grand. It featured the traditional Vie-Gorgon design: everything was tall and narrow. Tall, narrow windows. Tall, narrow doors. High ceilings, narrow halls. In an effort to both create a sense of space and to give the viewer a sense of being in the middle of a forest of (tall, narrow) columns, many of the walls were open arches.
The tendency of the Vie-Gorgons to fill large rooms with tall pillars made navigating by way of telerhythmia tricky; Skinner had to sweep the knocks out in wide arcs in front of her, and listen carefully to screen out the double-echoes. Still, she knew her way around the building, and eventually succeeded in finding the small sleeping chamber that Stitch had set aside for emergencies.
Green lightning flashed, and Skinner could see it behind her eyes. It was common knowledge that knockers, at least the ones strong enough to be employed by the coroners, were blind, but this was only partially true. In fact, Skinner’s eyes were extraordinarily sensitive: seeing with the unbearable clarity of her eyes was actually excruciatingly painful. She, like most knockers, wore the band of silver over her eyes to make sure that her vision was completely eclipsed.
It didn’t help during the psychestorms. Despite the silver plate and the copper shielding in the walls and roof of the building, the green lightning was always visible. She could be a hundred miles underground, and still see those eerie pulses of green. More thunder rumbled, but the mental echo that accompanied it was mercifully faint.
The wind began to pick up, and then the clouds broke. Huge globs of snow fell in the screaming winds; Skinner could hear them hitting the copper-sheathed roof, despite the fact that it was another storey over her head. The sound of fat snowflakes on the copper roof stabbed delicately at her inner-ear, a sharp violent sound that she could never hope to explain to the ordinary-of-hearing.
She made her way to a cot and sat down on the edge. It creaked and groaned, and threatened to collapse beneath her weight, but held firm. Skinner sighed and set her cane down next to her. She was beginning to regret leaving Valentine downstairs. His conversation might be inane, but at least it was better than sitting quietly by herself while the storm moaned around her, buffeting her throbbing head.
Lightning flashed again, and in the psychic afterimage in her mind, Skinner could see the city, its merlons and spires and chimney-pots black silhouettes limned with dull green. The snow fell in a horizontal wave of black spots. The image was gone almost immediately, but the thought of it lingered in her mind, a peculiar aspect of the psychestorm. Skinner shivered, and wished she had some music to listen to.
Beckett has a phonograph in his office, she thought briefly, then discarded the idea. She’d have to leave the room then, and her sensitivity to the strange effects of the psychestorm would make that unpleasant. He probably only has old Corimander symphonies anyway. Like most of the Trowthi, Skinner recognized Edmund Corimander as the greatest Trowthi composer in history, and she’d heard The Siege of Canth enough times that she knew the movements by heart, but that was about as far as her interest in the epic, brassy sounds of Corimander’s orchestra went.
Another flare of lightning threw the whole city into stark relief again. It was followed swiftly by a sharp clap of thunder whose echo penetrated the copper in the walls. There had been a man on the roof, she thought, climbing over a forest of small bronze chimneys, when the thunder echoed. He’d been on the roof next door. The sound of the thunder rolled in her mind still. The