The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [65]
“Enough!” Beckett shouted at them. “Or I will shoot the both of you. You,” he pointed at the sharpsie. “Take us to your headman. You,” he said to the trolljrman, “I paid you to translate, so cut the commentary.”
The sharpsie spat a gob of yellow spit into the snow at the trolljrman’s feet, but then nodded curtly. It led Beckett and his translator deeper into Mudside.
The headman’s home was, by far, the largest of the shoddy wooden dwellings in Mudside. It appeared to be the hulk of an old clipper-ship, turned upside down and half buried in mud. The inside was hollowed out to make one, large room, and the walls were covered in sheets of hammered copper; Beckett suspected that his was one of the few places to which sharpsies could retreat in order to shelter from psychestorms.
There were a dozen sharpsies hunkered up in filthy blankets, barely illuminated by the reddish light of a great fire in the center that poured suffocating black wood smoke into the air. Beckett’s guide slipped into the flickering shadows and leaned close to one of the curled-up sharpsies.
This one was old; yellow clumps of hair tufted at his elbows and chin, and his skin was a deep, leathery brown. He uncurled himself from his place by the copper-covered wall, and Beckett could see that his chest was wrapped with leather straps, from which hung fetishes of bones, feathers, teeth, claws, and bits of fur. The sharpsie shuffled towards the coroner, his normally-rapid gait slowed to a bare crawl by arthritic age.
“My name is Elijah Beckett,” the coroner told the ancient sharpsie. “I work for the Emperor. I know that one of your people was hired to do something…something pretty terrible.” The sharpsies, Beckett knew, were not naturally predisposed to cruelty, despite what their vicious grins suggested, but desperation could drive anyone to great lengths. “I am not after you or any of yours. All I want is the man that hired him.”
The old sharpsie’s black eyes were covered with a bluegray film; Beckett couldn’t tell if it was staring right at him, or completely blind. It stood stock still for several moments before gurgling something in sharpish.
“He wants to know how he can trust you,” the trolljrman said.
Beckett shrugged. “You can’t. But I’ll tell you this: the Committee for Public Safety is about to fall on Mudside like a hammer, all because of the murder in North Ferry. If I can find who set you up, there’s a chance we can stop it.”
The old sharpsie was still and silent for a long time. So long that Beckett, fearing the old creature hadn’t heard him, drew breath to repeat himself. Even as he did, the sharpsie nodded, then coughed a loud chain of glottals to another of his nearby people. This one uncurled himself from its spot by the fire, and practically bounced on its springy legs to where Beckett stood. The old sharpsie and the new one spoke quietly in their choking, growling language for several minutes. Finally, the old headman turned to Beckett’s translator and spoke.
The trolljrman interpreted. “He says, this one, they keep her nearby when they find out what happens. She tells, say she was on a work-crew in North Ferry, lengthening the archwindows on Sansome Street. She hears a man banging on a door, then finds door unlocked, goes inside. He comes out, come to her, offers her money to bite the bodies up.”
“Does she know the man’s name?”
The old sharpsie nodded. “She heard him call out when he banged on the door,” the trolljrman said. “They don’t know how to say it in Sharpish,” he added. “It sounds like Hoh-ooash Uhhaechngung.” The old sharpsie muttered something else. “He says . . . Sun-Man?” The trolljrman asked. “No. Light-Man.”
“Lightman?” Beckett asked. “Is that his name? Light-man?” His last name. The man’s first name was something that the sharpsies could only pronounce Hoh-ooash. “Do you know anything else about him? What he looked like? Where he was from? What…”
There was a sudden commotion outside. The sharpsies, even the ones that seemed asleep, immediately sprang to their feet in the dark room, eyes alert. Someone