The Grand Dark

by Richard Kadrey

  “It’s your fault. You didn’t tell me that Andrzej character was a bleeder.”

  Parvulesco held up the cigarette and said, “Open.” Roland opened his lips and Parvulesco placed the cigarette there. Roland took a couple of puffs and put his arms around Parvulesco.

  Largo didn’t realize how scared he’d been until the feeling began to subside. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been here.”

  “It was a hell of a coincidence, wasn’t it?” said Roland.

  Parvulesco said, “He’s right. This was in no way an ambush.”

  Largo smiled with them. “Mere happenstance,” he said.

  “Now you get it,” said Roland.

  “Then I thank providence and you.”

  Roland made a face and held out his hand. “Stop thanking everybody and let me get a better look at that fancy blade of yours.”

  Largo unhooked the knife from the harness and handed it to Roland. He looked it over while Parvulesco oohed and ahhed. “A wicked toy,” Roland said. He slipped his hand into the spiked knuckle grip and slashed the air a few times. Largo took a step back. The big man sighted down the blade, weighed it in his hand. Finally, satisfied, he gave it back to Largo.

  “It’s a beautiful thing. What will you take for it?” said Roland.

  Largo snapped the knife back into its harness. “Believe me, if it was mine I’d give it to you. But unfortunately it isn’t. It belongs to the company.”

  “What?” said Parvulesco. “Who gave it to you? Not Branca.”

  Largo gave him a look. “I was as surprised as you.”

  “Did he say why?”

  Largo held up a hand and let it drop to his side. “König had it before me. Apparently all the chief couriers have it. Something about how the valuables we carry make us more vulnerable.”

  “You’re a target now,” said Roland.

  “That’s the way he put it too.”

  “He’s probably right. You should let me show you how to use that thing.”

  “You’d do that?” said Largo.

  He put his hand on Largo’s shoulder. “We sodomite sisters have to stick together.”

  Largo touched his pocket and felt the weight of his tips. “I think I owe both of you drinks. As many as you can hold down.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but another time,” said Parvulesco. He looked at Roland. “This one needs to go home and scrub little pieces of bully out of his teeth.”

  “I’m offended,” said Roland. “I didn’t bite him once. But now that you bring it up, I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  “I think Herr Andrzej and the others understood the message. No need to resort to cannibalism.”

  “Yet,” said Largo.

  Roland pointed at him. “See? He understands.”

  Parvulesco got his bicycle and pulled Roland away with him. “It’s time to go, dear. Have a good night, Largo.”

  “Thank you again.”

  As he started to leave, Largo heard a roar from behind the truck Parvulesco had appeared from earlier. Roland, on a heavy motorbike, sped out around it, towing Parvulesco on his bicycle. Largo watched them go until the sound of the motorbike’s engine died away. As he got on his own bicycle, it occurred to him that Margit had never arrived.

  Or maybe she did and was scared off by the fight.

  In any case, there was nothing he could do about it now. He would speak to her at work tomorrow.

  As he rode away, the knife tapped lightly against his ribs. He thought about how he’d shown the thing to Weimer but had made no move to take it out. Between Andrzej’s brutal threats and seeing Roland charge at him with no thought of backing down, Largo replayed the scene over and over again in his mind. He took it apart and put it back together again in different ways, with different outcomes. Roland’s charge didn’t work. He was attacked and killed by the other couriers and Largo did nothing. Largo himself was taken down by the mob. Andrzej found Largo’s knife and used it against Roland and Parvulesco. Largo ran away before anything happened. Or Largo stayed and was killed with his own knife.

  The two constants in these alternate versions of the events were Andrzej’s confidence and Largo’s lack of it. It was one thing to mime strength, as he’d learned to do, but it was another to have it in your blood.

  Largo’s hands shook as he rode home. When he reached the door to his building his stomach cramped with tension. He had to stop and lean against a wall. For a few seconds it was hard to breathe. Grasping in his pocket, he pulled out the vial and put two drops of morphia under his tongue, waiting what felt like forever for them to take effect.

  Over the next few minutes, his fear lessened and the cramps subsided enough that he could walk upstairs to his flat. Largo’s hands still shook and he fumbled with his keys, but by the time he got inside and turned on the piss-yellow overhead light he could breathe again. He was still angry and scared, but the fear had transfigured itself into something hard and bright.

  Next time, he thought. With Andrzej or any of the others—if it comes down to it, I won’t flash the knife.

  I’ll use it.

  The Refugee Road

  From A Young Person’s Guide to the Great War

  In the days leading up to the Great War, when rumors ran rampant, High Proszawa’s wealthiest families began the trek south. Not long after, the rumors reached a fever pitch, with stories about devastating battles and atrocities along the northern front. After that, the flood of affluent refugees doubled. The most prosperous families left their mansions and estates in the care of their loyal servants, while others were forced to sell them off for a pittance.

  After moving to Lower Proszawa, High Proszawa’s elite began buying the city’s most desirable properties at a furious rate. Whole blocks of chateaus and ancient manor houses were snapped up overnight. Because most of the city’s industry had been conscripted into the war effort, few new homes were being built. Property prices exploded to the point where the middle class and the poor (including the servants left behind in High Proszawa) who followed were pushed into refugee areas in the least desirable districts of Lower Proszawa.

  After the war, some of the middle-class families recovered, but the poor remained exiled in run-down districts near the wharves and industrial areas. And while the price of property dipped in the early postwar days, it never returned to its prewar levels. Partly this had to do with the disappearance of a number of neighborhoods due to stray bombs. Regardless of the reason, with land prices still high, many of those houses were never rebuilt. Rather, developers simply razed the few standing structures, paving the way for new mansions and luxury tower blocks. Within a year of the armistice, Empyrean doubled in size. Even some of the well-off exiles who’d sold their assets during the early war panic found it difficult to afford their opulent lifestyles. Many families who’d managed to hold on to some of their wealth moved into neighborhoods such as Kromium. This created a rivalry between the districts that was jovial on the surface, but could quickly turn ugly, shattering friendships and family alliances that had lasted generations.

  The middle and lower classes settled in Granate and similar districts. The less lucky, especially refugees from the south and the foreign colonies, had to retreat to the worst areas, the docks and the Midden. Exiles with manual work skills who spoke Proszawan could sometimes find work in Machtviertel, where they could pool their resources and rent humble workers’ quarters, but those were few and far between.

  This situation led to the first of a series of worker uprisings, which we will examine more fully in later chapters. However, it should be noted that many manual laborers, such as road builders and miners—workers with limited skills—resented that Maras were performing the low-wage jobs they coveted. Worker Maras in the streets were routinely stolen or ripped apart and burned. There were even break-ins at the Mara factories, where rioters destroyed production lines. Soon, the angry mobs went after chimeras, killing many of the street cleaners. In
two notorious raids, the mob released bitva war chimeras in the wealthy districts. It took days for the authorities to round up the animals. During this time, Empyrean was impassable and residents were forced to remain indoors for several days. The servant Maras they sent out into the chaos to bring back food seldom returned. However, the riots were eventually put down by armed Maras, police, and volunteer soldiers returned from the front.

  In the wake of this insurrection, rumors began to spread about the refugees. Many from the frigid northern colonies carried their religion with them, which included rituals involving the skulls and bones of certain tundra deer. After the riots, these artifacts were turned into tales of human skulls by the yellowsheets, which also spread stories of kidnapping, human sacrifice, and disease.

  Today, the only outward displays of these old beliefs are in the board games refugee children play using small bones, coins, and other odd objects. Because of their obscure nature and nefarious reputation, the games are said to be favored among unscrupulous gamblers, criminals, and smugglers, and should be avoided at all costs by law-abiding citizens.

  Chapter Eight

  RAINER FOXX LIVED IN LYSERGSÄUREHOF, A SMALL SQUARE IN THE POOREST part of Little Shambles. The streetlights hadn’t worked there in years and being situated on the shore of Heldenblut Bay, it was perpetually cold and dripping with sea spray, as if a tidal wave that had swamped the area earlier in the day had just receded. Normally Largo would be wary of bicycling into an unlit part of the district, but Lysergsäurehof was so cold and dismal that rats and missing cobblestones in the street were more worrisome than criminals.

  The building where Rainer lived was four stories tall and had once been the office of a shipping company. The company was long gone, but the building remained—at least, for the moment. With each loud footfall or door slam, Largo half expected the old wreck to come tumbling down.

  There was no proper lock on the front door. Instead, there was an intricate webbing of rebar and wires. It was like a combination lock. Move this bar, pull that wire, and so on. Do it right, and the web slipped easily away from the entrance. Do it wrong, and any one of Rainer’s many booby traps would go off, maiming the interloper. Largo had been to the building many times, but still lived in dread of dropping a slippery wire or sneezing at the wrong moment and finding himself impaled on a length of rusty metal or hoisted into the air by a loop of wire around his neck. Tonight, despite his shaky hands, he managed to get into the building unscathed.

  He yelled as he trudged up the four floors to Rainer’s flat. “Hello! It’s Largo. I’ve brought some food.”

  The door was open when he reached the fourth floor. He went inside and was relieved by the warmth from the small fireplace. After a brief hug, Rainer motioned for him to come to the large bank of windows that overlooked the bay. The area was crowded with Rainer’s collection of telescopes and spyglasses. Largo looked down for some activity in the water, but Rainer pointed at the sky. It took Largo a moment to see what his friend was gesturing at.

  The land across the wide bay was sunk in darkness and had been so since the end of the war. It was the southernmost tip of the High Proszawa forbidden zone. The land lay a scorched, lifeless ruin and Largo couldn’t figure out why Rainer was so insistent that he look at it. Over the bay a few small airborne Maras flew in crisscross patterns, their wings beating furiously. Largo turned to Rainer. “Night patrols looking for smugglers. What’s special about them?”

  Again Rainer pointed toward High Proszawa. “Look past them, at the city itself,” he said, the sound coming from the speaker horn on a nearby wireless. His voice was less grating than those of most Iron Dandies, but the low amplification made him sound ghostly and far away.

  Largo stared across the bay. If there was supposed to be anything there, he couldn’t see it. The flying Maras didn’t help; the winking lights on their underbellies were very distracting . . .

  Then he saw it. A single faint flash of white light, as if an eye had blinked once over the dead city and vanished.

  “Did you see?” said Rainer.

  “Yes! But . . . what was it?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen life across the bay.”

  Largo laughed once. “Life? There’s nothing over there. Just a handful of lunatic looters in the ruins.”

  “Hnn,” said Rainer, a sound Largo didn’t know how to interpret. Hoping to change the subject, he pulled a white bag from his pocket. It was still warm from the bakery and marked with spots of grease. “Spiced meat pies,” he said. “I know how much you like them.”

  “Thank you,” said Rainer, patting him on the arm. “My pension from the government is late and I’ve been running low on provisions.”

  “I can give you some money. I’m getting good tips these days.”

  Rainer waved a hand at him. “Thank you, but no. The check will be along any day now.” As he said it, he went into the small kitchen and brought back plates, napkins, and a heavy fork for himself. They sat down at Rainer’s dinner table—an ornate partner desk abandoned by the shipping company. The wood had warped in the dampness, so nothing on it would lie flat. Glasses and bottles tended to slide off the edge, so Rainer and his guests never drank during meals.

  Largo put a meat pie on each of their plates and waited for his friend to prepare his. Rainer was a few years older than Largo and had been a soldier, and a decorated one at that. He had a Red Eagle medal for his wounds and a silver Knight’s Cluster for his heroism at the Battle of Liebzeit Valley. It was there that Rainer had lost most of his face. Shrapnel had left deep scars across both cheeks, as if he’d been slashed repeatedly with a saber. His nose was missing and his mouth was a soft angular slit. But his eyes had been spared. They were light blue and in his ruined face, they stood out even more dramatically than before he’d been wounded. He was the only Iron Dandy whom Largo had ever seen with his mask off, and the guilt for his own cowardice during the war knotted his stomach every time they were together. Though he was hungry after a long day’s work, Largo left his food untouched while Rainer prepared his.

  He used the heavy fork to mash the pie into a soft paste. When he was done, he shoveled a small forkful into his ruined mouth. Rainer was one of the lucky Dandies who had enough of a tongue left that he could still taste food. “It’s good,” he said through the wireless.

  Largo bit into his dinner and said lightly, “I know. I think the baker makes the best pies in the city. I can bring you more if you like.”

  “That would be nice.” They ate in silence for a few minutes before Rainer said, “What have you been up to? You’re dressed better than your usual rags. Did Remy find that shirt for you?”

  Largo shook his head. “Would you believe it? It belongs to one of the puppets at the Grand Dark. You should come with me one night. I can get us both in for free.”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  “Why not? You can’t sit up here alone forever.” Largo looked around Rainer’s flat. The part of his friend that survived from before the war—the clever part who’d built the webbed lock on his front door and made his voice come from the wireless—still believed in science and engineering. Visitors entering his rooms could see it immediately by the collection of star charts, telescopes, and other optical instruments that stood by the windows. The part of Rainer that concerned Largo was the part that had emerged since he’d locked himself away and become obsessed with spiritualism. The walls were covered with spirit photos and posters of famous clairvoyants. Nearby tables were stacked with books on ghosts and various spirit boards, including an electric model that shocked you if you tried to move the platen on your own. Largo knew that electric boards were expensive and he wondered how much of Rainer’s pension money he’d squandered on it.

  After a few more bites of pie Rainer said, “Who says that I’m alone?” He pointed to the boards with his fork.

  “Rainer, please,” said Largo.

  “You’re right. It’s rude of me, t
rying to entangle you in my personal obsessions.”

  “It’s not that. I just worry about you spending your life listening for voices that, even if they exist, cannot possibly speak.”

  Rainer nodded but didn’t look up from his plate. Largo wondered if it was he and not Rainer who was the rude one.

  I shouldn’t dismiss his beliefs so easily. Rainer’s life is so small these days. Stargazing and ghosts are all he has left. And he was a soldier. He doesn’t need mothering. He needs me to listen and be a friend.

  Largo started to apologize, but Rainer spoke up first. “Tell me about yourself. It’s been a while since we’ve had dinner. How are you?”

  “To tell you the truth, exciting things are happening, but before I go into that, would you mind . . . ?” Largo took out the bottle of morphia and held it up so that Rainer could see. “It’s been an eventful day and I could use a bit.”

  Rainer stopped eating. “Do you have a few drops to spare? My allotment is almost gone and sometimes at night the pain keeps me from sleeping.”

  “It’s too damp in here. No wonder you ache. You need to move somewhere dry.”

  “I wish it were that simple. What I really need is a skull not held together with screws and wire.”

  Again, Largo felt a little spasm in his stomach. “Of course I have some to spare,” he said. “You go first. Take as many drops as you like.”

  Rainer accepted the bottle and squeezed five drops into his mouth. Largo was both impressed and worried. That’s more than I’ve ever taken at one time. He watched for signs of an overdose as Rainer handed him back the bottle. Largo put two drops under his own tongue. He continued to watch his friend, but Rainer seemed fine.

  If that’s what he’s using these days, no wonder he’s running low.

  Largo set down the morphia so that Rainer would know it was available if he needed more. But the moment he let go of the bottle, it slid to the edge of the table and Largo had to grab it before it fell. He tried to set it down two more times before both men laughed and he had to put the bottle back in his pocket.