The Grand Dark. Richard Kadrey

moment later an unshaven man wearing small wire-rimmed glasses opened the door a crack, leaving the lock chain across the gap. “Who the fuck are you?” he said.

      Largo took the box from his shoulder bag and said, “Delivery,” in a flat, indifferent voice. Saying anything more might invite suspicion. Speaking any other way definitely would.

      The unshaven man tilted his head, taking in Largo and the box. His hair was gray and thin. There were scabs on his forehead near his hairline. It looked like he’d been picking at them. “Where’s the other one?” he said.

      It took Largo a second to understand that the man meant König. He shook his head. “He doesn’t work there anymore. It’s just me now.”

      “Huh,” said the man. “You’re a bit pretty for this neck of the woods.”

      Largo straightened, feeling the knife under his jacket. His sense for the mores of the old neighborhood was coming back to him—as was his hatred for them. He knew what would come next from the scabby man and how he was supposed to respond, and the cheap game brought back frightening childhood memories. He said, “Fuck off, my fine brother. I grew up by the canal on Berber Lane.”

      “Did you now? You’ve cleaned up since then.”

      “My compliments to your spectacles.” Largo loathed the ritual posturing of the Green, and he’d hoped never to have to do it again. Yet his promotion had brought him straight back to this awful place. It wasn’t an auspicious beginning for the new position. He pressed on, holding up the little box and waggling it up and down. “Do you want it or not? I don’t have all day.”

      The man was starting to say something else when a piercing scream came from somewhere in the flat. “Wait here,” he said, and closed the door. Standing in the hall, Largo heard more screams through the door. Questions and images flowed through his head. Had the scabby man kidnapped someone? Was someone—a woman, he was sure it was a woman—being beaten in another room? Or was she dying in childbirth? The next scream wasn’t just a wail, there were words: “Now! Now! Now! Now!” Largo dug his heel into a splintered part of the floor as it dawned on him that he recognized the screams.

      It was someone deep in the throes of morphia withdrawal.

      He looked at the box. There weren’t any markings to indicate its origin. He wondered if it was medication from a hospital. He was sure Herr Branca wouldn’t send him out on his first delivery with something illicit. It must be medicine, he told himself.

      A second later, the flat’s door opened again. The man stuck out a grimy-black hand and grabbed for the box. “Give it to me.”

      Largo took a step back out of his reach. He got the pad and pencil from his bag. “You have to sign for it,” he said.

      The man’s hand dropped a few inches. “Please. I need it now.”

      “Not until you sign.” Largo knew the rules of the Green. If he backed down now it would be a sign of weakness, and if anyone was watching the exchange it would put him in danger. He gave the man a hard look even as he felt a few beads of perspiration on his forehead.

      “Wait,” said the scabby man. He closed the door for a moment and when he opened it again there was a pile of coins in his hand, including two small gold ones. “Take it.”

      “Are you trying to bribe me?” he said, a little surprised by the offer.

      There was another scream from the flat. Largo felt like a heel for continuing to play the game, but he knew he had to.

      “It’s a tip,” said the man. “For your trouble and my earlier rudeness. Only you have to sign the form.”

      Largo looked at the money. Whether it was a bribe or a tip, it was the largest amount of money anyone had ever offered him for a delivery.

      There was another scream, this one more violent than the others. Largo grabbed the coins from the man’s hand and gave him the package. “Good luck,” he said, but the man had already slammed the door shut. Largo put the coins in his pocket and looked at the delivery form. There was no name on it, just the address.

       Perfect. My first delivery as chief courier and I’ve already committed an offense that could get me fired.

      With no other choice in the matter, Largo signed the form Franz Negovan, the name of a boy he’d known growing up in the Green. He was anxious and angry as he left the building, thinking that if all of his deliveries were like this, he wouldn’t last long as chief courier.

      Downstairs, as he expected, the children who’d been playing war earlier were clustered around his bicycle. A dirty blond girl of about ten sat on the seat and looked at him with eyes that were forty years older and harder.

      “We watched it for you,” she said. “Made sure nothing bad happened to it.”

      Largo had been through similar shakedowns before and had known this other ritual of the Green was coming. When he’d been in similar situations as a child, when he’d had little to give or trade, the result was usually a beating or his running as fast as he could—and his bicycle being stolen or destroyed. These were only children, but in the Green, age didn’t mitigate danger. Fortunately, now things were different. He hoped.

      He reached into his pants pocket and came up with some of the coins he’d brought from home and a few from the gray-haired man—all silver. He’d put the gold ones in his jacket. He said, “And you did an excellent job, I see. Here’s something for your trouble.”

      The girl accepted the coins and counted them carefully. When she was done she nodded to the other kids and hopped off Largo’s bicycle. As soon as they were across the yard, the girl distributed the money to the other children and the war game resumed without missing a beat. Largo unchained his bicycle, dropped the lock into his shoulder bag, and pedaled slowly back down the route he’d taken earlier. As much as he wanted to speed away from the misery and memories of the Green, he kept to a moderate pace. To go faster was something else that he knew would show weakness. There were many unspoken but universally understood rules in the district, and he’d learned them all the hard way. The one odd thought that struck him as he pedaled away was that if, as a younger man, he hadn’t left Haxan Green, a hard-eyed little girl like the one at the tower block could have been his daughter. It made him think of his own family.

      Largo had grown up with his parents in a decaying mansion by the canal. His father had a wagon and a sick horse that he’d probably bought under the table from an army stable. Father rode the wagon all over Lower Proszawa looking for scrap to sell and, like Largo, making the occasional delivery. Largo’s mother panhandled and picked pockets in the street markets around the Green. Largo had been a pale, scrawny child, and his parents had been very protective of him. Maybe too much, he thought now. He was always cautious and nervous around confrontations. Even his encounter with the scabby man, as well as he’d handled it, left him feeling slightly ill, which was humiliating.

      Because no one had been home during the day to take care of him, Largo went with his father on his rounds. His mother worried about taking a small boy to some districts even more dangerous than Haxan Green—kidnappings were frequent and children were often sold off to fishing ships along the bay or pimps in the city. To protect the boy during his rounds, his father put him in a wooden crate up front in the wagon. It was through the air holes in the side of the crate that Largo first learned Lower Proszawa’s winding streets and alleys.

      Later, he would become an expert while running from gangs wielding chains and knives or bullocks looking for his parents. Of course, he’d never admitted any of this to Remy. It was too embarassing. Besides, she talked as little about her family as Largo did about his, and it made him wonder if she had secrets too.

      On his way back to the office, Largo was delayed by a caravan of double-decker party Autobuses. The city’s merrymakers always grew more boisterous in the days before the anniversary of the end of the Great War. Buses and street parties were some of the few places where the upper and lower classes mingled easily because each had the same