Читать книгу The Grand Dark онлайн | страница 28

It was winter and his breath steamed in the damp air. Largo ran to find Heinrich, who, he knew, would be by the stables, where the children often played. When he arrived, Largo found Heinrich surrounded by a gang of older boys from the Green. Largo crouched behind one of the stable doors so they wouldn’t see him, and was frozen there as the scene reminded him of the same one his father had endured. One of the gang demanded that Heinrich give them his heavy winter coat, and after some shoving and punching, he did it. Once they had the coat, he tried to run, but one of the boys hit him with a chain. He continued to beat Heinrich as the other boys kicked and hit him with pipes they’d hidden under their clothes. Once the gang had run off—and only then—had Largo crept from the stable to his friend’s side.

Heinrich lay in a pool of sticky blood. There was a crack in his forehead where part of his skull had caved in. Largo shook him and, stupidly, yelled his name. Across the road from the stables was a stand of withered trees, and the gang that had beaten Heinrich had been there, well within earshot. They came racing out, heading straight for him. Though Largo was small, he’d always been a fast runner. He darted away from the stables into Haxan Green’s back alleys and side roads. The boys chased him for what seemed like hours, but Largo kept ahead of them, ducking through basements, out through coal chutes, and doubling back on himself through the complex web of streets.

The sun had been going down when he finally managed to get home. Luckily, his mother hadn’t returned from the market yet. One of Largo’s chores in the evening was to start a fire in the old cast-iron oven so that she could cook them whatever she’d stolen that day. Instead, Largo hid in his room scouring Heinrich’s blood off his hands in a washbasin. After that, he didn’t fight when his mother told him to stay inside. He instead spent his time with old maps of Lower Proszawa he found in the attic, tracing the routes he’d taken on rides with his father and learning by heart the layout of the brilliant city, formulizing his paths of escape but also dreaming of life on those other streets.