Читать книгу The Grand Dark онлайн | страница 3

To Largo’s surprise, while the crossing signal still read HALT, one of the little winged bread boxes crept past the other Maras and whirred quietly across Krähe Vale. With a mechanical rumble, a squat, armored juggernaut carrying soldiers sped around a corner and crushed the bread box under its metal treads without slowing. All that was left of the little carrier were a small motor sputtering blue sparks, splinters, and a flattened sandwich. Largo hadn’t eaten for a day and the sight of food made him hungry. Still, he smiled. Indeed, the Blind Maras would put him out of business one day, but not today, and not for many days to come. When the signal clicked to PROCEED he guided his bicycle through the remains left in the intersection as the rest of the automata split up, carrying their goods all over Lower Proszawa.

The clock over the Great Triumphal Square—renamed, perhaps a touch optimistically, after the war—showed that it was just a few minutes before six. Largo had spent far too long in bed that morning with Remy, his lover, but it was so hard to leave her. He bent over his handlebars, pedaling faster, knowing all too well that being late at the beginning of the work week was a good way to have Herr Branca snapping at you until Friday. Worse, it could result in a humiliating dismissal.

The edges of the plaza were coming to life. Bakers laid out loaves and pies in the windows of their shops. The newspaper kiosk attendant by the underground tram station cut open piles of tabloid yellowsheets full of political intrigue and reports of the previous night’s murders. All-night revelers wandered through the square, still jubilantly drunk from the evening before. Along the gutters, purring piglike chimeras cleared the street trash by devouring it.

Beyond the edges of the plaza, prostitutes flirted with men in strange masks made of steel and leather—Iron Dandies, they were called, but never where they could hear it. They were war veterans considered too disfigured to be glimpsed by the city’s ordinary citizens—Largo among them. He’d heard that if you stared too long at a Dandy he’d rip his mask off, giving you a good look at his mutilated face. Seeing a Dandy that way was considered bad luck.