Richard Kadrey - The Grand Dark

While the theater went through renovations, Una’s theater troupe performed in the nearby ruins of bombed-out buildings, giving the productions a level of verisimilitude never before seen in the city. Even with the area’s unsavory reputation, the plays brought in viewers from all over Lower Proszawa, and the theater was a success from its early days.

There is one question that certain critics and conspiracy theorists always come back to when discussing Una Herzog: Where did her puppets originate? No other theater in the city had them and few people had seen similar appliances outside of the military and large corporations such as Schöne Maschinen. Whatever the truth, the strange stories swirling around Una have only enhanced her enigmatic reputation and added to the otherworldly luster of the Theater of the Grand Darkness.

The Mara cruised them past bright cafés, restaurants, and dance halls. The music was frantic, the crowds laughing and boisterous. Though they were moving through Kromium, Largo knew that the streets in Little Shambles were just as wild. It had been this way since soon after the armistice was signed, an endless frantic party.

Largo frowned when he saw Petersen’s home. It was nothing more than a large but old-fashioned Imperial mansion—a great granite-and-marble box meant to show off old money. He expected more from an art patron.

Remy paid for the cab and Largo held the door for her. He could hear music, and shadows flitted by the bright windows. “What a mausoleum,” he said.

“What?” said Remy, adjusting her hair in the cab’s side mirror.

“The house. I didn’t expect your friend to live in such a dull old place. It’s not a home. It’s a bank vault.”

“If it were a bank vault he might have made it himself. His family supplies most of the steel to the government so they can make the little bombs and tanks they’re so fond of.”

“I suppose rich codgers like that have to keep up appearances,” Largo said. He turned to Remy. “Which makes you and your friends his attempt at radicalism. At least he has good taste in vices.”

Remy kissed her index finger and pressed it to Largo’s lips. “I’m your vice, dear. As for Petersen, I’m here to drink his champagne and smile prettily so he’ll shower more of those lovely war profits on us poor, deluded artists.”

She looped her arm around Largo’s as they went up the long walkway to the mansion. Maybe it was the morphia wearing off, but Largo’s self-consciousness returned. He held his free arm straight at his side, hoping that the holes in the elbow wouldn’t show. This would be so much easier, he thought, if he really were a failed poet or an aspiring musician. He wasn’t even sure he could lie well enough to pass himself off as either to justify his shabby clothes. The best he could hope for was that everyone would already be so drunk and drugged that it wouldn’t matter what he said.

A tall servant Mara, like the one in Empyrean, greeted them at the door.

“Lovely to see you,” it said, and ushered them inside. Seeing the automaton did nothing to improve Largo’s mood. Still, he forced himself to smile. The last thing he wanted to do was let Remy down in front of these people.

A large Proszawan flag on the wall directly across from the front door caught Largo’s eye. He supposed it was there to signal patriotism during uncertain times, but festooned as it was with balloons and tinsel, the flag looked more like something that would be up in the back of the Grand Dark as a joke. Next to the flag was a winding marble staircase lined with ancient tapestries and flowers in golden pots. Below that was a white grand piano. A man in a tuxedo played something light and fast, but Largo couldn’t pick out a melody over the sound of an amplified gramophone in the next room. Remy took his hand and led him inside.

The living room was enormous, the largest Largo had ever seen. The ceiling was two stories high and the large windows overlooking Heldenblut Bay were each a single pane of flawless glass. Almost everything in the room was white, except for the sofa and chairs, which were a vivid crimson.

The room was crowded with guests and heavy with smoke. Young couples in tuxedos and evening gowns and older men with waxed mustaches mixed easily with artists in clothes that were no better than Largo’s. However, he noted that the artists were comfortable and wore their garb stylishly. Seeing the shabby artists made Largo feel better and more determined to relax and at least appear at home in his rags.

Remy waved to a group of about eight people across the room. She tugged Largo to an oversize chaise longue where Lucie, another performer from the Grand Dark, had fallen asleep on her side holding a full flute of champagne that, miraculously, hadn’t spilled. Remy sat down next to Lucie and pulled Largo down beside her. She reached across the sleeping woman and gently plucked the champagne from her hand. “Lucie won’t mind,” Remy said, and downed the whole glass.

Her artist friends, reclining on the floor atop pillows and draped on the sofa, laughed. Largo recognized Enki Helm, the blind painter who worked in the absurdist Xuxu style more, Largo suspected, out of luck than talent. There was Bianca, an aspiring opera singer whom Largo liked and who—famously—was discovered while singing for pennies in the streets. Baumann was there too. Of course he’s here. He was a young up-and-coming film actor so handsome that Largo wanted to slap him. Instead, he smiled at them all and they raised glasses or nodded in response.

“Where have you been, Remy?” said Baumann, not even acknowledging Largo sitting beside her. “The evening couldn’t properly start without you.”

Remy said, “I could say that I was working, but really I was waiting until you were done with your boring stories about which society ladies you’re sleeping with.”

Baumann sat up in feigned indignation. “My affairs are never boring, and my stories even less so.”

“That depends on how many times you’ve heard them,” said Bianca. “Really, you must bed either more of these old fraus or fewer more-interesting ones.”

“Does anyone else have love advice for me?” said Baumann. “How about you, Largo? You’ve charmed lovely Remy here. What’s your secret?”

Largo froze. He couldn’t think of a thing to say to the bright and witty group. Luckily, before his silence became awkward, he was saved by a Mara that approached the group with more champagne. During the minute or so it took for everyone to get a glass, Largo had time to think. “I’m just the right size,” he said.

“What does that mean?” said Enki.

“For her to dress.”

Remy laughed, spilling champagne onto her lap. She took a napkin lodged under Lucie’s arm and wiped herself off, saying, “It’s true. He is the absolutely perfect size. Do you like his shirt? It belongs to Blixa Konstantin, the tragic victim in our second show.”

Bianca gave a snorting laugh and fell against Enki. Hanna, a biological artist who designed custom chimeras for Lower Proszawa’s richest families, tugged open Largo’s jacket and ran her fingers teasingly over the shirt.

“It’s lovely material,” she said. “If you were to die tonight you’d make a gorgeous cadaver.”

Remy took Hanna’s hand away from Largo’s chest and placed it on her own. “And what about me? Would you sneak a feel of my corpse?”

Hanna placed another hand on Remy’s breasts. She said, “Alive or dead, you always look good enough to eat.” Remy gave her a dainty kiss on the cheek.

“Already on to necrophilia, are we?” said Strum, the poet. “Or is it cannibalism? And barely eleven o’clock.”