Richard Kadrey - The Grand Dark

Harper Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2019

Copyright © Richard Kadrey 2019

Cover design by Jeanne Reina © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover illustration © Will Staehle and Shutterstock.com

Richard Kadrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008288853

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008288860

Version: 2019-05-17

To Drexel and Conan,

both of whom should have been

around a lot longer

There were a few short, wonderful years of euphoria when the slaughter was over. Of course, nothing had been settled and we knew it but, in its own way, watching the cataclysm hurtle toward us made the madness of the wild time even sweeter.

—Günther Harden, Cocaine and Bullets: My Lost Years

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

MAP

CHAPTER ONE

THE CITY. THE AIR.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SECRET FETE

CHAPTER THREE

A CURSED PLACE

CHAPTER FOUR

ABOVE THE CITY

CHAPTER FIVE

HINTERLAND

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE REFUGEE ROAD

CHAPTER EIGHT

EUGENICS

CHAPTER NINE

SERVANTS AND WARRIORS

CHAPTER TEN

AT THE STREET MARKET BY THE CROSSROADS

CHAPTER ELEVEN

XUXU: ARTISTIC MOVEMENT OR ACADEMIC PRANK?

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE WALKING WOUNDED

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE WONDERS OF THE SOUTH

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE SHAPE OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE CORRUPTER OF INNOCENCE, ACT 1

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

FOOTNOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY RICHARD KADREY

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

The great war was over, but everyone knew another war was coming and it drove the city a little mad.

Near dawn, Largo Moorden pedaled his bicycle through the nearly deserted streets of Lower Proszawa. It was exactly one week since his twenty-first birthday. Fog from the nearby bay and smoke from the armaments factory left the center of the city looking like a flat, ashen mirage. As Largo sped over the Ore Bridge, the edges of Gothic office buildings, dwellings, and cafés coalesced into view. Streetcars gliding atop silent magnetic tracks in the street and above, old church spires—shadowy outlines a second before—solidified and were gone.

At the bottom of the bridge, where Krähe Vale crossed Tombstrasse, a line of Blind Mara delivery automata sat waiting for the crossing signal to change. Some of the larger contraptions—the Black Widows carrying machine parts for the factory—resembled wrought iron spiders the size of pushcarts, while the little tea and breakfast Maras were wooden bread boxes decorated with wings and carvings of flying women. Largo was tempted to veer into the line of machines and kick over one or two of the smaller ones. He knew that someday soon the Maras were going to put human couriers like him out of business. Each time he thought about it, a little wave of panic bubbled up from his stomach because, aside from a strong set of legs, the only things Largo possessed that were worth money were his bicycle and an encyclopedic knowledge of every street and alley in the city.

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.