LITMIR.BIZ

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raised an eyebrow at him. “About your funeral? Herr Branca has it planned out. We’ll all be attending.”

      “I need some morphia,” Largo whispered.

      Margit looked around. “I don’t have any with me. Maybe at lunch. Do you have cash?”

      “I will by then.”

      “See that you do,” she said sternly. “I can’t give credit anymore. Even to you.”

      “Don’t worry. I’ll have money.”

      “At lunch then.” She turned and went to her bicycle. Largo looked at the door to Herr Branca’s office, took a breath, and went inside.

      Branca glanced up at him when Largo entered the room. He made a great show of capping his pen and setting it down on his desk. “Thank you for joining us this morning, Largo.”

      “I’m very sorry I’m late.”

      “I thought we discussed this. As chief courier, you have to be an example to the others.”

      “Yes sir. I understand, but the bullocks, that is, the police wouldn’t let me go.”

      Branca frowned and came around his desk. “The police? What did you do to attract their attention?”

      “Nothing. There was an incident in the butchers’ quarter and I was trying to leave.”

      “What kind of incident?”

      “A man was ill. It might have been the Drops.”

      “How dramatic,” said Branca. “Why did the police think it was necessary to question you?”

      “They accused me of being the man’s accomplice.”

      Branca stepped closer to Largo. “Accomplice? Accomplice in what?”

      “They said he was an anarchist.”

      Branca opened his eyes wider. “And are you?”

      “Sir?”

      “Are you an anarchist?”

      “Of course not.”

      “That’s good,” said Branca. “I can’t abide seditionists and neither can the company.”

      “There’s something else …,” said Largo.

      “Well?”

      “I’m afraid they might come to talk to you.”

      “Here? You told them where you worked?”

      “I had no choice.”

      “I see. I assume they searched you? What did the officers say when they discovered your knife?”

      Reluctantly, Largo said, “I didn’t have it.”

      Branca looked at the ceiling. “Where is it?” he said.

      “At home.”

      “I see. You didn’t go home last night?”

      “No. I was with a sick friend.”

      “Of course,” said Branca. He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Perhaps it was a lucky thing, this sick friend of yours. If the police suspected you of a crime they might have misconstrued the knife.”

      “Do you think it’s safe for me to continue wearing it?”

      Branca clasped his hands behind his back. “You must make a choice. Which is the greater fear: the police, or losing your job and possibly your life?”

      “I want to keep my job. And my life.”

      “A wise choice. See that you don’t forget the knife again.”

      “I won’t.”

      “All right. Enough of this nonsense. You have deliveries to make,” said Branca. He went back behind his desk.

      “Then I’m not fired?”

      “We’ll see. I’m not happy about the police incident, but I applaud you for your honesty.” Branca looked at a few parcels stacked on a battered wooden worktable. He picked up one and weighed it in his hands. “This will do nicely. I suspect you’ll wish you had your knife with you this morning.”

      Largo looked at the package and wondered what was inside. He tried reading the address, but it was too far away. Is the old bastard just giving me a hard time or sending me off to get killed? he wondered. “I’ll get the knife during my lunch break,” he said.

      “Another wise choice,” said Branca. “Tell me, does this sick friend of yours have any other friends?”

      “Yes. Many.”

      “Then perhaps one of them can visit tonight so that you won’t be tardy tomorrow.”

      Largo shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It won’t be necessary. She’s much better now.”

      “I’m nearly fainting in delight,” said Branca, handing the parcel and an old shoulder bag to Largo, who took them and started out.

      “Largo,” said Herr Branca.

      He stopped and turned around.

      “I approve of your shirt. It’s good to see you dressing a bit more professionally. I should have the money for your clothing stipend tomorrow. That’s all.”

      Largo nodded to Branca and went out to his bicycle. He was excited at the prospect of having some decent clothes to wear. However, when he read the address on the parcel the excitement evaporated.

       I was right.

       The prick wants me dead.

       HINTERLAND

      Machtviertel had never really been a neighborhood, merely a collection of coal power plants, warehouses, and rail hubs. The plants produced power for much of the western half of Lower Proszawa, but its location had been chosen primarily to provide an endless source of heat and electricity for the armaments factory. However, when it switched to plazma power many years earlier, that left a surplus of coal in the district and more workers than it needed. Yet no one lost their job. The government kept the trains coming and let the coal pile up. They calculated that it was better to pay the workers than let them sit idle. And so the coal continued to grow. The coal continued to burn. And thus Machtviertel became a walled city within the city, ringed by a moat of filth.

      Smoke from the coal towers blanketed the district in perpetual darkness. A thick crust of carbonous dust covered everything. Around the active buildings, workers left black footprints in their wake. By the warehouses where trains offloaded their cargo, there were great ebony dunes that turned to thick mud in the rain. Machtviertel had a hellish reputation in the city, partly for the environment, but also for its inhabitants. People lived in the older, disused power stations and warehouses. There was a saying in Lower Proszawa: “Those who live in Machtviertel are insane. But those who seek them out are madmen.”

       CHAPTER SIX

      It took Largo almost an hour to bicycle there. He stopped beside the largest of the abandoned power plants, commonly known as the Black Palace. When it had been built, the dynamos’ home was a showcase for Lower Proszawa’s strength and ingenuity. The smokestacks rose one hundred feet into the air and the stonework on the front of the plant had been carved into old mythological scenes. At the top, giants pulled iron from the ground and molded it with volcanic fire. Lower and at street level, smaller spirits and artisans molded the iron into metal towers and wires, spreading light and power to a darkened land. Now, however, the Black Palace was a crumbling ebony

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