Low Town: A novel - Softcover

Polansky, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307743349 ISBN 13: 9780307743343

Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Drug dealers, hustlers, brothels, dirty politics, corrupt cops . . . and sorcery. Welcome to Low Town.

In the forgotten back alleys and flophouses that lie in the shadows of Rigus, the finest city of the Thirteen Lands, you will find Low Town. It is an ugly place, and its cham­pion is an ugly man. Disgraced intelligence agent. Forgotten war hero. Independent drug dealer. After a fall from grace five years ago, a man known as the Warden leads a life of crime, addicted to cheap violence and expensive drugs. Every day is a constant hustle to find new customers and protect his turf from low-life competition like Tancred the Harelip and Ling Chi, the enigmatic crime lord of the heathens.

The Warden’s life of drugged iniquity is shaken by his dis­covery of a murdered child down a dead-end street . . . set­ting him on a collision course with the life he left behind. As a former agent with Black House—the secret police—he knows better than anyone that murder in Low Town is an everyday thing, the kind of crime that doesn’t get investi­gated. To protect his home, he will take part in a dangerous game of deception between underworld bosses and the psy­chotic head of Black House, but the truth is far darker than he imagines. In Low Town, no one can be trusted.

Daniel Polansky has crafted a thrilling novel steeped in noir sensibilities and relentless action, and set in an original world of stunning imagination, leading to a gut-wrenching, unforeseeable conclusion. Low Town is an attention-grabbing debut that will leave readers riveted . . . and hun­gry for more.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DANIEL POLANSKY is from Baltimore, Maryland. Low Town is his first novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1


 
In the opening days of the Great War, on the battle- fields of Apres and Ives, I acquired the ability to abandon slumber with the flutter of an eyelid. It was a necessary adaptation, as heavy sleepers were likely to come to greeted by the sight of a Dren commando with a trench blade. It’s a vestige of my past I’d rather lose, all things considered. Rare is the situation that requires the full range of one’s perceptions, and in general the world is improved by being only dimly visible.
 
Case in point—my room was the sort of place best viewed half asleep or in a drunken stupor. Late autumn light filtered through my dusty window and made the interior, already only a few small steps from squalor, look still less prepossessing. Even by my standards the place was a dump, and my standards are low. A worn dresser and a chipped table set were the only furnishings that accompanied the bed, and a veneer of grime covered the floor and walls. I passed water in the bedpan and threw the waste into the alley below.
 
Low Town was in full stream, the streets echoing with the screech of fish hags advertising the day’s catch to porters carrying crates north into the Old City. At the market a few blocks east merchants sold underweight goods to middlemen for clipped copper, while down Light Street guttersnipes kept drawn-dagger eyes out for an unwary vendor or a blue blood too far from home. In the corners and the alleys the working boys kept up the same cries as the fish hags, though they spoke lower and charged more. Worn streetwalkers pulling the early shift waved tepid come-ons at passersby, hoping to pad their faded charms into one more day’s worth of liquor or choke. The dangerous men were mostly still asleep, their blades sheathed next to their beds. The really dangerous men had been up for hours, and their quills and ledgers were getting hard use.
 
I grabbed a hand mirror off the floor and held it at arm’s length. Under the best of circumstances, perfumed and manicured, I am an ugly man. A lumpen nose dripped below overlarge eyes, a mouth like a knife wound set off center. Enhancing my natural charms are an accumulation of scars that would shame a masochist, an off-color line running up my cheek from where an artillery shard had come a few inches from laying me out, the torn flesh of my left ear testifying to a street brawl where I’d taken second place.
 
A vial of pixie’s breath winked good morning from the worn wood of my table. I uncorked it and took a whiff. Cloyingly sweet vapors filled my nostrils, followed closely by a familiar buzzing in my ears. I shook the bottle—half empty, it had gone quick. Pulling on my shirt and boots, I grabbed my satchel from beneath the bed and walked downstairs to greet the late morn.
 
The Staggering Earl was quiet this time of day, and the main room was dominated by the mammoth figure behind the bar, Adolphus the grand, co-owner and publican. Despite his height—he was a full head taller than my own six feet—his casklike torso was so wide as to give the impression of corpulence, though a closer examination would reveal the balance of his bulk as muscle. Adolphus had been an ugly man before a Dren bolt claimed his left eye, but the black cloth he wore across the socket and the scar that tore down his pockmarked cheek hadn’t improved things. Between that and his slow stare he seemed a thug and a dullard, and though he was neither of those things this impression tended to keep folk civil in his presence.
 
He was cleaning the bar and pontificating on the injustices of the day to one of our more sober patrons. It was a popular pastime. I sidled over and took the cleanest seat.
 
Adolphus was too dedicated to solving the problems of the nation to allow common courtesy to intrude on his monologue, so by way of greeting he offered me a perfunctory nod. “And no doubt you’d agree with me, having seen what a failure his lordship has been as High Chancellor. Let him go back to stringing up rebels as Executor of the Throne’s Justice—at least that was a task he was fit for.”
 
“I’m not really sure what you’re talking about, Adolphus. Everyone knows our leaders are as wise as they are honest. Now is it too late for a plate of eggs?”
 
He turned his head toward the kitchen and growled, “Woman! Eggs!” Aside completed, he circled back on his captive drunk. “Five years I gave the Crown, five years and my eye.” Adolphus liked to slip his injury into casual conversation, apparently operating under the impression that it was inconspicuous. “Five years neck deep in shit and filth, five years while the bankers and nobles back home got rich on my blood. A half ochre a month ain’t much for five years of that, but it’s mine and I’ll be damned if I let ’em forget it.” He dropped his rag on the counter and pointed a sausage-sized finger at me in hopes of encouragement. “It’s your half ochre too, my friend. You’re awfully quiet for a man forgotten by his Queen and country.”
 
What was there to say? The High Chancellor would do what he wished, and the rantings of a one-eyed ex-pikeman were unlikely to do much to persuade him. I grunted noncommittally. Adeline, as quiet and small as her husband was the opposite, came out of the kitchen and offered me a plate with a tiny smile. I took the first and returned the second. Adolphus kept up his rambling, but I ignored him and turned to the eggs. We’d been friends for a decade and a half because I forgave him his garrulousness and he forgave me my taciturnity.
 
The breath was kicking in. I could feel my nerves getting steadier, my eyesight sharper. I shoveled the baked black bread into my mouth and considered the day’s work. I needed to visit my man in the customs office—he’d promised me clean passes a fortnight ago but had yet to make good. Beyond that there were the usual rounds to the distributors who bought from me, shady bartenders and small-time dealers, pimps and pushers. Come evening, I needed to stop by a party up toward Kor’s Heights—I had told Yancey the Rhymer I’d check in before his evening set.
 
Back on the main stage the drunk found a chance to interrupt Adolphus’s torrent of quasi-coherent civic slander. “You hear any- thing about the little one?”
 
The giant and I exchanged unhappy glances. “The hoax are useless,” Adolphus said, and went back to cleaning. Three days earlier the child of a dockworker had gone missing from an alley outside her house. Since then “Little Tara” had become something of a cause célèbre for the people of Low Town. The fishermen’s guild had put out a reward, the Church of Prachetas had offered a service in her honor, even the guard had set aside their lethargy for a few hours to bang on doors and look down wells. Nothing had been found, and seventy-two hours was a long time for a child to stay lost in the most crowded square mile in the Empire. Sakra willing, the girl was fine, but I wouldn’t bet my unpaid half ochre on it.
 
The reminder of the child provoked the minor miracle of shut- ting Adolphus’s mouth. I finished my breakfast in silence, then pushed my plate aside and rose to my feet. “Hold any messages—I’ll be back after dark.”
 
Adolphus waved me out.
 
I exited into the chaos of Low Town at midday and began my walk east toward the docks. Leaning against the wall a block past the Earl, rolling a cigarette and glowering, I spotted all five and a half feet of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0307743349
• ISBN 13: 9780307743343
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: SC; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/; ; CL MODESTO LAFUENTE 41; Madrid; Madrid; Spanien