<p>The Angel Islington was dreaming A dark and rushing dream.</p>
<p>Huge waves were rising and crashing over the city; the night sky was rent with forks of white lightning from horizon to horizon; the rain fell in sheets, the city trembled; fires started near the great amphitheater and spread, quickly, through the city, defying the storm. Islington was looking down on everything from far above, hovering in the air, as one hovers in dreams, as it had hovered in those long-ago times. There were buildings in that city that were many hundreds of feet high, but they were dwarfed by the gray-green Atlantic waves. And then it heard the people scream. There were four million people in Atlantis, and, in its dream, Islington heard each and every one of their voices, clearly and distinctly, as, one by one, they screamed, and choked, and burned, and drowned, and died. The waves swallowed the city, and, at length, the storm subsided.</p>
<p>When dawn broke, there was nothing to indicate there had ever been a city there at all, let alone an island twice the size of Greece. Nothing of Atlantis remained but the water-bloated bodies of children, of women and of men, floating on the cold morning waves; bodies the seagulls, gray and white, were already beginning to pick with their cruel beaks.</p>
<p>And Islington woke. It was standing in the octagon of iron pillars, beside the great black door, made of flint and tarnished silver. It touched the cold smoothness of the flint, the chill of the metal. It touched the table. It ran its finger lightly along the walls. Then it walked through chambers of its hall, one after another, touching things, as if to reassure itself of their existence, to convince itself it was here, and now. It followed patterns, as it walked, smooth channels its bare feet had worn, over the centuries, in the rock. It stopped when it reached the rock-pool, kneeling down and letting its fingers touch the cold water.</p>
<p>There was a ripple in the water, which began with its fingertips and echoed out to the edges. The reflections in the pool, of the angel itself and the candle flames that framed it, shimmered and transformed. It was looking into a cellar. The angel concentrated for a moment; it could hear a telephone ring, somewhere in the distance.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup walked over to the telephone and picked up the receiver. He looked rather pleased with himself. "Croup and Vandemar," he barked. "Eyes gouged, noses twisted, tongues pierced, chins cleft, throats slit."</p>
<p>"Mister Croup," said the angel. "They now have the key. I want the girl called Door kept safe on her journey back to me."</p>
<p>"Safe," repeated Mr. Croup, unimpressed. "Right. We'll keep her safe. What a marvelous idea-such originality. Positively astounding. Most people would be content with hiring assassins for executions, sly killings, vile murders even. Only you, sir, would hire the two finest cutthroats in the whole of space and time, and then ask them to ensure a little girl remains unharmed."</p>
<p>"See that she is, Mister Croup. Nothing is to hurt her. Permit her to be harmed in any way and you will displease me deeply. Do you understand?"</p>
<p>"Yes." Croup shifted uncomfortably.</p>
<p>"Is there anything else?" asked Islington.</p>
<p>"Yes, sir." Croup coughed into his hand. "Do you remember the marquis de Carabas?"</p>
<p>"Of course."</p>
<p>"I take it that there is no such similar prohibition on extirpating the marquis…?"</p>
<p>"Not any longer," said the angel. "Just protect the girl."</p>
<p>It removed its hand from the water. The reflection was now merely candle flames and an angel of astonishing, perfectly androgynous, beauty. The Angel Islington stood up and returned to its inner chambers to await its eventual visitors.</p>
<p>"What did he say?" asked Mr. Vandemar.</p>
<p>"He said, Mister Vandemar, that we should feel free to do whatsoever we wished to the marquis."</p>
<p>Vandemar nodded. "Did that include killing him painfully?" he asked, a little pedantically.</p>
<p>"Yes, Mister Vandemar, I would say, on reflection, it did."</p>
<p>"That's good, Mister Croup. Wouldn't like another telling-off." He looked up at the bloody thing hanging above them. "Better get rid of the body, then."</p>
<p>One of the front wheels on the supermarket shopping cart squeaked, and it had a pronounced tendency to pull to the left. Mr. Vandemar had found the metal cart on a grassed-in traffic island, near the hospital. It was, he had realized on seeing it, just the right size for moving a body. He could have carried the body, of course; but then it could have bled on him, or dripped other fluids. And he only had the one suit. So he pushed the shopping cart with the body of the marquis de Carabas in it through the storm drain, and the cart went squee, squee and pulled to the left. He wished that Mr. Croup would push the shopping cart, for a change. But Mr. Croup was talking. "You know, Mister Vandemar," he was saying, "I am currently too overjoyed, too delighted, not to mention too utterly and illimitably ecstatic, to grouse, gripe or grumble-having finally been permitted to do what we do best-'"</p>
<p>Mr. Vandemar negotiated a particularly awkward corner. "Kill someone, you mean?" he asked.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup beamed. "Kill someone I mean indeed, Mister Vandemar, brave soul, glittering, noble fellow. However, by now you must have sensed a lurking 'but' skulking beneath my happy, blithe, and chipper exterior. A minuscule vexation, like the teeniest lump of raw liver sticking to the inside of my boot. You must, I have no doubt, be saying to yourself, 'All is not well in Mister Croup's breast. I shall induce him to unburden himself to me.' "</p>
<p>Mr. Vandemar pondered this while he forced open the round iron door between the storm drain and the sewer and clambered through. Then he manhandled the wire cart with the marquis de Carabas's body through the doorway. And then, more or less certain that he had been thinking nothing of the sort, he said, "No."</p>
<p>Mr. Croup ignored this, and continued, "… And, were I then, in response to your pleadings, to divulge to you what vexes me, I would confess that my soul is irked by the necessity to hide our light under a bushel. We should be hanging the former marquis's sad remains from the highest gibbet in London Below. Not tossing it away, like a used… " He paused, searching for the exact simile.</p>
<p>"Rat?" suggested Mr. Vandemar. "Thumbscrew? Spleen?" Squee, squee went the wheels of the shopping cart.</p>
<p>"Ah well," said Mr. Croup. In front of them was a deep channel of brown water. Drifting on the water's surface were off-white suds of foam, used condoms, and occasional fragments of toilet paper. Mr. Vandemar stopped the shopping cart. Mr. Croup leaned down and picked up the marquis's head by the hair, hissing into its dead ear, "The sooner this business is over and done with, the happier I'll be. There's other times and other places that would properly appreciate two pair of dab hands with the garrotting wire and the boning knife."</p>
<p>Then he stood up. "Goodnight, good marquis. Don't forget to write."</p>
<p>Mr. Vandemar tipped over the cart, and the marquis's corpse tumbled out and splashed into the brown water below them. And then, because he had come to dislike it intensely, Mr. Vandemar pushed the shopping cart into the sewer as well, and watched the current carry it away.</p>
<p>Then Mr. Croup held his lamp up high, and he stared out at the place in which they stood. "It is saddening to reflect," said Mr. Croup, "that there are folk walking the streets above who will never know the beauty of these sewers, Mister Vandemar. These red-brick cathedrals beneath their feet."</p>
<p>"Craftsmanship," agreed Mr. Vandemar.</p>
<p>They turned their backs on the brown water and made their way back into the tunnels. "With cities, as with people, Mister Vandemar," said Mr. Croup, fastidiously, "the condition of the bowels is all-important."</p>
<p>Door tied the key around her neck with a piece of string that she found in one of the pockets of her leather jacket. "That's not going to be safe," said Richard. The girl made a face at him. "Well," he said. "It's not."</p>
<p>She shrugged. "Okay," she said. "I'll get a chain for it when we get to the market." They were walking through a maze of caves, deep tunnels hacked from the limestone that seemed almost prehistoric.</p>
<p>Richard chuckled. "What's so funny?" Door asked.</p>
<p>He grinned. "I was just thinking of the expression on the marquis's face when we tell him we got the key from the friars without his help."</p>
<p>"I'm sure he'll have something sardonic to say about it," she said. "And then, back to the angel. By the 'long and dangerous way.' Whatever that is."</p>
<p>Richard admired the paintings on the cave walls. Russets and ochres and siennas outlined charging boars and fleeing gazelles, woolly mastodons and giant sloths: he imagined that the paintings had to be thousands of years old, but then they turned a corner, and he noticed that, in the same style, there were lorries, house cats, cars, and-markedly inferior to the other images, as if only glimpsed infrequently, and from a long way away-airplanes.</p>
<p>None of the paintings were very high off the ground. He wondered if the painters were a race of subterranean Neanderthal pygmies. It was as likely as anything else in this strange world. "So where is the next market?" he asked.</p>
<p>"No idea," said Door. "Hunter?"</p>
<p>Hunter slipped out of the shadows. "I don't know."</p>
<p>A small figure dashed past them, going back the way they had come. A few moments later another couple of tiny figures came toward them in fell pursuit. Hunter whipped out a hand as they passed, snagging a small boy by the ear. "Ow," he said, in the manner of small boys. "Let me go! She stole my paintbrush."</p>
<p>"That's right," said a piping voice from further down the corridor. "She did."</p>
<p>"I didn't," came an even higher and more piping voice, from even further down the corridor.</p>
<p>Hunter pointed to the paintings on the cave wall. "You did these?" she asked.</p>
<p>The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys. "Yeah," he said, truculently. "Some of them."</p>
<p>"Not bad," said Hunter. The boy glared at her.</p>
<p>"Where's the next Floating Market?" asked Door.</p>
<p>"Belfast," said the boy. "Tonight."</p>
<p>"Thanks," said Door. "Hope you get your paintbrush back. Let him go, Hunter."</p>
<p>Hunter let go of the boy's ear. He did not move. He looked her up and down, then made a face, to indicate that he was, without any question at all, unimpressed. "You're Hunter?" he asked. She smiled down at him, modestly. He sniffed. "You're the best bodyguard in the Underside?"</p>
<p>"So they tell me."</p>
<p>The boy reached one hand back and forward again, in one smooth movement. He stopped, puzzled, and opened his hand, examined his palm. Then he looked up at Hunter, confused. Hunter opened her hand to reveal a small switchblade with a wicked edge. She held it up, out of the boy's reach. He wrinkled his nose. "How'd you do that?"</p>
<p>"Scram," said Hunter. She closed the knife and tossed it back to the boy, who took off down the corridor without a backward glance, in pursuit of his paintbrush.</p>
<p>The body of the marquis de Carabas drifted east, through the deep sewer, face down.</p>
<p>London's sewers had begun their lives as rivers and streams, flowing north to south (and, south of the Thames, south to north) carrying garbage, animal carcasses, and the contents of chamber pots into the Thames, which would, for the most part, carry the offending substances out to sea. This system had more or less worked for many years, until, in 1858, the enormous volume of effluent produced by the people and industries of London, combined with a rather hot summer, produced a phenomenon known at the time as the Great Stink: the Thames itself had become an open sewer. People who could leave London, left it; the ones who stayed wrapped cloths doused in carbolic around their faces and tried not to breathe through their noses. Parliament was forced to recess early in 1858, and the following year it ordered that a programme of sewer-building begin. The thousands of miles of sewers that were built were constructed with a gentle slope from the west to the east, and, somewhere beyond Greenwich, they were pumped into the Thames Estuary, and the sewage was swept off into the North Sea. It was this journey that the body of the late marquis de Carabas was making, traveling west to east, toward the sunrise and the sewage works.</p>
<p>Rats on a high brick ledge, doing the things that rats do when no people are watching, saw the body go by. The largest of them, a big black male, chittered. A smaller brown female chittered back, then she leapt down from the ledge onto the marquis's back and rode it down the sewer a little way, sniffing at the hair and the coat, tasting the blood, and then, precariously, leaning over, and scrutinizing what could be seen of the face.</p>
<p>She hopped off the head into the filthy water and swam industriously to the side, where she clambered up the slippery brickwork. She hurried back a long a beam, and rejoined her companions.</p>
<p>"Belfast?" asked Richard.</p>
<p>Door smiled, impishly, and would say nothing more than, "You'll see," when he pressed her about it.</p>
<p>He changed his tack. "How do you know that kid was telling you the truth about the market?" he asked.</p>
<p>"It's not something anyone down here ever lies about. I… don't think we can lie about it." She paused. "The market's special."</p>
<p>"How did that kid know where it was?"</p>
<p>"Someone told him," said Hunter.</p>
<p>Richard brooded on this for a moment. "How did they know?"</p>
<p>"Someone told them," explained Door.</p>
<p>"But… " He wondered who chose the locations in the first place, how the knowledge was spread, trying to frame the question in such a way that he did not sound stupid.</p>
<p>A rich female voice asked from the darkness, "Hss. Any idea when the next market is?"</p>
<p>She stepped into the light. She wore silver jewelry, and her dark hair was perfectly coifed. She was very pale, and her long dress was jet black velvet. Richard knew immediately that he had seen her before, but it took him a few moments to place her: the first Floating Market, that was it-in Harrods. She had smiled at him.</p>
<p>"Tonight," said Hunter. "Belfast."</p>
<p>"Thank you," said the woman. She had the most amazing eyes, thought Richard. They were the color of foxgloves.</p>
<p>"I'll see you there," she said, and she looked at Richard as she said it. Then she looked away, a little shyly; she stepped into the shadows, and she was gone.</p>
<p>"Who was that?" asked Richard.</p>
<p>"They call themselves Velvets," said Door. "They sleep down here during the day, and walk the Up-world at night."</p>
<p>"Are they dangerous?" asked Richard.</p>
<p>"Everybody's dangerous," said Hunter.</p>
<p>"Look," said Richard. "Going back to the market. Who decides where it gets held, and when? And how do the first people find out where it's being held?" Hunter shrugged. "Door?" he asked.</p>
<p>"I've never thought about it." They turned a corner. Door held up her lamp. "Not bad at all," said Door.</p>
<p>"And fast, too," said Hunter. She touched the painting on the rock wall with her fingertip. The paint was still wet. It was a painting of Hunter and Door and Richard. It was not flattering.</p>
<p>The black rat entered the lair of the Golden deferentially, his head lowered, ears back. He crawled forward, squeeing and chittering.</p>
<p>The Golden had made their lair in a pile of bones. This pile of bones had once belonged to a woolly mammoth, back in the cold times when the great hairy beasts walked across the snowy tundra of the south of England as if, in the opinion of the Golden, they owned the place. This particular mammoth, at least, had been disabused of that idea rather thoroughly and quite terminally by the Golden.</p>
<p>The black rat made its obeisance at the base of the bone pile. Then he lay on his back with his throat exposed, closed his eyes, and waited. After a while a chittering from above told him that he could roll over.</p>
<p>One of the Golden crawled out of the mammoth skull, on top of the heap of bones. It crawled along the old ivory tusk, a golden-furred rat with copper-colored eyes, the size of a large house cat.</p>
<p>The black rat spoke. The Golden thought, briefly, and chattered an order. The black rat rolled on his back, exposing his throat again, for a moment. Then a twist and a wriggle, and he was on his way.</p>
<p>There had been Sewer Folk before the Great Stink, of course, living in the Elizabethan sewers, or the Restoration sewers, or the Regency sewers, as more and more of London's waterways were forced into pipes and covered passages, as the expanding population produced more filth, more rubbish, more effluent; but after the Great Stink, after the great plan of Victorian sewer-building, that was when the Sewer Folk came into their own. They could be found anywhere in the length and breadth of the sewers, but they made their permanent homes in some of the churchlike red-brick vaults toward the east, at the confluence of many of the churning foamy waters. There they would sit, rods and nets and improvised hooks beside them, and watch the surface of the brown water.</p>
<p>They wore clothes-brown and green clothes, covered in a thick layer of something that might have been mold and might have been a petrochemical ooze, and might, conceivably, have been something much worse. They wore their hair long and matted. They smelled more or less as one would imagine. Old storm lanterns were hung about the tunnel. Nobody knew what the Sewer Folk used for fuel, but their lanterns burned with a rather noxious blue-and-green flame.</p>
<p>It was not known how the Sewer Folk communicated among themselves. In their few dealings with the outside world, they used a kind of sign language. They lived in a world of gurgles and drips, the men, the women, and the silent little sewer children.</p>
<p>Dunnikin spotted something in the water. He was the chief of the Sewer Folk, the wisest and the oldest. He knew the sewers better than their original builders did. Dunnikin reached for a long shrimping net; one practiced hand movement and he was fishing out a rather bedraggled mobile telephone from the water. He walked over to a small heap of rubbish in the corner and put the telephone down with the rest of their haul. The day's catch so far consisted of two odd gloves, a shoe, a cat skull, a sodden packet of cigarettes, an artificial leg, a dead cocker spaniel, a pair of antlers (mounted), and the bottom half of a baby carriage.</p>
<p>It had not been a good day. And tonight was a market night, in the open air. So Dunnikin kept his eyes on the water. You never knew what would turn up.</p>
<p>Old Bailey was hanging his wash out to dry. Blankets and sheets fluttered and blew in the wind on the top of Centre Point, the ugly and distinctive sixties skyscraper that marks the eastern end of Oxford Street, far above Tottenham Court Road Station. Old Bailey did not care very much for Centre Point itself, but, as he'd often tell the birds, the view from the top was without compare, and, furthermore, the top of Centre Point was one of the few places in the West End of London where you did not have to look at Centre Point itself.</p>
<p>The wind ripped feathers from Old Bailey's coat and blew them away, off over London. He did not mind. As he also often told his birds, there were more where those came from.</p>
<p>A large black rat crawled out through a ripped air-vent cover, looked around, then came over to Old Bailey's bird-spattered tent. It ran up the side of the tent, then along the top of Old Bailey's washing line. It squealed at him, urgently.</p>
<p>"Slower, slower," said Old Bailey. The rat repeated itself, at a lower pitch, but just as urgently. "Bless me," said Old Bailey. He ran into his tent and returned with weapons-his toasting fork and a coal shovel. Then he hurried back into the tent again and came out with some bargaining tools. And then he walked back into the tent for the last time, and opened his wooden chest, and pocketed the silver box. "I really don't have time for this tomfoolery," he told the rat, on his final exit from the tent. "I'm a very busy man. Birds don't catch themselves, y'know."</p>
<p>The rat squeaked at him. Old Bailey was unfastening the coil of rope around his middle. "Well," he told the rat, "there's others could get the body. I'm not as young as I was. I don't like the under-places. I'm a roof-man, I am, born and bred."</p>
<p>The rat made a rude noise.</p>
<p>"More haste, less speed," replied Old Bailey. "I'm goin'. Young whippersnapper. I knew your great-great-grandfather, young feller-me-rat, so don't you try putting on airs… Now, where's the market going to be?" The rat told him. Then Old Bailey put the rat in his pocket and climbed over the side of the building.</p>
<p>Sitting on the ledge beside the sewer, in his plastic lawn chair, Dunnikin was overcome by a presentiment of wealth and prosperity. He could feel it drifting from west to east, toward them.</p>
<p>He clapped his hands, loudly. Other men ran to him, and the women, and the children, seizing hooks and nets and lines as they did so. They assembled along the slippery sewer ledge, in the sputtering green light of their lanterns. Dunnikin pointed, and they waited, in silence, which is how the Sewer Folk wait.</p>
<p>The body of the marquis de Carabas came floating facedown along the sewer, the current carrying him as slow and stately as a funeral barge. They pulled it in with their hooks and their nets, in silence, and soon had it up on the ledge. They removed the coat, the boots, the gold pocket-watch, and the contents of the coat pockets, although they left the rest of the clothes on the corpse.</p>
<p>Dunnikin beamed at the loot. He clapped again, and the Sewer Folk began to ready themselves for the market. Now they truly had something of value to sell.</p>
<p>"Are you sure the marquis will be at the market?" Richard asked Door, as the path began, slowly, to climb.</p>
<p>"He won't let us down," she said, as confidently as she could. "I'm sure he'll be there."</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>FOURTEEN</p>
</title>
<p>HMS Belfast is a gunship of 11,000 tons, commissioned in 1939, which saw active service in the Second World War. Since then it has been moored on the south bank of the Thames, in postcard-land, between Tower Bridge and London Bridge, opposite the Tower of London. From its deck one can see St. Paul's Cathedral and the gilt top of the columnlike Monument to the Great Fire of London erected, as so much of London was erected, by Christopher Wren. The ship serves as a floating museum, as a memorial, as a training ground.</p>
<p>There is a walkway onto the ship from the shore, and they came down the walkway in their twos and threes, and in their dozens. They set up their stalls as early as they could, all the tribes of London Below, united both by the Market Truce and by a mutual desire to pitch their own stalls as far as possible from the Sewer Folk's stall.</p>
<p>It had been agreed well over a century before that the Sewer Folk could only set up a stall at those markets held in the open air. Dunnikin and his folk dumped their booty in a large pile on a rubber sheet, beneath a large gun tower. Nobody ever came to the Sewer Folk's stall immediately: but toward the end of the market they would come, the bargain hunters, the curious, and those few fortunate individuals blessed with no sense of smell.</p>
<p>Richard and Hunter and Door pushed their way through the crowds on the deck. Richard realized that he had somehow lost the need to stop and stare. The people here were no less strange than at the last Floating Market, but, he supposed, he was every bit as strange to them, wasn't he? He looked around, scanning the faces in the crowd as they walked, hunting for the marquis's ironic smile. "I don't see him," he said.</p>
<p>They were approaching a smith's stall, where a man who could easily have passed for a small mountain, if one were to overlook the shaggy brown beard, tossed a lump of red-molten metal from a brazier onto an anvil. Richard had never seen a real anvil before. He could feel the heat from the molten metal and the brazier from a dozen feet away.</p>
<p>"Keep looking. De Carabas'll turn up," said Door, looking behind them. "Like a bad penny." She thought for a moment, and added, "What exactly is a bad penny anyway?" And then, before Richard could answer, she squealed, "Hammersmith!"</p>
<p>The bearded mountain-man looked up, stopped hitting the molten metal, and roared, "By the Temple and the Arch. Lady Door!" Then he picked her up, as if she weighed no more than a mouse.</p>
<p>"Hello, Hammersmith," said Door. "I hoped you'd be here."</p>
<p>"Never miss a market, lady," he thundered, cheerfully. Then he confided, like an explosion with a secret, "This's where the business is, y'see. Now," he said, recollecting the cooling lump of metal on his anvil, "just you wait here a moment." He put Door down at eye level, on the top of his booth,, seven feet above the deck.</p>
<p>He banged the lump of metal with his hammer, twisting it as he did so with implements Richard assumed, correctly, were tongs. Under the hammer blows it changed from a shapeless blob of orange metal into a perfect black rose. It was a work of astonishing delicacy, each petal perfect and distinct. Hammersmith dipped the rose into a bucket of cold water beside the anvil: it hissed and steamed. Then he pulled it out of the bucket, wiped it, and handed it to a fat man in chain mail who was standing, patiently, to one side; the fat man professed himself well satisfied and gave Hammersmith, in return, a green plastic Marks and Spencer shopping bag, filled with various kinds of cheese.</p>
<p>"Hammersmith?" said Door, from her perch. "These are my friends."</p>
<p>Hammersmith enveloped Richard's hand in one several sizes up. His handshake was enthusiastic, but very gentle, as if he had, in the past, had a number of accidents shaking hands and had practiced it until he got it right. "Charmed," he boomed.</p>
<p>"Richard," said Richard.</p>
<p>Hammersmith looked delighted. "Richard! Fine name! I had a horse called Richard." He let go of Richard's hand, turned to Hunter, and said, "And you are… Hunter? Hunter! As I live, breathe, and defecate! It is!" Hammersmith blushed like a schoolboy. He spat on his hand and attempted, awkwardly, to plaster his hair back. Then he stuck his hand out and realized that he had just spat on it, and he wiped it on his leather apron, and shifted his weight from foot to foot.</p>
<p>"Hammersmith," said Hunter, with a perfect caramel smile.</p>
<p>"Hammersmith?" asked Door. "Will you help me down?"</p>
<p>He looked shamefaced. "Beg pardon, lady," he said, and lifted her down. It came to Richard then that Hammersmith had known Door as a small child, and he found himself feeling unaccountably jealous of the huge man. "Now," Hammersmith was saying to Door, "What can I do for you?"</p>
<p>"Couple of things," she said. "But first of all-" She turned to Richard. "Richard? I've got a job for you."</p>
<p>Hunter raised an eyebrow. "For him?"</p>
<p>Door nodded. "For both of you. Will you go and find us some food? Please?" Richard felt oddly proud. He had proved himself in the ordeal. He was One of Them. He would Go, and he would Bring Back Food. He puffed out his chest.</p>
<p>"I am your bodyguard. I stay by your side," said Hunter.</p>
<p>Door grinned. Her eyes flashed. "In the market? It's okay, Hunter. Market Truce holds. No one's going to touch me here. And Richard needs looking after more than I do." Richard deflated, but no one was watching.</p>
<p>"And what if someone violates the Truce?" asked Hunter.</p>
<p>Hammersmith shivered, despite the heat of his brazier. "Violate the Market Truce? Brrrr."</p>
<p>"It's not going to happen. Go on. Both of you. Curry, please. And get me some papadums, please. Spicy ones."</p>
<p>Hunter ran her hand through her hair. Then she turned and walked off into the crowd, and Richard went with her. "So what would happen if someone violated Market Truce?" asked Richard, as they pushed through the crowds.</p>
<p>Hunter thought about this for a moment. "The last time it happened was about three hundred years ago. A couple of friends got into an argument over a woman, in the market. A knife was pulled and one of them died. The other fled."</p>
<p>"What happened to him? Was he killed?"</p>
<p>Hunter shook her head. "Quite the opposite. He still wishes he had been the one to have died."</p>
<p>"He's still alive?"</p>
<p>Hunter pursed her lips. "Ish," she said, after a while. "Alive-ish."</p>
<p>A moment passed, then "Phew," Richard thought he was going to be ill. "What's that-that stink?"</p>
<p>"Sewer Folk."</p>
<p>Richard averted his head and tried not to breathe through his nose until they were well away from the Sewer Folk's stall.</p>
<p>"Any sign of the marquis yet?" he asked. Hunter shook her head. She could have reached out her hand and touched him. They went up a gangplank, toward the food stalls, and more welcoming aromas.</p>
<p>Old Bailey found the Sewer Folk with little difficulty, following his nose.</p>
<p>He knew what he had to do, and he took a certain pleasure in making a bit of a performance of it, ostentatiously examining the dead cocker spaniel, the artificial leg, and the damp and moldy portable telephone, and shaking his head dolorously at each of them. Then he made a point of noticing the marquis's body. He scratched his nose. He put on his spectacles and peered at it. He nodded to himself, glumly, hoping to give the vague impression of being a man in need of a corpse who was disappointed by the selection but was going to have to make do with what they had. Then he beckoned to Dunnikin, and pointed to the corpse.</p>
<p>Dunnikin opened his hands wide, smiled beatifically, and gazed up toward the heavens, conveying the bliss with which the marquis's remains had entered their life. He put a hand to his forehead, lowered it, and looked devastated, in order to convey the tragedy that losing such a remarkable corpse would be.</p>
<p>Old Bailey put a hand in his pocket and produced a half-used stick of deodorant. He handed it to Dunnikin, who squinted at it, licked it, and handed it back, unimpressed. Old Bailey pocketed it. He looked back at the corpse of the marquis de Carabas, half-dressed, barefoot, still damp from its journey through the sewers. The body was ashen, drained of blood from many cuts, small and large, and the skin was wrinkled and prunelike from its time in the water.</p>
<p>Then he pulled out a bottle, three-quarters filled with a yellow liquid, and passed it to Dunnikin. Dunnikin looked at it suspiciously. The Sewer Folk know what a bottle of Chanel No. 5 looks like, and they gathered around Dunnikin, staring. Carefully, self-importantly, he unscrewed the top of the bottle and dabbed the tiniest amount on his wrist. Then, with a gravity the finest Parisian parfumier would have envied, Dunnikin sniffed. Then he nodded his head, enthusiastically, and approached Old Bailey to embrace him and conclude the deal. The old man averted his face and held his breath until the embrace was concluded.</p>
<p>Old Bailey held up one finger and tried his best to mime that he was not so young as once he was and that, dead or not, the marquis de Carabas was a bit on the heavy side. Dunnikin picked his nose thoughtfully, and then, with a hand gesture indicating not only magnanimity but also a foolish and misplaced generosity that would, obviously, send him, Dunnikin, and the rest of the Sewer Folk, to the poorhouse, he had one of the younger Sewer Folk tie the corpse to the bottom half of the old baby carriage.</p>
<p>The old roof-man covered the body with a cloth, and he pulled it away from the Sewer Folk, across the crowded deck.</p>
<p>"One portion of vegetable curry, please," said Richard, to the woman at the curry stall. "And, um, I was wondering. The meat curry. What kind of meat is it, then?" The woman told him. "Oh," said Richard. "Right. Um. Better just make that vegetable curries all round."</p>
<p>"Hello again," said a rich voice beside him. It was the pale woman they had met in the caves, with the black dress and the foxglove eyes.</p>
<p>"Hullo," said Richard, with a smile. "-Oh, and some papadums, please. You, um. Here for curry?"</p>
<p>She fixed him with her violet gaze and said, in mock Bela Lugosi, "I do not eat… curry." And then she laughed, a lavish, delighted laugh, and Richard found himself realizing how long it had been since he had shared a joke with a woman.</p>
<p>"Oh. Um. Richard. Richard Mayhew." He stuck out his hand. She touched it with her own hand, in something a little like a handshake. Her fingers were very cold, but then, late at night, at the end of autumn, on a ship out on the Thames, everything is very cold.</p>
<p>"Lamia," she said. "I'm a Velvet."</p>
<p>"Ah," he said. "Right. Are there a lot of you?"</p>
<p>"A few," she said.</p>
<p>Richard collected the containers with the curry. "What do you do?" he asked.</p>
<p>"When I'm not looking for food," she said, with a smile, "I'm a guide. I know every inch of the Underside."</p>
<p>Hunter, who Richard could have sworn had been over on the other side of the stall, was standing next to Lamia. She said, "He's not yours."</p>
<p>Lamia smiled sweetly. "I'll be the judge of that," she said.</p>
<p>Richard said, "Hunter, this is Lamia. She's a Velcro."</p>
<p>"Vel-vet," corrected Lamia, sweetly.</p>
<p>"She's a guide."</p>
<p>"I'll take you wherever you want to go."</p>
<p>Hunter took the bag with the food in it from Richard. "Time to go back," she said.</p>
<p>"Well," said Richard. "If we're off to see the you-know-what, maybe she could help."</p>
<p>Hunter said nothing; instead, she looked at Richard. Had she looked at him that way the day before, he would have dropped the subject. But that was then. "Let's see what Door thinks," said Richard. "Any sign of the marquis?"</p>
<p>"Not yet," said Hunter.</p>
<p>Old Bailey had dragged the corpse down the gangplank tied to its baby carriage-base, like a ghastly Guy Fawkes, one of the effigies that, not so very long ago, the children of London had wheeled and dragged around in early November, displaying to passersby before tossing them to their flaming demise on the bonfires of the fifth of November, Bonfire Night. He pulled the corpse over Tower Bridge, and, muttering and complaining, he hauled it up the hill past the Tower of London. He made his way west toward Tower Hill Station and stopped a little before the station, beside a large gray jut of wall. It wasn't a roof, thought Old Bailey, but it would do. It was one of the last remnants of the London Wall. The London Wall, according to tradition, was built on the orders of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, in the third century A.D., at the request of his mother Helena. At that point, London was one of the few great cities of the Empire that did not yet have a magnificent wall. When it was finished it enclosed the small city completely; it was thirty feet high, and eight feet wide, and was, unarguably, the London Wall.</p>
<p>It was no longer thirty feet high, the ground level having risen since Constantine's mother's day (most of the original London Wall is fifteen feet below street level today), and it no longer enclosed the city. But it was still an imposing lump of wall. Old Bailey nodded vigorously to himself. He fastened a length of rope to the baby carriage, and he scrambled up the wall; then, grunting and 'bless-me'-ing, he hauled the marquis up to the top of the wall. He untied the body from the carriage wheels and laid it gently out on its back, arms at its side. There were wounds on the body that were still oozing. It was very dead. "You stupid bugger," whispered Old Bailey, sadly. "What did you want to get yourself killed for, anyway?"</p>
<p>The moon was bright and small and high in the cold night, and autumn constellations speckled the blue-black sky like the dust of crushed diamonds. A nightingale fluttered onto the wall, examined the corpse of the marquis de Carabas, and chirruped sweetly. "None of your beak," said Old Bailey, gruffly. "You birds don't smell like flipping roses, neither." The bird chirped a melodious nightingale obscenity at him, and flew off into the night.</p>
<p>Old Bailey reached into his pocket and pulled out the black rat, who had gone to sleep. It stared about it sleepily, then yawned, displaying a vast and ratty expanse of piebald tongue. "Personally," said Old Bailey to the black rat, "I'll be happy if I never smell anything ever again." He put it down by his feet on the stones of London Wall, and it chittered at him, and gestured with its front paws. Old Bailey sighed. Carefully, he took the silver box out of his pocket, and, from an inner pocket, he pulled the toasting fork.</p>
<p>He placed the silver box on de Carabas's chest, then, nervously, he reached out the toasting fork, and flipped open the lid of the box. Inside the silver box, on a nest of red velvet, was a large duck's egg, pale blue green in the moonlight. Old Bailey raised the toasting fork, closed his eyes, and brought it down on the egg.</p>
<p>There was a whup as it imploded. There was a great stillness for several seconds after that; then the wind began. It had no direction, but seemed somehow to be coming from everywhere, a swirling sudden gale. Fallen leaves, newspaper pages, all the city's detritus blew up from the ground and was driven through the air. The wind touched the surface of the Thames and carried the cold water into the sky in a fine and driving spray. It was a dangerous, crazy wind. The stall holders on the deck of the Belfast cursed it and clutched their possessions to keep them from blowing away.</p>
<p>And then, when it seemed that the wind would become so strong that it would blow the world away and blow the stars away and send the people tumbling through the air like so many desiccated autumn leaves-</p>
<p>Just then-</p>
<p>– it was over, and the leaves, and the papers, and the plastic shopping bags, tumbled to the earth, and the road, and the water.</p>
<p>High on the remnant of the London Wall, the silence that followed the wind was, in its way, as loud as the wind had been. It was broken by a cough; a horrid, wet coughing. This was followed by the sound of someone awkwardly rolling over; and then the sound of someone being sick.</p>
<p>The marquis de Carabas vomited sewer water over the side of the London Wall, staining the gray stones with brown foulness. It took a long time to purge the water from his body. And then he said, in a hoarse voice that was little more than a grinding whisper, "I think my throat's been cut. Have you anything to bind it with?"</p>
<p>Old Bailey fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a grubby length of cloth. He passed it to the marquis, who wrapped it around his throat a few times and then tied it tight. Old Bailey found himself reminded, incongruously, of the high-wrapped Beau Brummel collars of the Regency dandies. "Anything to drink?" croaked the marquis.</p>
<p>Old Bailey pulled out his hip-flask and unscrewed the top, and passed it to the marquis, who swigged back a mouthful, then winced with pain, and coughed weakly. The black rat, who had watched all this with interest, now began to climb down the fragment of wall and away. It would tell the Golden: all favors had been repaid, all debts were done.</p>
<p>The marquis gave Old Bailey back his hip-flask. Old Bailey put it away. "How are ye feeling?" he asked.</p>
<p>"I've felt better." The marquis sat up, shivering. His nose was running, and his eyes flickered about: he was staring at the world as if he had never seen it before.</p>
<p>"What did you have to go and get yourself killed for, anyway, that's what I want to know," asked Old Bailey.</p>
<p>"Information," whispered the marquis. "People tell you so much more when they know you're just about to be dead. And then they talk around you, when you are."</p>
<p>"Then you found out what you wanted to know?"</p>
<p>The marquis fingered the wounds in his arms and his legs, "Oh yes. Most of it. I have more than an inkling of what this affair is actually about." Then he closed his eyes once more, and wrapped his arms about himself, and swayed, slowly, back and forth.</p>
<p>"What's it like then?" asked Old Bailey. "Being dead?"</p>
<p>The marquis sighed. And then he twisted his lips up into a smile, and with a glitter of his old self, he replied, "Live long enough, Old Bailey, and you can find out for yourself."</p>
<p>Old Bailey looked disappointed. "Bastard. After all I done to bring you back from that dread bourne from which there is no returning. Well usually no returning."</p>
<p>The marquis de Carabas looked up at him. His eyes were very white in the moonlight. And he whispered, "What's it like being dead? It's very cold, my friend. Very dark, and very cold."</p>
<p>Door held up the chain. The silver key hung from it, red and orange in the light of Hammersmith's brazier. She smiled. "Fine work, Hammersmith."</p>
<p>"Thank you, lady."</p>
<p>She hung the chain around her neck and hid the key away inside her layers of clothes. "What would you like in return?"</p>
<p>The smith looked abashed. "I hardly want to presume upon your good nature… " he mumbled.</p>
<p>Door made her "get on with it" face. He bent down and produced a black box from beneath a pile of metalworking tools. It was made of dark wood, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, and was the size of a large dictionary. He turned it over and over in his hands. "It's a puzzle-box," he explained. "I took it in return for some smithing a handful of years back. I can't get it to open, though I've tried so hard."</p>
<p>Door took the box and ran her fingers over the smooth surface. "I'm not surprised you haven't been able to open it. The mechanism's all jammed. It's completely fused shut."</p>
<p>Hammersmith looked glum. "So I'll never find out what's in it."</p>
<p>Door made an amused face. Her fingers explored the surface of the box. A rod slid-out of the side of the box. She half-pushed the rod back into the box, then twisted. There was a clunk from deep inside it, and a door opened in the side. "Here," said Door.</p>
<p>"My lady," said Hammersmith. He took the box from her and pulled the door open all the way. There was a drawer inside the box, which he pulled open. The small toad, in the drawer, croaked and looked about itself with copper eyes, incuriously. Hammersmith's face fell. "I was hoping it would be diamonds and pearls," he said.</p>
<p>Door reached out a hand and stroked the toad's head. "He's got pretty eyes," she said. "Keep him, Hammersmith. He'll bring you luck. And thank you again. I know I can rely on your discretion."</p>
<p>"You can rely on me, lady," said Hammersmith, earnestly.</p>
<p>They sat together on the top of the London Wall, not speaking. Old Bailey slowly lowered the baby carriage wheels to the ground below them. "Where's the market?" asked the marquis.</p>
<p>Old Bailey pointed to the gunship. "Over there."</p>
<p>"Door and the others. They'll be expecting me."</p>
<p>"You aren't in any condition to go anywhere." The marquis coughed, painfully. It sounded, to Old Bailey, like there was still plenty of sewer in his lungs. "I've made a long enough journey today," de Carabas whispered. "A little farther won't hurt." He examined his hands, flexed the fingers slowly, as if to see whether or not they would do as he wished. And then he twisted his body around, and began, awkwardly, to climb down the side of the wall. But before he did so, he said, hoarsely and perhaps a little sadly, "It would seem, Old Bailey, that I owe you a favor."</p>
<p>When Richard returned with the curries, Door ran to him and threw her arms around him. She hugged him tightly, and even patted his bottom, before seizing the paper bag from him and pulling it open with enthusiasm. She took a container of vegetable curry and began, happily, to eat.</p>
<p>"Thanks," said Door, with her mouth full. "Any sign of the marquis yet?"</p>
<p>"None," said Hunter.</p>
<p>"Croup and Vandemar?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Yummy curry. This is really good."</p>
<p>"Got the chain all right?" asked Richard. Door pulled the chain up from around her neck, enough to show it was there, and she let it fall again, the weight of the key pulling it back down.</p>
<p>"Door," said Richard, "this is Lamia. She's a guide. She says she can take us anywhere in the Underside."</p>
<p>"Anywhere?" Door munched a papadum.</p>
<p>"Anywhere," said Lamia.</p>
<p>Door put her head on one side. "Do you know where the Angel Islington is?"</p>
<p>Lamia blinked, slowly, long lashes covering and revealing her foxglove-colored eyes. "Islington?" she said. "You can't go there… "</p>
<p>"Do you know?"</p>
<p>"Down Street," said Lamia. "The end of Down Street. But it's not safe."</p>
<p>Hunter had been watching this conversation, arms folded and unimpressed. Now she said, "We don't need a guide."</p>
<p>"Well," said Richard, "I think we do. The marquis isn't around anywhere. We know it's going to be a dangerous journey. We have to get the… the thing I got… to the Angel. And then he'll tell Door about her family, and he'll tell me how to get home."</p>
<p>Lamia looked up at Hunter with delight. "And he can give you brains," she said, cheerfully, "and me a heart."</p>
<p>Door wiped the last of the curry from her bowl with her fingers, and licked them. "We'll be fine, just the three of us, Richard. We cannot afford a guide."</p>
<p>Lamia bridled. "I'll take my payment from him, not you."</p>
<p>"And what payment would your kind demand?" asked Hunter.</p>
<p>"That," said Lamia with a sweet smile, "is for me to know and him to wonder."</p>
<p>Door shook her head. "I really don't think so."</p>
<p>Richard snorted. "You just don't like it that I'm figuring everything out for once, instead of following blindly behind you, going where I'm told."</p>
<p>"That's not it at all."</p>
<p>Richard turned to Hunter. "Well, Hunter. Do you know the way to Islington?" Hunter shook her head.</p>
<p>Door sighed. "We should get a move on. Down Street, you say?"</p>
<p>Lamia smiled with plum-colored lips. "Yes, lady."</p>
<p>By the time the marquis reached the market they were gone.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>FIFTEEN</p>
</title>
<p>They walked off the ship, down the long gangplank, and onto the shore, where they went down some steps, through a long, unlit underpass, and up again. Lamia strode confidently ahead of them. She brought them out in a small, cobbled alley. Gaslights burned and sputtered on the walls.</p>
<p>"Third door along," she said.</p>
<p>They stopped in front of the door. There was a brass plate on it, which said:</p>
<empty-line/>
<subtitle>THE ROYAL SOCIETY</subtitle>
<empty-line/>
<subtitle>FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY</subtitle>
<empty-line/>
<subtitle>TO HOUSES</subtitle>
<empty-line/>
<p>And beneath that, in smaller letters:</p>
<empty-line/>
<subtitle>DOWN STREET. PLEASE KNOCK.</subtitle>
<empty-line/>
<p>"You get to the street through the house?" asked Richard.</p>
<p>"No," said Lamia. "The street is in the house." Richard knocked on the door. Nothing happened. They waited, and they shivered from the early morning cold. Richard knocked again. Finally, he rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a sleepy-looking footman, wearing a powdered, crooked wig and scarlet livery. He looked at the motley rabble on his doorstep with an expression that indicated that they had not been worth getting out of bed for.</p>
<p>"Can I help you?" said the footman. Richard had been told to fuck off and die with more warmth and good humor.</p>
<p>"Down Street," said Lamia, imperiously.</p>
<p>"This way," sighed the footman. "If you'll wipe your feet."</p>
<p>They walked through an impressive lobby. Then they waited while the footman lit each of the candles on a candelabra. They went down some impressive, richly carpeted stairs. They went down a flight of less impressive, less richly carpeted stairs. They went down a flight of entirely unimpressive stairs carpeted in a threadbare brown sacking, and, finally, they went down a flight of drab wooden stairs with no carpet on them at all.</p>
<p>At the bottom of those stairs was an antique service elevator, with a sign on it. The sign said:</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>OUT OF ORDER</p>
</title>
<p>The footman ignored the sign and pulled open the wire outer door with a metallic thud. Lamia thanked him, politely, and stepped into the elevator. The others followed. The footman turned his back on them. Richard watched him through the wire mesh, clutching his candelabra, going back up the wooden stairs. There was a short row of black buttons on the wall of the elevator. Lamia pressed the bottom-most button. The metal lattice door closed automatically, with a bang. A motor engaged, and the elevator began, slowly, creakily, to descend. The four of them stood packed in the elevator. Richard realized that he could smell each of the women in the elevator with him: Door smelled mostly of curry; Hunter smelled, not unpleasantly, of sweat, in a way that made him think of great cats in cages at zoos; while Lamia smelled, intoxicatingly, of honeysuckle and lily of the valley and musk.</p>
<p>The elevator continued to descend. Richard was sweating, in a clammy cold sweat, and digging his fingernails deep into his palms. In the most conversational tones he could muster, he said, "Now would be a very bad time to discover that one was claustrophobic, wouldn't it?"</p>
<p>"Yes," said Door.</p>
<p>"Then I won't," said Richard. And they went down.</p>
<p>Finally, there was a jerk, and a clunk, and a ratcheting noise, and the elevator stopped. Hunter pulled open the door, looked about, and then stepped out onto a narrow ledge.</p>
<p>Richard looked out of the open elevator door. They were hanging in the air, at the top of something that reminded Richard of a painting he had once seen of the Tower of Babel, or rather of how the Tower of Babel might have looked were it inside out. It was an enormous and ornate spiral path, carved out of rock, which went down and down around a central well. Lights flickered dimly, here and there in the walls, beside the paths, and, far, far below them, tiny fires were burning. It was at the top of the central well, a few thousand feet above solid ground, that the elevator was hanging. It swayed a little.</p>
<p>Richard took a deep breath and followed the others onto the wooden ledge. Then, although he knew it was a bad idea, he looked down. There was nothing but a wooden board between him and the rock floor, thousands of feet below. There was a long plank stretched between the ledge on which they stood and the top of the rocky path, twenty feet away. "And I suppose," he said, with a great deal less insouciance than he imagined, "this wouldn't be a good time to point out that I'm really bad at heights."</p>
<p>"It's safe," said Lamia. "Or it was the last time I was here. Watch." She walked across the board, a rustle of black velvet. She could have balanced a dozen books on her head and never dropped one. When she reached the stone path at the side, she stopped, and turned, and smiled at them encouragingly. Hunter followed her across, then turned, and waited beside her on the edge.</p>
<p>"See?" said Door. She reached out a hand, squeezed Richard's arm. "It's fine." Richard nodded, and swallowed. Fine. Door walked across. She did not seem to be enjoying herself; but she crossed, nonetheless. The three women waited for Richard, who stood there. Richard noticed after a while that he did not seem to be starting to walk across the wooden plank, despite the "walk!" commands he was sending to his legs.</p>
<p>Far above them, a button was pressed: Richard heard the thunk and the distant grinding of an elderly electric motor. The door of the elevator slammed closed behind him, leaving Richard standing, precariously, on a narrow wooden platform, no wider than a plank itself.</p>
<p>"Richard!" shouted Door. "Move!"</p>
<p>The elevator began to ascend. Richard stepped off the shaking platform, and onto the wooden board; then his legs turned to jelly beneath him, and he found himself on all fours on the plank, holding on for dear life. There was a tiny, rational part of his mind that wondered about the elevator: who had called it back up, and why? The rest of his mind, however, was engaged in telling all his limbs to clutch the plank rigidly, and in screaming, at the top of its mental voice, "I don't want to die." Richard closed his eyes as tightly as he could, certain that if he opened them, and saw the rock wall below him, he would simply let go of the plank, and fall, and fall, and-</p>
<p>"I'm not scared of falling," he told himself. "The part I'm scared of is where you finish falling." But he knew he was lying to himself. It was the fall he was scared of-afraid of flailing and tumbling helplessly through the air, down to the rock floor far below, knowing there was nothing he could do to save himself, no miracle that would save him…</p>
<p>He slowly became aware that someone was talking to him.</p>
<p>"Just climb along the plank, Richard," someone was saying.</p>
<p>"I… can't," he whispered.</p>
<p>"You went through worse than this to get the key, Richard," someone said. It was Door talking.</p>
<p>"I'm really not very good at heights," he said, obstinately, his face pressed against the wooden board, his teeth chartering. Then, "I want to go home." He felt the wood of the plank pressing against his face. And then the plank began to shake. Hunter's voice said, "I'm really not sure how much weight the board will bear. You two put your weight here." The plank vibrated as someone moved along it, toward him. He clung to it, with his eyes closed. Then Hunter said, quietly, confidently, in his ear, "Richard?"</p>
<p>"Mm."</p>
<p>"Just edge forward, Richard. A bit at a time. Come on… " Her caramel fingers stroked his white-knuckled hand, clasping the plank. "Come on."</p>
<p>He took a deep breath, and inched forward. And froze again. "You're doing fine," said Hunter. "That's good. Come on." And, inch by inch, creep by crawl, she talked Richard along the plank, and then, at the end of the plank, she simply picked him up, her hands beneath his arms, and placed him on solid ground.</p>
<p>"Thank you," he said. He could not think of anything else to say to Hunter that would be big enough to cover what she had just done for him. He said it again. "Thank you." And then he said, to all of them, "I'm sorry."</p>
<p>Door looked up at him. "It's okay," she said. "You're safe now." Richard looked at the winding spiral road beneath the world, going down, and down; and he looked at Hunter and Door and Lamia; and he laughed until he wept.</p>
<p>"What," Door demanded, when, at length, he had stopped laughing, "is so funny?"</p>
<p>"Safe," he said, simply. Door stared at him, and then she, too, smiled. "So where do we go now?" Richard asked.</p>
<p>"Down," said Lamia. They began to walk down Down Street. Hunter was in the lead, with Door beside her. Richard walked next to Lamia, breathing in the lily-of-the-valley-honeysuckle scent of her, and enjoying her company.</p>
<p>"I really appreciate you coming with us," he told her. "Being a guide. I hope it's not going to be bad luck for you or anything."</p>
<p>She fixed him with her foxglove-colored eyes. "Why should it be bad luck?"</p>
<p>"Do you know who the rat-speakers are?"</p>
<p>"Of course."</p>
<p>"There was a rat-speaker girl named Anaesthesia. She. Well, we got to be sort of friends, and she was guiding me somewhere. And then she got stolen. On Night's Bridge. I keep wondering what happened to her."</p>
<p>She smiled at him sympathetically. "My people have stories about that. Some of them may even be true."</p>
<p>"You'll have to tell me about them," he said. It was cold. His breath was steaming in the chilly air.</p>
<p>"One day," she said. Her breath did not steam. "It's very good of you, taking me with you."</p>
<p>"Least we could do."</p>
<p>Door and Hunter went around the curve in front of them, and went out of sight. "You know," said Richard, "the other two are getting a bit ahead of us. We might want to hurry."</p>
<p>"Let them go," she said, gently. "We'll catch up." It was, thought Richard, peculiarly like going to a movie with a girl as a teenager. Or rather, like walking home afterwards: stopping at bus shelters, or beside walls, to snatch a kiss, a hasty fumble of skin and a tangle of tongues, then hurrying on to catch up with your friends…</p>
<p>Lamia ran a cold finger down his cheek. "You're so warm," she said, admiringly. -"It must be wonderful to have so much warmth."</p>
<p>Richard tried to look modest. "It's not something I think about much, really," he admitted. He heard, distantly, from above, the metallic slam of the elevator door.</p>
<p>Lamia looked up at him, pleadingly, sweetly. "Would you give me some of your heat, Richard?" she asked. "I'm so cold."</p>
<p>Richard wondered if he should kiss her. "What? I… "</p>
<p>She looked disappointed. "Don't you like me?" she asked. He hoped, desperately, that he had not hurt her feelings.</p>
<p>"Of course I like you," he heard his voice saying. "You're very nice."</p>
<p>"And you aren't using all your heat, are you?" she pointed out, reasonably.</p>
<p>"I suppose not… "</p>
<p>"And you said you'd pay me for being your guide. And it's what I want, as my payment. Warmth. Can I have some?"</p>
<p>Anything she wanted. Anything. The honeysuckle and the lily of the valley wrapped around him, and his eyes saw nothing but her pale skin and her dark plum-bloom lips, and her jet black hair. He nodded. Somewhere inside him something was screaming; but whatever it was, it could wait. She reached up her hands to his face and pulled it gently down toward her. Then she kissed him, long and languorously. There was a moment of initial shock at the chill of her lips, and the cold of her tongue, and then he succumbed to her kiss entirely.</p>
<p>After some time, she pulled back.</p>
<p>He could feel the ice on his lips. He stumbled back against the wall. He tried to blink, but his eyes felt as if they were frozen open. She looked up at him and smiled delightedly, her skin flushed and pink and her lips, scarlet; her breath steamed in the cold air. She licked her red lips with a warm crimson tongue. His world began to go dark. He thought he saw a black shape at the edge of his vision.</p>
<p>"More," she said. And she reached out to him.</p>
<p>He watched the Velvet pull Richard to her for the first kiss, watched the rime and the frost spread over Richard's skin. He watched her pull back, happily. And then he walked up behind her, and, as she moved in to finish what she had begun, he reached out and seized her, hard, by the neck, and lifted her off the ground.</p>
<p>"Give it back," he rasped in her ear. "Give him back his life." The Velvet reacted like a kitten who had just been dropped into a bathtub, wriggling and hissing and spitting and scratching. It did her no good: she was held tight by the throat.</p>
<p>"You can't make me," she said, in decidedly unmusical tones.</p>
<p>He increased the pressure. "Give him his life back," he told her, hoarsely and honestly, "or I'll break your neck." She winced. He pushed her toward Richard, frozen and crumpled against the rock wall.</p>
<p>She took Richard's hand, and breathed into his nose and mouth. Vapor came from her mouth, and trickled into his. The ice on his skin began to thaw, the rime on his hair to vanish. He squeezed her neck again. "All of it, Lamia." She hissed, then, extremely grudgingly, and opened her mouth once more. A final puff of steam drifted from her mouth to his, and vanished inside him. Richard blinked. The ice on his eyes had melted to tears, and they were running down his cheeks. "What did you do to me?" he asked.</p>
<p>"She was drinking your life," said the marquis de Carabas, in a hoarse whisper. "Taking your warmth. Turning you into a cold thing like her."</p>
<p>Lamia's face twisted, like a tiny child deprived of a favorite toy. Her foxglove eyes flashed. "I need it more than he does," she wailed.</p>
<p>"I thought you liked me," said Richard, stupidly.</p>
<p>The marquis picked Lamia up, one-handed, and brought her face close to his. "Go near him again, you or any of the Velvet Children, and I'll come by day to your cavern, while you sleep, and I'll burn it to the ground. Understand?"</p>
<p>Lamia nodded. He let go of her, and she dropped to the floor. Then she pulled herself up to her full size, which was not terribly tall, threw back her head, and spat, hard, into the marquis's face. She picked up the front of her black velvet dress and ran up the slope, and away, her footsteps echoing through the winding rock path of Down Street, while her ice-cold spittle ran down the marquis's cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.</p>
<p>"She was going to kill me," stammered Richard.</p>
<p>"Not immediately," said the marquis, dismissively. "You would have died eventually, though, when she finished eating your life."</p>
<p>Richard stared at the marquis. His skin was filthy, and he seemed ashen beneath the dark of his skin. His coat was gone: instead, he wore an old blanket wrapped about his shoulders, like a poncho, with something bulky-Richard could not tell what- strapped beneath it. He was barefoot, and, in what Richard took to be some kind of bizarre fashion affectation, there was a discolored cloth wrapped all the way around his throat.</p>
<p>"We were looking for you," said Richard.</p>
<p>"And now you've found me," croaked the marquis, drily.</p>
<p>"We were expecting to see you at the market."</p>
<p>"Yes. Well. Some people thought I was dead. I was forced to keep a low profile."</p>
<p>"Why… why did some people think you were dead?"</p>
<p>The marquis looked at Richard with eyes that had seen too much and gone too far. "Because they killed me," he said. "Come on, the others can't be too far ahead."</p>
<p>Richard looked over the side of the path, across the central well. He could see Door and Hunter, across the well, on the level below. They were looking around-for him, he assumed. He called to them, shouted and waved, but the sound did not carry. The marquis laid a hand upon Richard's arm. "Look," he said. He pointed to the level beneath Door and Hunter. Something moved. Richard squinted: he could make out two figures, standing in the shadows. "Croup and Vandemar," said the marquis. "It's a trap."</p>
<p>"What do we do?"</p>
<p>"Run!" said the marquis. "Warn them. I can't run yet… go, damn you!"</p>
<p>And Richard ran. He ran as fast as he could, as hard as he could, down the sloping stone road under the world. He felt a sudden stabbing pain in his chest: a stitch. And he pushed himself on, and still he ran.</p>
<p>He turned a corner, and he saw them all. "Hunter! Door!" he gasped, breathless. "Stop! Watch out!"</p>
<p>Door turned. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar stepped out from behind a pillar. Mr. Vandemar yanked Door's hands behind her back and bound them in one movement with a nylon strip. Mr. Croup was holding something long and thin in a brown cloth cover, like the kind Richard's father had used to carry his fishing poles in. Hunter stood there, her mouth open. Richard shouted, "Hunter. Quickly."</p>
<p>She nodded, spun around, and kicked out one foot, in a smooth, almost balletic, motion.</p>
<p>Her foot caught Richard squarely in the stomach. He fell to the floor several feet away, winded and breathless and hurt. "Hunter?" he gasped.</p>
<p>"I'm afraid so," said Hunter, and she turned away. Richard felt sick, and saddened. The betrayal hurt him as much as the blow.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar ignored Richard and Hunter entirely. Mr. Vandemar was trussing Door's arms, while Mr. Croup stood and watched. "Don't think of us as murderers and cutthroats, miss," Mr. Croup was saying, conversationally. "Think of us as an escort service."</p>
<p>Hunter stood beside the rock face, looking at none of them, and Richard lay on the rock floor and writhed and tried, somehow, to suck air back into his lungs. Mr. Croup turned back to Door and smiled, showing many teeth. "You see, Lady Door. We are going to make sure you get safely to your destination."</p>
<p>Door ignored him. "Hunter," she called, "what's happening?" Hunter did not move, nor did she answer.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup beamed, proudly. "Before Hunter agreed to work for you, she agreed to work for our principal. Taking care of you."</p>
<p>"We told you," crowed Mr. Vandemar. "We told you one of you was a traitor." He threw back his head, and howled like a wolf.</p>
<p>"I thought you were talking about the marquis," said Door.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup scratched his head of orange hair, theatrically. "Talking of the marquis, I wonder where he is. He's a bit late, isn't he, Mister Vandemar?"</p>
<p>"Very late indeed, Mister Croup. As late as he possibly could be."</p>
<p>Mr. Croup coughed sententiously and delivered his punch line. "Then from now on, we'll have to call him the late marquis de Carabas. I'm afraid he's ever-so-slightly-"</p>
<p>"Dead as a doornail," finished Mr. Vandemar. Richard finally managed to get enough air into his lungs to gasp, "You traitorous bitch."</p>
<p>Hunter glanced at the ground. "No hard feelings," she whispered.</p>
<p>"The key you obtained from the Black Friars," said Mr. Croup to Door. "Who has it?"</p>
<p>"I do," gasped Richard. "You can search me, if you like. Look." He fumbled in his pockets-noticing something hard and unfamiliar in his back pocket, but there was no time to investigate that now-and he pulled out the front-door key of his old flat. He dragged himself to his feet and staggered over to Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. "Here."</p>
<p>Mr. Croup reached over and took the key from him. "Good gracious me," he said; scarcely glancing at it. "I find myself utterly taken in by his cunning ploy, Mister Vandemar." He passed the key to Mr. Vandemar, who held it up between finger and thumb, and crushed it like brass foil. "Fooled again, Mister Croup," he said.</p>
<p>"Hurt him, Mister Vandemar," said Mr. Croup.</p>
<p>"With pleasure, Mister Croup," said Mr. Vandemar, and he kicked Richard in the kneecap. Richard fell to the ground, in agony. As if from a long way away, he could hear Mr. Vandemar's voice; it appeared to be lecturing him. "People think it's how hard you kick that hurts," Mr. Vandemar's voice was saying. "But it's not how hard you kick. It's where. I mean, this's really a very gentle kick… "- something slammed into Richard's left shoulder. His left arm went numb, and a purple-white blossom of pain opened up in his shoulder. It felt like his whole arm was on fire, and freezing, as if someone had jabbed an electrical prod deep into his flesh, and turned up the current as high as it would go. He whimpered. And Mr. Vandemar was saying, "… but it hurts just as much as this-which is much harder… " and the boot rammed into Richard's side like a cannonball. He could hear himself screaming.</p>
<p>"I've got the key," he heard Door say.</p>
<p>"If only you had a Swiss army knife," Mr. Vandemar told Richard, helpfully, "I could show you what I do with all the different bits. Even the bottle-opener, and the thing for getting stones out of horses' hooves."</p>
<p>"Leave him, Mister Vandemar. There will be time enough for Swiss army knives. Does she have the token?" Mr. Croup fumbled in Door's pockets, and took out the carved obsidian figure: the tiny Beast the angel had given her.</p>
<p>Hunter's voice was low and resonant. "What about me? Where's my payment?"</p>
<p>Mr. Croup sniffed. He tossed her the fishing pole case. She caught it one-handed. "Good hunting," said Mr. Croup. Then he and Mr. Vandemar turned and walked off down the twisting slope of Down Street, with Door between them. Richard lay on the floor and watched them go, with a terrible feeling of despair spreading outward from his heart.</p>
<p>Hunter knelt on the ground and began to undo the straps on the case. Her eyes were wide and shining. Richard ached. "What is it?" he asked. "Thirty pieces of silver?" She pulled it, slowly, from its fabric cover, her fingers caressing it, stroking it, loving it. "A spear," she said, simply.</p>
<p>It was made of a bronze-colored metal; the blade was long, and it curved like a kris, sharp on one side, serrated on the other; there were faces carved into the side of the haft, which was green with verdigris, and decorated with strange designs and odd curlicues. It was about five feet long, from the tip of the blade to the end of the haft. Hunter touched it, almost fearfully, as if it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.</p>
<p>"You sold Door out for a spear," said Richard. Hunter said nothing. She wetted a fingertip with her pink tongue, then gently ran it across the side of the head of the spear, testing the edge on the blade; and then she smiled, as if she were satisfied with what she felt. "Are you going to kill me?" Richard asked. He was surprised to find himself no longer scared of death-or at least, he realized, he was not scared of that death.</p>
<p>She turned her head, then, and looked at him. She looked more alive than he had ever seen her; more beautiful, and more dangerous. "And what kind of challenge would I have hunting you, Richard Mayhew?" she asked, with a vivid smile. "I have bigger game to kill."</p>
<p>"This is your Great-Beast-of-London-hunting spear, isn't it?" he said.</p>
<p>She looked at the spear in a way that no woman had ever looked at Richard. "They say that nothing can stand against it."</p>
<p>"But Door trusted you. I trusted you."</p>
<p>She was no longer smiling. "Enough."</p>
<p>Slowly, the pain was beginning to abate, dwindling to a dull ache in his shoulder and his side and his knee. "So who are you working for? Where are they taking her? Who's behind all this?"</p>
<p>"Tell him, Hunter," rasped the marquis de Carabas. He was holding a crossbow pointed at Hunter. His bare feet were planted on the ground; his face was implacable.</p>
<p>"I wondered whether you were as dead as Croup and Vandemar claimed you were," said Hunter, barely turning her head. "You struck me as a hard man to kill."</p>
<p>He inclined his head, in an ironic bow, but his eyes did not move, and his hands remained steady. "And you strike me that way too, dear lady. But a crossbow bolt to the throat, and a fall of several thousand feet may prove me wrong, eh? Put the spear down and step back." She placed the spear on the floor, gently, lovingly; then she stood up and stepped back from it. "You may as well tell him, Hunter," said the marquis. "I know; I found out the hard way. Tell him who's behind all this."</p>
<p>"Islington," she said.</p>
<p>Richard shook his head, as if he were trying to brush away a fly. "It can't be," he said. "I mean, I've met Islington. He's an angel." And then, almost desperately, he asked, "Why?"</p>
<p>The marquis's eyes had not left Hunter, nor had the point of the crossbow wavered. "I wish I knew. But Islington is at the bottom of Down Street, and at the bottom of this mess. And between us and Islington is the labyrinth and the Beast. Richard, take the spear. Hunter, walk in front of me, please."</p>
<p>Richard picked up the spear, and then, awkwardly, using the spear to lean on, he pulled himself up to a standing position. "You want her to come with us?" he asked, puzzled.</p>
<p>"Would you prefer her behind us?" asked the marquis, drily.</p>
<p>"You could kill her," said Richard.</p>
<p>"I will, if there are no other alternatives," said the marquis, "but I would hate to remove an option, before it was entirely necessary. Anyway, death is so final, isn't it?"</p>
<p>"Is it?" asked Richard.</p>
<p>"Sometimes," said the marquis de Carabas. And they went down.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>SIXTEEN</p>
</title>
<p>They walked for hours in silence, following the winding stone road downwards. Richard was still in pain; he was limping, and experiencing a strange mental and physical turmoil: feelings of defeat and betrayal roiled within him, which, combined with the near loss of his life to Lamia, the damage inflicted by Mr. Vandemar, and his experiences on the plank far above, left him utterly wrecked. Yet, he was certain that his experiences of the last day paled into something small and insignificant when placed beside whatever the marquis had experienced. So he said nothing.</p>
<p>The marquis kept silent, as every word he uttered hurt his throat. He was content to let it heal, and to concentrate on Hunter. He knew that, should he let his attention flag for even a moment, she would know it, and she would be away, or she would turn on them. So he said nothing.</p>
<p>Hunter walked a little ahead of them. She, also, said nothing.</p>
<p>After some hours, they reached the bottom of Down Street. The street ended in a vast Cyclopean gateway-built of enormous rough stone blocks. Giants built that gate, thought Richard, half-remembered tales of long-dead kings of mythical London churning in his head, tales of King Bran and of the giants Gog and Magog, with hands the size of oak trees, and severed heads as big as hills. The portal itself had long since rusted and crumbled away. Fragments of it could be seen in the mud beneath their feet, dangling uselessly from a rusted hinge on the side of the gate. The hinge was taller than Richard.</p>
<p>The marquis gestured for Hunter to stop. He moistened his lips, and said, "This gate marks the end of Down Street, and the beginning of the labyrinth. And beyond the labyrinth waits the Angel Islington. And in the labyrinth is the Beast."</p>
<p>"I still don't understand," said Richard. "Islington. I actually met him. It. Him. He's an angel. I mean, a real angel."</p>
<p>The marquis smiled, without humor. "When angels go bad, Richard, they go worse than anyone. Remember, Lucifer used to be an angel."</p>
<p>Hunter watched Richard with nut brown eyes. "The place you visited is Islington's citadel, and also its prison," she said. It was the first thing she had said in hours. "It cannot leave."</p>
<p>The marquis addressed her directly. "I assume that the labyrinth and the Beast are there to discourage visitors."</p>
<p>She inclined her head. "So I would assume also."</p>
<p>Richard turned on the marquis, all his anger and impotence and frustration spewing out of him in one angry blast. "Why are you even talking to her? Why is she still with us? She was a traitor-she tried to make us think that you were the traitor."</p>
<p>"And I saved your life, Richard Mayhew," said Hunter, quietly. "Many times. On the bridge. At the gap. On the board up there." She looked into his eyes, and it was Richard who looked away.</p>
<p>Something echoed through the tunnels: a bellow, or a roar. The hairs on the back of Richard's neck prickled. It was far away, but that was the only thing about it in which he could take any comfort. He knew that sound: he had heard it in his dreams, but now it sounded neither like a bull nor like a boar; it sounded like a lion; it sounded like a dragon.</p>
<p>"The labyrinth is one of the oldest places in London Below," said the marquis. "Before King Lud founded the village on the Thames marshes, there was a labyrinth here."</p>
<p>"No Beast, though," said Richard.</p>
<p>"Not then."</p>
<p>Richard hesitated. The distant roaring began again. "I… I think I've had dreams about the Beast," he said.</p>
<p>The marquis raised an eyebrow. "What kind of dreams?"</p>
<p>"Bad ones," said Richard.</p>
<p>The marquis thought about this, eyes flickering. And then he said, "Look, Richard. I'm taking Hunter. But if you want to wait here, well, no one could accuse you of cowardice."</p>
<p>Richard shook his head. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. "I'm not turning back. Not now. They've got Door."</p>
<p>"Right," said the marquis. "Well then. Shall we go?"</p>
<p>Hunter's perfect caramel lips twisted into a sneer. "You'd have to be mad to go in there," she said. "Without the angel's token you could never find your way. Never get past the boar."</p>
<p>The marquis reached his hand under his poncho blanket and produced the little obsidian statue he had taken from Door's father's study. "One of these, you mean?" he asked. The marquis felt, then, that much of what he had gone through in the previous week was made up for by the expression on Hunter's face. They went through the gate, into the labyrinth.</p>
<p>Door's arms were bound behind her back, and Mr. Vandemar walked behind her, one huge beringed hand resting on her shoulder, pushing her along. Mr. Croup scuttled on ahead of them, holding the talisman he had taken from her on high, and peering edgily from side to side, like a particularly pompous weasel on its way to raid the henhouse.</p>
<p>The labyrinth itself was a place of pure madness. It was built of lost fragments of London Above: alleys and roads and corridors and sewers that had fallen through the cracks over the millennia, and entered the world of the lost and the forgotten. The two men and the girl walked over cobbles, and through mud, and through dung of various kinds, and over rotting wooden boards. They walked through daylight and night, through gaslit streets, and sodium-lit streets, and streets lit with burning rushes and links. It was an ever-changing place: and each path divided and circled and doubled back on itself.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup felt the tug of the talisman, and let it take him where it wanted to go. They walked down a tiny alleyway, which had once been part of a Victorian "rookery"-a slum comprised in equal parts of theft and penny gin, of twopenny-halfpenny squalor and threepenny sex-and they heard it, snuffling and snorting somewhere nearby. And then it bellowed, deep and dark. Mr. Croup hesitated, before hurrying forward, up a short wooden staircase; and then, at the end of the alley, he stopped, squinting about him, before he led them down some steps into a long stone tunnel that had once run across the Fleet Marshes, in the Templars' time. Door said, "You're afraid, aren't you?" Croup glared at her. "Hush your tongue." She smiled, although she did not feel like smiling. "You're scared that your safe-conduct token won't get you past the Beast. What are you planning now? To kidnap Islington? Sell both of us to the highest bidder?"</p>
<p>"Quiet," said Mr. Vandemar. But Mr. Croup simply chuckled; and Door knew then that the Angel Islington was not her friend.</p>
<p>She began to shout. "Hey! Beast! Here!" Mr. Vandemar cuffed her head and knocked her against the wall. "Said to be quiet," he told her, calmly. She tasted blood in her mouth and spat scarlet on the mud. Then she parted her lips to begin shouting once more. Mr. Vandemar, anticipating this, had taken a handkerchief from his pocket, and he forced it into her mouth. She tried to bite his thumb as he did so, but it made no appreciable impression on him.</p>
<p>"Now you'll be quiet," he told her. Mr. Vandemar was very proud of his handkerchief, which was spattered with green and brown and black and had originally belonged to an overweight snuff dealer in the 1820s, who had died of apoplexy and been buried with his handkerchief in his pocket. Mr. Vandemar still occasionally found fragments of snuff merchant in it, but it was, he felt, a fine handkerchief for all that. They continued in silence.</p>
<p>Richard made another entry in his mental diary. Today, he thought, I've survived walking the plank, the kiss of death, and a lecture on inflicting pain. Right now, I'm on my way through a labyrinth with a mad bastard who came back from the dead and a bodyguard who turned out to be a… whatever the opposite of a bodyguard is. I am so far out of my depth that… Metaphors failed him, then. He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.</p>
<p>They were wading through a narrow passage of wet, marshy ground, between dark stone walls. The marquis held both the token and the crossbow, and he took care to walk, at all times, about ten feet behind Hunter. Richard, in the lead, was carrying Hunter's Beast spear and a yellow flare the marquis had produced from beneath his blanket, which illuminated the stone walls and the mud, and he walked well in front of Hunter. The marshland stank, and huge mosquitoes had begun to settle upon Richard's arms and legs and face, biting him painfully and raising huge, itching welts. Neither Hunter nor the marquis so much as mentioned the mosquitoes.</p>
<p>Richard was beginning to suspect that they were quite lost. It did not help his mood any that there were a large number of dead people in the marsh: leathery preserved bodies, discolored skeletal bones, and pallid, water-swollen corpses. He wondered how long the corpses had been there, and whether they had been killed by the Beast or by the mosquitoes. He said nothing as they walked on for another five minutes and eleven mosquito bites, and then he called out, "I think we're lost. We've been through this way before."</p>
<p>The marquis held up the token. "No. We're fine," he said. "The token is leading us straight. Clever little thing."</p>
<p>"Yeah," said Richard, who was not impressed. "Very clever."</p>
<p>It was then that the marquis stepped, barefoot, on the shattered rib cage of a half-buried corpse, puncturing his heel, and causing him to stumble. The little black statue went flying through the air and tumbled into the black marsh with the satisfied plop of a leaping fish returning to the water. The marquis righted himself and pointed the crossbow at Hunter's back.</p>
<p>"Richard," he called. "I dropped it. Can you come back here?" Richard walked back, holding the flare high, hoping for the glint of flame on obsidian, seeing nothing but wet mud. "Get down into the mud and look," said the marquis.</p>
<p>Richard groaned.</p>
<p>"You've dreamed of the Beast, Richard," said the marquis. "Do you really want to encounter it?"</p>
<p>Richard thought about this for not very long, then he pushed the haft of the bronze spear into the surface of the marsh and stood the flare up into the mud beside it, illuminating the surface of the marsh with a fitful amber light. He got down on his hands and knees in the bog, searching for the statue. He ran his hands over the surface of the marsh, hoping not to encounter any dead faces or hands. "It's hopeless. It could be anywhere."</p>
<p>"Keep looking," said the marquis.</p>
<p>Richard tried to remember how he usually found things. First he let his mind go as blank as he could, then he let his gaze wander over the surface of the marsh, purposelessly, idly. Something glittered on the boggy surface, five feet to his left. It was the Beast statue. "I can see it," called Richard.</p>
<p>He floundered toward it through the mud. The little glassy beast was head-down in a puddle of dark water. Perhaps the mud was disturbed by Richard's approach; more likely, as Richard was convinced forever after, it was just the sheer cussedness of the material world. Whatever the cause, he was almost next to the little statue when the marsh made a noise that sounded like a giant stomach rumbling, and a large bubble of gas floated up and popped noxiously and obscenely beside the talisman, which vanished beneath the water.</p>
<p>Richard reached the place where the talisman had been and pushed his arms deep into the mud, searching for it wildly, not caring what else his fingers might encounter. It was no use. It was gone forever. "What do we do now?" asked Richard.</p>
<p>The marquis sighed. "Get back over here, and we'll figure out something."</p>
<p>Richard said, quietly, "Too late."</p>
<p>It was coming toward them so slowly, so ponderously that he thought for a fragment of a second that it was old, sick, even dying. That was his first thought. And then he realized how much ground it was covering as it approached, mud and foul water splashing up from its hooves as it ran, and he realized how wrong he had been in thinking it slow. Thirty feet away from them the Beast slowed, and stopped, with a grunt. Its flanks were steaming. It bellowed, in triumph, and in challenge. There were broken spears, and shattered swords, and rusted knives, bristling from its sides and back. The yellow flare light glinted in its red eyes, and on its tusks, and its hooves.</p>
<p>It lowered its massive head. It was some kind of boar, thought Richard, and then realized that that had to be nonsense: no boar could be so huge. It was the size of an ox, of a bull elephant, of a lifetime. It stared at them, and it paused for a hundred years, which transpired in a dozen heartbeats.</p>
<p>Hunter knelt, in one fluid motion, and pulled up the spear from the Fleet Marsh, which released it with a sucking noise. And, in a voice that was pure joy, she said, "Yes. At last."</p>
<p>She had forgotten them all; forgotten Richard down in the mud, and the marquis and his foolish crossbow, and the world. She was delighted and transported, in a perfect place, the world she lived for. Her world contained two things: Hunter, and the Beast. The Beast knew that too. It was the perfect match, the hunter and the hunted. And who was who, and which was which, only time would reveal; time and the dance.</p>
<p>The Beast charged.</p>
<p>Hunter waited until she could see the white spittle dripping from its mouth, and as it lowered its head she stabbed up with the spear; but, as she tried to sink the spear into its side, she understood that she had moved just a fraction of a second too late, and the spear went tumbling out of her numbed hands, and a tusk sharper than the sharpest razor blade opened her side. And as she fell beneath its monstrous weight, she felt its sharp hooves crushing down on her arm, and her hip, and her ribs. And then it was gone, vanished back into the darkness, and the dance was done.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup was more relieved than he would have admitted to be through the labyrinth. But he and Mr. Vandemar were through it, unharmed, as was their prey. There was a rock face in front of them, an oaken double door set in the rock face, and an oval mirror set in the right-hand door.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup touched the mirror with one grimy hand. The surface of the mirror clouded at his touch, seethed for a moment, bubbling and roiling like a vat of boiling quicksilver, and then was still. The Angel Islington looked out at them. Mr. Croup cleared his throat. "Good morning, sir. It is us, and we have the young lady you sent us to fetch for you."</p>
<p>"And the key?" The angel's gentle voice seemed to come from all around them.</p>
<p>"Hanging around her swanlike neck," said Mr. Croup, a little more anxiously than he intended to.</p>
<p>"Then enter," said the angel. The oak doors swung open at his words, and they went in.</p>
<p>It had all happened so fast. The Beast had come out of the darkness, Hunter had snatched the spear, and it had charged her and disappeared back into the darkness.</p>
<p>Richard strained to hear the Beast. He could hear nothing but, somewhere close to him, the slow drip, drip of water, and the high, maddening whine of mosquitoes. Hunter lay on her back in the mud. One arm was twisted at a peculiar angle. He crawled toward her, through the mire. "Hunter?" he whispered. "Can you hear me?"</p>
<p>There was a pause. And then, a whisper so faint he thought for a moment he had imagined it, "Yes."</p>
<p>The marquis was still some yards away, standing stock-still beside a wall. Now he called out, "Richard-stay where you are. The creature's just biding its time. It'll be back."</p>
<p>Richard ignored him. He spoke to Hunter. "Are you… " he paused. It seemed such a stupid thing to say. He said it anyway. "Are you going to be all right?" She laughed, then, with blood-flecked lips, and shook her head. "Are there any medical people down here?" he asked the marquis.</p>
<p>"Not in the sense you're thinking of. We have some healers, a handful of leeches and chirurgeons… "</p>
<p>Hunter coughed, then, and winced. Bright red, arterial blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. The marquis edged a little closer. "Do you keep your life hidden anywhere, Hunter?" he asked.</p>
<p>"I'm a hunter," she whispered, disdainfully. "We don't go in for that kind of thing… " She pulled air into her lungs with an effort, then exhaled, as if the simple effort of breathing were becoming too much for her. "Richard, have you ever used a spear?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Take it," she whispered.</p>
<p>"But… "</p>
<p>"Do it." Her voice was low and urgent. "Pick it up. Hold it at the blunt end."</p>
<p>Richard picked up the fallen spear. He held it at the blunt end. "I knew that part," he told her.</p>
<p>A glimmer of a smile breathed across her face. "I know."</p>
<p>"Look," said Richard, feeling, not for the first time, like the only sane person in a madhouse. "Why don't we just stay very quiet. Maybe it'll go away. We'll try to get you some help." And, not for the first time, the person he was talking to ignored him utterly.</p>
<p>"I did a bad thing, Richard Mayhew," she whispered, sadly. "I did a very bad thing. Because I wanted to be the one to kill the Beast. Because I needed the spear." And then, impossibly, she began to haul herself to her feet. Richard had not realized how badly she had been injured; nor could he now imagine what pain she must be in: he could see her right arm hanging uselessly, a white shard of bone protruding horribly from the skin. Blood ran from a cut in her side. Her rib cage looked wrong.</p>
<p>"Stop it," he hissed, futilely. "Get down."</p>
<p>With her left hand she pulled a knife from her belt, put it into her right hand, closed the nerveless fingers around the hilt. "I did a bad thing," she repeated. "And now I make amends."</p>
<p>She began humming, then. Humming high and humming low, until she found the note that made the walls and the pipes and the room reverberate, and she hummed that note until it felt like the entire labyrinth must be echoing to her hum. And then, sucking the air into her shattered rib cage, she shouted, "Hey. Big boy? Where are you?" There came no reply. No noise but the low drip of water. Even the mosquitoes were quiet.</p>
<p>"Maybe it's… gone away," said Richard, gripping the spear so tightly that it hurt his hands.</p>
<p>"I doubt it," muttered the marquis.</p>
<p>"Come on, you bastard," Hunter screamed. "Are you scared?"</p>
<p>There was a deep bellow from off front of them, and the Beast came out of the dark, and it charged once more. This time there could be no room for mistakes. "The dance," whispered Hunter. "The dance is not yet over."</p>
<p>As the Beast came toward her, its horns lowered, she shouted, "Now-Richard. Strike! Under and up! Now!" before the Beast hit her and her words turned into a wordless scream.</p>
<p>Richard saw the Beast come out from the darkness, into the light of the flare. It all happened very slowly. It was like a dream. It was like all his dreams. The Beast was so close he could smell the shit-and-blood animal stench of it, so close he could feel its warmth. And Richard stabbed with the spear, as hard as he could, pushing up into its side and letting it sink in.</p>
<p>A bellow, then, or a roar, of anguish, and hatred, and pain. And then silence.</p>
<p>He could hear his heart, thudding in his ears, and he could hear water dripping. The mosquitoes began to whine once more. He realized he was still holding tight to the haft of the spear, although the blade of it was buried deep within the body of the immobile Beast. He let go of it, and staggered around the beast, looking for Hunter. She was trapped beneath the Beast. It occurred to him that if he moved her, pulling her out from under it, he might cause her death, so instead he pushed, as hard as he could, against the warm dead flanks of the Beast, trying to move it. It was like trying to push-start a Sherman tank, but eventually, awkwardly, he tumbled it half-off her.</p>
<p>Hunter lay on her back, staring up at the darkness above them. Her eyes were open, and unfocussed, and Richard knew, somehow, that they saw nothing at all. "Hunter?" he said.</p>
<p>"I'm still here, Richard Mayhew." Her voice sounded almost detached. She made no effort to find him with her eyes, no effort to focus. "Is it dead?"</p>
<p>"I think so. It's not moving."</p>
<p>And then she laughed; it was a strange sort of laugh, as if she had just heard the funniest joke that ever the world told a hunter. And, between her spasms of laughter, and the wet, racking coughs that interrupted them, she shared the joke with him. "You killed the Beast," she said. "So now you're the greatest hunter in London Below. The Warrior… " And then she stopped laughing. "I can't feel my hands. Take my right hand." Richard fumbled under the Beast's body, and wrapped his hand around Hunter's chill fingers. They felt so small, suddenly. "Is there still a knife in my hand?" she whispered.</p>
<p>"Yes." He could feel it, cold and sticky.</p>
<p>"Take the knife. She's yours."</p>
<p>"I don't want your… "</p>
<p>"Take her." He pried the knife free from her fingers. "She's yours now," whispered Hunter. Nothing was moving, save her lips; and her eyes were clouding. "She's always looked after me. Clean my blood off her, though… mustn't rust the blade… a hunter always looks after her weapons." She gulped air. "Now… touch the Beast's blood… to your eyes and tongue… "</p>
<p>Richard was not sure that he had heard her correctly, nor that he believed what he had heard. "What?"</p>
<p>Richard had not noticed the marquis approach, but now he spoke intently into Richard's ear. "Do it, Richard. She's right. It'll get you through the labyrinth. Do it."</p>
<p>Richard put his hand down to the spear, ran it up the haft until he felt the Beast's hide and the warm stickiness of the Beast's blood. Feeling slightly foolish, he touched his hand to his tongue, tasting the salt of the creature's blood: it did not, to his surprise, revolt him. It tasted utterly natural, like tasting an ocean. He touched his bloody fingers to his eyes, where the blood stung like sweat.</p>
<p>Then, "I did it," he told her.</p>
<p>"That's good," whispered Hunter. She said nothing more.</p>
<p>The marquis de Carabas reached out his hand and closed her eyes. Richard wiped Hunter's knife on his shirt. It was what she had told him to do. It saved having to think.</p>
<p>"Better get a move on," said the marquis, standing up.</p>
<p>"We can't just leave her here."</p>
<p>"We can. We can come back for the body later."</p>
<p>Richard polished the blade as hard as he could on his shirt. He was crying, now, but he had not noticed. "And if there isn't any later?"</p>
<p>"Then we'll just have to hope that someone disposes of all our remains. Including the Lady Door's. And she must be getting tired of waiting for us." Richard looked down. He wiped the last of Hunter's blood off her knife, and put it through his belt. Then he nodded. "You go," said de Carabas. "I'll follow as fast as I can."</p>
<p>Richard hesitated; and then, as best he could, he ran.</p>
<p>Perhaps it was the Beast's blood that did it; he certainly had no other explanation. Whatever the reason, he ran straight and true through the labyrinth, which no longer held any mysteries for him. He felt that he knew every twist, every path, every alley and lane and runnel of it. He ran, stumbling and falling, and still running, exhausted, through the labyrinth, his blood pounding in his temples. A rhyme coursed through his head, as he ran, pounding and echoing to the rhythm of his feet. It was something he had heard as a child. This aye night, this aye night Every night and all Fire and fleet and candlelight And Christ receive thy soul.</p>
<p>The words went around and around, dirgelike, in his head. Fire and fleet and candlelight…</p>
<p>At the end of the labyrinth was a sheer granite cliff, and set in the cliff were high wooden double doors. There was an oval mirror hanging on one of the doors. The doors were closed. He touched the wood, and the door opened, silently, to his touch.</p>
<p>Richard went inside.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>SEVENTEEN</p>
</title>
<p>Richard followed the path between the burning candles, which led him through the angel's vault to the Great Hall. He recognized his surroundings: this was where they had drunk Islington's wine: an octagon of iron pillars supporting the stone roof above them, the huge black stone and metal door, the old wooden table, the candles.</p>
<p>Door was chained up, spread-eagled between two pillars beside the flint and silver door. She stared at him as he came in, her odd-colored pixie eyes wide and scared. The Angel Islington, standing beside her, turned and smiled at Richard as he entered. That was the most chilling thing of all: the gentle compassion, the sweetness of that smile.</p>
<p>"Come in, Richard Mayhew. Come in," said the Angel Islington. "Dear me. You do look a mess." There was honest concern in its voice. Richard hesitated. "Please." The angel gestured, curling a white forefinger, urging him further in. "I think we all know each other. You know the Lady Door, of course, and my associates, Mister Croup, Mister Vandemar." Richard turned. Croup and Vandemar were standing on each side of him. Mr. Vandemar smiled at him. Mr. Croup did not. "I was hoping you would show up," continued the angel. It tipped its head on one side, and asked, "By the bye, where is Hunter?"</p>
<p>"She's dead," said Richard. He heard Door gasp.</p>
<p>"Oh. The poor dear," said Islington. It shook its head sadly, obviously regretting the senseless loss of human life, the frailty of all mortals born to suffer and to die.</p>
<p>"Still," said Mr. Croup chirpily. "Can't make an omelette without killing a few people."</p>
<p>Richard ignored them, as best he could. "Door? Are you all right?"</p>
<p>"More or less, thanks. So far." Her lower lip was swollen, and there was a bruise on her cheek.</p>
<p>"I am afraid," said Islington, "that Miss Door was proving a little intransigent. I was just discussing having Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar… " It paused. There were obviously some things it found distasteful actually to say.</p>
<p>"Torture her," suggested Mr. Vandemar, helpfully.</p>
<p>"We are," said Mr. Croup, "after all, famed across the entirety of creation for our skill in the excrutiatory arts."</p>
<p>"Good at hurting people," clarified Mr. Vandemar.</p>
<p>The angel continued, staring intently at Richard as it spoke, as if it had heard neither of them. "But then, Miss Door does not strike me as someone who will easily change her mind."</p>
<p>"Give us time enough," said Mr. Croup. "We'd break her."</p>
<p>"Into little wet pieces," said Mr. Vandemar.</p>
<p>Islington shook his head and smiled indulgently at this display of enthusiasm. "No time," it said to Richard, "no time. However, she does strike me as someone who would indeed act to end the pain and suffering of a friend, a fellow mortal, such as yourself, Richard… " Mr. Croup hit Richard in the stomach, then: a vicious rabbit punch to the gut, and Richard doubled up. He felt Mr. Vandemar's fingers on the back of his neck, pulling him back to a standing position.</p>
<p>"But it's wrong," said Door.</p>
<p>Islington looked thoughtful. "Wrong?" it said, puzzled and amused.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup pulled Richard's head close to his, and smiled his graveyard smile. "He's traveled so far beyond right and wrong he couldn't see them with a telescope on a nice clear night," he confided. "Now Mister Vandemar, if you'll do the honors?"</p>
<p>Mr. Vandemar took Richard's left hand in his. He took Richard's little finger between his huge fingers and bent it back until it broke. Richard cried out.</p>
<p>The angel turned, slowly. It seemed distracted by something. It blinked its pearl gray eyes. "There's someone else out there. Mister Croup?" There was a dark shimmer where Mr. Croup had been, and he was there no longer.</p>
<p>The marquis de Carabas was flattened against the side of the red granite cliff, staring at the oak doors that led into Islington's dwelling.</p>
<p>Plans and plots whirled through his head, each scheme fizzling out uselessly as he imagined it. He had thought he would have known what to do when he got to this point, and he was discovering, to his disgust, that he had absolutely no idea. There were no more favors to call in, no levers to press or buttons to push, so he scrutinized the doors and wondered whether they were guarded, whether the angel would know if they were opened. There had to be an obvious solution he was missing, if only he thought hard enough: perhaps something would occur to him. At least, he thought, slightly cheered, he had surprise on his side.</p>
<p>That was until he felt the cold point of a sharp knife placed against his throat, and he heard Mr. Croup's oily voice whispering in his ear. "I already killed you once today," it was saying. "What does it take to teach some people?"</p>
<p>Richard was manacled and chained between a pair of iron pillars when Mr. Croup returned, prodding the marquis de Carabas with his knife. The angel looked at the marquis, with disappointment on its face, then, gently, it shook its beautiful head. "You told me he was dead," it said.</p>
<p>"He is," said Mr. Vandemar.</p>
<p>"He was," corrected Mr. Croup.</p>
<p>The angel's voice was a fraction less gentle and less caring. "I will not be lied to," it said.</p>
<p>"We don't lie," said Mr. Croup, affronted.</p>
<p>"Do," said Mr. Vandemar.</p>
<p>Mr. Croup ran a grimy hand through his filthy orange hair, in exasperation. "Indeed we do. But not this time."</p>
<p>The pain in Richard's hand showed no indication of subsiding. "How can you behave like this?" he asked, angrily. "You're an angel."</p>
<p>"What did I tell you, Richard?" asked the marquis, drily.</p>
<p>Richard thought. "You said, Lucifer was an angel."</p>
<p>Islington smiled superciliously. "Lucifer?" it said. "Lucifer was an idiot. It wound up lord and master of nothing at all."</p>
<p>The marquis grinned. "And you wound up lord and master of two thugs and a roomful of candles?"</p>
<p>The angel licked its lips. "They told me it was my punishment for Atlantis. I told them there was nothing more I could have done. The whole affair was… " it paused, as if it were hunting for the correct word. And then it said, with regret, "Unfortunate."</p>
<p>"But millions of people were killed," said Door.</p>
<p>Islington clasped its hands in front of its chest, as if it were posing for a Christmas card. "These things happen," it explained, reasonably.</p>
<p>"Of course they do," said the marquis, mildly, the irony implicit in his words, not in his voice. "Cities sink every day. And you had nothing to do with it?"</p>
<p>It was as if the lid had been pulled off something dark and writhing: a place of derangement and fury and utter viciousness; and, in a time of scary things, it was the most frightening thing Richard had seen. The angel's serene beauty cracked; its eyes flashed; and it screamed at them, crazy-scary and uncontrolled, utterly certain in its righteousness, "They deserved it."</p>
<p>There was a moment of silence. And then the angel lowered its head, and sighed, and raised its head, and said, very quietly and with deep regret, "Just one of those things." Then it pointed to the marquis. "Chain him up," it said.</p>
<p>Croup and Vandemar fastened manacles around the marquis's wrists, and chained the manacles securely to the pillars beside Richard. The angel had turned its attention back to Door. It walked over to her, reached out its hand, placed it beneath her pointed chin, and raised her head, to stare into her eyes. "Your family," it said, gently. "You come from a very unusual family. Quite remarkable."</p>
<p>"Then why did you have us killed?"</p>
<p>"Not all of you," it said. Richard thought it was talking about Door, but then it said, "There was always the possibility that you might not have… worked out as well as you did." It released her chin and stroked her face with long, white fingers, and it said, "Your family can open doors. They can create doors where there were no doors. They can unlock doors that are locked. Open doors that were never meant to be opened." It ran its fingers down her neck, gently, as if it were caressing her, then closed its hand on the key about her neck. "When I was sentenced here, they gave me the door to my prison. And they took the key to the door, and put it down here too. An exquisite form of torture." It tugged, gently, on the chain, pulling it out from under Door's layers of silk and cotton and lace, revealing the silver key; and then it ran its fingers over the key, as if it were exploring her secret places.</p>
<p>Richard knew, then. "The Black Friars were keeping the key safe from you," he said.</p>
<p>Islington let go of the key. Door was chained up beside the door made of black flint and tarnished silver. The angel walked to it, and placed a hand on it, white against the blackness of the door. "From me," agreed Islington. "A key. A door. An opener of the door. There must be the three, you see: a particularly refined sort of joke. The idea being that when they decided I had earned forgiveness and my freedom, they would send me an opener, and give me the key. I just decided to take matters into my own hands, and will be leaving a little early."</p>
<p>It turned back to Door. Once more it caressed the key. Then it closed its hand about the key and tugged, hard. The chain snapped. Door winced. "I spoke first to your father, Door," the angel continued. "He worried about the Underside. He wanted to unite London Below, to unite the baronies and fiefdoms-perhaps even to forge some kind of bond with London Above. I told him I would help him, if he would help me. Then I told him the nature of the help I needed, and he laughed at me." It repeated the words, as if it still found them impossible to believe. "He laughed. At me."</p>
<p>Door shook her head. "You killed him because he turned you down?"</p>
<p>"I didn't kill him," Islington corrected her, gently. "I had him killed."</p>
<p>"But he told me I could trust you. He told me to come here. In his journal."</p>
<p>Mr. Croup began to giggle. "He didn't," he said. "He never did. That was us. What was it he actually said, Mister Vandemar?"</p>
<p>"Door, child, fear Islington," said Mr. Vandemar, with her father's voice. The voice was exact. "Islington's got to be behind all this. It's dangerous, Door- keep away from it-"</p>
<p>Islington caressed her cheek, with the key. "I thought my version would get you here a little faster."</p>
<p>"We took the journal," said Mr. Croup. "We fixed it, and we returned it."</p>
<p>"Where does the door lead to?" called Richard.</p>
<p>"Home," said the angel.</p>
<p>"Heaven?"</p>
<p>And Islington said nothing, but it smiled.</p>
<p>"So, you figure they won't notice you're back?" sneered the marquis. "Just, 'Oh look, there's another angel, here, grab a harp and on with the hosannas'?"</p>
<p>Islington's gray eyes were bright. "Not for me the smooth agonies of adulation, of hymns and halos and self-satisfied prayers," it said. "I have… my own agenda."</p>
<p>"Well, now you've got the key," said Door.</p>
<p>"And I have you," said the angel. "You're the opener. Without you the key is useless. Open the door for me."</p>
<p>"You killed her family," said Richard. "You've had her hunted through London Below. Now you want her to open a door for you so you can single-handedly invade Heaven? You're not much of a judge of character, are you? She'll never do it."</p>
<p>The angel looked at him then, with eyes older than the Milky Way. Then it said, "Ah me," and turned its back, as if it were ill-prepared to watch the unpleasantness that was about to occur.</p>
<p>"Hurt him some more, Mister Vandemar," said Mr. Croup. "Cut off his ear."</p>
<p>Mr. Vandemar raised his hand. It was empty. He jerked his arm, almost imperceptibly, and now he was holding a knife. "Told you one day you'd find out what your own liver tastes like," he said to Richard. "Today's going to be your lucky day." He slid the knife blade gently beneath Richard's earlobe. Richard felt no pain-perhaps, he thought, he had felt too much pain already that day, perhaps the blade was too sharp to hurt. But he felt the warm blood drip, wetly, from his ear down his neck. Door was watching him, and her elfin face and huge opal-colored eyes filled his vision. He tried to send her mental messages. Hold out. Don't let them make you do this. I'll be fine. Then Mr. Vandemar put a little pressure on the knife, and Richard bit back a scream. He tried to stop his face from grimacing, but another jab from the blade jerked a grimace and a moan from him.</p>
<p>"Stop them," said Door. "I'll open your door."</p>
<p>Islington gestured, curtly, and Mr. Vandemar sighed piteously and put his knife away. The warm blood dripped down Richard's neck and pooled and puddled in the hollow of his clavicle. Mr. Croup walked over to Door and unlocked the right-hand manacle. She stood there, rubbing her wrist, framed by the pillars. She was still chained to the pillar on the left, but she now had a certain amount of freedom of movement. She put her hand out for the key. "Remember," said Islington. "I have your friends."</p>
<p>Door looked at him with utter contempt, every inch Lord Portico's oldest daughter. "Give me the key," she said. The angel passed her the silver key.</p>
<p>"Door," called Richard. "Don't do it. Don't set it free. We don't matter."</p>
<p>"Actually," said the marquis, "I matter very much. But I have to agree. Don't do it."</p>
<p>She looked from Richard to the marquis, her eyes lingering on their manacled hands, on the heavy chains that bound them to the black iron pillars. She looked very vulnerable; and then she turned away, and walked to the limit of her own chain, until she stood in front of the black door made of flint and tarnished silver. There was no keyhole. She put the palm of her right hand on the door, and closed her eyes, let the door tell her where it opened, what it could do, finding those places inside herself that corresponded with the door. When she pulled her hand away, there was a keyhole that had not been there before. A white light lanced out from behind the keyhole, sharp and bright as a laser in the candlelit darkness of the hall.</p>
<p>The girl pushed the silver key into the keyhole. There was a pause, and then she turned it in the lock. Something went click, and there was a chiming noise, and suddenly the door was framed in light. "When I am gone," said the angel, very quietly, to Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, with charm, and with kindness, and with compassion, "kill them all, howsoever, you wish." It turned back to the door, which Door was pulling open: it was opening slowly, as if there was great resistance. She was sweating.</p>
<p>"So your employer's leaving," said the marquis to Mr. Croup. "I hope you've both been paid in full."</p>
<p>Croup peered at the marquis, and said, "What?"</p>
<p>"Well," said Richard, wondering what the marquis was trying to do, but willing to play along, "you don't think you're ever going to see him again, do you?"</p>
<p>Mr. Vandemar blinked, slowly, like an antique camera, and said, "What?"</p>
<p>Mr. Croup scratched his chin. "The corpses-to-be have a point," he said to Mr. Vandemar. He walked toward the angel, who stood, arms folded, in front of the door. "Sir? It might be wise for you to settle up, before you commence the next stage of your travels."</p>
<p>The angel turned, and looked down at him as if he were less important than the least speck of dirt. Then it turned away. Richard wondered what it was contemplating. "It is of no matter now," said the angel. "Soon, all the rewards your revolting little minds can conceive of will be yours. When I have my throne."</p>
<p>"Jam tomorrow, eh?" said Richard.</p>
<p>"Don't like jam," said Mr. Vandemar. "Makes me belch."</p>
<p>Mr. Croup waggled a finger at Mr. Vandemar, "He's welching out on us," he said. "You don't welch on Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar, me bucko. We collect our debts."</p>
<p>Mr. Vandemar walked over to where Mr. Croup was standing. "In full," he said.</p>
<p>"With interest," barked Mr. Croup.</p>
<p>"And meat hooks," said Mr. Vandemar</p>
<p>"From Heaven?" called Richard, from behind them. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar walked toward the contemplative angel. "Hey!" said Mr. Croup.</p>
<p>The door had opened, only a crack, but it was open. Light flooded through the crack in the door. The angel took a step forward. It was as if it were dreaming with its eyes wide open. The light from the crack in the door bathed its face, and it drank it in like wine. "Have no fear," it said. "For when the vastness of creation is mine, and they gather about my throne to sing hosannas to my name, I shall reward the worthy and cast down those who are hateful in my sight."</p>
<p>With an effort, Door wrenched the black door fully open. The view through the door was blinding in its intensity: a swirling maelstrom of color and light. Richard squinted his eyes, and turned his head away from the glare, all vicious orange and retinal purple. Is that what Heaven looks like? It seems more like Hell.</p>
<p>And then he felt the wind. A candle flew past his head, and vanished through the door. And then another. And then the air was filled with candles, all spinning and tumbling through the air, heading for the light. If was as if the whole room were being sucked through the door. It was more than a wind, though. Richard knew that. His wrists began to hurt where they were manacled-it was as if, suddenly, he weighed twice as much as he ever had before. And then his perspective changed. The view through the doorway- it was looking down: it was not merely the wind that was pulling everything toward the door. It was gravity. The wind was only the air in the hall being sucked into the place on the other side of the door. He wondered what was on the other side of the door-the surface of a star, perhaps, or the event horizon of a black hole, or something he could not even imagine.</p>
<p>Islington grabbed hold of the pillar beside the door, and held on desperately. "That's not Heaven," it shouted, gray eyes flashing, spittle on its perfect lips. "You mad little witch. What have you done?"</p>
<p>Door was clutching the chains that held her to the black pillar, white-knuckled. There was triumph in her eyes. Mr. Vandemar had caught hold of a table leg, while Mr. Croup, in his turn, had caught hold of Mr. Vandemar. "It wasn't the real key," said Door, triumphantly, over the roar of the wind. "That was just a copy of the key I had Hammersmith make in the market."</p>
<p>"But it opened the door," screamed the angel.</p>
<p>"No," said the girl with the opal eyes, distantly. "I opened a door. As far and hard away as I could, I opened a door."</p>
<p>There was no longer any trace of kindness or compassion on the angel's face; only hatred, pure and honest and cold. "I will kill you," it told her.</p>
<p>"Like you killed my family? I don't think you're going to kill anyone anymore."</p>
<p>The angel was hanging onto the pillar with pale fingers, but its body was at a ninety-degree angle to the room, and was most of the way through the door. It looked both comical and dreadful. It licked its lips. "Stop it," it pleaded. "Close the door. I'll tell you where your sister is… She's still alive… " Door flinched.</p>
<p>And Islington was sucked through the door, a tiny, plummeting figure, shrinking as it tumbled into the blinding gulf beyond. The pull was getting stronger. Richard prayed that his chains and manacles would hold: he could feel himself being sucked toward the opening, and, from the corner of his eye, he could see the marquis dangling from his chains, like a string-puppet being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.</p>
<p>The table, the leg of which Mr. Vandemar was holding tightly, flew through the air and jammed in the open doorway. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar were dangling out of the door. Mr. Croup, who was clinging, quite literally, to Mr. Vandemar's coattails, took a deep breath and began slowly to clamber, hand over hand, up Mr. Vandemar's back. The table creaked. Mr. Croup looked at Door, and he smiled like a fox. "I killed your family," said Mr. Croup. "Not him. And now I'm-finally-going to finish the… "</p>
<p>It was at that moment that the fabric of Mr. Vandemar's dark suit gave way. Mr. Croup tumbled, screaming, into the void, clutching a long strip of black material. Mr. Vandemar looked down at the flailing figure of Mr. Croup as it fell away from them. He, too, looked over at Door, but there was no menace in his gaze. He shrugged, as best as one can shrug while holding on to a table leg for dear life, and then he said, mildly, "Bye-bye," and let go of the table leg.</p>
<p>Silently he plunged through the door, into the light, shrinking as he fell, heading for the tiny figure of Mr. Croup. Soon the two shapes merged into one little blob of blackness in a sea of churning purple and white and orange light, and then the black dot, too, was gone. It made some sort of sense, Richard thought: they were a team, after all.</p>
<p>It was getting harder to breathe. Richard felt giddy and light-headed. The table in the doorway splintered and was sucked away through the door. One of Richard's manacles popped open, and his right arm whipped free. He grabbed the chain holding the left hand, and gripped it as tightly as he could, grateful that the broken finger was on the hand that was still in the manacle; even so, red and blue flashes of pain were shooting up his left arm. He could hear himself, distantly, shouting in pain.</p>
<p>He could not breathe. White blotches of light exploded behind his eyes. He could feel the chain beginning to give way…</p>
<p>The sound of the black door slamming closed filled his whole world. Richard fell violently back against the cold iron pillar, and slumped to the floor. There was silence, then, in the hall-silence, and utter darkness, in the Great Hall under the earth. Richard closed his eyes: it made no difference to the darkness, and he opened his eyes once more.</p>
<p>The hush was broken by the marquis's voice, asking, drily, "So where did you send them?" And then Richard heard a girl's voice talking. He knew it had to be Door's, but it sounded so young, like the voice of a tiny child at bedtime, at the end of a long and exhausting day. "I don't know… a long way away. I'm… very tired now. I… "</p>
<p>"Door," said the marquis. "Snap out of it." it was good that he was saying it, thought Richard, somebody had to, and Richard could no longer remember how to talk. There was a click, then, in the darkness: the sound of a manacle opening, followed by the sound of chains falling against a metal pillar. Then the sound of a match being struck. A candle was lit: it burned weakly, and flickered in the thin air. Fire and fleet and candlelight, thought Richard, and he could not remember why.</p>
<p>Door walked, unsteadily, to the marquis, holding her candle. She reached out a hand, touched his chains, and his manacles clicked open. He rubbed his wrists. Then she walked over to Richard, and touched his single remaining manacle. It fell open. Door sighed, then, and sat down beside him. He reached out his good arm and cradled her head, holding her close to him. He rocked her slowly back and forth, crooning a wordless lullaby. It was cold, cold, there in the angel's empty hall; but soon the warmth of unconsciousness reached out and enveloped them both.</p>
<p>The marquis de Carabas watched the sleeping children. The idea of sleep-of returning, even for a short time, to a state so horribly close to death-scared him more than he would have ever believed. But, eventually, even he put his head down on his arm, and closed his eyes.</p>
<p>And then there were none.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>EIGHTEEN</p>
</title>
<p>The Lady Serpentine, who was, but for Olympia, the oldest of the Seven Sisters, walked through the labyrinth beyond Down Street, her head held high, her white leather boots squashing through the dank mud. This was, after all, the furthest she had been from her house in over a hundred years. Her wasp-waisted majordomo, dressed from head to foot all in black leather, walked ahead of her, holding a large carriage-lamp. Two of Serpentine's other women, similarly dressed, walked behind her at a respectful distance.</p>
<p>The ripped lace train of Serpentine's dress dragged in the mire behind her, but she paid it no mind. She saw something glinting in the lamplight ahead of them, and, beside it, a dark and bulky shape.</p>
<p>"There it is," she said.</p>
<p>The two women who had been walking, behind her hurried forward, splashing through the marsh, and as Serpentine's butler approached, bringing with her a swinging circle of warm light, the shape resolved into objects. The light had been glinting from a long bronze spear. Hunter's body, twisted and bloody and wretched, lay on its back, half-buried in the mud, in a large pool of scarlet gore, its legs trapped beneath the body of an enormous boar-like creature. Her eyes were closed.</p>
<p>Serpentine's women hauled the body out from under the Beast, and lay it in the mud. Serpentine knelt in the wet mire and ran one finger down Hunter's cold cheek, until it reached her blood-blackened lips, where she let it linger for some moments. Then she stood up. "Bring the spear," said Serpentine.</p>
<p>One of the women picked up Hunter's body; the other pulled the spear from the carcass of the Beast and put it over her shoulder. And then the four figures turned, and went back the way they had come; a silent procession deep beneath the world. The lamplight flickered on Serpentine's ravaged face as she walked; but it revealed no emotion of any kind, neither happy nor sad.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>NINETEEN</p>
</title>
<p>For a moment, upon waking, he had NO idea at all who he was. It was a tremendously liberating feeling, as if he were free to be whatever he wanted to be: he could be anyone at all-able to try on any identity; he could be a man or a woman, a rat or a bird, a monster or a god. And then someone made a rustling noise, and he woke up the rest of the way, and in waking he found that he was Richard Mayhew, whoever that was, whatever that meant. He was Richard Mayhew, and he did not know where he was.</p>
<p>There was crisp linen pressed against his face. He hurt all over; in some places-the little finger on his left hand, for example-more than others.</p>
<p>Someone was nearby. Richard could hear breathing, and the hesitant rustling noises of a person in the same room he was in, trying to be discreet. Richard raised his head, and discovered, in the raising, more places that hurt. Some of them hurt very badly. Far away-rooms and rooms away-people were singing. The song was so distant and quiet he knew he would lose it if he opened, his eyes: a deep, melodious chanting…</p>
<p>He opened his eyes. The room was small, and dimly lit. He was on a low bed, and the rustling sound he had heard was made by a cowled figure in a black robe, with his back to Richard. The black figure was dusting the room, with an incongruously brightly colored feather duster. "Where am I?" asked Richard.</p>
<p>The black figure nearly dropped its feather duster, then it turned, revealing a very nervous, thin, dark brown face. "Would you like some water?" the Black Friar asked, in the manner of one who has been told that if the patient wakes up, he is to be asked if he would like some water, and has been repeating it to himself over and over for the last forty minutes to make sure that he didn't forget.</p>
<p>"I… " and Richard realized that he was most dreadfully thirsty. He sat up in the bed. "Yes, I would. Thank you very much." The friar poured some water from a battered metal jug into a battered metal cup and passed it to Richard. Richard sipped the water slowly, restraining the impulse to gulp it down. It was crystal cold and clear and tasted like diamonds and ice.</p>
<p>Richard looked down at himself. His clothes were gone. He had been dressed in a long robe, like one of the Black Friars' habits, but gray. His broken finger had been splinted and neatly bandaged. He raised a finger to his ear; there was a bandage on it, and what felt like stitches beneath the bandage. "You're one of the Black Friars," said Richard.</p>
<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
<p>"How did I get here? Where are my friends?"</p>
<p>The friar pointed to the corridor, wordlessly and nervously. Richard got out of the bed. He checked under his gray robe: he was naked. His torso and legs were covered in a variety of deep indigo and purple bruises, all of which seemed to have been rubbed with some kind of ointment: it smelt like cough syrup and buttered toast. His right knee was bandaged. He wondered where his clothes were. There were sandals beside the bed, and he put them on, then he walked out into the corridor. The abbot was coming down the passage toward him, holding onto the arm of Brother Fuliginous, his blind eyes pearlescent in the darkness beneath his cowl.</p>
<p>"You are awake, then, Richard Mayhew," said the abbot. "How do you feel?"</p>
<p>Richard made a face. "My hand… "</p>
<p>"We set your finger. It had been broken. We tended your bruises and your cuts. And you needed rest, which we gave you."</p>
<p>"Where's Door? And the marquis? How did we get here?"</p>
<p>"I had you brought here," said the abbot. The two friars began to walk down the corridor, and Richard walked with them.</p>
<p>"Hunter," said Richard. "Did you bring back her body?"</p>
<p>The abbot shook his head. "There was no body. Only the Beast."</p>
<p>"Ah, um. My clothes… " They came to the door of a cell, much like the one Richard had woken in. Door was sitting on the edge of her bed, reading a copy of Mansfield Park that Richard was certain the friars had not previously known that they had. She, too, wore a gray monk's robe, which was much, much too big for her, almost comically so. She looked up as they entered. "Hello," she said. "You've been asleep for ages. How are you feeling?"</p>
<p>"Fine, I think. How are you?"</p>
<p>She smiled. It was not a very convincing smile. "A bit shaky," she admitted. There was a loud rattling in the corridor, and Richard turned to see the marquis de Carabas being wheeled toward them in a rickety and antique wheelchair. The wheelchair was being pushed by a large Black Friar. Richard wondered how the marquis managed to make being pushed around in a wheelchair look like a romantic and swashbuckling thing to do. The marquis honored them with an enormous smile. "Good evening, friends," he said.</p>
<p>"Now," said the abbot, "that you are all here, we must talk."</p>
<p>He led them to a large room, warmed by a roaring scrap wood fire. They arranged themselves around a table. The abbot gestured for them all to sit down. He felt for his chair and sat down in it. Then he sent Brother Fuliginous and Brother Tenebrae (who had been pushing the marquis's wheelchair) out of the room.</p>
<p>"So," said the abbot. "To business. Where is Islington?"</p>
<p>Door shrugged. "As far away as I could send him. Halfway across space and time."</p>
<p>"I see," said the abbot. And then he said, "Good."</p>
<p>"Why didn't you warn us about him?" asked Richard.</p>
<p>"That was not our responsibility."</p>
<p>Richard snorted. "What happens now?" he asked them all.</p>
<p>The abbot said nothing.</p>
<p>"Happens? In what way?" asked Door.</p>
<p>"Well, you wanted to avenge your family. And you have. And you've sent everyone involved off to some distant corner of nowhere. I mean, no one's going to try and kill you anymore, are they?"</p>
<p>"Not for right now," said Door, seriously.</p>
<p>"And you?" Richard asked the marquis de Carabas. "Have you got what you wanted?"</p>
<p>The marquis nodded. "I believe so. My debt to Lord Portico has been paid in full, and the Lady Door owes me a significant favor."</p>
<p>Richard looked to Door. She nodded. "So what about me?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Well," said Door. "We couldn't have done it without you."</p>
<p>"That's not what I meant. What about getting me back home?"</p>
<p>The marquis raised an eyebrow. "Who do you think she is-the Wizard of Oz? We can't send you home. This is your home."</p>
<p>Door said, "I tried to tell you that before, Richard."</p>
<p>"There has to be a way," said Richard, and he slammed his left hand down on the table, hard, for emphasis. It hurt his finger, but he kept his face composed. And then he said, "Ow," but he said it very quietly, because he had gone through much worse.</p>
<p>"Where is the key?" asked the abbot.</p>
<p>Richard inclined his head. "Door," he said.</p>
<p>She shook her pixy head. "I don't have it," she told him. "I slipped it back into your pocket at the last market. When you brought the curry."</p>
<p>Richard opened his mouth, and then he closed it again. Then he opened it and said, "You mean, when I told Croup and Vandemar that I had it, and they were welcome to search me… I had it?" She nodded. He remembered the hard object in his back pocket, on Down Street; remembered her hugging him on the ship…</p>
<p>The abbot reached out. His wrinkled brown fingers picked up a small bell from the table, which he shook, summoning Brother Fuliginous. "Bring me the Warrior's trousers," he said. Fuliginous nodded and left.</p>
<p>"I'm no warrior," said Richard.</p>
<p>The Abbot smiled gently. "You killed the Beast," he explained, almost regretfully. "You are the Warrior."</p>
<p>Richard folded his arms, exasperated. "So, after all this, I still don't get to go home, but as a consolation prize I've made it onto some kind of archaic underground honors list?"</p>
<p>The marquis looked unsympathetic. "You can't go back to London Above. A few individuals manage a kind of half-life-you've met Iliaster and Lear. But that's the best you could hope for, and it isn't a good life."</p>
<p>Door reached out a hand, and touched Richard's arm. "I'm sorry," she told him. "But look at all the good you've done. You got the key for us."</p>
<p>"Well," he asked, "what was the point of that? You just forged a new key-" Brother Fuliginous reappeared, carrying Richard's jeans; they were ripped, and covered in mud, and splashed with dried blood, and they stank. The friar handed the trousers to the abbot, who commenced to go through the pockets. Door smiled, sweetly. "I couldn't have had Hammersmith copy it without the original," she reminded him.</p>
<p>The abbot cleared his throat. "You are all very stupid people," he told them, graciously, "and you do not know anything at all." He held up the silver key. It glinted in the firelight. "Richard passed the Ordeal of the Key. He is its master, until he returns it to our keeping. The key has power."</p>
<p>"It's the key to Heaven… " said Richard, unsure of what the abbot was getting at, of what point he was trying to make.</p>
<p>The old man's voice was deep and melodious. "The key is the key to all reality. If Richard wants to return to London Above, then the key will take him back to London Above."</p>
<p>"It's that simple?" asked Richard. The old man nodded his blind head, beneath the shadows of his cowl. "Then when could we do this?"</p>
<p>"As soon as you are ready," said the abbot.</p>
<p>The friars had washed and repaired his clothes and returned them to him. Brother Fuliginous led him through the abbey, up a vertiginous series of ladders and steps, up into the bell tower. There was a heavy wooden trapdoor in the top of the tower. Brother Fuliginous unlocked it, and the two men pushed through it and found themselves in a narrow tunnel, thickly cobwebbed, with metal rungs set in the side of one wall. They climbed the rungs, going up for what seemed like thousands of feet, and came out on a dusty Underground station platform.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>NIGHTINGALE LANE</p>
</title>
<p>said the old signs on the wall. Brother Fuliginous wished Richard well and told him to wait there and he would be collected, and then he clambered down the side of the wall, and he was gone.</p>
<p>Richard sat on the platform for twenty minutes. He wondered what kind of station this was: it seemed neither abandoned, like British Museum, nor real, like Blackfriars: instead it was a ghost-station, an imaginary place, forgotten and strange. He wondered why the marquis had not said good-bye. When Richard had asked Door, she had said that she didn't know, but that maybe good-byes were something else, like comforting people, at which the marquis wasn't much good. Then she told him that she had something in her eye, and she gave him a paper with his instructions on, and she went away.</p>
<p>Something waved from the darkness of the tunnel: something white. It was a handkerchief on a stick. "Hello?" called Richard.</p>
<p>The feather-wrapped roundness of Old Bailey stepped out of the gloom, looking self-conscious and ill at ease. He was waving Richard's handkerchief, and he was sweating. "It's me little flag," he said, pointing to the handkerchief.</p>
<p>"I'm glad it's come in useful."</p>
<p>Old Bailey grinned uneasily. "Right. Just wanted to say. Something I got for you. Here you go." He thrust a hand into a coat pocket and pulled out a long black feather with a blue-purple-green sheen to it; red thread had been wound around the quill end of the feather.</p>
<p>"Um. Well, thanks," said Richard, unsure of what he ought to do with it.</p>
<p>"It's a feather," explained Old Bailey. "And a good one. Memento. Souvenir. Keepsake. And it's free. A gift. Me to you. Bit of a thank-you."</p>
<p>"Yes. Well. Very kind of you."</p>
<p>Richard put it in his pocket. A warm wind blew through the tunnel: a train was coming. "This'll be your train now," said Old Bailey. "I don't take trains, me. Give me a good roof any day." He shook Richard's hand, and fled.</p>
<p>The train pulled in at the station, its headlights were turned off, and there was nobody standing in the driver's compartment in the front. It came to a full stop: all the carriages were dark, and no doors opened. Richard knocked on the door in front of him, hoping that it was the correct one. The door gaped open, flooding the imaginary station with warm yellow light. Two small, elderly gentlemen holding long, copper-colored bugles stepped off the train and onto the platform. Richard recognized them: Dagvard and Halvard, from Earl's Court; although he could no longer recall, if he had ever known, which gentleman was which. They put their bugles to their lips and performed a ragged, but sincere, fanfare. Richard got onto the train, and they walked in behind him.</p>
<p>The earl was sitting at the end of the carriage, petting the enormous Irish wolfhound. The jester- Tooley, thought Richard, that was his name-stood beside him. Other than that, and the two men-at-arms, the carriage was deserted. "Who is it?" asked the earl.</p>
<p>"It's him, sire," said his jester. "Richard Mayhew. The one who killed the Beast."</p>
<p>"The Warrior?" The Earl scratched his red-gray beard thoughtfully. "Bring him here."</p>
<p>Richard walked down to the earl's chair. The earl eyed him up and down pensively and gave no indication that he remembered ever meeting Richard before. "Thought you'd be taller," said the earl, at length.</p>
<p>"Sorry."</p>
<p>"Well, better get on with it." The old man stood up and addressed the empty car. "Good evening. Here to honor young Mayflower. What was it the bard said?" And then he recited, in a rhythmic alliterative boom, "Crimson the cuts in the carcass, Fast falls the foe, Dauntless devout defender, Bravest of boys… Not really a boy anymore, though, is he, Tooley?"</p>
<p>"Not particularly, Your Grace."</p>
<p>The earl reached out his hand. "Give me your sword, boy."</p>
<p>Richard put his hand to his belt and pulled out the knife that Hunter had given him. "Will this do?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Yes-yes," said the old man, taking the knife from him.</p>
<p>"Kneel," said Tooley, in a stage whisper, pointing to the train floor. Richard went down on one knee; the earl tapped him gently on each shoulder with the knife. "Arise," he bellowed, "Sir Richard of Maybury. With this knife I do give to you the freedom of the Underside. May you be allowed to walk freely, without let or hindrance… and so on and so forth… et cetera… blah blah blah," he trailed of vaguely.</p>
<p>"Thanks," said Richard. "It's Mayhew, actually." But the train was coming to a stop.</p>
<p>"This is where you get off," said the earl. He gave Richard his knife-Hunter's knife-once more, patted him on the back, and pointed toward the door.</p>
<p>The place that Richard got off was not an Underground station. It was above ground, and it reminded Richard a little of St. Pancras Station-there was something similarly oversized and mock-Gothic about the architecture. But there was also a wrongness that somehow marked it as part of London Below. The light was that strange, strained gray one only sees shortly before dawn and for a few moments after sunset, the times when the world washes out into gloom, and color and distance become impossible to judge.</p>
<p>There was a man sitting on a wooden bench, watching him; and Richard approached him, cautiously, unable to tell, in the gloaming, who the man was, whether it was someone he had met before. Richard was still holding Hunter's knife-his knife- and now he gripped the hilt more tightly, for reassurance. The man looked up as Richard approached, and he sprang to his feet. He tugged at his forelock, something Richard had previously only seen done on television adaptations of classic novels. He looked both comical and unpleasant. Richard recognized the man as the Lord Rat-speaker.</p>
<p>"Well-well. Yes-yes," said the rat-speaker, agitatedly, beginning in mid-sentence, "Just to say, the girl Anaesthesia. No hard feelings. The rats are your friends, still. And the rat-speakers. You come to us. We'll do you all right."</p>
<p>"Thanks," said Richard. Anaesthesia will take him, he thought. She's expendable.</p>
<p>The Lord Rat-speaker fumbled on the bench, and presented Richard with a black vinyl zip-up sports bag. It was extremely familiar. "It's all there. Everything. Take a look." Richard opened the bag. All his possessions were in there, including, on top of some neatly folded jeans, his wallet. He zipped the bag up, threw it over his shoulder, and walked away from the man, without a thank-you or a backward glance.</p>
<p>Richard walked out of the station and down some gray stone steps. All was silent. All was empty. Dead autumn leaves blew across an open court, a flurry of yellow and ochre and brown, a sudden burst of muted color in the dim light. Richard crossed the court and walked down some steps into an underpass. There was a fluttering in the half-dark, and, warily, he turned. There were about a dozen of them, in the corridor behind him, and they slipped toward him almost silently, just a rustle of dark velvet, and, here and there, the clink of silver jewelery. The rustle of the leaves had been so much louder than these pale women. They watched him with hungry eyes.</p>
<p>He was scared, then. He had the knife, true, but he could no more fight with it than he could jump across the Thames. He hoped that, if they attacked, he might be able to scare them away with it. He could smell honeysuckle, and lily of the valley, and musk.</p>
<p>Lamia edged her way to the front of the Velvets, and stepped forward. Richard raised the knife, nervously, remembering the chilly passion of her embrace, how pleasant it was and how cold. She smiled at him, and inclined her head, sweetly. Then she kissed her fingertips, and blew the kiss toward Richard.</p>
<p>He shivered. Something fluttered in the darkness of the underpass; and when he looked again, there was nothing but shadows.</p>
<p>Through the underpass, and Richard walked up some steps, and found himself at the top of a small grassy hill. It was dawn, and he could just make out details of the countryside around him: almost leafless oak, and ash, and beech trees, readily identifiable by the shapes of their trunks. A wide, clean river meandered gently through the green countryside. As he looked around, he realized that he was on an island of some kind-two smaller rivers ran into the larger one, cutting him off on his little hill, from the mainland. He knew then, without knowing how, but with total certainty, that he was still in London, but London as it had been perhaps three thousand years ago, or more, before ever the first stone of the first human habitation was laid upon a stone.</p>
<p>He unzipped his bag and put the knife away in it, beside his wallet. Then he zipped it up again. The sky was starting to lighten, but the light was odd. It was younger, somehow, than the sunlight he was familiar with-purer, perhaps. An orange-red sun rose in the east, where Docklands would one day be, and Richard watched the dawn breaking over forests and marshes that he kept thinking of as Greenwich and Kent and the sea.</p>
<p>"Hello," said Door. He had not seen her approach. She was wearing different clothes beneath her battered brown leather jacket: they were still layered and ripped and patched, though, in taffeta and lace and silk and brocade. Her short red hair shone in the dawn like burnished copper.</p>
<p>"Hello," said Richard. She stood beside him and twined her small fingers into his right hand, the hand that was holding the sports bag. "Where are we?" he asked.</p>
<p>"On the awesome and terrible island of Westminster," she told him. It sounded as if she were quoting from somewhere, but he did not believe he had ever heard that phrase before. They began to walk together over the long grass, wet and white with melting frost. Their footprints left a dark green trail in the grass behind them, showing where they had come from.</p>
<p>"Look," said Door. "With the angel gone, there's a lot of sorting out to do in London Below. And there's only me to do it. My father wanted to unite London Below… I suppose I ought to try to finish what he started." They were walking north, away from the Thames, hand in hand. White seagulls wheeled and called in the sky above them. "Richard, you heard what Islington said to us about keeping my sister alive, just in case. I may not be the only one of my family left. And you've saved my life. More than once." She paused, and then, all in a rush, blurted, "You've been a really good friend to me, Richard. And I've sort of got to like having you around. Please don't go."</p>
<p>He squeezed her hand in his, gently. "Well," he said, "I've sort of got to like having you around, too. But I don't belong in this world. In my London… well, the most dangerous thing you ever have to watch out for is a taxi in a bit of a hurry. I like you, too. I like you an awful lot. But I have to go home."</p>
<p>She looked up at him with her odd-colored eyes, green and blue and flame. "Then we won't ever see each other again," she said.</p>
<p>"I suppose we won't."</p>
<p>"Thanks for everything you did," she said, seriously. Then she threw her arms around him, and she squeezed him tightly enough that the bruises on his ribs hurt, and he hugged her back, just as tightly, making all of his bruises complain violently, and he simply didn't care.</p>
<p>"Well," he said, eventually. "It was very nice knowing you." She was blinking hard. He wondered if she were going to tell him again that she had something in her eye. Instead she said, "Are you ready?"</p>
<p>He nodded.</p>
<p>"Have you got the key?"</p>
<p>He put down his bag and rummaged in his back pocket with his good hand. He took out the key and handed it to her. She held it out in front of her, as if it were being inserted in an imaginary door. "Okay," she said. "Just walk. Don't look back."</p>
<p>He began walking down a small hill, away from the blue waters of the Thames. A gray gull swooped past. At the bottom of the hill, he looked back. She stood at the top of the hill, silhouetted by the rising sun. Her cheeks were glistening. The orange sunlight gleamed on the key. Door turned it, with one decisive motion.</p>
<p>The world went dark, and a low roar filled Richard's head, like the maddened growling of a thousand enraged beasts.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>TWENTY</p>
</title>
<p>The world went dark, and a low roar filled Richard's head, like the maddened growling of a thousand enraged beasts. He blinked at the darkness, held tight to his bag. He wondered if he had been foolish, putting the knife away. Some people brushed past him in the dark. Richard started away from them. There were steps in front of him; Richard began to ascend, and, as he did so, the world began to resolve, to take shape and to re-form.</p>
<p>The growling was the roar of traffic, and he was coming out of an underpass in Trafalgar Square. The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel.</p>
<p>It was midmorning, on a warm October day, and he stood in the square holding his bag and blinking at the sunlight. Black taxis and red buses and multicolored cars roared and careened about the square, while tourists threw handfuls of pigeon feed down for the legions of tubby pigeons and took their snapshots of Nelson's Column and the huge Landseer lions that flanked it. He walked through the square, wondering if he was real or not. The Japanese tourists ignored him. He tried talking to a pretty fairhaired girl, who laughed, and shook her head, and said something in a language Richard thought might have been Italian, but was actually Finnish.</p>
<p>There was a small child of indeterminate sex, staring at some pigeons while orally demolishing a chocolate bar. He crouched down next to it. "Ur Hello, kiddie," said Richard. The child sucked its chocolate bar intently and gave no indication of recognizing Richard as another human being. "Hello," repeated Richard, a slight note of desperation creeping into his voice. "Can you see me? Kiddie? Hello? Two small eyes glared at him from a chocolate covered face. And then its lower lip began to tremble, and the child fled, throwing its arms around the legs of the nearest adult female, and wailing "Mommy? This man's bothering me. He's bothering me."</p>
<p>The child's mother turned on Richard with a formidable scowl. "What are you doing," she demanded, "bothering our Leslie? There are places for people like you."</p>
<p>Richard began to smile. It was a huge and happy smile. "I really am most frightfully sorry," he said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. And then, clutching his bag, he ran through Trafalgar Square, accompanied by bursts of sudden pigeons, who took to the air in astonishment.</p>
<p>He took his cashcard out of his wallet, and he put it into the cash machine. It recognized his four-digit pin number, advised him to keep it a secret and not disclose it to anyone, and asked what kind of service he would like. He asked for cash, and it gave him cash in abundance. He punched the air in delight, and then, embarrassed, pretended that he had been hailing a cab.</p>
<p>A cab stopped for him-it stopped!-for him!-and he climbed in, and sat in the back, and beamed. He asked the driver to take him to his office. And when the cab driver pointed out that it would almost be quicker to walk, Richard grinned even wider, and said he did not care. And as soon as they were underway he asked-practically begged-the cab driver to regale him, Richard, with his opinions on Inner-City Traffic Problems, How Best to Deal with Crime, and Thorny Political Issues of the Day. The cab driver accused Richard of "taking the Mickey," and sulked for all of the five-minute journey up the Strand. Richard did not care. He tipped the man ridiculously anyway. And then he walked into his office.</p>
<p>As he entered the building, he felt the smile begin to leave his face. Each step he took left him more anxious, more uneasy. What if he still had no job? What did it matter if small, chocolate-covered children and cab drivers could see him, if it turned out that, by some appalling mischance, he remained invisible to his colleagues?</p>
<p>Mr. Figgis, the security guard, looked up from a copy of Naughty Teenage Nymphets, which he had hidden inside his copy of the Sun, and he sniffed. "Morning Mister Mayhew," he said. It was not a welcoming "morning." It was the kind of "morning" that implied that the speaker really did not care if the recipient lived or died-nor indeed, for that matter, if it was even morning.</p>
<p>"Figgis!" exclaimed Richard, in delight. "And hello to you too, Mister Figgis, you exceptional security guard!"</p>
<p>Nobody had ever said anything remotely like that to Mr. Figgis before, not even naked ladies in his imagination; Figgis stared suspiciously at Richard until he got into the elevator and vanished from sight, then he returned his attention to the naughty teenage nymphets, none of whom, he was beginning to suspect, was ever likely to see twenty-nine again, lollipops or no lollipops.</p>
<p>Richard got out of the elevator and walked, slightly hesitantly, down the corridor. Everything will be all right, he told himself, if only my desk is there. If my desk is there, everything will be fine. He walked into the large room full of cubicles he had worked in for three years. People were working at desks, talking on telephones, rummaging through filing cabinets, drinking bad tea and worse coffee. It was his office. And there was the place by the window, where his desk had once been, which was now occupied by a gray cluster of filing cabinets and a yucca plant. He was about to turn and run when someone handed him a cup of tea in a Styrofoam cup.</p>
<p>"The return of the prodigal, eh?" said Gary. "Here you go."</p>
<p>"Hello Gary," said Richard. "Where's my desk?"</p>
<p>"This way," said Gary. "How was Majorca?"</p>
<p>"Majorca?"</p>
<p>"Don't you always go to Majorca?" asked Gary. They were walking up the back stairs that led to the fourth floor.</p>
<p>"Not this time," said Richard.</p>
<p>"I was going to say," said Gary. "Not much of a tan."</p>
<p>"No," agreed Richard. "Well. You know. I needed a change."</p>
<p>Gary nodded. He pointed to a door that had, for as long as Richard had been there, been the door to the executive files and supplies room. "A change? Well, you've certainly got one now. And may I be the first to congratulate you?" The plaque on the door said:</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>
<p>R. B. MAYHEW</p>
</title>
<subtitle>JUNIOR PARTNER</subtitle>
<empty-line/>
<p>"Lucky bastard," said Gary, affectionately.</p>
<p>He wandered off, and Richard went through the door, utterly bemused. The room was no longer an executive supplies and file room: it had been emptied of files and supplies, and painted in gray and black and white, and recarpeted. In the center of the office was a large desk. He examined it: it was, unmistakably, his very own desk. His trolls had all been neatly put away in one of the desk drawers, and he took them all out, and arranged them around the office. He had his own window, with a nice view of the sludge-brown river and the South Bank of the Thames, beyond. There was even a large green plant, with huge waxy leaves, of the kind that looks artificial but isn't. His old, dusty, cream-colored computer terminal had been replaced with a much sleeker, cleaner black computer terminal, which took up less desk space.</p>
<p>He walked over to the window and sipped his tea, staring out at the dirty brown river.</p>
<p>"You've found everything all right, then?" He looked up. Crisp, and efficient, Sylvia, the MD's PA, was standing in the doorway. She smiled when she saw him.</p>
<p>"Um. Yes. Look, there are things I have to take care of at home… d'you think it'd be all right if I took the rest of the day off and-"</p>
<p>"Suit yourself. You aren't meant to be back in till tomorrow anyway."</p>
<p>"I'm not?" he asked. "Right."</p>
<p>Sylvia frowned. "What happened to your finger?"</p>
<p>"I broke it," he told her.</p>
<p>She looked at his hand with concern. "You weren't in a fight, were you?"</p>
<p>"Me?"</p>
<p>She grinned. "Just teasing. I suppose you shut it in a door. That's what my sister did."</p>
<p>"No," Richard began to admit, "I was in a fi… " Sylvia raised an eyebrow. "A door," he finished lamely.</p>
<p>He went to the building he had once lived in by taxi. He was not sure that he trusted himself to travel by the Underground. Not yet. Having no door key, he knocked at the door of his flat and was more than disappointed when it was opened by the woman Richard last remembered meeting, or rather, failing to meet, in his bathroom. He introduced himself as the previous tenant, and quickly established that a) he, Richard, no longer lived there, and b) she, Mrs. Buchanan, had no idea what had happened to any of his personal possessions. Richard took some notes, and then he said good-bye very nicely, and took another black taxi to go and see a man in a camel-hair coat.</p>
<p>The smooth man in the camel-hair coat was not wearing his camel-hair coat, and was, in fact, a good deal less smooth than the last time Richard had encountered him. They were sitting in his office, and he had listened to Richard's list of complaints with the expression of someone who has recently and accidentally swallowed whole a live spider and has just begun to feel it squirm.</p>
<p>"Well, yes," he admitted, after looking at the files. "There does seem to have been some kind of problem, now you mention it. I can't quite see how it could have happened."</p>
<p>"I don't think it matters how it happened," said Richard, reasonably. "The fact of the matter is that while I was away for a few weeks, you rented my apartment to," he consulted his notes, "George and Adele Buchanan. Who have no intention of leaving."</p>
<p>The man closed the file. "Well," he said. "Mistakes do happen. Human error. I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about it."</p>
<p>The old Richard, the one who had lived in what was now the Buchanans' home, would have crumbled at this point, apologized for being a nuisance, and gone away. Instead, Richard said, "Really? Nothing you can do about it? You rented a property I was legally renting from your company to someone else, and in the process lost all my personal possessions, and there's nothing you can do about it? Now, I happen to think, and I'm sure my lawyer will also think, that there is a great deal you can do about it."</p>
<p>The man without the camel-hair coat looked as if the spider was beginning to crawl back up his throat. "But we don't have any other vacant apartments like yours in the building," he said. "There's only the penthouse suite."</p>
<p>"That," Richard told the man, coldly, "would be fine… " The man relaxed. "… for living accommodation. Now," said Richard, "let's talk about compensation for my lost possessions."</p>
<p>The new apartment was much nicer than the one he had left behind. It had more windows, and a balcony, a spacious lounge, and a proper spare bedroom. Richard prowled it, dissatisfied. The man-without-a-camel-hair-coat had, extremely grudgingly, had the apartment furnished with a bed, a sofa, several chairs, and a television set. Richard put Hunter's knife on the mantelpiece. He bought a take-away curry from the Indian restaurant across the road, sat on the carpeted floor of his new apartment, and ate it, wondering if he had ever really eaten curry late at night in a street-market held on the deck of a gunship moored by Tower Bridge. It did not seem very likely, now that he thought about it.</p>
<p>The doorbell rang. He got up and answered the door. "We found a lot of your stuff, Mr. Mayhew," said the man who was once more wearing his camel-hair coat. "Turned out it'd been put into storage. Right, bring the stuff in, lads."</p>
<p>A couple of burly men hauled in several large wooden packing cases, filled with Richard's stuff, and deposited them on the carpet in the middle of the living room.</p>
<p>"Thanks," said Richard. He reached into the first box, unwrapped the first paper-covered object, which turned out to be a framed photograph of Jessica. He stared at it for some moments, and then he put it down again in the case. He found the box with his clothes in it, removed them, and put them away in his bedroom, but the other boxes sat, untouched, in the middle of the living room floor. As the days went on, he felt increasingly guilty about not unpacking them. But he did not unpack them.</p>
<p>He was in his office, sitting at his desk, staring out of the window, when the intercom buzzed. "Richard?" said Sylvia. "The MD wants a meeting in his office in twenty minutes to discuss the Wandsworth report."</p>
<p>"I'll be there," he said. Then, because he had nothing else to do for the next ten minutes, he picked up an orange troll and menaced a slightly smaller green-haired troll with it. "I am the greatest warrior of London Below. Prepare to die," he said, in a dangerous trollish voice, waggling the orange troll. Then he picked up the green-haired troll, and said, in a smaller trollish voice, "Aha! But first you shall drink the nice cup of tea… "</p>
<p>Someone knocked on the door, and, guiltily, he put down the trolls. "Come in." The door opened, and Jessica came in, and stood in the doorway. She looked nervous. He had forgotten quite how beautiful she was. "Hello Richard," she said.</p>
<p>"Hello Jess," said Richard, and then he corrected himself. "Sorry-Jessica."</p>
<p>She smiled, and tossed her hair. "Oh, Jess is fine," she said, and looked as if she almost meant it. "Jessica-Jess. Nobody's called me Jess for ages. I rather miss it."</p>
<p>"So," said Richard, "what brings, do I have the honor, you, um."</p>
<p>"Just wanted to see you, really."</p>
<p>He was not sure what he ought to say. "That's nice," he said.</p>
<p>She closed the door to his office and took a few steps toward him. "Richard. You know something strange? I remember calling the engagement off. But I hardly remember what we were arguing about."</p>
<p>"No?"</p>
<p>"It's not important, though. Is it?" She looked around the office. "You got a promotion?"</p>
<p>"Yes."</p>
<p>"I'm happy for you." She put a hand into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a small brown box. She put it down on Richard's desk. He opened the box, although he knew what was inside it. "It's our engagement ring. I thought that, well, maybe, I'd give it back to you, and then, well, if things worked out, well, perhaps one day you'd give it back to me." It glittered in the sunlight: the most money he had ever spent on anything. He closed the box, and gave it back to her. "You keep it, Jessica," he said. And then, "I'm sorry."</p>
<p>She bit her lower lip. "Did you meet someone?" He hesitated. He thought of Lamia, and Hunter, and Anaesthesia, and even Door, but none of them were someones in the way that she meant. "No. No one else," he said. And then, realizing it was true as he said it, "I've just changed, that's all."</p>
<p>His intercom buzzed. "Richard? We're waiting for you." He pressed the button. "Be right down, Sylvia."</p>
<p>He looked at Jessica. She said nothing. Perhaps there was nothing she could trust herself to say. She walked away, and she closed the door quietly behind her.</p>
<p>Richard picked up the papers he would need, with one hand. He ran the other hand across his face, as if he were wiping something away: sorrow, perhaps, or tears, or Jessica.</p>
<p>He started taking the Tube again, to and from work, although he soon found that he had stopped buying newspapers to read on his journey in the morning and the evening, and instead of reading he would scan the faces of the other people on the train, faces of every kind and color, and wonder if they were all from London Above, wonder what went on behind their eyes.</p>
<p>During the evening rush hour, a few days after his encounter with Jessica, he thought he saw Lamia across the carriage, with her back to him, her dark hair piled high on her head and her dress long and black. His heart began to pound in his chest. He pushed his way toward her through the crowded compartment. As he got closer, the train pulled into a station, the doors hissed open, and she stepped off. But it was not Lamia. Just another young London goth-girl, he realized, disappointed, off for a night on the town.</p>
<p>One Saturday afternoon he saw a large brown rat, sitting on top of the plastic garbage cans at the back of Newton Mansions, cleaning its whiskers and looking as if it owned the world. At Richard's approach it leapt down onto the pavement and waited in the shadow of the garbage cans, staring up at him with wary bead-black eyes.</p>
<p>Richard crouched down. "Hello," he said, gently. "Do we know each other?" The rat made no kind of response that Richard was able to perceive, but it did not run away. "My name is Richard Mayhew," he continued, in a low voice. "I'm not actually a rat-speaker, but I, um, know a few rats, well, I've met some, and I wondered if you were familiar with the Lady Door"</p>
<p>He heard a shoe scrape behind him, and he turned to see the Buchanans looking at him curiously. "Have you… lost something?" asked Mrs. Buchanan. Richard heard, but ignored, her husband's gruff whisper of "Just his marbles."</p>
<p>"No," said Richard, honestly, "I was, um, saying hello to a… " The rat scurried off and away.</p>
<p>"Was that a rat?" barked George Buchanan. "I'll complain to the council. It's a disgrace. But that's London for you, isn't it?"</p>
<p>Yes, agreed Richard. It was. It really was.</p>
<p>Richard's possessions continued to sit untouched in the wooden packing cases in the middle of the living room floor.</p>
<p>He had not yet turned on the television. He would come home at night, and eat, then he would stand at the window, looking out over London, at the cars and the rooftops and the lights, as the late autumn twilight turned into night, and the lights came on all over the city. He would watch, standing alone in his darkened flat, until the city's lights began to be turned off. Eventually, reluctantly, he would undress, and climb into bed, and go to sleep.</p>
<p>Sylvia came into his office one Friday afternoon. He was opening envelopes, using his knife-Hunter's knife-as a letter-opener. "Richard?" she said. "I was wondering. Are you getting out much, these days?" He shook his head. "Well, a bunch of us are going out this evening. Do you fancy coming along?"</p>
<p>"Um. Sure," he said. "Yes. I'd love it."</p>
<p>He hated it.</p>
<p>There were eight of them: Sylvia and her young man, who had something to do with vintage cars, Gary from Corporate Accounts, who had recently broken up with his girlfriend, due to what Gary persisted in describing as a slight misunderstanding (he had thought she would be rather more understanding about his sleeping with her best friend than she had in fact turned out to be), several perfectly nice people and friends of nice people, and the new girl from Computer Services.</p>
<p>First they saw a film on the huge screen of the Odeon, Leicester Square. The good guy won in the end, and there were plenty of explosions and flying objects on the way. Sylvia decided that Richard should sit next to the girl from Computer Services, as, she explained, she was new to the company and did not know many people.</p>
<p>They walked down to Old Compton Street, on the edge of Soho, where the tawdry and the chic sit side by side to the benefit of both, and they ate at La Reache, filling up on couscous and dozens of marvelous plates of exotic food, which covered their table and spilled over onto an unused table nearby, and they walked from there to a small pub Sylvia liked in nearby Berwick Street, and they had a few drinks, and they chatted.</p>
<p>The new girl from Computer Services smiled at Richard a lot, as the evening went on, and he had nothing at all to say to her. He bought a round of drinks for the party, and the girl from Computer Services helped him carry them from the bar back to their table. Gary went off to the men's room, and the girl from Computer Services came and sat next to Richard, taking his place. Richard's head was filled with the clink of glasses, and the blare of the jukebox, and the sharp smell of beer and spilt Bacardi and cigarette smoke. He tried to listen to the conversations going on at the table, and he found that he could no longer concentrate on what anyone was saying, and, which was worse, that he was not interested in any of what he was able to hear.</p>
<p>And it came to him then, as clearly and as certainly as if he had been watching it on the big screen at the Odeon, Leicester Square: the rest of his life. He would go home tonight with the girl from Computer Services, and they would make gentle love, and tomorrow, it being Saturday, they would spend the morning in bed. And then they would get up, and together they would remove his possessions from the packing cases, and put them away. In a year, or a little less, he would marry the girl from Computer Services, and get another promotion, and they would have two children, a boy and a girl, and they would move out to the suburbs, to Harrow or Croydon or Hampstead or even as far away as distant Reading.</p>
<p>And it would not be a bad life. He knew that, too. Sometimes there is nothing you can do.</p>
<p>When Gary came back from the toilet, he looked around in puzzlement. Everyone was there except… "Dick?" he asked "Has anyone seen Richard?"</p>
<p>The girl from Computer Services shrugged.</p>
<p>Gary went outside, to Berwick Street. The cold of the night air was like a splash of water to his face. He could taste winter in the air. He called, "Dick? Hey? Richard?"</p>
<p>"Over here."</p>
<p>Richard was leaning against a wall, in the shadows. "Just getting a breath of fresh air."</p>
<p>"Are you all right?" asked Gary.</p>
<p>"Yes," said Richard. "No. I don't know."</p>
<p>"Well," said Gary, "that covers your options. Do you want to talk about it?"</p>
<p>Richard looked at him seriously. "You'll laugh at me."</p>
<p>"I'll do that anyway."</p>
<p>Richard looked at Gary. Then Gary was relieved to see him smile, and he knew that they were still friends. Gary looked back at the pub. Then he put his hands into his coat pockets. "Come on," he said. "Let's walk. You can get it off your chest. Then I'll laugh at you."</p>
<p>"Bastard," said Richard, sounding a lot more like Richard than he had in recent weeks.</p>
<p>"It's what friends are for."</p>
<p>They began to amble off, under the streetlights. "Look, Gary," Richard began. "Do you ever wonder if this is all there is?"</p>
<p>"What?"</p>
<p>Richard gestured vaguely, taking in everything. "Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?"</p>
<p>"I think that sums it up, yes," said Gary.</p>
<p>Richard sighed. "Well," he said, "for a start, I didn't go to Majorca. I mean, I really didn't go to Majorca."</p>
<p>Richard talked as they walked up and down the warren of tiny Soho back streets between Regent Street and the Charing Cross Road. He talked, and talked, beginning with finding a girl bleeding on the pavement, and trying to help, because he couldn't just leave her there, and what happened next. And when they got too cold to walk they went into an all-night greasy spoon cafe. It was a proper one, the kind that cooked everything in lard, and served cups of serious tea in large chipped white mugs shiny with bacon grease. Richard and Gary sat and Richard talked while Gary listened, and then they ordered fried eggs and baked beans and toast and sat and ate them, while Richard continued to talk, and Gary continued to listen. They mopped up the last of their egg yolks with the toast. They drank more tea, until eventually Richard said, "… and then Door did something with the key, and I was back again. In London Above. Well, the real London. And, well, you know the rest."</p>
<p>There was a silence. "That's all," said Richard. He finished his tea.</p>
<p>Gary scratched his head. "Look," he said, at length. "Is this real? Not some kind of horrible joke? I mean, somebody with a camera isn't about to leap out from behind a screen or something and tell me I'm on Candid Camera?"</p>
<p>"I sincerely hope not," said Richard. "You… do you believe me?"</p>
<p>Gary looked at the bill on their table, counted out pound coins, and dropped them onto the Formica, where they sat beside a plastic tomato ketchup container in the shape of an oversized tomato, old ketchup caked black about its nozzle. "I believe that, well, something happened to you, obviously… Look, more to the point, do you believe it?"</p>
<p>Richard stared up at him. There were dark circles beneath Richard's eyes. "Do I believe it? I don't know anymore. I did. I was there. There was a part in there when you turned up, you know."</p>
<p>"You didn't mention that before."</p>
<p>"It was a pretty horrid part. You told me that I'd gone mad and I was just wandering around London hallucinating."</p>
<p>They walked out of the cafe and walked south, toward Piccadilly. "Well," said Gary, "you must admit, it sounds more likely than your magical London underneath, where the people who fall through the cracks go. I've passed the people who fall through the cracks, Richard: they sleep in shop doorways all down the Strand. They don't go to a special London. They freeze to death in the winter."</p>
<p>Richard said nothing.</p>
<p>Gary continued. "I think maybe you got some kind of blow on the head. Or maybe some kind of shock when Jessica chucked you. For a while you went a little crazy. Then you got better."</p>
<p>Richard shivered. "You know what scares me? I think you could be right."</p>
<p>"So life isn't exciting?" continued Gary. "Great. Give me boredom. At least I know where I'm going to eat and sleep tonight. I'll still have a job on Monday. Yeah?" He turned and looked at Richard.</p>
<p>Richard nodded, hesitantly. "Yeah."</p>
<p>Gary looked at his watch. "Bloody hell," he exclaimed. "It's after two o'clock. Let's hope there are still a few taxis about." They walked into Brewer Street, at the Piccadilly end of Soho, wandering past the lights of the peep shows and the strip clubs. Gary was talking about taxis. He was not saying anything original, or even interesting. He was simply fulfilling his obligation as a Londoner to grumble about taxis. "… Had his light on and everything," he was saying, "I told him where I wanted to go, he said, sorry, I'm on my way home, I said, where do all you taxi drivers live anyway? And why don't any of you live near me? The trick is to get in first, then tell them you live south of the river, I mean, what was he trying to tell me? The way he was carrying on, Battersea might as well have been in bloody Katmandu… "</p>
<p>Richard had tuned him out. When they reached Windmill Street, Richard crossed the road and stared into the window of the Vintage Magazine Shop, examining the cartoonish models of forgotten film stars and the old posters and comics and magazines on display. It had been a glimpse into a world of adventure and imagination. And it was not true. He told himself that.</p>
<p>"So, what do you think?" Gary asked.</p>
<p>Richard jerked back to the present. "Of what?"</p>
<p>Gary realized Richard had not heard a word he had said. He said it again. "If there aren't any taxis we could get night buses."</p>
<p>"Yeah," said Richard. "Great. Fine."</p>
<p>Gary grimaced. "You worry me."</p>
<p>"Sorry."</p>
<p>They walked down Windmill Street, toward Piccadilly. Richard thrust his hands deep into his pockets. He looked puzzled for a moment, and pulled out a rather crumpled black crow's feather, with red thread tied around the quill.</p>
<p>"What's that?" asked Gary.</p>
<p>"It's a-" He stopped. "It's just a feather. You're right. It's only rubbish." He dropped the feather in the gutter at the curb, and did not look back.</p>
<p>Gary hesitated. Then he said, picking his words with care, "Have you thought about seeing somebody?"</p>
<p>"See somebody? Look, I'm not crazy, Gary."</p>
<p>"Are you sure about that?" A taxi came toward them, yellow for-hire light burning.</p>
<p>"No," said Richard, honestly. "Here's a taxi. You take it. I'll take the next one."</p>
<p>"Thanks." Gary waved down the taxi and climbed into the back before telling the driver that he wished to go to Battersea. He pulled down the window, and, as the taxi pulled out, he said, "Richard-this is reality. Get used to it. It's all there is. See you on Monday."</p>
<p>Richard waved at him and watched the taxi drive away. Then he turned around and walked slowly away from the lights of Piccadilly, back up toward Brewer Street. There was no longer a feather by the curb. Richard paused beside an old woman, fast asleep in a shop doorway. She was covered with a ripped old blanket, and her few possessions-two small junk-filled cardboard boxes and a dirty, once-white umbrella-were tied together with string beside her, and the string was tied around her wrist, to keep anyone from stealing them while she slept. She wore a wool hat, of no particular color.</p>
<p>He pulled out his wallet, found a ten-pound note, and bent down to slide the folded note into the woman's hand. Her eyes opened, and she jerked awake. She blinked at the money with old eyes. "What's this?" she said, sleepily, displeased at having been woken. "Keep it," said Richard.</p>
<p>She unfolded the money, then pushed it up her sleeve. "Whatchyouwant?" she asked Richard, suspiciously.</p>
<p>"Nothing," said Richard. "I really don't want anything. Nothing at all." And then he realized how true that was; and how dreadful a thing it had become. "Have you ever got everything you ever wanted? And then realized it wasn't what you wanted at all?"</p>
<p>"Can't say that I have," she said, picking the sleep from the corner of her eyes.</p>
<p>"I thought I wanted this," said Richard. "I thought I wanted a nice, normal life. I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane. You know?" She shook her head. He reached into his inside pocket. "You see this?" he said. He held up the knife. "Hunter gave this to me as she died," he told her.</p>
<p>"Don't hurt me," said the old lady. "I ain't done nuffing."</p>
<p>He heard a strange intensity in his own voice. "I wiped her blood from the blade. A hunter looks after her weapons. The earl knighted me with it. He gave me the freedom of the Underside."</p>
<p>"I don't know anyfing about that," she said. "Please. Put it away. That's a good lad."</p>
<p>Richard hefted the knife. Then he lunged toward the brick wall, next to the doorway in which the woman had been sleeping. He slashed three times, once horizontally, twice vertically. "What you doin'?" asked the woman, warily.</p>
<p>"Making a door," he told her.</p>
<p>She sniffed. "You ought to put that thing away. If the police see you they'll run you in for offensive weapons."</p>
<p>Richard looked at the outline of a doorway he had scratched on the wall. He put his knife back into his pocket, and he began to hammer on the wall with his fists. "Hey! Is there anyone there? Can you hear me? It's me-Richard. Door? Someone?" He hurt his hands, but he kept banging and flailing at the brickwork.</p>
<p>And then the madness left him, and he stopped.</p>
<p>"Sorry," he said to the old lady.</p>
<p>She did not answer. She had either gone back to sleep or, more probably, pretended to go back to sleep. Elderly snores, real or feigned, came from the doorway. Richard sat down on the pavement, and wondered how someone could make such a mess of their life as he had made of his. Then he looked back at the doorway he had scratched on the wall.</p>
<p>There was a door-shaped hole in the wall, where he had scratched his outline. There was a man standing in the doorway, with his arms folded theatrically. He stood there until he was certain that Richard had seen him. And then he yawned hugely, covering his mouth with a dark hand.</p>
<p>The marquis de Carabas raised an eyebrow. "Well?" he said, irritably. "Are you coming?"</p>
<p>Richard stared at him for a heartbeat.</p>
<p>Then Richard nodded, without trusting himself to speak, and stood up. And they walked away together through the hole in the wall, back into the darkness, leaving nothing behind them; not even the doorway.</p>
</section>
</body>
</FictionBook>