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.
"Rat?" suggested Mr. Vandemar. "Thumbscrew? Spleen?" Squee, squee went the
wheels of the shopping cart.
"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."
Then he stood up. "Goodnight, good marquis. Don't forget to write."
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.
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."
"Craftsmanship," agreed Mr. Vandemar.
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."

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."
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.
Richard chuckled. "What's so funny?" Door asked.
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."
"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."
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.
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.
"No idea," said Door. "Hunter?"
Hunter slipped out of the shadows. "I don't know."
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."
"That's right," said a piping voice from further down the corridor. "She did."
"I didn't," came an even higher and more piping voice, from even further down the
corridor.
Hunter pointed to the paintings on the cave wall. "You did these?" she asked.
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."
"Not bad," said Hunter. The boy glared at her.
"Where's the next Floating Market?" asked Door.
"Belfast," said the boy. "Tonight."
"Thanks," said Door. "Hope you get your paintbrush back. Let him go, Hunter."
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?"
"So they tell me."
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?"
"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.

The body of the marquis de Carabas drifted east, through the deep sewer, face
down.
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.
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.
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.

"Belfast?" asked Richard.
Door smiled, impishly, and would say nothing more than, "You'll see," when he
pressed her about it.
He changed his tack. "How do you know that kid was telling you the truth about
the market?" he asked.
"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."
"How did that kid know where it was?"
"Someone told him," said Hunter.
Richard brooded on this for a moment. "How did they know?"
"Someone told them," explained Door.
"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.
A rich female voice asked from the darkness, "Hss. Any idea when the next
market is?"
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.
"Tonight," said Hunter. "Belfast."
"Thank you," said the woman. She had the most amazing eyes, thought Richard.
They were the color of foxgloves.
"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.
"Who was that?" asked Richard.
"They call themselves Velvets," said Door. "They sleep down here during the day,
and walk the Up-world at night."
"Are they dangerous?" asked Richard.
"Everybody's dangerous," said Hunter.
"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.
"I've never thought about it." They turned a corner. Door held up her lamp. "Not
bad at all," said Door.
"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.

The black rat entered the lair of the Golden deferentially, his head lowered, ears
back. He crawled forward, squeeing and chittering.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
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.
"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."
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."
The rat made a rude noise.
"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.

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.
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.
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.
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.

"Are you sure the marquis will be at the market?" Richard asked Door, as the path
began, slowly, to climb.
"He won't let us down," she said, as confidently as she could. "I'm sure he'll be
there."
FOURTEEN
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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!"
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.
"Hello, Hammersmith," said Door. "I hoped you'd be here."
"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.
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.
"Hammersmith?" said Door, from her perch. "These are my friends."
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.
"Richard," said Richard.
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.
"Hammersmith," said Hunter, with a perfect caramel smile.
"Hammersmith?" asked Door. "Will you help me down?"
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?"
"Couple of things," she said. "But first of all—" She turned to Richard. "Richard?
I've got a job for you."
Hunter raised an eyebrow. "For him?"
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.
"I am your bodyguard. I stay by your side," said Hunter.
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.
"And what if someone violates the Truce?" asked Hunter.
Hammersmith shivered, despite the heat of his brazier. "Violate the Market Truce?
Brrrr."
"It's not going to happen. Go on. Both of you. Curry, please. And get me some
papadums, please. Spicy ones."
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.
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."
"What happened to him? Was he killed?"
Hunter shook her head. "Quite the opposite. He still wishes he had been the one to
have died."
"He's still alive?"
Hunter pursed her lips. "Ish," she said, after a while. "Alive-ish."
A moment passed, then "Phew," Richard thought he was going to be ill. "What's
that—that stink?"
"Sewer Folk."
Richard averted his head and tried not to breathe through his nose until they were
well away from the Sewer Folk's stall.
"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.

Old Bailey found the Sewer Folk with little difficulty, following his nose.
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.
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.
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.
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, selfimportantly, 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.
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.
The old roof-man covered the body with a cloth, and he pulled it away from the
Sewer Folk, across the crowded deck.

"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."
"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.
"Hullo," said Richard, with a smile. "—Oh, and some papadums, please. You, um.
Here for curry?"
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.
"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.
"Lamia," she said. "I'm a Velvet."
"Ah," he said. "Right. Are there a lot of you?"
"A few," she said.
Richard collected the containers with the curry. "What do you do?" he asked.
"When I'm not looking for food," she said, with a smile, "I'm a guide. I know
every inch of the Underside."
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."
Lamia smiled sweetly. "I'll be the judge of that," she said.
Richard said, "Hunter, this is Lamia. She's a Velcro."
"Vel-vet," corrected Lamia, sweetly.
"She's a guide."
"I'll take you wherever you want to go."
Hunter took the bag with the food in it from Richard. "Time to go back," she said.
"Well," said Richard. "If we're off to see the you-know-what, maybe she could
help."
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?"
"Not yet," said Hunter.

Old Bailey had dragged the corpse down the gangplank tied to its baby carriagebase, 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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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—
Just then—
—it was over, and the leaves, and the papers, and the plastic shopping bags,
tumbled to the earth, and the road, and the water.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
The marquis gave Old Bailey back his hip-flask. Old Bailey put it away. "How are
ye feeling?" he asked.
"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.
"What did you have to go and get yourself killed for, anyway, that's what I want to
know," asked Old Bailey.
"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."
"Then you found out what you wanted to know?"
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.
"What's it like then?" asked Old Bailey. "Being dead?"
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."
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."
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."

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."
"Thank you, lady."
She hung the chain around her neck and hid the key away inside her layers of
clothes. "What would you like in return?"
The smith looked abashed. "I hardly want to presume upon your good nature . . . "
he mumbled.
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."
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."
Hammersmith looked glum. "So I'll never find out what's in it."
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.
"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.
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."
"You can rely on me, lady," said Hammersmith, earnestly.

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.
Old Bailey pointed to the gunship. "Over there."
"Door and the others. They'll be expecting me."
"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."

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.
"Thanks," said Door, with her mouth full. "Any sign of the marquis yet?"
"None," said Hunter.
"Croup and Vandemar?"
"No."
"Yummy curry. This is really good."
"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.
"Door," said Richard, "this is Lamia. She's a guide. She says she can take us
anywhere in the Underside."
"Anywhere?" Door munched a papadum.
"Anywhere," said Lamia.
Door put her head on one side. "Do you know where the Angel Islington is?"
Lamia blinked, slowly, long lashes covering and revealing her foxglove-colored
eyes. "Islington?" she said. "You can't go there . . . "
"Do you know?"
"Down Street," said Lamia. "The end of Down Street. But it's not safe."
Hunter had been watching this conversation, arms folded and unimpressed. Now
she said, "We don't need a guide."
"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."
Lamia looked up at Hunter with delight. "And he can give you brains," she said,
cheerfully, "and me a heart."
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."
Lamia bridled. "I'll take my payment from him, not you."
"And what payment would your kind demand?" asked Hunter.
"That," said Lamia with a sweet smile, "is for me to know and him to wonder."
Door shook her head. "I really don't think so."
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."
"That's not it at all."
Richard turned to Hunter. "Well, Hunter. Do you know the way to Islington?"
Hunter shook her head.
Door sighed. "We should get a move on. Down Street, you say?"
Lamia smiled with plum-colored lips. "Yes, lady."
By the time the marquis reached the market they were gone.
FIFTEEN
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.
"Third door along," she said.
They stopped in front of the door. There was a brass plate on it, which said:
THE ROYAL SOCIETY
FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY
TO HOUSES
And beneath that, in smaller letters:
DOWN STREET. PLEASE KNOCK.
"You get to the street through the house?" asked Richard.
"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 sleepylooking 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.
"Can I help you?" said the footman. Richard had been told to fuck off and die with
more warmth and good humor.
"Down Street," said Lamia, imperiously.
"This way," sighed the footman. "If you'll wipe your feet."
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.
At the bottom of those stairs was an antique service elevator, with a sign on it. The
sign said:
OUT OF ORDER
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.
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?"
"Yes," said Door.
"Then I won't," said Richard. And they went down.
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.
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.
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."
"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.
"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.
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.
"Richard!" shouted Door. "Move!"
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—
"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 . . .
He slowly became aware that someone was talking to him.
"Just climb along the plank, Richard," someone was saying.
"I . . . can't," he whispered.
"You went through worse than this to get the key, Richard," someone said. It was
Door talking.
"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?"
"Mm."
"Just edge forward, Richard. A bit at a time. Come on . . . " Her caramel fingers
stroked his white-knuckled hand, clasping the plank. "Come on."
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.
"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."
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.
"What," Door demanded, when, at length, he had stopped laughing, "is so funny?"
"Safe," he said, simply. Door stared at him, and then she, too, smiled. "So where
do we go now?" Richard asked.
"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-thevalley-honeysuckle scent of her, and enjoying her company.
"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."
She fixed him with her foxglove-colored eyes. "Why should it be bad luck?"
"Do you know who the rat-speakers are?"
"Of course."
"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."
She smiled at him sympathetically. "My people have stories about that. Some of
them may even be true."
"You'll have to tell me about them," he said. It was cold. His breath was steaming
in the chilly air.
"One day," she said. Her breath did not steam. "It's very good of you, taking me
with you."
"Least we could do."
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."
"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 . . .
Lamia ran a cold finger down his cheek. "You're so warm," she said, admiringly. -
"It must be wonderful to have so much warmth."
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.
Lamia looked up at him, pleadingly, sweetly. "Would you give me some of your
heat, Richard?" she asked. "I'm so cold."
Richard wondered if he should kiss her. "What? I . . . "
She looked disappointed. "Don't you like me?" she asked. He hoped, desperately,
that he had not hurt her feelings.
"Of course I like you," he heard his voice saying. "You're very nice."
"And you aren't using all your heat, are you?" she pointed out, reasonably.
"I suppose not . . . "
"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?"
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 plumbloom 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.
After some time, she pulled back.
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.
"More," she said. And she reached out to him.

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.
"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.
"You can't make me," she said, in decidedly unmusical tones.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
"I thought you liked me," said Richard, stupidly.
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?"
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.
"She was going to kill me," stammered Richard.
"Not immediately," said the marquis, dismissively. "You would have died
eventually, though, when she finished eating your life."
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.
"We were looking for you," said Richard.
"And now you've found me," croaked the marquis, drily.
"We were expecting to see you at the market."
"Yes. Well. Some people thought I was dead. I was forced to keep a low profile."
"Why . . . why did some people think you were dead?"
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."
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."
"What do we do?"
"Run!" said the marquis. "Warn them. I can't run yet . . . go, damn you!"
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.
He turned a corner, and he saw them all. "Hunter! Door!" he gasped, breathless.
"Stop! Watch out!"
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."
She nodded, spun around, and kicked out one foot, in a smooth, almost balletic,
motion.
Her foot caught Richard squarely in the stomach. He fell to the floor several feet
away, winded and breathless and hurt. "Hunter?" he gasped.
"I'm afraid so," said Hunter, and she turned away. Richard felt sick, and saddened.
The betrayal hurt him as much as the blow.
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."
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."
Door ignored him. "Hunter," she called, "what's happening?" Hunter did not move,
nor did she answer.
Mr. Croup beamed, proudly. "Before Hunter agreed to work for you, she agreed to
work for our principal. Taking care of you."
"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.
"I thought you were talking about the marquis," said Door.
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?"
"Very late indeed, Mister Croup. As late as he possibly could be."
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—
"
"Dead as a doornail," finished Mr. Vandemar. Richard finally managed to get
enough air into his lungs to gasp, "You traitorous bitch."
Hunter glanced at the ground. "No hard feelings," she whispered.
"The key you obtained from the Black Friars," said Mr. Croup to Door. "Who has
it?"
"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."
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.
"Hurt him, Mister Vandemar," said Mr. Croup.
"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.
"I've got the key," he heard Door say.
"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."
"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.
Hunter's voice was low and resonant. "What about me? Where's my payment?"
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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."
"This is your Great-Beast-of-London-hunting spear, isn't it?" he said.
She looked at the spear in a way that no woman had ever looked at Richard. "They
say that nothing can stand against it."
"But Door trusted you. I trusted you."
She was no longer smiling. "Enough."
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?"
"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.
"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."
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."
"Islington," she said.
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?"
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."
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.
"Would you prefer her behind us?" asked the marquis, drily.
"You could kill her," said Richard.
"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?"
"Is it?" asked Richard.
"Sometimes," said the marquis de Carabas. And they went down.
SIXTEEN
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.
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.
Hunter walked a little ahead of them. She, also, said nothing.
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.
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."
"I still don't understand," said Richard. "Islington. I actually met him. It. Him. He's
an angel. I mean, a real angel."
The marquis smiled, without humor. "When angels go bad, Richard, they go worse
than anyone. Remember, Lucifer used to be an angel."
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."
The marquis addressed her directly. "I assume that the labyrinth and the Beast are
there to discourage visitors."
She inclined her head. "So I would assume also."
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."
"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.
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.
"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."
"No Beast, though," said Richard.
"Not then."
Richard hesitated. The distant roaring began again. "I . . . I think I've had dreams
about the Beast," he said.
The marquis raised an eyebrow. "What kind of dreams?"
"Bad ones," said Richard.
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."
Richard shook his head. Sometimes there is nothing you can do. "I'm not turning
back. Not now. They've got Door."
"Right," said the marquis. "Well then. Shall we go?"
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."
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.

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.
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.
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 twopennyhalfpenny 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?"
"Quiet," said Mr. Vandemar. But Mr. Croup simply chuckled; and Door knew then
that the Angel Islington was not her friend.
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.
"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.

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.
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.
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."
The marquis held up the token. "No. We're fine," he said. "The token is leading us
straight. Clever little thing."
"Yeah," said Richard, who was not impressed. "Very clever."
It was then that the marquis stepped, barefoot, on the shattered rib cage of a halfburied 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.
"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.
Richard groaned.
"You've dreamed of the Beast, Richard," said the marquis. "Do you really want to
encounter it?"
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."
"Keep looking," said the marquis.
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.
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.
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.
The marquis sighed. "Get back over here, and we'll figure out something."
Richard said, quietly, "Too late."
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.
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.
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."
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.
The Beast charged.
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.

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.
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."
"And the key?" The angel's gentle voice seemed to come from all around them.
"Hanging around her swanlike neck," said Mr. Croup, a little more anxiously than
he intended to.
"Then enter," said the angel. The oak doors swung open at his words, and they
went in.

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.
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?"
There was a pause. And then, a whisper so faint he thought for a moment he had
imagined it, "Yes."
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."
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.
"Not in the sense you're thinking of. We have some healers, a handful of leeches
and chirurgeons . . . "
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.
"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?"
"No."
"Take it," she whispered.
"But . . . "
"Do it." Her voice was low and urgent. "Pick it up. Hold it at the blunt end."
Richard picked up the fallen spear. He held it at the blunt end. "I knew that part,"
he told her.
A glimmer of a smile breathed across her face. "I know."
"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.
"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.
"Stop it," he hissed, futilely. "Get down."
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."
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.
"Maybe it's . . . gone away," said Richard, gripping the spear so tightly that it hurt
his hands.
"I doubt it," muttered the marquis.
"Come on, you bastard," Hunter screamed. "Are you scared?"
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."
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.
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.
A bellow, then, or a roar, of anguish, and hatred, and pain. And then silence.
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 pushstart a Sherman tank, but eventually, awkwardly, he tumbled it half-off her.
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.
"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?"
"I think so. It's not moving."
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.
"Yes." He could feel it, cold and sticky.
"Take the knife. She's yours."
"I don't want your . . . "
"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 . . . "
Richard was not sure that he had heard her correctly, nor that he believed what he
had heard. "What?"
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."
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.
Then, "I did it," he told her.
"That's good," whispered Hunter. She said nothing more.
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.
"Better get a move on," said the marquis, standing up.
"We can't just leave her here."
"We can. We can come back for the body later."
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?"
"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."
Richard hesitated; and then, as best he could, he ran.

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.
The words went around and around, dirgelike, in his head. Fire and fleet and
candlelight . . .
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.
Richard went inside.
SEVENTEEN
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.
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.
"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?"
"She's dead," said Richard. He heard Door gasp.
"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.
"Still," said Mr. Croup chirpily. "Can't make an omelette without killing a few
people."
Richard ignored them, as best he could. "Door? Are you all right?"
"More or less, thanks. So far." Her lower lip was swollen, and there was a bruise
on her cheek.
"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.
"Torture her," suggested Mr. Vandemar, helpfully.
"We are," said Mr. Croup, "after all, famed across the entirety of creation for our
skill in the excrutiatory arts."
"Good at hurting people," clarified Mr. Vandemar.
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."
"Give us time enough," said Mr. Croup. "We'd break her."
"Into little wet pieces," said Mr. Vandemar.
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.
"But it's wrong," said Door.
Islington looked thoughtful. "Wrong?" it said, puzzled and amused.
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?"
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.
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.

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.
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.
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?"

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.
"He is," said Mr. Vandemar.
"He was," corrected Mr. Croup.
The angel's voice was a fraction less gentle and less caring. "I will not be lied to,"
it said.
"We don't lie," said Mr. Croup, affronted.
"Do," said Mr. Vandemar.
Mr. Croup ran a grimy hand through his filthy orange hair, in exasperation.
"Indeed we do. But not this time."
The pain in Richard's hand showed no indication of subsiding. "How can you
behave like this?" he asked, angrily. "You're an angel."
"What did I tell you, Richard?" asked the marquis, drily.
Richard thought. "You said, Lucifer was an angel."
Islington smiled superciliously. "Lucifer?" it said. "Lucifer was an idiot. It wound
up lord and master of nothing at all."
The marquis grinned. "And you wound up lord and master of two thugs and a
roomful of candles?"
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."
"But millions of people were killed," said Door.
Islington clasped its hands in front of its chest, as if it were posing for a Christmas
card. "These things happen," it explained, reasonably.
"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?"
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."
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.
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."
"Then why did you have us killed?"
"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.
Richard knew, then. "The Black Friars were keeping the key safe from you," he
said.
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."
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."
Door shook her head. "You killed him because he turned you down?"
"I didn't kill him," Islington corrected her, gently. "I had him killed."
"But he told me I could trust you. He told me to come here. In his journal."
Mr. Croup began to giggle. "He didn't," he said. "He never did. That was us. What
was it he actually said, Mister Vandemar?"
"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—"
Islington caressed her cheek, with the key. "I thought my version would get you
here a little faster."
"We took the journal," said Mr. Croup. "We fixed it, and we returned it."
"Where does the door lead to?" called Richard.
"Home," said the angel.
"Heaven?"
And Islington said nothing, but it smiled.
"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'?"
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."
"Well, now you've got the key," said Door.
"And I have you," said the angel. "You're the opener. Without you the key is
useless. Open the door for me."
"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."
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.
"Hurt him some more, Mister Vandemar," said Mr. Croup. "Cut off his ear."
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.
"Stop them," said Door. "I'll open your door."
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."
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.
"Door," called Richard. "Don't do it. Don't set it free. We don't matter."
"Actually," said the marquis, "I matter very much. But I have to agree. Don't do
it."
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.
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.
"So your employer's leaving," said the marquis to Mr. Croup. "I hope you've both
been paid in full."
Croup peered at the marquis, and said, "What?"
"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?"
Mr. Vandemar blinked, slowly, like an antique camera, and said, "What?"
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."
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."
"Jam tomorrow, eh?" said Richard.
"Don't like jam," said Mr. Vandemar. "Makes me belch."
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."
Mr. Vandemar walked over to where Mr. Croup was standing. "In full," he said.
"With interest," barked Mr. Croup.
"And meat hooks," said Mr. Vandemar
"From Heaven?" called Richard, from behind them. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar
walked toward the contemplative angel. "Hey!" said Mr. Croup.
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."
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.
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.
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?"
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."
"But it opened the door," screamed the angel.
"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."
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.
"Like you killed my family? I don't think you're going to kill anyone anymore."
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.
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.
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 . . .
"
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.
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.
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.
He could not breathe. White blotches of light exploded behind his eyes. He could
feel the chain beginning to give way . . .
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.
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 . . . "
"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.
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.
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.
And then there were none.
EIGHTEEN
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.
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.
"There it is," she said.
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.
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.
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.