Neverwhere

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-the-valley-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 plum-bloom lips, and her jet black hair. He nodded. Somewhere inside him something was screaming; but whatever it was, it could wait. She reached up her hands to his face and pulled it gently down toward her. Then she kissed him, long and languorously. There was a moment of initial shock at the chill of her lips, and the cold of her tongue, and then he succumbed to her kiss entirely.

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.