Neverwhere

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.