Neverwhere (21 page)

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.

T
hey 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 sleepy-looking footman, wearing a powdered, crooked wig and scarlet livery. He looked at the motley rabble on his doorstep with an expression that indicated that they had not been worth getting out of bed for.

“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 chattering. 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 were 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.