people slipped and slid through the darkness about them, holding lamps, torches, flashlights, and candles. it made richard think of documentary films he had seen of schools of fish, glittering and darting through the ocean . . . deep water, inhabited by things that had lost the use of their eyes.

richard followed the leather woman up some steps. stone steps, edged with metal. they were in an underground station. they joined a line of people waiting to slip through a grille, which had been opened a foot or so to uncover the door, which led out onto the pavement.

immediately in front of them were a couple of young boys, each with a string tied around his wrist. the strings were held by a pallid, bald man, who smelled of formaldehyde. immediately behind them in the line waited a gray-bearded man with a black-and-white kitten sitting on his shoulder. it washed itself, intently licked the man's ear, then curled up on his shoulder and went to sleep. the line moved slowly, as, one by one, the figures at the end slipped through the space between the grille and the wall and edged into the night. "why are you going to the market, richard mayhew?" asked the leather woman, in a low voice. richard still could not place her accent: he was beginning to suspect that she was african or australian--or perhaps she came from somewhere even more exotic and obscure.

"i have friends i'm hoping to meet there. well, just one friend. i don't actually know many people from this world. i was sort of getting to know anaesthesia, but . . . " he trailed off. asked the question he had not dared to voice until this moment. "is she dead?"

the woman shrugged. "yes. or as good as. i trust your visit to the market will make her loss worthwhile."

richard shivered. "i don't think it could," he said. he felt empty, and utterly alone. they were approaching the front of the line. "what do you do?" he asked.

she smiled. "i sell personal physical services."

"oh," he said. "what kind of personal physical services?" he asked.

"i rent my body." she did not elaborate.

"ah." he was too weary to pursue it, to press her to explain just what she meant; he had an idea, though. and then they stepped out into the night. richard looked back. the sign on the station said knightsbridge. he didn't know whether to smile or to mourn. it felt like the small hours of the morning. richard looked down at his watch and was not surprised to notice that the digital face was now completely blank. perhaps the batteries had died, or, he thought, more likely, time in london below had only a passing acquaintance with the kind of time he was used to. he did not care. he unstrapped the watch and dropped it into the nearest garbage can.

the odd people were crossing the road in a stream, walking through the double doors facing them. "there?" he said, appalled.

the woman nodded. "there."

the building was large, and it was covered with many thousands of burning lights. conspicuous coats of arms on the wall facing them proudly proclaimed that it sold all sorts of things by appointment to various members of the british royal family. richard, who had spent many a footsore weekend hour trailing behind jessica through every prominent shop in london, recognized it immediately, even without the huge sign, proclaiming it to be, "harrods?"

the woman nodded. "only for tonight," she said. "the next market could be anywhere."

"but i mean," said richard. "harrods." it seemed almost sacrilegious to be sneaking into this place at night.

they walked in through the side door. the room was dark. they passed the _bureau de change_ and the gift-wrapping section, through another darkened room selling sunglasses and figurines, and then they stepped into the egyptian room. color and light broke over richard like a wave hitting the shore. his companion turned to him: she yawned, catlike, shading the vivid pinkness of her mouth with the back of her caramel hand. and then she smiled, and said, "well. you're here. safe and, more or less, sound. i have business to attend to. fare you well." she nodded curtly and slipped away into the crowd.

richard stood there, alone in the throng, drinking it in. it was pure madness--of that there was no doubt at all. it was loud, and brash, and insane, and it was, in many ways, quite wonderful. people argued, haggled, shouted, sang. they hawked and touted their wares, and loudly declaimed the superiority of their merchandise. music was playing--a dozen different kinds of music, being played a dozen different ways on a score of different instruments, most of them improvised, improved, improbable. richard could smell food. all kinds of food--the smells of curries and spices seemed to predominate, with, beneath them, the smells of grilling meats and mushrooms. stalls had been set up all throughout the shop, next to, or even on, counters that, during the day, had sold perfume, or watches, or amber, or silk scarves. everybody was buying. everybody was selling. richard listened to the market cries as he began to wander through the crowds.

"lovely fresh dreams. first-class nightmares. we got 'em. get yer lovely nightmares here."

"weapons! arm yourself! defend your cellar, cave, or hole! you want to hit 'em? we got 'em. come on darling, come on over here . . . "

"rubbish!" screamed a fat, elderly woman, in richard's ear, as he passed her malodorous stall. "junk!" she continued. "garbage! trash! offal! debris! come and get it! nothing whole or undamaged! crap, tripe, and useless piles of shit. you know you want it."

a man in armor beat a small drum and chanted, "lost property. roll up, roll up, and see for yourself. lost property. none of your found things here. everything guaranteed properly lost."

richard wandered through the huge rooms of the store, like a man in a trance. he was unable to even guess how many people there were at the night market. a thousand? two thousand? five thousand?

one stall was piled high with bottles, full bottles and empty bottles of every shape and every size, from bottles of booze to one huge glimmering bottle that could have contained nothing but a captive djinn; another sold lamps with candles, made of many kinds of wax and tallow; a man thrust what appeared to be a child's severed hand clutching a candle toward him as he passed, muttering, "hand of glory, sir? send 'em up the wooden hill to bedfordshire. guaranteed to work." richard hurried past, not wishing to find out what a hand of glory was, nor how it worked; he passed a stall selling glittering gold and silver jewelry, another selling jewelry made from what looked like the valves and wires of antique radios; there were stalls that sold every manner of book and magazine; others that sold clothes--old clothes patched, and mended, and made strange; several tattooists; something that he was almost certain was a small slave market (he kept well clear of this); a dentist's chair, with a hand-operated manual drill, with a line of miserable people standing beside it, waiting to have their teeth pulled or filled by a young man who seemed to be having altogether too good a time; a bent old man selling unlikely things that might have been hats and might have been modern art; something that looked very much like a portable shower facility; even a blacksmith's . . .

and every few stalls there would be somebody selling food. some of them had food cooking over open fires: curries, and potatoes, and chestnuts, and huge mushrooms, and exotic breads. richard found himself wondering why the smoke from the fires didn't set off the building's sprinkler system. then he found himself wondering why no one was looting the store: why set up their own little stalls? why not just take things from the shop itself? he knew better, at this point, than to risk asking anyone . . . he seemed marked as a man from london above, and thus worthy of great suspicion.

there was something deeply tribal about the people, richard decided. he tried to pick out distinct groups: there were the ones who looked like they had escaped from a historical reenactment society; the ones who reminded him of hippies; the albino people in gray clothes and dark glasses; the polished, dangerous ones in smart suits and black gloves; the huge, almost identical women who walked together in twos and threes, and nodded when they saw each other; the tangle-haired ones who looked like they probably lived in sewers and who smelled like hell; and a hundred other types and kinds . . .

he wondered how normal london--_his_ london--would look to an alien, and that made him bold. he began to ask them, as he went, "excuse me? i'm looking for a man named de carabas and a girl called door. do you know where i'd find them?" people shook their heads, apologized, averted their eyes, moved away.

richard took a step back and stepped on someone's foot. someone was well over seven feet tall, and was covered in tufty ginger-colored hair. someone's teeth had been sharpened to points. someone picked richard up with a hand the size of a sheep's head, and put richard's head so close to someone's mouth that richard almost gagged. "i'm really sorry," said richard. "i--i'm looking for a girl named door. do you know--" but someone dropped him onto the floor and moved on.

another whiff of cooking food wafted across the floor, and richard, who had managed to forget how hungry he was ever since he had declined the prime cut of tomcat--he could not think how many hours before--now found his mouth watering, and his thinking processes beginning to grind to a halt.

the iron-haired woman running the next food stall he approached did not reach to richard's waist. when richard tried to talk to her, she shook her head, drew a finger across her lips. she could not talk, or did not talk, or did not want to talk. richard found himself conducting the negotiations for a cottage cheese and lettuce sandwich and a cup of what looked and smelled like home-brewed lemonade, in sign language. his food cost him a ballpoint pen, and a book of matches he had forgotten he had. the little woman must have felt that she had got by far the better of the deal, for, as he took his food, she threw in a couple of small, nutty cookies.

richard stood in the middle of the throng, listening to the music--someone was, for no reason that richard could easily discern, singing the lyrics of "greensleeves" to the tune of "yakkety-yak"-- watching the bizarre bazaar unfold around him, and eating his sandwiches.

as he finished the last of the sandwiches, he realized that he had no idea how anything he had just eaten had tasted; and he resolved to slow down, and chew the cookies more slowly. he sipped the lemonade, making it last. "you need a bird, sir?" asked a cheery voice, close at hand. "i got rooks and ravens, crows and starlings. fine, wise birds. tasty _and_ wise. brilliant."

richard said, "no, thank you" and turned around.

the hand-painted sign above the stall said:

old bailey's birds and information

there were other, smaller, signs scattered about:

you wants it, we knows it, and you won't find a plumper starling!!!! and when it's time for a rook, it's time for old bailey!! richard found himself thinking of the man he had seen when he had first come to london, who used to stand outside leicester square tube station with a huge hand-painted sandwich board that exhorted the world to "less lust through less protein, eggs, meat, beans, cheese and sitting."

birds hopped and fluttered about small cages that looked as if they had been woven out of tv antennae. "information, then?" continued old bailey, warming to his own sales-pitch. "roof-maps? history? secret and mysterious knowledge? if i don't knows it, it's probably better forgot. that's what i says." the old man still wore his feathered coat, was still wrapped about with ropes and cords. he blinked at richard, then pulled on the pair of spectacles tied about his neck with string. he inspected richard carefully through them. "hang on--i knows you. you was with the marquis de carabas. on the rooftops. remember? eh? i'm old bailey. remember me?" he thrust out his hand, pumped richard's hand furiously.

"actually," said richard, "i'm looking for the marquis. and for a young lady named door. i think they're probably together."

the old man did a little jig, causing several feathers to detach themselves from his coat; this provoked a chorus of raucous disapproval from the various birds around them. "information! information!" he announced to the crowded room. "see? i told 'em. diversify, i said. _diversify!_ you can't sell rooks for the stewpot forever--anyway, they taste like boiled slipper. and they're so stupid. thick as custard. you ever eaten rook?" richard shook his head. that was something he could be certain of, at any rate. "what'll you give me?" asked old bailey.

"sorry?" said richard, awkwardly leaping from ice floe to ice floe in the stream of the old man's consciousness.

"if'n i give ye your information. what'll i get?"

"i don't have any money," said richard. "and i just gave my pen away."

he began to pull out the contents of richard's pockets. "there," said old bailey. "that!"

"my hankie?" asked richard. it was not a particularly clean handkerchief; it had been a present from his aunt maude, on his last birthday. old bailey seized it and waved it above his head, happily.

"never you fear, laddie," he sang, triumphantly. "your quest is at an end. go down there, through that door. you can't miss them. they're auditioning." he was pointing towards harrods' extensive network of food halls. a rook cawed maliciously. "none of your beak," said old bailey, to the rook. and, to richard, he said, "thank'ee for the little flag." he jigged around his stall, delighted, waving richard's handkerchief to and fro.

_auditioning?_ thought richard. and then he smiled. it didn't matter. his quest, as the mad old roof-man had put it, was at an end. he walked toward the food halls.

fashion, in bodyguards, seemed to be everything. they all had a knack of one kind or another, and each of them was desperate to demonstrate it to the world. at the moment, ruislip was facing off against the fop with no name.

the fop with no name looked somewhat like an early eighteenth-century rake, one who hadn't been able to find real rake clothes and had had to make do with what he could find at the salvation army store. his face was powdered to white, his lips painted red. ruislip, the fop's opponent, resembled a bad dream one might have if one fell asleep watching sumo wrestling on the television with a bob marley record playing in the background. he was a huge rastafarian who looked like nothing so much as an obese and enormous baby.

they were standing face to face, in the middle of a cleared circle of spectators and other bodyguards and sightseers. neither man moved a muscle. the fop was a good head taller than ruislip. on the other hand, ruislip looked as if he weighed as much as four fops, each of them carrying a large leather suitcase entirely filled with lard. they stared at each other, without breaking eye contact.

the marquis de carabas tapped door on the shoulder and pointed. something was about to happen.

one moment there were two men standing impassively, just looking at each other, then the fop's head rocked back, as if he'd just been hit in the face. a small, reddish purple bruise appeared on his cheek. he pursed his lips and fluttered his eyelashes. "la," he said, then stretched his rouged lips wide, in a ghastly parody of a smile.

the fop gestured. ruislip staggered, and clutched his stomach.

the fop with no name smirked outrageously, waggled his fingers, and blew kisses to several spectators. ruislip stared angrily at the fop, redoubling his mental assault. blood began to drip from the fop's lips. his left eye started to swell. he staggered. the audience muttered appreciatively.

"it's not as impressive as it looks," whispered the marquis to door.

the fop with no name stumbled, suddenly, going onto his knees, as if someone were forcing him down, and fell, awkwardly, to the floor. then he jerked, as if someone had just kicked him, hard, in the stomach. ruislip looked triumphant. the spectators clapped, politely. the fop writhed and spat blood onto the sawdust on the floor of harrods' fish and meat hall. he was dragged off into the corner by some friends, and was violently sick.

"next," said the marquis.

the next would-be bodyguard was again thinner than ruislip (being about the size of two and a half fops, carrying but a single suitcase filled with lard between them). he was covered in tattoos and dressed in clothes that looked like they had been stitched together from old car seats and rubber mats. he was shaven-headed, and he sneered at the world through rotten teeth. "i'm varney," he said, and he hawked, and spat green on the sawdust. he walked into the ring.

"when you're ready, gentlemen," said the marquis.

ruislip stamped his bare feet on the floor, sumo-like, one-two, one-two, and commenced to stare hard at varney. a small cut opened on varney's forehead, and blood began to drip from it into one eye. varney ignored it; and instead appeared to be concentrating on his right arm. he pulled his arm up slowly, like a man fighting a great deal of pressure. then he slammed his fist into ruislip's nose, which began to spurt blood. ruislip drew one long, horrible breath, and hit the ground with the sound of half a ton of wet liver being dropped into a bathtub. varney giggled.

ruislip slowly pulled himself back to his feet blood from his nose soaking his mouth and chest, dripping onto the sawdust. varney wiped the blood from his forehead and bared his ruined mouth at the world in an appalling grin. "come on," he said. "fat bastard. hit me again."

"that one's promising," muttered the marquis.

door raised an eyebrow. "he doesn't look very nice."

"_nice_ in a bodyguard," lectured the marquis, "is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters. he looks _dangerous_." there was a murmur of appreciation, then, as varney did something rather fast and painful to ruislip, something that involved the sudden connection of varney's leather-bound foot and ruislip's testicles. the murmur was the kind of restrained and deeply unenthusiastic applause one normally only hears in england on sleepy sunny sunday afternoons, at village cricket matches. the marquis clapped politely with the rest of them. "very good, sir," he said.

varney looked at door, and he winked at her, almost proprietarily, before he returned his attention to ruislip. door shivered.

richard heard the clapping and walked toward it.

five almost identically dressed, pale young women walked past him. they wore long dresses made of velvet, each dress as dark as night, one each of dark green, dark chocolate, royal blue, dark blood, and pure black. each woman had black hair and wore silver jewelry; each was perfectly coifed, perfectly made up. they moved silently: richard was aware only of a swish of heavy velvet as they went past, a swish that sounded almost like a sigh. the last of the women, the one dressed in utter black, the palest and the most beautiful, smiled at richard. he smiled back at her, warily. then he walked on toward the audition.

it was being held in the fish and meat hall, on the open area of floor beneath harrods' fish sculpture. the audience had their back to him, were standing two or three people deep. richard wondered if he would easily be able to find door and the marquis: and then the crowd parted, and he saw them both, sitting on the glass top of the smoked-salmon counter. he opened his mouth to shout out door's name; and as he did so, he realized why the crowd had parted, as an enormous dreadlocked man, naked but for a green, yellow, and red cloth wrapped like a diaper around his middle, came catapulting through the crowd, as if tossed by a giant, landing squarely on top of him.

"richard?" she said.

he opened his eyes. the face swam in and out of focus. fire opal-colored eyes, peering into his, from a pale, elfin face.

"door?" he said.

she looked furious; she looked beyond fury. "temple and arch, richard. i don't _believe_ it. what are you doing here?"

"it's nice to see you, too," said richard, weakly. he sat up and wondered if he was suffering from a concussion. he wondered how he'd know if he was, and he wondered why he had ever thought that door would have been pleased to see him. she stared intently at her nails, nostrils flaring, as if she did not trust herself to say anything else.

the big man with the very bad teeth, the man who had knocked richard over on the bridge, was fighting with a dwarf. they were fighting with crowbars, and the fight was not as unequal as one might have imagined. the dwarf was preternaturally fast: he rolled, he struck, he bounced, he dove; his every movement made varney appear lumbering and awkward by comparison.

richard turned to the marquis, who was watching the fight intently. "what is happening?" he asked.

the marquis spared him a glance, and then returned his gaze to the action in front of them. _"you,"_ he said, "are out of your league, in deep shit, and, i would imagine, a few hours away from an untimely and undoubtedly messy end. _we,_ on the other hand, are auditioning bodyguards." varney connected his crowbar with the dwarf, who instantly stopped bouncing and darting, and instantly began lying insensible. "i think we've seen enough," said the marquis, loudly. "thank you all. mister varney, if you could wait behind?"

"why did you have to come here?" door said to richard, frostily.

"i didn't really have much choice," said richard.

she sighed. the marquis was walking around the perimeter, dismissing the various bodyguards who had already auditioned, distributing a few words of praise here, of advice there. varney waited patiently, off to one side. richard essayed a smile at door. it was ignored. "how did you get to the market?" she asked.

"there are these rat people--" richard began.

"rat-speakers," she said.

"and you see, the rat who brought us the marquis's message--"

"master longtail," she said.

"well, he told them they had to get me here."

she raised an eyebrow, cocked her head slightly on one side. "a rat-speaker brought you here?"

he nodded. "most of the way. her name was anaesthesia. she . . . well, something happened to her. on the bridge. this other lady brought me the rest of the way here. i think she was a . . . you know." he hesitated, then said it. "hooker."

the marquis had returned. he stood in front of varney, who looked obscenely pleased with himself. "weapons expertise?" asked the marquis.

"whew," said varney. "put it like this. if you can cut someone with it, blow someone's head off with it, break a bone with it, or make a nasty hole in someone with it, then varney's the master of it."

"previous satisfied employers include?"

"olympia, the shepherd queen, the crouch enders. i done security for the may fair for a bit, as well."

"well," said the marquis de carabas. "we're all very impressed with your skill."

"i had heard," said a female voice, "that you had put out a call for bodyguards. not for enthusiastic amateurs." her skin was the color of burnt caramel, and her smile would have stopped a revolution. she was dressed entirely in soft mottled gray and brown leathers. richard recognized her immediately.

"that's her," richard whispered to door. "the hooker."

"varney," said varney, affronted, "is the best guard and bravo in the underside. everyone knows that."

the woman looked at the marquis. "you've finished the trials?" she asked.

"yes," said varney.

"not necessarily," said the marquis.

"then," she told him. "i would like to audition." there was a beat before the marquis de carabas said, "very well," and stepped backward.

varney was undoubtedly dangerous, not to mention a bully, a sadist, and actively harmful to the physical health of those around him. what he was not, though, was particularly quick on the uptake. he stared at the marquis as the penny dropped, and dropped, and kept on dropping. finally, in disbelief, he asked, "i have to fight _her_?"

"yes," said the leather woman. "unless you'd like a little nap, first." varney began to laugh: a manic giggle. he stopped laughing a moment later, when the woman kicked him, hard, in the solar plexus, and he toppled like a tree.

near his hand, on the floor, was the crowbar he had used in the fight with the dwarf. he grabbed it, slammed it into the woman's face--or would have, had she not ducked out of the way. she clapped her open hands onto his ears, very fast. the crowbar went flying across the room. still reeling from the pain in his ears, varney pulled a knife from his boot. he was not entirely sure what happened after that: only that the world swung out from under him, and then he was lying, face down, on the ground, with blood coming from his ears, and his own knife at his throat, while the marquis de carabas was saying, "enough!"

the woman looked up, still holding varney's knife to his throat. "well?" she said.

"very impressive," said the marquis. door nodded.

richard was thunderstruck: it had been like watching emma peel, bruce lee, and a particularly vicious tornado, all rolled into one and sprinkled with a generous helping of a mongoose killing a king cobra. that was how she had moved. that was how she had fought.

richard normally found displays of real violence unnerving. but he found watching this woman in action exhilarating, as if she were finding a part of him he had not known existed. it seemed utterly right, in this unreal mirror of the london he had known, that she should be here and that she should be fighting so dangerously and so well.

she was part of london below. he understood that now. and as he thought that, he thought about london above, and a world in which no one fought like this--no one needed to fight like this--a world of safety and of sanity and, for a moment, the homesickness engulfed him like a fever.

the woman looked down at varney. "thank you, mister varney," she said, politely. "i'm afraid we won't be needing your services after all." she got off him, and put his knife away in her belt.

"and you are called?" asked the marquis.

"i'm called hunter," she said.

nobody said anything. then door spoke, hesitantly, "_the_ hunter?"

"that's right," said hunter, and she brushed the dust of the floor from her leather leggings. "i'm back."

from somewhere a bell sounded, twice, a deep bonging noise that made richard's teeth vibrate. "five minutes," muttered the marquis. then he said, to the remains of the crowd, "i think we've found our bodyguard. thank you all very much. nothing more to see."

hunter walked over to door, and looked her up and down. "can you stop people from killing me?" asked door. hunter inclined her head toward richard. "i saved _his_ life three times today, crossing the bridge, coming to the market."

varney, who had stumbled to his feet, picked up the crowbar with his mind. the marquis watched him do it; he said nothing.

the ghost of a smile hovered about door's lips. "that's funny," she said. "richard thought you were a--"

hunter never found out what richard thought she was. the bar came hurtling toward her head. she simply reached out a hand and caught it: it _thwapped,_ satisfyingly, into the palm of her hand.

she walked over to varney. "is this yours?" she asked. he bared his teeth at her, yellow and black and brown. "right now," said hunter, "we're under market truce. but if you try something like that again, i'll waive the truce, and i'll break off both your arms and make you carry them home in your teeth. now," she continued, bending his wrist behind his back, "say sorry, nicely."

"ow," said varney.

"yes?" she said, encouragingly.

he spat it out as if it were choking him. "i'm sorry." she let him go. varney backed away to a safe distance, plainly scared and furious, watching hunter. when he reached the door to the food halls, he hesitated, and shouted, "you're dead. you're fucking dead, you are!" in a voice that hovered on the edge of tears, and then he turned, and he ran from the room.

"amateurs," sighed hunter.

they walked back through the store the way that richard had come. the bell he had heard was now tolling deeply and continually. when they came upon it, he saw that it was a huge brass bell, suspended on a wooden frame, with a rope suspended from the clapper. it was being tolled by a large black man, wearing the black robes of a dominican monk, and it had been set up next to harrods' gourmet jelly bean stand.

impressive as the market had been to watch, richard found the speed at which it was being dismantled, broken down, and put away even more impressive. all evidence that it had ever been there was vanishing: stalls were being taken apart, loaded onto people's backs, hauled off into the streets. richard noticed old bailey, his arms filled with his crude signs and with bird cages, stumbling out of the store. the old man waved happily at richard and vanished off into the night.

the crowds thinned, the market vanished, and almost instantly the ground floor of harrods looked as usual, as sedate, elegant, and clean as any time he had walked around it in jessica's wake on a saturday afternoon. it was as if the market had never existed.

"hunter," said the marquis. "i've heard of you, of course. where have you been, all this time?"

"hunting," she said, simply. then, to door. "can you take orders?"

door nodded. "if i have to."

"good. then maybe i _can_ keep you alive," said hunter. "if i take the job."

the marquis stopped. his eyes flickered over her, distrustfully. "you said, _if_ you take the job . . . ?"

hunter opened the door, and they stepped out onto the pavement of london at night. it had rained while they had been at the market, and the streetlights now glimmered on the wet tarmac. "i've taken it," said hunter.

richard stared at the glistening street. it all seemed so normal, so quiet, so sane. for a moment, he felt that all he needed to get his life back would be to hail a taxi and tell it to take him home. and then he would sleep the night through in his own bed. but a taxi would not see him or stop for him, and he had nowhere to go, even if one did.

"i'm tired," he said.

no one said anything. door would not meet his eyes, the marquis was cheerfully ignoring him, and hunter was treating him as an irrelevance. he felt like a small child, unwanted, following the bigger children around, and that made him irritated. "look," he said, clearing his throat, "i know you are all very busy people. but what about me?"

the marquis turned and stared at him, eyes huge and white in his dark face. "you?" he said. "what about you?"

"well," said richard. "how do i get back to normal again? it's like i've walked into a nightmare. last week everything made sense, and now nothing makes sense . . . " he trailed off. swallowed. "i want to know how to get my life back," he explained.

"you won't get it back traveling with us, richard," said door. "it's going to be hard enough for you anyway. i . . . i really am sorry."

hunter, in the lead, knelt down on the pavement. she took a small metal rod from her belt and used it to unlock the cover to a sewer. she pulled up the sewer cover, looked into it warily, climbed down, then ushered door into the sewer. door did not look at richard as she went down. the marquis scratched the side of his nose. "young man," he said, "understand this: there are two londons. there's london above--that's where you lived--and then there's london below--the underside--inhabited by the people who fell through the cracks in the world. now you're one of them. good night."

he began to climb down the sewer ladder. richard said, "wait," and caught the sewer cover before it could close. he followed the marquis down. it smelled like drains at the top of the sewer--a dead, soapy, cabbagey smell. he expected it to get worse as he went down, but instead the smell quickly dissipated as he approached the floor of the sewer. gray water ran, shallow but fast, along the bottom of the brick tunnel. richard stepped into it. he could see the lights of the others up ahead, and he ran and splashed down the tunnel until he caught up with them.

"go away," said the marquis.

"no," he said.

door glanced up at him. "i am really sorry, richard," she said.

the marquis stepped between richard and door. "you can't go back to your old home or your old job or your old life," he said to richard, almost gently. "none of those things exist. up there, _you_ don't exist." they had reached a junction: a place where three tunnels came together. door and hunter set off along one of them, the one that was empty of water, and they did not look back. the marquis lingered.

"you'll just have to make the best of it down here," he said to richard, "in the sewers and the magic and the dark." and then he smiled, hugely, whitely: a gleaming grin, monumental in its insincerity. "well--delightful to see you again. best of luck. if you can survive for the next day or two," he confided, "you might even make it through a whole month." and with that he turned and strode off through the sewer, after door and hunter.

richard leaned against a wall and listened to their footsteps, echoing away, and to the rush of the water running past on its way to the pumping stations of east london, and the sewage works. "shit," he said. and then, to his surprise, for the first time since his father died, alone in the dark, richard mayhew began to cry.

the underground station was quite empty, and quite dark. varney walked through it, keeping close to walls, darting nervous looks behind him, and in front of him, and from side to side. he had picked the station at random, had headed for it over the rooftops and through the shadows, making certain that he was not being followed. he was not heading back to his lair in the camden town deep tunnels. too risky. there were other places where varney had cached weapons and food. he would go to ground for a little while, until this all blew over.

he stopped beside a ticket machine and listened, in the darkness: absolute silence. reassured that he was alone, he allowed himself to relax. he stopped at the top of the spiral staircase and drew a deep breath.

an oily voice from beside him said conversationally, "varney's the finest bravo and guard in the underside. everyone knows that. mister varney told us so himself." a voice from the other side of him responded, dully, "it's not nice to lie, mister croup."

in the pitch darkness, mr. croup expanded on his theme. "it isn't, mister vandemar. i have to say, i regard it as a personal betrayal, and i was deeply wounded by it. and disappointed. when you don't have any redeeming features, you don't take particularly kindly to disappointment, do you, mister vandemar?"

"not kindly at all, mister croup."

varney threw himself forward, and ran, headlong, in the dark, down the spiral staircase. a voice from the top of the stairs, mr. croup's: "really," it said, "we ought to look upon it as a mercy killing."

the sound of varney's feet clattered off the metal railings, echoed throughout the stairwell. he puffed, and he panted, his shoulders glancing off the walls, tumbling blindly downwards in the dark. he reached the bottom of the steps, next to the sign warning travelers that there were 259 steps up to the top, and only healthy people should even think about attempting it. everyone else, suggested the sign, should use the elevator.

_the elevator?_

something clanked, and the elevator doors opened, magnificently slowly, flooding the passageway with light. varney fumbled for his knife: cursed, when he realized the hunter-bitch still had it. he reached for the machete in his shoulder sheath. it was gone.

he heard a polite cough behind him, and he turned.

mr. vandemar was sitting on the steps, at the bottom of the spiral staircase. he was picking his fingernails with varney's machete.

and then mr, croup fell upon him, all teeth and talons and little blades; and varney never had a chance to scream. "bye," said mr. vandemar, impassively, and he continued paring his nails. after that the blood began to flow. wet, red blood in enormous quantities, for varney was a big man, and he had been keeping it all inside. when mr. croup and mr. vandemar were finished, however, one would have been hard put even to notice the slight stain on the floor at the bottom of the spiral staircase.

the next time the floors were washed, it was gone forever.

hunter was in the lead. door walked in the middle. the marquis de carabas took up the rear. none of them had said a word since leaving richard half an hour earlier.

door stopped, suddenly. "we can't do this," she said, flatly. "we can't leave him back there."

"of course we can," said the marquis. "we did."

she shook her head. she had felt guilty and stupid ever since she saw richard, lying on his back beneath ruislip, at the audition. she was tired of it.

"don't be foolish," said the marquis.

"he saved my life," she told him. "he could have left me on the sidewalk. he didn't."

it was her fault. she knew that was true. she had opened a door to someone who could help her, and help her he had. he had taken her somewhere warm, and he had cared for her, and he had brought her help. the action of helping her had tumbled him from his world into hers.

it was foolish to even think about bringing him with them. they could not afford to bring someone with them: she was unsure that the three of them would be able to take care of themselves on the journey that confronted them.

she wondered, briefly, if it were simply the door that she had opened, that had taken her to him, which had allowed him to notice her, or if there were, somehow, more to it than that.

the marquis raised an eyebrow: he was detached, removed, a creature of pure irony. "my dear young lady," he said. "we are not bringing a guest along on this expedition."

"don't patronize me, de carabas," said door. she was so tired. "and i think i can decide who comes with us. you _are_ working for me, aren't you? or is it the other way around?" her sorrow and exhaustion had drained her of her patience. she needed de carabas--she couldn't afford to drive him away-- but she had reached her limit.

de carabas stared at her, coldly angry. "he is _not_ coming with us," he stated, flatly. "anyway, he's probably dead by now."

richard was not dead. he was sitting in the dark, on a ledge, on the side of a storm drain, wondering what to do, wondering how much further out of his league he could possibly get. his life so far, he decided, had prepared him perfectly for a job in securities, for shopping at the supermarket, for watching soccer on the television on the weekends, for turning up the thermostat if he got cold. it had magnificently failed to prepare him for a life as an un-person on the roofs and in the sewers of london, for a life in the cold and the wet and the dark.

a light glimmered. footsteps came toward him. if, he decided, it was a bunch of murderers, cannibals, or monsters, he would not even put up a fight. let them end it all for him; he'd had enough. he stared down into the dark, to the place where his feet should be. the footsteps came closer.

"richard?" the voice was door's. he jumped. then he studiously ignored her. _if it weren't for you,_ he thought . . . "richard?"

he didn't look up. "what?" he said.

"look," she said. "you really wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for me," _you can say that again,_ he thought. "and i don't think you'll be any safer with us. but. well." she stopped. a deep breath. "i'm sorry. i really am. are you coining?"

he looked at her then: a small creature with huge eyes staring at him urgently from a heart-shaped, pale face. okay, he said to himself. i guess i'm not quite ready to just give up and die. "well, i don't have anywhere else to be right now," he said, with a studied unconcern that bordered on hysteria. "why not?"

her face changed. she threw her arms around his chest and hugged him, tightly. "and we will try to get you back home again," she said. "promise. once we've found what i'm looking for." he wondered if she meant it, suspected, for the first time, that what she was offering might be impossible. but he pushed that thought out of his head. they began to walk down the tunnel. richard could see hunter and the marquis waiting for them at the tunnel's mouth. the marquis looked as if he had been forced to swallow a pulped lemon.

"what _are_ you looking for, anyway?", asked richard, cheering up a little.

door took a deep breath, and answered after a long pause. "it's a long story," she said, solemnly. "right now we're looking for an angel named islington." it was then that richard began to laugh; he couldn't help himself. there was hysteria in there, certainly, but there was also the exhaustion of someone who had managed, somehow, to believe several dozen impossible things in the last twenty-four hours, without ever getting a proper breakfast. his laughter echoed down the tunnels.

"an angel?" he said, giggling helplessly. "called islington?"

"we've got a long way to go," said door.

and richard shook his head, and felt wrung out, and emptied, and flayed. "an angel," he whispered, hysterically, to the tunnels and the dark. "an angel."

there were candles all over the great hall: candles stood by the iron pillars that held the roof up; candles waited by the waterfall that ran down one wall and into the small rock-pool below; candles clustered on the sides of the rock wall; candles huddled on the floor; candles were set into candlesticks by the huge door that stood between two dark iron pillars. the door was built of polished black flint set into a silver base that had tarnished, over the centuries, almost to black. the candles were unlit; but as the tall form walked past, they flickered into flame. no hand touched them; no fires touched their wicks.

the figure's robe was simple, and white; or more than white. a color, or an absence of all colors, so bright as to be startling. its feet were bare on the cold rock floor of the great hall. its face was pale and wise, and gentle; and, perhaps, a little lonely.

it was very beautiful.

soon every candle in the hall was burning. it paused by the rock-pool; knelt beside the water, cupped its hands, lowered them into the clear water, raised them, and drank. the water was cold, but very pure. when it had finished drinking the water it closed its eyes for a moment, as if in benediction. then it stood up, and walked away, back through the hall, the way it had come; and the candles went out as it passed, as they had done for tens of thousands of years. it had no wings; but still, it was, unmistakably, an angel.

islington left the great hall; and the last of the candles went out, and the darkness returned.