Neverwhere

"Who the hell do you think it was?"

Mr. Vandemar chewed, thoughtfully, then sucked the slug into his mouth. "A scarecrow man?" he ventured.

"Our employer."

"That was going to be my next guess."

"Scarecrows," spat Mr. Croup, disgusted. He was moving from a red rage to an oily gray sulk.

Mr. Vandemar swallowed the contents of his mouth and wiped his lips on his sleeve. "Best way to scare crows," said Mr. Vandemar, "you just creep up behind them and put your hand round their little crow necks and squeeze until they don't move anymore. That scares the stuffing out of them."

And then he was silent; and from far above they heard the sound of crows flying, cawing angrily.

"Crows. Family Corvidae. Collective noun," intoned Mr. Croup, relishing the sound of the word, "a murder."

Richard waited against the wall, next to Door. She said very little; she chewed her fingernails, ran her hands through her reddish hair until it was sticking up in all directions, then tried to push it back down again. She was certainly unlike anyone he had ever known. When she noticed him looking at her, she shrugged and shimmied down further into her layers of clothes, deeper into her leather jacket. Her face looked out at the world from inside the jacket. The expression on her face made Richard think of a beautiful homeless child he had seen, the previous winter, behind Covent Garden: he had not been certain whether it was a girl or a boy. Its mother was begging, pleading with the passers-by for coins to feed the child and the infant that she carried in her arms. But the child stared out at the world and said nothing, although it must have been cold and hungry. It just stared.

Hunter stood by Door, looking back and forth down the platform. The marquis had told them where to wait, and then he had slipped away. From somewhere, Richard heard a baby begin to cry. The marquis slipped out of an exit-only door and walked toward them. He was chewing on a piece of candy.

"Having fun?" asked Richard. A train was coming toward them, its approach heralded by a gust of warm wind.

"Just taking care of business," said the marquis. He consulted the piece of paper and his watch. He pointed to a place on the platform. "This should be the Earl's Court train. Stand behind me here, you three." Then, as the Underground train—a rather boring-looking, normal train, Richard was disappointed to observe—rumbled and rattled its way into the station, the marquis leaned across Richard and said to Door, "My lady? There is something that perhaps I should have mentioned earlier."

She turned her odd-colored eyes on him. "Yes?"

"Well," he said, "the earl might not be entirely pleased to see me."

The train slowed down and stopped. The car that had pulled up in front of Richard was quite empty: its lights were turned off, it was bleak and empty and dark. From time to time Richard had noticed cars like this one, locked and shadowy, on Tube trains, and he had wondered what purpose they served. The other doors on the train hissed open, and passengers got on and got off. The doors of the darkened car remained closed. The marquis drummed on the door with his fist, an intricate rhythmic rap. Nothing happened. Richard was just wondering if the train would now pull out without them on it, when the door of the dark car was pushed open from the inside. It opened about six inches, and an elderly, bespectacled face peered out at them.

"Who knocks?" he said.

Through the opening, Richard could see flames burning, and people, and smoke inside the car. Through the glass in the doors, however, he still saw a dark and empty carriage. "The Lady Door," announced the marquis, smoothly, "and her companions."

The door slid open all the way, and they were inside Earl's Court.

SEVEN

There was straw scattered on the floor, over a layer of rushes. There was an open log fire, sputtering and blazing in a large fireplace. There were a few chickens, strutting and pecking on the floor. There were seats with hand-embroidered cushions on them, and there were tapestries covering the windows and the doors.

Richard stumbled forward as the train lurched out of the station. He reached out, grabbed hold of the nearest person, and regained his balance. The nearest person happened to be a short, gray, elderly man-at-arms, who would have looked, Richard decided, exactly like a recently retired minor official were it not for the tin hat, the surcoat, the rather clumsily knitted chain mail, and the spear; instead he looked like a recently retired minor official who had, somewhat against his will, been dragooned into his local amateur dramatic society, where he had been forced to play a man-at-arms.

The little gray man blinked shortsightedly at Richard as Richard grabbed him, and then he said, lugubriously, "Sorry about that."

"My fault," said Richard.

"I know," said the man.