Neverwhere

The marquis had been amusing himself while he waited for her to collect herself by playing a game of knucklebones with some old coins and bones he kept in one of the many pockets of his coat. He looked up at her coldly. “Indeed?”

She bit her lower lip. “No. Not really. I’m not sorry. I’ve been running and hiding and running so hard that . . . this was the first chance I’ve really had to . . . ” she stopped.

The marquis swept up the coins and the bones, and returned them to their pocket. “After you,” he said. He followed her back to the wall of pictures. She put one hand on the painting of her father’s study and took the marquis’s large black hand with the other.

. . . reality twisted . . .

They were in the conservatory, watering the plants. First Portia would water a plant, directing the flow of the water toward the soil at the base of the plant, avoiding the leaves and the blossoms. “Water the shoes,” she said to her youngest daughter. “Not the clothes.”

Ingress had her own little watering can. She was so proud of it. It was just like her mother’s, made of steel, painted bright green. As her mother finished with each plant, Ingress would water it with her tiny watering can. “On the shoes,” she told her mother. She began laughing, then, spontaneous little-girl laughter.

And her mother laughed too, until foxy Mr. Croup pulled her hair back, hard and sudden, and cut her white throat from ear to ear.

“Hello, Daddy,” said Door, quietly.

She touched the bust of her father with her fingers, stroking the side of his face. A thin, ascetic man, almost bald. Caesar as Prospero, thought the marquis de Carabas. He felt a little sick. That last image had hurt. Still: he was in Lord Portico’s study. That was a first.

The marquis took in the room, eyes sliding from detail to detail. The stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling; the leather-bound books, an astrolabe, convex and concave mirrors, odd scientific instruments; there were maps on the walls, of lands and cities de Carabas had never heard of; a desk, covered in handwritten correspondence. The white wall behind the desk was marred by a reddish-brown stain. There was a small portrait of Door’s family on the desk. The marquis stared at it. “Your mother and your sister, your father, and your brothers. All dead. How did you escape?” he asked.

She lowered her hand. “I was lucky. I’d gone off exploring for a few days . . . did you know there are still some Roman soldiers camped out by the Kilburn River?”

The marquis had not known this, which irritated him. “Hmm. How many?”

She shrugged. “A few dozen. They were deserters from the Nineteenth Legion, I think. My Latin’s a bit patchy. Anyway, when I got back here . . . ” She paused, swallowed, her opal-colored eyes brimming with tears.

“Pull yourself together,” said the marquis, shortly. “We need your father’s journal. We have to find out who did this.”

She frowned at him. “We know who did this. It was Croup and Vandemar—“

He opened a hand, waggled his fingers as he spoke. “They’re arms. Hands. Fingers. There’s a head that ordered it, that wants you dead, too. Those two don’t come cheap.” He looked around the cluttered office. “His journal?” said the marquis.

“It’s not here,” she said. “I told you. I looked.”

“I was under the misapprehension that your family was skilled in locating doors, both obvious and otherwise.”

She glowered at him. Then she closed her eyes and put her finger and thumb on each side of the bridge of her nose. Meanwhile, the marquis examined the objects on Portico’s desk. An inkwell; a chess-piece; a bone die; a gold pocket-watch; several quill-feathers and . . .

Interesting.

It was a small statue of a boar, or a crouching bear, or perhaps a bull. It was hard to tell. It was the size of a large chess-piece, and it had been roughly carved out of black obsidian. It reminded him of something, but of what he could not say. He picked it up casually, turned it over, curled his fingers around it.

Door lowered her hand from her face. She looked puzzled and confused. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“It is here,” she said, simply. She began to walk through the study, head turning first to one side and then to the other. The marquis slipped the carving discreetly into an inside pocket.

Door stood before a high cabinet. “There,” she said. She reached out a hand: there was a click, and a small panel in the side of the cabinet swung open. Door reached into the darkness and removed something roughly the size and shape of a small cannon-ball. She passed it to the marquis. It was a sphere, constructed of old brass and polished wood, inset with polished copper and glass lenses. He took it from her.

“This is it?”

She nodded.

“Well done.”

She looked grave. “I don’t know how I could have missed it before.”

“You were upset,” said the marquis. “I was certain it would be here. And I am so rarely wrong. Now . . . ” he held the little wooden globe up. The light caught the polished glass and glinted from the brass and copper fittings. It galled him to admit ignorance about anything, but he said it anyway. “How does this work?”

Anaesthesia led Richard into a small park on the south side of the bridge, then down some stone steps, set beside a wall. She relit her candle-in-a-bottle, and then she opened a workman’s door and closed it behind them. They went down some steps, with the darkness all around them.

“There’s a girl named Door,” said Richard. “She’s a bit younger than you. Do you know her?”

“The Lady Door. I know who she is.”

“So which, um, barony is she part of?”

“No barony. She’s of the House of the Arch. Her family used to be very important.”

“Used to be? Why did they stop?”

“Somebody killed them.”

Yes, he remembered the marquis saying something about that, now. A rat cut across their path. Anaesthesia stopped on the steps and performed a deep curtsey. The rat paused. “Sire,” she said, to the rat. “Hi,” said Richard. The rat looked at them for a heartbeat, then it darted off down the steps. “So,” said Richard. “What is a floating market?”

“It’s very big,” she said. “But rat-speakers hardly ever need to go to the market. To tell the truth—” She hesitated. “Nah. You’ll laugh at me.”

“I won’t,” said Richard, honestly.