Neverwhere

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, na**d 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!”