Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

" '… turn right into Hanway Street, left into Hanway Place, then right again into Orme Passage. Stop at the first streetlight you come to… ' Are you sure this is right?"

"Yes."

He did not remember an Orme Passage, although he had been to Hanway Place before: there was an underground Indian restaurant there his friend Gary liked a lot. As far as Richard could remember, Hanway Place was a dead end. The Mandeer, that was the restaurant. He passed the brightly lit front door, the restaurant's steps leading invitingly down into the underground, and then he turned left…

He had been wrong. There was an Orme Passage. He could see the sign for it, high on the wall. ORME PASSAGE Wl

No wonder he hadn't noticed it before: it was scarcely more than a narrow alleyway between houses, lit by a sputtering gas-jet. You don't see many of those anymore, thought Richard, and he held up his instructions to the gaslight, peering at them.

" 'Then turn around thrice, widdershins'?"

"Widdershins means counterclockwise, Richard."

He turned, three times, feeling stupid. "Look, why do I have to do all this, just to see your friend. I mean, all this nonsense… "

"It's not nonsense. Really. Just-humor me on this, okay?" And she had smiled at him.

He stopped turning. Then he walked down the alley to the end. Nothing. No one. Just a metal garbage can, and beside it something that might have been a pile of rags. "Hello?" called Richard. "Is anyone here? I'm Door's friend. Hello?"

No. There was no one there. Richard was relieved. Now he could go home and explain to the girl that nothing had happened. Then he would call in the appropriate authorities, and they would sort it all out. He crumpled the paper into a tight ball, and tossed it toward the bin.

What Richard had taken for a pile of rags unfolded, expanded, stood up in one fluid motion. A hand caught the crumpled paper in midair.

"Mine, I believe," said the marquis de Carabas. He wore a huge dandyish black coat that was not quite a frock coat nor exactly a trench coat, and high black boots, and, beneath his coat, raggedy clothes. His eyes burned white in an extremely dark face. And he grinned white teeth, momentarily, as if at a private joke of his own, and bowed to Richard, and said, "De Carabas, at your service, and you are…?"

"Um," said Richard. "Er. Um."

"You are Richard Mayhew, the young man who rescued our wounded Door. How is she now?"

"Er. She's okay. Her arm's still a bit-"

"Her recovery time will undoubtedly astonish us all. Her family had remarkable recuperative powers. It's a wonder anyone managed to kill them at all, isn't it?" The man who called himself the marquis de Carabas walked restlessly up and down the alley. Richard could already tell that he was the type of person who was always in motion, like a great cat.

"Somebody killed Door's family?" asked Richard.

"We're not going to get very far if you keep repeating everything I say, now, are we?" said the marquis, who was now standing in front of Richard. "Sit down," he ordered. Richard looked around the alley for something to sit on. The marquis put a hand on his shoulder and sent him sprawling to the cobblestones. "She knows I don't come cheap. What exactly is she offering me?"

"Sorry?"

"What's the deal? She sent you here to negotiate, young man. I'm not cheap, and I never give freebies."

Richard shrugged, as well as he could shrug from a supine position. "She said to tell you that she wants you to accompany her home-wherever that is-and to fix her up with a bodyguard."

Even when the marquis was at rest, his eyes never ceased moving. Up, down, around, as if he were looking for something, thinking about something. Adding, subtracting, evaluating. Richard wondered whether the man was quite sane. "And she's offering me?"

"Well. Nothing."

The marquis blew on his fingernails and polished them on the lapel of his remarkable coat. Then he turned away. "She's offering me. Nothing." He sounded offended.

Richard scrambled back up to his feet. "Well, she didn't say anything about money. She just said she was going to have to owe you a favor."

The eyes flashed. "Exactly what kind of favor?"

"A really big one," said Richard. "She said she was going to have to owe you a really big favor."

De Carabas grinned to himself, a hungry panther sighting a lost peasant child. Then he turned on Richard. "And you left her alone?" he asked. "With Croup and Vandemar out there? Well, what are you waiting for?" He knelt down and took from his pocket a small metal object, which he pushed into a manhole cover at the edge of the alley and twisted. The manhole cover came up easily; the marquis put away the metal object and took something out of another pocket that reminded Richard a little of a long firework, or a flare. He held it in one hand, ran his other hand along it, and the far end erupted into scarlet flame.

"Can I ask a question?" said Richard.

"Certainly not," said the marquis. "You don't ask any questions. You don't get any answers. You don't stray from the path. You don't even think about what's happening to you right now. Got it?"

"But-"

"Most important of all: no buts," said de Carabas. "And time is of the essence. Move." He pointed into the depths revealed by the open manhole cover. Richard moved, clambering down the metal ladder set into the wall beneath the manhole, feeling so far out of his depth that it didn't even occur to him to question any further.

Richard wondered where they were. This didn't seem to be a sewer. Perhaps it was a tunnel for telephone cables, or for very small trains. Or for… something else. He realized that he did not know very much about what went on beneath the streets of London. He walked nervously, worried that he'd catch his feet in something, that he'd stumble in the darkness and break his ankle. De Carabas strode on ahead, nonchalantly, apparently not caring whether Richard was with him or not. The crimson flame cast huge shadows on the tunnel walls.

Richard ran to catch up. "Let's see… " said de Carabas. "I'll need to get her to the market. The next one's in, mm, two days' time, if I recall correctly, as of course I unfailingly do. I can hide her until then."

"Market?" asked Richard.

"The Floating Market. But you don't want to know about that. No more questions."

Richard looked around. "Well, I was going to ask you where we are now. But I suppose you were going to refuse to tell me."

The marquis grinned once more. "Very good," he said, approvingly. "You are in enough trouble already."

"You can say that again," sighed Richard. "My fiancee's dumped me, and I'll probably have to get a new telephone-"

"Temple and Arch. A telephone is the least of your troubles." De Carabas put the flare down on the ground, resting it against the wall, where it continued to sputter and flame, and he began to climb up some metal rungs set into the wall. Richard hesitated, and then followed him. The rungs were cold and rusted; he could feel them crumbling roughly against his hands as he climbed, fragments of rust getting in his eyes and mouth. The scarlet light from below was flickering, and then it went out. They climbed in total darkness.

"So, are we going back to Door?" Richard asked.

"Eventually. There's a little something I need to organize first. Insurance. And when we get into daylight, don't look down."

"Why not?" asked Richard. And then daylight hit his face, and he looked down.

It was daylight (how was it daylight? a tiny voice asked, in the back of his head. It had been almost night when he entered the alley, what, an hour ago?), and he was holding onto a metal ladder that ran up the outside of a very high building (but a few seconds ago he was climbing up the same ladder, and he had been inside, hadn't he?), and below him, he could see…