Neverwhere

"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 pe

"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 u

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 fu

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 thi

"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?"