Neverwhere

"Now," said the abbot, "that you are all here, we must talk."

He led them to a large room, warmed by a roaring scrap wood fire. They arranged themselves around a table. The abbot gestured for them all to sit down. He felt for his chair and sat down in it. Then he sent Brother Fuliginous and Brother Tenebrae (who had been pushing the marquis's wheelchair) out of the room.

"So," said the abbot. "To business. Where is Islington?"

Door shrugged. "As far away as I could send him. Halfway across space and time."

"I see," said the abbot. And then he said, "Good."

"Why didn't you warn us about him?" asked Richard.

"That was not our responsibility."

Richard snorted. "What happens now?" he asked them all.

The abbot said nothing.

"Happens? In what way?" asked Door.

"Well, you wanted to avenge your family. And you have. And you've sent everyone involved off to some distant corner of nowhere. I mean, no one's going to try and kill you anymore, are they?"

"Not for right now," said Door, seriously.

"And you?" Richard asked the marquis de Carabas. "Have you got what you wanted?"

The marquis nodded. "I believe so. My debt to Lord Portico has been paid in full, and the Lady Door owes me a significant favor."

Richard looked to Door. She nodded. "So what about me?" he asked.

"Well," said Door. "We couldn't have done it without you."

"That's not what I meant. What about getting me back home?"

The marquis raised an eyebrow. "Who do you think she is—the Wizard of Oz? We can't send you home. This is your home."

Door said, "I tried to tell you that before, Richard."

"There has to be a way," said Richard, and he slammed his left hand down on the table, hard, for emphasis. It hurt his finger, but he kept his face composed. And then he said, "Ow," but he said it very quietly, because he had gone through much worse.

"Where is the key?" asked the abbot.

Richard inclined his head. "Door," he said.

She shook her pixy head. "I don't have it," she told him. "I slipped it back into your pocket at the last market. When you brought the curry."

Richard opened his mouth, and then he closed it again. Then he opened it and said, "You mean, when I told Croup and Vandemar that I had it, and they were welcome to search me . . . I had it?" She nodded. He remembered the hard object in his back pocket, on Down Street; remembered her hugging him on the ship . . .

The abbot reached out. His wrinkled brown fingers picked up a small bell from the table, which he shook, summoning Brother Fuliginous. "Bring me the Warrior's trousers," he said. Fuliginous nodded and left.

"I'm no warrior," said Richard.

The Abbot smiled gently. "You killed the Beast," he explained, almost regretfully. "You are the Warrior."

Richard folded his arms, exasperated. "So, after all this, I still don't get to go home, but as a consolation prize I've made it onto some kind of archaic underground honors list?"

The marquis looked unsympathetic. "You can't go back to London Above. A few individuals manage a kind of half-life—you've met Iliaster and Lear. But that's the best you could hope for, and it isn't a good life."

Door reached out a hand, and touched Richard's arm. "I'm sorry," she told him. "But look at all the good you've done. You got the key for us."

"Well," he asked, "what was the point of that? You just forged a new key—" Brother Fuliginous reappeared, carrying Richard's jeans; they were ripped, and covered in mud, and splashed with dried blood, and they stank. The friar handed the trousers to the abbot, who commenced to go through the pockets. Door smiled, sweetly. "I couldn't have had Hammersmith copy it without the original," she reminded him.

The abbot cleared his throat. "You are all very stupid people," he told them, graciously, "and you do not know anything at all." He held up the silver key. It glinted in the firelight. "Richard passed the Ordeal of the Key. He is its master, until he returns it to our keeping. The key has power."

"It's the key to Heaven . . . " said Richard, unsure of what the abbot was getting at, of what point he was trying to make.

The old man's voice was deep and melodious. "The key is the key to all reality. If Richard wants to return to London Above, then the key will take him back to London Above."

"It's that simple?" asked Richard. The old man nodded his blind head, beneath the shadows of his cowl. "Then when could we do this?"

"As soon as you are ready," said the abbot.

The friars had washed and repaired his clothes and returned them to him. Brother Fuliginous led him through the abbey, up a vertiginous series of ladders and steps, up into the bell tower. There was a heavy wooden trapdoor in the top of the tower. Brother Fuliginous unlocked it, and the two men pushed through it and found themselves in a narrow tu

NIGHTINGALE LANE

said the old signs on the wall. Brother Fuliginous wished Richard well and told him to wait there and he would be collected, and then he clambered down the side of the wall, and he was gone.

Richard sat on the platform for twenty minutes. He wondered what kind of station this was: it seemed neither abandoned, like British Museum, nor real, like Blackfriars: instead it was a ghost-station, an imaginary place, forgotten and strange. He wondered why the marquis had not said good-bye. When Richard had asked Door, she had said that she didn't know, but that maybe good-byes were something else, like comforting people, at which the marquis wasn't much good. Then she told him that she had something in her eye, and she gave him a paper with his instructions on, and she went away.

Something waved from the darkness of the tu

The feather-wrapped roundness of Old Bailey stepped out of the gloom, looking self-conscious and ill at ease. He was waving Richard's handkerchief, and he was sweating. "It's me little flag," he said, pointing to the handkerchief.

"I'm glad it's come in useful."

Old Bailey gri

"Urn. Well, thanks," said Richard, unsure of what he ought to do with it.

"It's a feather," explained Old Bailey. "And a good one. Memento. Souvenir. Keepsake. And it's free. A gift. Me to you. Bit of a thank-you."

"Yes. Well. Very kind of you."

Richard put it in his pocket. A warm wind blew through the tu

The train pulled in at the station, its headlights were turned off, and there was nobody standing in the driver's compartment in the front. It came to a full stop: all the carriages were dark, and no doors opened. Richard knocked on the door in front of him, hoping that it was the correct one. The door gaped open, flooding the imaginary station with warm yellow light. Two small, elderly gentlemen holding long, copper-colored bugles stepped off the train and onto the platform. Richard recognized them: Dagvard and Halvard, from Earl's Court; although he could no longer recall, if he had ever known, which gentleman was which. They put their bugles to their lips and performed a ragged, but sincere, fanfare. Richard got onto the train, and they walked in behind him.

The earl was sitting at the end of the carriage, petting the enormous Irish wolfhound. The jester– Tooley, thought Richard, that was his name—stood beside him. Other than that, and the two men-at-arms, the carriage was deserted. "Who is it?" asked the earl.