Neverwhere(23)

Mr. Croup turned out the lights. “Oh, Mister Vandemar,” he said, enjoying the sound of the words, as he enjoyed the sound of all words, “if you cut us, do we not bleed?”

Mr. Vandemar pondered this for a moment, in the dark. Then he said, with perfect accuracy, “No.”



“A spy from the Upworld,” said the Lord Rat-speaker. “Heh? I should slit you from gullet to gizzard and tell fortunes with your guts.”

“Look,” said Richard, his back against the wall, with the glass dagger pressed against his Adam’s apple. “I think you’re making a bit of a mistake here. My name is Richard Mayhew. I can prove who I am. I’ve got my library cards. Credit cards. Things,” he added, desperately.

At the opposite end of the hall, Richard noticed, with the dispassionate clarity that comes when a lunatic is about to slit your throat with a piece of broken glass, people were throwing themselves to the ground, bowing low, and remaining on the floor. A small black shape was coming toward them along the ground. “I think a moment’s reflection might prove that we’re all being very silly,” said Richard. He had no idea what the words meant, just that they were coming out of his mouth, and that as long as he was talking, he was not dead. “Now, why don’t you put that away, and—excuse me, that’s my bag,” this last to a thin, bedraggled girl in her late teens who had taken Richard’s bag and was roughly tipping his possessions out onto the ground.

The people in the hall continued to bow, and to stay bowed, as the small shape came closer. It reached the group of people around Richard, although not a one of them noticed it. They were all looking at Richard.

It was a rat, which looked up at Richard, curiously. He had the bizarre and momentary impression that it winked one of its little black oildrop eyes at him. Then it cluttered, loudly.

The man with the glass dagger threw himself on his knees. So did the people gathered around them. So, too, after a moment’s hesitation, and a little more awkwardly, did the homeless man, the one they had called Iliaster. In a moment, Richard was the only one standing. The thin girl tugged at his elbow, and he, too, went down on one knee.

Lord Rat-speaker bowed so low that his long hair brushed the ground, and he chittered back at the rat, wrinkling his nose, showing his teeth, squeaking and hissing, for all the world like an enormous rat himself.

“Look, can anybody tell me . . . ” muttered Richard.

“Quiet!” said the thin girl.

The rat stepped—a little disdainfully, it seemed—into the Lord Rat-speaker’s grubby hand, and the man held it, respectfully, up in front of Richard’s face. It waved its tail languidly as it inspected Richard’s features. “This is Master Longtail, of the clan Gray,” said the Lord Rat-speaker. “He says you looks exceeding familiar. He wants to know if he’s met you afore.”

Richard looked at the rat. The rat looked at Richard. “I suppose it’s possible,” he admitted.

“He says he was discharging an obligation to the marquis de Carabas.”

Richard stared at the animal more closely. “It’s that rat? Yes, we’ve met. Actually, I threw the TV remote, control at it.” Some of the people standing around looked shocked. The thin girl actually squeaked. Richard hardly noticed them; at least something was familiar in this madness. “Hello, Ratty,” he said. “Good to see you again. Do you know where Door is?”

“Ratty!” said the girl in something between a squeak and a horrified swallow. She had a large, water-stained red button pinned to her ragged clothes, the kind that comes attached to birthday cards. It said, in yellow letters, I AM 11.

Lord Rat-speaker waved his glass dagger admonishingly at Richard. “You must not address Master Longtail, save through me,” he said. The rat squeaked an order. The man’s face fell. “Him?” he said, looking at Richard disdainfully. “Look, I can’t spare a soul. How about if I simply slice his throat and send him down to the Sewer Folk . . . “

The rat chittered once more, decisively, then leapt from the man’s shoulder onto the ground and vanished into one of the many holes that lined the walls.

The Lord Rat-speaker stood up. A hundred eyes were fixed on him. He turned back to the hall and looked at his subjects, crouched beside their greasy fires. “I don’t know what you lot are all looking at,” he shouted. “Who’s turning the spits, eh? You want the grub to burn? There’s nothing to see. Go on. Get-get away with the lot of you.” Richard stood up, nervously. His left leg had gotten numb, and he rubbed life into it, as it prickled with pins and needles. Lord Rat-speaker looked at Iliaster. “He’s got to be taken to the market. Master Longtail’s orders.”