“Well,” said the thin girl. “I’m a little scared.”
“Scared? Of the market?”
They had reached the bottom of the steps. Anaesthesia hesitated and then turned left. “Oh. No. There’s a truce in the market. If anyone hurt anyone there, the whole of London Below would be down on them like a ton of sewage.”
“So what are you scared of?”
“Getting there. They hold it in a different place every time. It moves around. And to get to the place it’ll be tonight . . . ” she fingered the quartz beads around her neck, nervously. “We’ll have to go through a really nasty neighborhood.” She did sound scared.
Richard suppressed the urge to put an arm around her. “And where would that be?” he asked. She turned to him, pushed the hair from her eyes, and told him.
“Knightsbridge,” repeated Richard, and he began to chuckle, gently.
The girl turned away. “See?” she said. “I said you’d laugh.”
The deep tunnels had been dug in the 1920s, for a high-speed extension to the Northern Line of London’s Underground Railway system. During the Second World War troops had been quartered there in the thousands, their waste pumped up by compressed air to the level of the sewers far above. Both sides of the runnels had been lined with metal bunk beds for the troops to sleep on. When the war ended the bunk beds had stayed, and on their wire bases cardboard boxes were stored, each box filled with letters and files and papers: secrets, of the dullest kind, stored down deep, to be forgotten. The need for economy had closed the deep tunnels completely in the early 1990s. The boxes of secrets were removed, to be scanned and stored on computers, or shredded, or burned.
Varney made his home in the deepest of the deep tunnels, far beneath Camden Town Tube. He had piled abandoned metal bunk beds in front of the only entrance. Then he had decorated. Varney liked weapons. He made his own, out of whatever he could find, or take, or steal, parts of cars and rescued bits of machinery, which he turned into hooks and shivs, crossbows and arbalests, small mangonels and trebuchets for breaking walls, cudgels, glaives and knob-kerries. They hung on the wall of the deep runnel, or sat in corners, looking unfriendly. Varney looked like a bull might look, if the bull were to be shaved, dehorned, covered in tattoos, and suffered from complete dental breakdown. Also, he snored. The oil lamp next to his head was turned down low. Varney slept on a pile of rags, snoring and snuffling, with the hilt of a homemade two-bladed sword on the ground beside his hand.
A hand turned up the oil lamp.
Varney had the two-bladed sword in his hand, and he was on his feet almost before his eyes were open. He blinked, stared around him. There was no one there: nothing had disturbed the pile of bunk beds blocking the door. He began to lower the sword.
A voice said, “Psst.”
“Hh?” said Varney.
“Surprise,” said Mr. Croup, stepping into the light.
Varney took a step back: a mistake. There was a knife at his temple, the point of the blade next to his eye. “Further movements are not recommended,” said Mr. Croup, helpfully. “Mister Vandemar might have a little accident with his old toad-sticker. Most accidents do occur in the home. Is that not so, Mister Vandemar?”
“I don’t trust statistics,” said Mr. Vandemar’s blank voice. A gloved hand reached down from behind Varney, crushed his sword, and dropped the twisted thing to the floor.
“How are you, Varney?” asked Mr. Croup. “Well, we trust? Yes? In fine form, fetlock and fettle for the market tonight? Do you know who we are?”
Varney did the nearest thing he could to a nod that didn’t actually involve moving any muscles. He knew who Croup and Vandemar were. His eyes were searching the walls. Yes, there: the morning-star: a spiked wooden ball, studded with nails, on a chain, in the far corner of the room . . .
“There is talk that a certain young lady will be auditioning bodyguards this evening. Had you thought of trying out for the task?” Mr. Croup picked at his tombstone teeth. “Enunciate clearly.” Varney picked up the morning-star with his mind. It was his Knack. Gentle, now . . . slowly . . . He edged it off the hook and pulled it up toward the top of the tunnel arch . . . With his mouth, he said, “Varney’s the best bravo and guard in the Underside. They say I’m the best since Hunter’s day.”
Varney mentally positioned the morning-star in the shadows above and behind Mr. Croup’s head. He would crush Croup’s skull first, then he’d take Vandemar . . .
The morning-star plunged toward Mr. Croup’s head: Varney flung himself down, away from the knife-blade at his eye. Mr. Croup did not look up. He did not turn. He simply moved his head, obscenely fast, and the morning-star crashed past him, into the floor, where it threw up chips of brick and concrete. Mr. Vandemar picked Varney up with one hand. “Hurt him?” he asked his partner.
Mr. Croup shook his head: not yet. To Varney, he said, “Not bad. So, ‘best bravo and guard,’ we want you to get yourself to the market tonight. We want you to do whatever you have to, to become that certain young lady’s personal bodyguard. Then, when you get the job, one thing you don’t forget. You may guard her from the rest of the world, but when we want her, we take her. Got it?”
Varney ran his tongue over the wreck of his teeth. “Are you bribing me?” he asked.
Mr. Vandemar had picked up the morning-star. He was pulling the chain apart, with his free hand, link by link, and dropping the bits of twisted metal onto the floor. Chink. “No,” said Mr. Vandemar. Chink. “We’re intimidating you.” Chink. “And if you don’t do what Mister Croup says, we’re . . . ” chink ” . . . hurting you . . . ” chink ” . . . very badly, before we’re . . . ” chink ” . . . killing you.”
“Ah,” said Varney. “Then I’m working for you, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are,” said Mr. Croup. “I’m afraid we don’t have any redeeming features.”
“That doesn’t bother me,” said Varney.
“Good,” said Mr. Croup. “Welcome aboard.”
It was a large but elegant mechanism, built of polished walnut and oak, of brass and glass, copper and mirrors and carved and inlaid ivory, of quartz prisms and brass gears and springs and cogs. The whole thing was rather larger than a wide-screen television, although the actual screen itself was no more than six inches across. A magnifying lens placed across it increased the size of the picture. There was a large brass horn coming out of the side—the kind you could find on an antique gramophone. The whole mechanism looked rather like a combined television and video player might look, if it had been invented and built three hundred years ago by Sir Isaac Newton. Which was, more or less, exactly what it was.