The Uncommoners #3

by Jennifer Bell

  “I’m sorry we didn’t learn more,” Ivy said gently. “At least this whole ‘traveling by pram’ thing seems to confirm the link between Rosie and Forward & Rife. And we’ve still got another day to look for her before the auction on Thursday.”

  “Yeah.” Valian squeezed the ball. “I don’t know…sometimes it bothers me that Rosie’s never come looking for me. It might be that she can’t for some reason, or maybe it’s that she doesn’t want to. She could have a great new life somewhere else.”

  Ivy understood that seven years was a long time for doubts to fester. “Valian,” she said gently, “Rosie’s your sister. Wherever she is, and whatever has happened to her, I guarantee that she misses you.” Then she added, in a more mischievous tone, “Even I don’t like it when Seb goes away for long periods of time, and he’s an idiot.”

  Valian smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Hey, guys, look at this!” Up ahead Seb stood beside an empty display cabinet. Resting on top was a gleaming silver telescope, the length of his forearm. The metal was engraved with tiny stars joined by straight lines—constellations. “ ‘The Frozen Telescope of the North,’ ” he read from the catalog. “Mr. Rife said he was giving a demonstration with this item next.”

  Ivy wondered if Mr. Rife had taken the object out to practice for the demonstration and had forgotten to lock it away afterward. Curious, she probed it with her senses. The broken soul within it chattered furiously, as if it was trying to stay warm. Perhaps a whisperer had given it its nickname.

  “It says here that uncommon telescopes gaze back in time to allow us to discover something new about our past,” Seb told them. “They’re like the opposite of uncommon clocks.”

  “Except that clocks are useful,” Valian remarked bitterly. “They predict the future so that you can stop bad things from happening. It doesn’t matter what a telescope shows you: you can’t change the past.”

  Peering at the freshly printed trail of posters they were leaving in their wake, Ivy replied, “No, but you can learn from it. If we aimed the telescope back to the time when Rosie disappeared, it’s possible we could unearth a fresh clue.”

  Valian looked left and right, checking they were alone. With a shrug, he picked up the telescope. “Anything’s worth a try.”

  “I’ll keep a lookout around the corner in case people start arriving for the demonstration,” Seb offered, passing Ivy the catalog.

  “The instructions aren’t that detailed,” she said, running her finger across the page. “To direct the telescope’s gaze, you must ‘first recall a moment you wish to look back to’; then to focus, ‘concentrate on an image of someone who was present.’ ” Her insides went heavy, realizing that all of Valian’s memories around the time of Rosie’s disappearance were probably painful to recall. “You can do this,” she encouraged.

  Valian nodded gravely and lifted the telescope to his eye. “Does it say anything else?”

  “It warns about paying attention to what you find,” Ivy replied. “You can’t revisit the same period again, and everything will go dark once the vision is over.”

  “Something’s happening,” Valian said suddenly. “I can see my parents arguing in our kitchen. Rosie and I are hiding under the table. I remember this! It’s the night they were murdered.”

  Ivy could hear the panic rising in his voice. Perhaps if she helped direct his thoughts, he’d be able to concentrate. “Try to relax,” she told him. “What other details do you notice?”

  “On the table is a collection of objects with numbered labels,” he said, describing the scene breathlessly. “Twenty-five of them. My parents must have brought them back from their latest scouting trip. It looks like they’ve used a fork to grade them, and a feather has automatically written the results on a piece of paper—I think that’s what my parents are arguing about.”

  Ivy had witnessed the use of an uncommon fork before—one tap of its prongs against an uncommon object and a number between one and ten rings out. The higher the grade, the more powerful the object. “Can you read what it says?”

  “Almost…” Valian adjusted his grip on the telescope, then gave an exasperated sigh. “No, it’s gone. Rosie and I have just jumped out, surprising our parents. Something fell off the table and Rosie put it in her pocket. The only object missing is number seventeen—it must have been that one…” He flinched. “Wait, I can see the paper now….”

  After a short pause he lowered the telescope. His face was pale.

  “Is that the end of the vision?” Ivy asked.

  He nodded slowly. “I saw the list. It only went up to number seventeen—the object Rosie got hold of.” He took a couple of deep breaths, as if he was trying to calm down.

  “Why did your parents stop there?”

  “Because object seventeen was a Grade Ten.”

  Ivy went rigid. The only objects believed to be Grade Ten were the Great Uncommon Good.

  “Security guards,” Seb called, jogging toward them. “Two of them, coming this way.” Then he read their expressions. “What happened?”

  Taking the Frozen Telescope from Valian’s hands, Ivy placed it back where they had found it. “I’ll tell you, but first Valian needs to sit down.”

  A safe distance away, they found a stone bench nestled under an arbor of drooping wisteria. Valian slumped on the edge of the seat; Ivy and Seb perched on either side.

  Ivy briefed Seb about their discovery. “Back then, the Great Uncommon Good were still a myth,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Valian’s parents must have scouted one of them by accident and only realized what it was when they graded it at home. Rosie can’t have understood what it was either.”

  “That’s got to be what’s hiding her,” Seb said. “Perhaps she picked it up and started playing with it. It could even be the whole reason she disappeared. Who knows what powers the object has.”

  “It must also be the reason my parents were killed,” Valian said in a hollow voice. “I’ve always known the Dirge did it and how it was done, just never why.” He stared at his feet, saying nothing more.

  Ivy recalled the details of his parents’ murder. They had been poisoned with a mixture of toxins including tongueweed—a foul uncommon substance that makes you tell the truth before you die. “The Dirge must have realized that your parents had one of the Great Uncommon Good and came looking for it,” she said softly. “That could be why they used the tongueweed—it would have forced them to reveal the object’s location.”

  Valian gave a slow nod. “Except, when the underguard examined our house afterward, it looked like someone had raided the place—smashing furniture and tearing through walls. If my parents had revealed the object’s location, then the Dirge wouldn’t have needed to search like that.” His shoulders slumped. “I think Mum and Dad had no idea that Rosie had accidentally taken the object. They couldn’t tell the Dirge where it was, and they were killed as punishment. They died for nothing.”

  Ivy shook her head but she wasn’t sure what to say to make Valian feel better. He dropped his face into his hands and they all fell silent.

  It was Seb who finally spoke. “Your parents would want you to find Rosie,” he said. “We’re getting closer to understanding what happened to her. We just need to figure out which one of the Great Uncommon Good she has.”

  “Seb’s right,” Ivy agreed. “Are you sure you didn’t catch sight of the object through the telescope?”

  Valian wiped his nose and lifted his head. “No. It was small enough to fit in Rosie’s pocket, that’s all I know.”

  “If it’s one of the Great Uncommon Good, there’s got to be something about it in here.” Ivy unfastened her satchel and withdrew Amos Stirling’s journal. She began flicking through the blank pages, counting. “We know Mr. Punch has the Stone of Dreams, and the three of us destroyed the Sack of Stars and hid the Jar o
f Shadows, so Rosie can’t have stolen any of those. Amos knew the whereabouts of the remaining two Great Uncommon Good when he wrote this in the 1960s. I just need some raider’s tonic to activate the uncommon ink.”

  Valian pulled a small silver flask out of his leather jacket. “Like I said, I came prepared for this trip.” He took a hefty sip (the uncommon concoction was normally drunk as an antidote to shock), and then he handed it over to Ivy.

  The scent of lady’s perfume wafted up from the bottle. Ivy drizzled a little of the liquid on page forty-two and, with a low hiss, a thick white mist seeped from the paper before words began to appear. She skimmed through till she found what she was looking for—a list of five objects and their locations.

  1. The Stone of Dreams—Lundinor

  2. The Sack of Stars—Unknown

  3. The Sands of Change—Nubrook

  4. The Jar of Shadows—Unknown

  5. The Sword of Wills—Montroquer

  “Numbers three and five are the ones we’re interested in,” she said, holding up the page so Valian and Seb could see it for themselves.

  “ ‘The Sands of Change—Nubrook,’ ” Seb read. “ ‘The Sword of Wills—Montroquer.’ So…both objects were hidden in undermarts.”

  Valian drummed his fingers on his knee, connecting the dots. “My parents scouted on common land, but they always visited local undermarts on their travels. They could have returned from a scouting trip to either New York or Paris.”

  “Is there any way to find out which one?” Ivy asked.

  “Yes, but not here.” He rose to his feet. “We need to go to the Bureau of Fair Trade. There’s one in every undermart. It’s where uncommon glove records are stored. We’ll be able to see who my parents last traded with.”

  They left the rooftop via the Chinese rug and walked across the courtyard toward the exit from the building. The patio was flanked by rows of terracotta urns, each twice the height of Seb. As they made for the door, Ivy spotted a familiar figure step out from behind one of them.

  “Quick—” She grabbed three auction catalogs from a nearby stand and threw two of them at the boys. “Cover your faces with these.”

  Seb fumbled with the pages as he flapped his open. “What’s the matter?”

  Ivy peered over the catalog spine. Ahead of them, a bespectacled woman in a moss-green head scarf was making her way out of the building. Fixed to the lapel of her long trench coat was a glittering brooch in the shape of a forked arrow.

  “Over there,” Ivy whispered. “It’s Curtis.”

  “Why am I pretending to be interested in”—Valian glanced at the page—“a set of uncommon hair rollers?”

  “Curtis is our babysitter,” Seb hissed. “We think she’s working for the Dirge—that’s why we left home early.”

  “Your babysitter?”

  “She got the job under suspicious circumstances,” Ivy clarified. “Also, she’s dead.”

  Simultaneously, they all risked a peek from behind their catalogs. Standing in the line to leave, Curtis pushed her glasses farther up as she examined a small gold object in her hand.

  “She’s reading a security cufflink,” Valian said. “Uncommoners use them to track stolen items. The left link shows the longitude and latitude of wherever the right link is, and vice versa. Both of you had better check your pockets—I bet she’s planted one on you.”

  Hiding behind one of the large urns, they all put their catalogs down. Ivy rustled around inside her pockets, but they were all empty, and Scratch let her know that there was nothing in her satchel that she hadn’t packed. After searching through his jeans and hoodie, Seb tried the pouch on the side of his backpack. Slowly he withdrew a square gold cufflink. “But my bag was stuffed under my bed all day before we came here,” he spluttered. “How did she—?” His brows jumped as he realized. “Oh. The walking-through-walls thing.”

  After taking the cufflink, Valian rotated the toggle twice before placing it back in Seb’s hand. “I’ve deactivated it now. Curtis must have used it to follow you here from London, but it doesn’t make sense that she’s working for the Dirge.”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Seb admitted. “But the truth is, we’ve thwarted their schemes twice before. They probably want us out of the way so we can’t interfere again.”

  “The Dirge are definitely up to something,” Ivy agreed. “Think of that recent theft in Montroquer.”

  Valian shook his head. “If Curtis had been ordered to kill you, she could have done it while she was hiding that cufflink. She must have some other motive for tracking you here.”

  After checking that Curtis had gone, they walked the remaining distance to the door and left the building. In the street outside, they spotted Curtis slinking away through the crowd.

  Valian began hurrying after her. “The Bureau of Fair Trade is in that direction anyway,” he said. “Come on, let’s see where she goes.”

  Ivy, Seb and Valian tailed Curtis as she advanced down the road. Before long she ventured through the revolving doors of a huge shopping mall—or at least Ivy supposed it was a shopping mall until she saw the flying road signs.

  “This is new,” Seb said, raising his voice above the babble of chatter.

  There were no shops inside the building. It was just a vast atrium filled with airborne road signs—everything from an octagonal red stop sign to a blue-and-white H for HOSPITAL—all ferrying passengers up and down. Depending on the size and shape of the sign, between one and three people sat with their legs dangling over the edge, like they were riding a chairlift. Ivy peered down into the void. Everything was enveloped in shadow after a few hundred meters. “How far down do they go?” she asked.

  “All the way to Fourth Quarter,” Valian replied. “They have these all over Nubrook. The Bureau’s down in Third Quarter.” He ushered them to the boarding zone, where the three of them clambered onto a large INTERSTATE 86 placard, a few signs behind Curtis’s.

  Ivy expected to feel a lurch when they started moving, but the ride was so smooth even Seb wasn’t bothered by it. She sat between him and Valian, keeping watch on Curtis ahead of them. The atrium walls were plastered with handkerchief materializers advertising everything from stand-up comedy pogo sticks to honey dippers that “Point you exactly where you want to be.”

  At the exit for the Third Quarter, Curtis dismounted her diamond-shaped TRUCKS CROSSING sign and headed along a litter-strewn main road—Ivy, Seb and Valian in pursuit. The pavements were pockmarked with chewing gum, and the air smelled sour, like moldy banana skins. The area reminded Ivy of the East End of Lundinor, by far the shabbiest quarter there.

  Curtis veered off into an alleyway between two dilapidated buildings. A skip near the entrance was loaded with mannequin body parts, plastic hooks and splintered shelving units. An old sign hung from a wall. “Lottie’s Accessory Lounge,” Ivy read.

  Valian edged around the corner. “I can’t see her. She must have vanished.”

  “I’m not sensing her either,” Ivy said, extending her whispering along the alley. “Although, there is another broken soul here.” A voice was murmuring nearby. Using it as a beacon, Ivy homed in on a dusty mirror leaning against the side of the skip.

  The three of them gathered around it. Ivy knelt down and ran her hands over the wooden frame, rubbing off the dirt to reveal a carved emblem at the bottom: a forked arrow. “That’s the same design as the brooch Curtis wears,” she noted. “There must be a connection.”

  “Uncommon mirrors are used to hide things,” Valian said cautiously. “You have to tell them a secret before they’ll reveal what they’re hiding. Whatever this mirror’s concealing might explain why Curtis is interested in you.”

  Ivy tried to think of something she’d never told anyone before, but it was surprisingly difficult. She could sense the soul inside the mirror giggl
ing breathlessly, excited at the prospect of hearing some gossip.

  Hang on…that’s it!

  She hadn’t yet spoken to Seb or Valian about her new whispering skill; she hadn’t said it aloud to anyone. “I have a secret. You know how I can listen to the souls trapped inside uncommon objects? Well, now I can talk to them too.”

  “You can?” Valian regarded her suspiciously.

  Ivy covered her face with her hair. “I’ve only spoken to Scratch—and that bell in the Grivens tournament last spring.”

  Suddenly their reflections wobbled. The surface of the mirror rippled in concentric circles and plunged into itself in the middle, forming the inside of a giant silver cone. Ivy yelped as her feet were dragged from under her and her vision blurred. She threw out her arms for balance.

  When her sight cleared she found herself in an empty slate-tiled hallway; the alleyway had vanished. Dim spotlights cast an emblem onto a strip of carpet: a forked arrow. Seb was there opposite her, standing with his back to a door, and Valian crouched beside him. “The mirror must have been hiding a portal to this place,” Seb said breathlessly.

  “I can hear voices,” Valian hissed. “We need to hide.”

  Ivy used her whispering to check: there were at least two of the dead approaching, possibly with other living uncommoners. She noticed a mirror-shaped opening in the wall behind, like a shadow cut out of the slate tiles. “Should we go back?” She could feel Scratch shivering in her satchel: he was frightened.

  Seb took a long tape measure from his pocket. Ivy recognized it as the uncommon one he’d been given in Lundinor last spring. “I’ve got a better idea,” he declared. “Stand next to me, both of you.”

  Ivy couldn’t think what her brother had in mind but, with people drawing closer, there wasn’t time to argue about it. She squashed herself under Seb’s armpit as he got the tape measure ready in front of them, as if he was going to start skipping backward with it. Valian tucked himself in on his other side.