“I haven’t actually tried this before,” Seb confessed, “but think of it as a jump rope. On the count of three—one…two…”
“Whatever you’re doing, just hurry,” Ivy urged. “They’re almost here!”
“Three!” Seb flicked his wrists, sending the tape measure flying up past their faces, over their heads and back down behind them toward their heels. Seb, Ivy and Valian all jumped as it scuffed the carpet under them and looped up again.
An odd sensation slithered through Ivy’s body, like her skin was being pulled in different directions. “What’s happening?” Her perspective warped so quickly that she felt nauseated. The hallway looked like it was getting bigger.
“It’s working!” Seb cried. “Keep jumping. We’re not quite small enough yet—”
Small enough? Ivy made a second assessment of the hallway: it actually was getting bigger. With every leap over the tape measure, the ceiling soared farther away.
After a few more bounces, Seb stopped. The walls loomed over them like mountain faces. “That should do it,” he decided, returning the tape measure to his pocket. “No one will notice us now.”
Valian swayed on the spot, looking disoriented. Ivy’s mouth hung open. It had all happened so quickly….She couldn’t quite believe it, but judging by the carpet fibers that stretched past her ankles, the three of them had shrunk to the size of insects.
Before her senses had had time to adjust, a pair of scuffed gray sneakers the size of double-decker buses came floating around the corner toward them. Ivy craned her neck and, with a jolt, recognized their male owner: dirty blond hair, grubby skin and a wonky red-and-blue jester’s hat.
“Is that Johnny Hands?” Valian exclaimed.
The ghoul was dressed in the same scruffy waistcoat and torn jeans that he normally wore as Hobsmatch. Ivy had no clue what he was doing there. As far as she was aware, Johnny Hands worked for Mr. Punch in Lundinor.
Next, pounding the floor with her boots, Curtis appeared at Johnny Hands’s shoulder. The glittering divergent arrow brooch on her trench coat matched the design of the badge that Johnny Hands had pinned to his hat.
“Let’s try one of my ideas this time,” Ivy said, noticing one of Johnny Hands’s laces dragging along the floor. “How are you two at climbing?”
Ivy steadied her feet as a muddy cotton shoelace the width of a tree branch swung toward her. With one great leap she caught it and heaved herself up.
“I hate this idea!” Seb shouted as he made the jump behind her. The lace jerked as he and Valian grabbed hold.
Clamping her knees together to support her weight, Ivy hoisted herself higher, just like she’d once seen a tree-climber do on TV. The vibrations in the lace told her that Seb and Valian were right behind. When they all reached the top, they let go of the lace and dropped onto the surface of Johnny Hands’s floating sneaker. Although the ghoul was hovering along smoothly, every bump and tremor of the ride was magnified to them. Ivy dug her fingernails into the leather, desperate to cling on.
“I don’t feel right,” Seb said, remaining crouched. Ivy wondered whether the shrinking sensations had somehow triggered his motion sickness.
“Let’s secure ourselves under these,” she suggested, tucking her legs beneath the strung laces. “At least we won’t fall off like this.”
Once they were all fastened down, Ivy got her first real chance to consider their new dimension. It was both terrifying and exhilarating to experience the world in such detail: the wispy dust particles suspended in the air, the rough threads of Johnny Hands’s stonewashed jeans, the texture of the slate tiles—even the odors of mud and stale carpet were richer and more intense, making her nose twitch. Despite everything being brighter and louder, Ivy’s eyes and ears didn’t feel overwhelmed: her senses must have adjusted during her transformation.
Their ghoulish ride took them through a doorway into a brightly lit room full of uncommoners in Hobsmatch. Some were sitting at desks studying maps or examining images captured in uncommon snow globes; others were hurrying to and fro distributing feathers. The noise of their movement was so loud it sent shudders through Ivy’s chest. She hoped that the three of them were too small to be seen or heard above it all.
“What do you think they’re all doing?” Seb asked.
On the wall on the far side of the room hung a patchwork of pillowcase and napkin materializers, and projected onto the surface of each was a live video feed. Each one seemed to be from a different place in New York—Ivy recognized one as the view over the Brooklyn Bridge and another as Grand Central Station—but most were just ordinary street corners or public spaces somewhere in the city.
“They’re not viewing sites inside Nubrook,” Valian observed. “They’re doing surveillance on everyone in New York—on commoners.”
“And they’re all wearing those forked arrows,” Ivy added. The emblem was easy to spot once you knew what to look for—some people around them had the design embroidered onto the hem of their dress, others incorporated it into the print of their scarf; Ivy even noticed one tattooed onto someone’s wrist.
As Johnny Hands glided farther into the room, Ivy caught sight of a week-old copy of the Nubrook Observer—an uncommon newspaper—hanging over the edge of a desk. Angling her head, she just about managed to read, upside down, the headline and start of the main story:
SEARCH FOR SOULMATES PUTS UNCOMMON WORLD AT RISK
The number of reckless acts on common land rises dramatically as the dead attempt to become Departed. Special Branch complain of being overstretched and under-resourced.
She saw that several sections of the main article had been highlighted, but they were passing too quickly for Ivy to read what they said. Special Branch, she knew, were an elite contingent of underguards whose job it was to keep the uncommon world secret from commoners. She wondered if perhaps this place could be something to do with them.
“The search for soulmates?” Seb said. “That can’t have the same meaning for uncommoners as it does in the common world, or else the article wouldn’t make sense.”
From the details in the subheading, Ivy could think of only one explanation. “If you’re a race of the dead, your soulmate must be the uncommon object that contains the remaining fragment of your soul,” she phrased carefully. She knew that occasionally when someone died, part of their essence transformed into a race of the dead while the other bit became trapped in an object, turning it uncommon. “That’s why the dead are searching for their soulmates—to unite the two parts of their soul, so they can become Departed.”
“Which, for some, is a lot better than floating around on Earth for eternity,” Valian remarked. “Mr. Punch only revealed the truth about soulmates last spring. For the first time the dead now know that there is a way for them to finally be at peace.”
“You could say the news was ‘death-changing,’ ” Seb joked. Ivy glared at him, and his expression turned serious. “Although I’ve read that not all the dead want to Depart,” he added.
Ivy thought of the somber-faced dead traders she’d seen wearing signs around their necks. The objects they were searching for must have been their soulmates. “That could be why Special Branch are under so much pressure,” she realized. “The dead are so desperate to find their soulmates that they’re carelessly appearing on common land, and Special Branch are having to cover it all up.”
Johnny Hands and Curtis stopped at a table that had a large gumball machine sitting on top. It was packed with multicolored bubble-gum balls, each printed with the forked arrow insignia. Standing by the desk, a tall man with straw-blond hair was studying another copy of the newspaper. He had on a smart gray suit with a red pocket square and polished brogues—common dress.
“Agent Curtis”—the man tilted his head in greeting—“Agent Hands…”
Johnny Hands removed his jester’s hat, waved it through t
he air and gave an old-fashioned bow; Curtis simply nodded. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” they responded in unison.
The expression made Valian flinch. “A rising tide…That’s who these people are—Tidemongers! My parents taught me about them. They’re an international espionage guild.”
“Are you saying they’re uncommon spies?” Seb asked, grinning. “That’s so cool!”
“We must be inside their Nubrook headquarters,” Valian guessed. “I expect they have secret bases all over the world.”
The word Tidemonger rattled around in Ivy’s head until she remembered where she’d seen it before—on a copy of a business card that Johnny Hands had given her last spring. He didn’t seem like an obvious choice for a spy; she couldn’t imagine him blending in anywhere.
The blond-haired man cleared his throat. “Agent Curtis, I understand you’ve been unable to track the assets down?”
“They took an aqua-transport to Nubrook, Commander,” she replied tersely. “It seems they are more capable than I had anticipated. Until recently, I had their whereabouts pinpointed, but they disabled my tracking device before I could make contact. To my knowledge, they’re still carrying the journal.”
The Commander inspected one of the bubble-gum balls very carefully before handing it to her. Ivy could sense it was uncommon. “Your orders are to continue searching. Those assets are more at risk from the Fallen Guild than most. Mr. Punch wants them—and the journal—safeguarded at all costs. We can’t spare the resources to help you, so you’re on your own. Updated intelligence details are inside the gum.”
“Understood, Commander.” Agent Curtis popped the gum into her mouth and started chewing.
“They’re talking about us!” Ivy realized, nudging her brother’s arm. “We are the assets. Curtis was trying to protect us, not kill us.” She felt silly now for jumping to conclusions. In fact, the last time she’d seen Mr. Punch, he had assured her that some of his “friends” would watch over her and Seb to keep them safe. The only thing Ivy couldn’t understand was why Mr. Punch had entrusted Amos’s journal to her if he was worried about her having it. Surely it would have been safer with him.
“Well, how were we meant to know?” Seb protested, peering into Curtis’s nostrils. “Anyway, some protection she is—she can’t find us even when we’re right under her nose!”
Dismissed, Curtis marched out of the hall, her trench coat flapping around her ankles. Then the Commander selected another of the bubble-gum balls and passed it to Johnny Hands before escorting him through a different door into a long passageway. They passed a rectangular shadow in the wall—the back of another mirror portal—before turning a corner. “The stakes could not be higher, Agent Hands,” the Commander said gravely. “We need someone with your experience for this next mission.”
Catching a hint of a smirk on Johnny Hands’s lips, Ivy huffed. She doubted there were many Tidemongers with a record as extensive as his: he was more than five hundred years old.
“Last night, while performing a routine investigation in a building in Midtown, a couple of NYPD officers came across a group of selkies,” the Commander briefed. “One of our friends at Special Branch happened to be passing and managed to save the policemen from being killed. While our friend was erasing their memories, he discovered several crooked sixpences at the scene—the selkies had been working for the Fallen Guild.”
Ivy swallowed. She herself had had the unfortunate experience of encountering a selkie before—a vicious race of the dead with slimy bodies and mouths full of sharks’ teeth. Those NYPD officers must have been terrified.
“Incidents like this are becoming more frequent,” the Commander went on. “Having infiltrated several of their meetings, we’ve learned that the Fallen Guild are pledging to find anyone’s soulmate in exchange for a year’s service in their army. It’s being rebuilt at a spectacular rate.”
Ivy contemplated how many lives were in danger. The last time the Dirge’s army had been in action, they had killed hundreds of uncommoners in Lundinor during the Great Battle of Twelfth Night in 1969.
“What kind of numbers are we talking?” Johnny Hands asked, chewing his gum.
“Details are sketchy, but we believe their forces are already large enough to launch an attack on any of the biggest undermarts,” the Commander replied. “But what with this ‘soulmates’ crisis, Special Branch don’t have the reserves to keep the uncommon world hidden and fight an army of the dead.” He sighed. “If the Fallen Guild choose to strike now, it will be up to just us and the remaining underguard to stop them.”
Johnny Hands winced. “Ah, I see the problem. So what do you want me to do?”
Ivy gripped her shoelace tighter as the Commander accompanied Johnny Hands into a room with glass cabinets down one side and a rack of costumes along the other. She skimmed the outfits as they passed: a waitress’s uniform, a business suit, a construction worker’s high-vis vest and hard hat—all undercover commoner disguises. Each of the outfits had a label printed with the forked arrow insignia. “That symbol’s everywhere,” she observed to Seb and Valian. “It has to be the Tidemongers’ crest. Every guild has a special symbol of their own.”
Only the lower shelves of the glass cabinets were visible from her level. They contained a range of small objects mounted on velvet trays—everything from ballpoint pens and paper clips to scissors and rubber bands.
Seb’s eyes gleamed. “Cool…uncommon spy gadgets!”
The Commander stopped at a particular cabinet filled with soldered circuit boards, USB sticks and old CDs. “Your new mission is to locate and arrest one of the Fallen Guild’s most important followers,” he informed Johnny Hands, collecting a disk from the top drawer. He held it aloft, at an angle. A shaft of light appeared in the hole at the center and cast a silvery outline of Europe over the surface of the ceiling. “I understand you’ve already crossed paths with the boy before—Alexander Brewster?”
Ivy flinched, recognizing the name. Alexander’s betrayal still tugged at her heart. He had been her friend until she’d discovered he’d used his talent for mixology—the art of combining different liquids using uncommon objects—to murder two underguards and besiege thousands of uncommoners. And now he was working for the Dirge.
“We’ve been tracking his movements where we can,” the Commander continued. “Traces of his mixology handiwork have been removed from several Fallen Guild crime scenes. Most recently, that tunneling incident in Montroquer.”
The break-in at the quartermaster’s vault, Ivy remembered. Alexander Brewster must have been the thief.
As the Commander spoke, a red dot appeared on the map and started flashing. Ivy craned her neck, watching as it moved from somewhere in Russia, over to Paris, and then finally to London, leaving a faint red trail behind. It bore a striking resemblance to the weather patterns of Storm Sarah she had seen on TV that morning. “We’ve intercepted several encrypted messages between Alexander and the Fallen Guild. Three phrases are repeated often—nuevo amanacer, nyt daggry and fajar baru. They all mean the same thing.”
“New Dawn,” Johnny Hands said, rubbing his stubbly chin.
The Commander looked surprised. “I didn’t know you spoke so many languages, Agent Hands.”
“Ah, well it is quite impossible to live as long as I have, Commander, and not master a few dozen at least,” Johnny Hands remarked. “Do you know what this ‘New Dawn’ is?”
“We believe it’s the code name for the Fallen Guild’s latest scheme. We’re not sure what it involves exactly, but based on what we’ve been able to decipher from their communications, we understand that the Fallen Guild have tasked Alexander with finding one of the Great Uncommon Good.”
Valian went rigid. “What?” He threw a panicked look at Ivy and Seb. “Alexander’s dangerous. We know he read some of Amos’s journal. What if he’s hunting for the object that Rosie has
?”
“Then she’s in danger,” Ivy replied, “and it’s more important than ever that we find her. We’ve got to get out of here.” She began assessing the moving floor—dismounting a giant floating sneaker wasn’t going to be easy. But they had another problem too. “At our current size it’ll take us a day just to trek to the other side of this room,” she pointed out. “We need to wait for an opportunity when no one is going to see us and use the tape measure again.”
Up above, the Commander bid Johnny Hands a solemn farewell before leaving him alone to gather his equipment. Johnny Hands went through each cabinet in turn, selecting different items with his pinkie extended, like he was choosing canapés at a buffet: a pencil sharpener, two champagne corks, a pair of earmuffs…
Seb withdrew the tape measure from his pocket. “I’ve got a plan. We slide down the laces and hide under that bin while we wait for Johnny Hands to leave”—he pointed to a large plastic container labeled RETURNS. There was a narrow gap at the bottom between the container legs and the carpet.
Suddenly, without warning, Johnny Hands made a swift about-turn, flinging Ivy’s head back against the shoe leather. “He’s going to go through the wall!” Valian shouted. “We have to jump off now!”
Seb yanked at the laces to loosen them and, together with Valian, scrambled to the edge of the shoe. Ivy hastened after them, trying not to imagine what death by wall-smooshing would feel like. It was only a few centimeters to the ground, but as they were the size of beetles, it looked more like five meters. She pushed her panic to the back of her mind, swung her legs over the side and slid off.
“Ahhhhh!” The plunge was so steep her bottom lost contact with the leather. She dropped through the air and hit the carpet with a thud, accidentally biting her tongue.
The Uncommoners #3 Page 5