The Uncommoners #3

by Jennifer Bell

  “I’m going to ask some of the local sky drivers if they’ve heard of this Lucien Brown who provided transport to my parents,” Valian said. “You two see if you can find the photographer my dad traded with. The name of his company was Snowy Snaps.”

  Ivy and Seb dipped through the crowd, checking the lanyards of every person shaking an uncommon snow globe. Ivy watched one family posing for a photo in front of the barrier. She found it hard to believe that anything other than white mist would show up behind them in the picture. Their snow globe photographer was busy giving loud directions to the family to get the shot he wanted. “Madam, if you step to your right,” he called, “that’s it—we can frame you right between the statue’s silver hands….”

  Silver hands…?

  Ivy recognized the phrase instantly. It gave her an idea. “Seb—” She tapped him on the arm. “The waterfall…it could be the answer to Amos’s rhyme—‘crystal droplet, bathed in breath, clasped within silver hands, deep within hide the Sands’…”

  “What?” he shouted.

  “The rhyme in Amos’s journal,” she repeated, more loudly. “ ‘Crystal droplet’ could mean water. The statue, it’s got silver hands that are ‘bathed in breath’…”

  Seb tugged on his earlobe. “I still can’t hear you.”

  “I can,” Valian said, appearing over Ivy’s shoulder. “I’ve had no luck with the sky drivers, but you’re right about that rhyme—it could refer to Breath Falls. We know my parents flew down here. Perhaps they found the Sands of Change hidden nearby?”

  The three of them hurried back to the railing and searched through the mist, looking for clues. Ivy scoured the colossus, but it was difficult to discern anything other than the rushing water and the statue’s silver torso. A narrow pebble beach ran around the edge of the plunge pool. “There,” Seb said. “Wait—is that something? I’m not sure.” He pointed to the water’s edge on the far bank. The shape of a building lurked in the mist.

  “I’ll ask the tour guide,” Ivy suggested. Wearing his luminescent NUBROOK SIGHTS bib, he was easy to find, and Ivy returned in moments with the information. “It’s a shop called the Old Seafarer’s Place,” she reported, “which opened in 1970. But it’s closed now. The man who owned it sold nautical objects. It’s the only shop down there.”

  Valian gazed suspiciously at the building. “My parents could have visited it, I suppose, looking for objects to trade. Let’s check it out.”

  Ivy hailed a sky driver, who agreed to fly them down on his rug on the condition they paid extra if any water damage was caused. Dropping them on the shore, he anxiously inspected his dripping tassels before zooming away.

  The Old Seafarer’s Place was the size of a small bungalow. It had barnacle-encrusted walls, porthole windows and a green mossy roof. Slimy red plastic streamers hung from the drainpipes like the bloody entrails of a monster. “What are those?” Ivy asked.

  Valian peered at them as they plodded across the shingles. “They look like decorations from the Nubrook Christmas parade. I guess the shop must have still been open last winter.” Seb tried the door but it was locked.

  “Good, I can’t see any shuttlecocks,” Valian said, pressing his face to the window. “I’ll unbolt it from the other side.” He bent down and retied the laces of his boat shoes with more complicated knots. Ivy could see through the hole in the heel that his socks were soaking wet. “Wait here,” he said, and filling his lungs with air and pushing his shoulders back, he walked through the wall.

  Seb gawped. “He has to let me try those things.”

  There was a clatter and the door swung open. “You might want to hold your nose,” Valian told them. “It stinks like a stagnant pond in here.”

  Ivy covered her face with her sleeve as they stepped inside. The shop had jagged, rocky walls and was filled with rope shelving units, each stocked with a variety of sea-themed objects—from anchors and lanterns to vintage life buoys. In the corner of the room stood a driftwood desk and, behind it, a large ship’s wheel fixed to the floor.

  “Anyone got any ideas what we’re looking for?” Seb asked.

  “I don’t know,” Valian said. “My parents didn’t buy anything in here, or else it would have shown up on their trading records. They must have just browsed. Perhaps if we look around, we’ll find answers.”

  A voice babbled into Ivy’s ear, making her twitch.

  “You OK?” Valian asked.

  “Just another broken soul.” She scanned her surroundings. “It’s this ship’s wheel. It’s uncommon.”

  “Really?” Valian ran his hands over the spokes. The wood was worn smooth in places; Ivy pondered what kind of ship it had been fixed to originally. “My parents had one of these,” Valian said. “They used it to protect their scout stash.”

  Seb frowned. “Scout stash?”

  “It’s a secure place where you store any objects you’re waiting to sell,” Valian explained. “It was one of the places the Dirge raided on the night my parents were murdered. The ship’s wheel was the key to gain entry, but only if you knew the correct combination of turns. This one must be hiding something. There might be clues in here that can help us guess the correct sequence to open it.”

  While Seb helped Valian search, Ivy focused her senses inside the wheel, just like she did whenever she spoke to the soul inside Scratch. Unlike the rushed gabble from Mr. Rife’s pram, the voice trapped inside the ship’s wheel was a slow drawl. After a minute’s focus Ivy was able to understand it.

  All right? the wheel asked in a sleepy Cornish accent. Where you to?

  Ivy wasn’t sure how to respond, so she decided that honesty was the best policy. Er…my friends and I need to know your combination.

  The voice chuckled. Can’t tell you that for free.

  Would you be willing to trade? Ivy asked. They were in an undermart, after all.

  Hmm…There was a long pause before the voice said, ’Ere, tell you what, sing me a shanty and I’ll let you pass. Customers used to hum them all the time, and I miss hearing them.

  Ivy hesitated. She wasn’t sure what kind of song a shanty was. “Seb, can you sing a shanty?”

  He looked out from behind a set of shelves. “Say what?”

  “A shanty. The soul inside the ship’s wheel told me that if we sing it a shanty, it’ll give us access.”

  Seb tilted his face lower. “There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Do you know what it is or not?” she asked impatiently.

  “Yeah. We learned one in music class last term. It’s a traditional work song sailors sing. I could hum the tune to one, but I can’t remember the words.”

  “So use different lyrics,” Valian suggested.

  Seb thought for a moment before starting to sing: “Can’t take not knowing, oh, oh, oh. Give me a reason, oh, oh, oh…”

  The tune was jolly and upbeat with lots of whistling. Ivy clamped her lips together so she wouldn’t explode with laughter. She recognized the words Seb was using from a song by his favorite band, the Ripz. The combination of the two didn’t exactly work. Happily she turned her senses back to the voice inside the ship’s wheel.

  I’ve never ’eard this one before, it remarked in a tone of surprise. Catchy.

  Without warning, the wheel made a series of clockwise and counterclockwise turns. There was a strange groaning sound, like a heavy object being dragged over wood, and a rectangular part of the floor fell away, forming a ramp.

  Seb stopped singing and walked to the edge to take a look down inside. “There’s some sort of railway under here,” he told them.

  The three of them ventured down carefully. Uncommon lemon squeezers were strung along the walls of a rocky tunnel, lighting it a few hundred meters into the darkness. A cart constructed from one half of a huge barrel sat on the tracks. Val
ian got in.

  “What are you doing?” Seb asked. “We can’t get into that thing—we don’t know where it leads.”

  “Isn’t that the point?” Valian argued. “What if it takes us to where my parents found the Sands of Change?”

  Ivy climbed in behind, knowing Valian was right. The interior of the barrel was fitted with three narrow benches. Moisture seeped up through her trousers as she sat down.

  “Fine,” muttered Seb, pursing his lips as he lifted his leg over the side and took the rear position. “But don’t blame me if—”

  The barrel shot forward over the rails. The hood of Ivy’s poncho flew back. “Hold on!” she cried. Wind blasted her face as they sped along the track, twisting left and right. She could hear the waterfall rumbling in the rocks above and presumed they were somewhere beneath it. They banked left and plunged deeper, eventually coming to a halt at the end of a short passage. Where the tracks finished, a stone door was set into the rocky wall.

  Seb got shakily to his feet. “Is that…?”

  Ivy shuddered, recognizing the symbol carved into the door: a crooked sixpence, the guild crest of the Dirge.

  Ivy steadied her nerves as they ventured closer to the door. “I don’t understand. Was the shop owner working for the Dirge?”

  “There’s only one way to know for sure,” Valian said. He tested the door and it creaked open.

  Inside, they found a small room with brick walls. The stale air was teeming with dust, like in an attic. A chill traced Ivy’s spine. “I know this place. Six walls. Six doors. We’re in the Hexroom.”

  Seb made a swift turn for the exit. “Time to be going,” he squeaked.

  “Wait.” Valian grabbed his arm. “This is the secret meeting place of the Dirge. We might learn something useful.”

  “Or we might be killed!” Seb insisted.

  Ivy understood why he was worried: the last time they had been inside the Hexroom, they’d come face to muzzle with a vicious grim-wolf, one of the races of the dead.

  Valian pointed to the floor. “I don’t think the Dirge use it anymore. Look at the dust—it’s undisturbed. No one’s been in here for ages.”

  Turning on the spot, Ivy surveyed the six doors in turn. Each member of the Dirge had their code name chiseled into the bricks above: Nightshade’s door was carved from glittering rock; Wolfsbane (whom they’d vanquished last spring) had a stainless-steel door; the wooden door of Ragwort (now imprisoned in a ghoul hole) opened onto a featherlight mailhouse in Lundinor. The code names of Monkshood, Hemlock and Blackclaw cut into the brickwork above the remaining three doors.

  Seb looked up at the stone door of Blackclaw, the leader of the Dirge, and shivered. “Still gives me the creeps that we’re related to that guy.”

  Ivy studied the crooked sixpence carved into the surface of Blackclaw’s door. The hooded face on the coin wore a mask covering its features. That mask had once belonged to their great-grandfather Octavius Wrench, before he died in the Great Battle of Twelfth Night. She speculated whether anyone else had filled the position of Blackclaw since their great-grandfather’s death.

  “Give me a hand with this,” Valian said, shoving the Hemlock door. “I just tried Ragwort’s door and it’s still unlocked, so maybe we can get this one open and discover who Hemlock is.”

  Ivy tensed, knowing that Valian had always held Hemlock responsible for his parents’ murder—hemlock was one of the poisons that had been used to kill them. “Can’t you use your boat shoes?” she suggested.

  He shook his head. “Not to move through uncommon doors.”

  Seb joined the effort, all three of them turning their shoulders against the stone to push. After a minute of sustained struggle, they straightened up again and eased their aching shoulders. Valian kicked the wall. “It’s no use,” he complained. “It won’t budge.”

  “But at least we’re a step closer to uncovering one of them,” Ivy reminded him, and she swung back the door through which they’d first entered the Hexroom. Above it, MONKSHOOD was carved into the bricks. “So the shopkeeper of the Old Seafarer’s Place isn’t just working for the Dirge. He is one of them. The dates make sense: the Dirge disappeared after the Great Battle in 1969, then this shop opened in 1970.”

  Valian’s face darkened. “Monkshood must have had an important reason for crawling out from under his rock for the first time in forty years. Do you think it’s got something to do with New Dawn?”

  “Maybe. Seb and I caught a glimpse of Monkshood in Lundinor last spring,” Ivy reminded him. She recalled the figure they’d seen in a long black hooded cloak. “He was trying to recruit Alexander Brewster to join the Dirge.”

  “Obviously he succeeded,” Valian growled. “Anyway—my parents couldn’t have discovered this hidden place. If they had, they would have shared the information with the underguards, and Monkshood would have been arrested. We need to pick up their trail somewhere else.”

  “In that case, can we please go now?” Seb pleaded. “I don’t want to stay in this room any longer.”

  Valian gave the Hemlock door a final unsuccessful shunt before returning to the barrel-cart alongside Seb. As Ivy lifted her leg over the side of the cask, a shadow in the tunnel wall caught her attention. It looked like the opening to a small cave. She ventured closer.

  Seb groaned. “Ivy, what are you doing?”

  Ignoring him, Ivy squeezed through the gap in the rock and emerged inside a small grotto lit by the silvery glow of an uncommon milk jug. The jagged walls extended into darkness many meters above.

  “It’s all right,” she called back. “It’s just an abandoned room.” Filling the floor was a single table and chair, with various papers strewn across the top. Most were too water-damaged to be legible, but a few—the ones tucked within the piles—had managed to stay dry.

  Valian appeared behind her, slipping easily through the slit in the wall. “Anything interesting?”

  She passed him a list of strange symbols written in black ink. It looked like some sort of code. “Remember the Commander at the Tidemongers’ base told Johnny Hands that Alexander Brewster and the Dirge were communicating in encrypted messages? Well, do you think this is one of them?”

  “Possibly.” Valian scrutinized the page.

  Hidden among the other papers, Ivy found a long scroll. The words Novus Aurora were scrawled around the outside. “ ‘Aurora’ is the name of the princess in Sleeping Beauty,” she recalled with a shiver. “My mum used to read me that fairy tale when I was little. I remember she told me the name means ‘dawn’ in Latin.”

  “Then ‘novus’ must translate as ‘new,’ ” Valian said, staring at her. “This is something to do with New Dawn.”

  With urgency, they unrolled the scroll and spread a world map over the table. Cities on every continent had been circled and numbered. “These all have major undermarts beneath them,” Valian identified. “Do you think New Dawn is a plan to attack them all with the army of the dead?”

  “It can’t be,” Ivy said. “At least, not all at once. The Tidemongers’ Commander said that the Dirge’s forces were only capable of attacking one of the bigger undermarts, not hundreds.” She scanned the diagram, focusing on the numbers. No two were the same. “What if these numbers represent the order in which the Dirge are going to strike?” Her heart began to race as she slid her finger across the map, counting as she went. New York is second. Moscow third. Berlin fourth…

  Her chest constricted as she pictured the undermarts beneath each city falling one by one to the Dirge’s control. She checked on London and found it inked with the number one. “Valian—they’re going to launch an assault on Lundinor first!”

  He grabbed her hand. “We need to show this to someone, fast.”

  Reversing along the track, the barrel-cart surfaced back inside the Old Seafarer’s Place in minutes. Although the shop was quie
t, the waterfall roared loudly outside.

  “We have to contact the Tidemongers right away,” Ivy said, leaping out of the barrel. Ordinarily she would have suggested they speak to Mr. Punch, but after his worrying message earlier, she wasn’t so confident he’d be able to help. “Do either of you have any feathers?”

  Seb shook his head.

  “I used the last of mine to send inquiries to my trading contacts this morning,” Valian replied sullenly. “We can get hold of some if we get back to the main part of Nubrook. We just need to hail a sky driver to take us up there.”

  “I’ll go,” Seb offered, striding toward the door. “I’m the tallest; they’re more likely to see me waving.”

  As Seb disappeared into the mist outside, Ivy rolled up the Dirge’s map and stuffed it into her satchel, contemplating whether they could arrange to have it ghost-couriered to the Tidemongers’ base. “We should send a feather to Johnny Hands first,” she decided. “Lundinor’s his home.” Without wanting to, she pictured the Dirge’s army of the dead tearing through the cobbled streets of Lundinor, destroying shops and houses, and killing those traders who stood in their way. “Why do the Dirge have such a vendetta against that undermart in particular?”

  “The one time the Dirge tried to take control of Lundinor all those years ago, they were humiliated,” Valian stated, perching on a driftwood bench in one corner of the shop. “So perhaps it’s not so much a vendetta as a need to succeed where they previously failed?”

  Ivy recalled her uncommon history. In the lead-up to the Great Battle of Twelfth Night, the Dirge had committed hundreds of crimes around the world, conducting a global campaign of fearmongering. “You could be right. These last six months the Dirge have been responsible for all kinds of offenses—burglary, arson, blackmail—it’s similar to what they did before.”

  “I bet that’s why they’re searching for one of the Great Uncommon Good,” Valian hissed. “The Dirge wouldn’t want to risk losing again and being made to look weak. Whichever object they’re chasing—the Sword of Wills or the Sands of Change—it might have the ability to bolster their power and ensure they win.”