There was a loud rumble, and then clear light appeared in the cracks between passengers. Other people started shuffling; Ivy felt a stream of hot air circle around her. Light flashed all around, and before she knew it, she was crouched on an area of pavement, surrounded by people in Hobsmatch.
“I can’t believe uncommoners actually pay to travel like that,” Seb grumbled next to her, wiping his face clean with the sleeve of his hoodie.
Ivy could see the pores of his skin as clear as if they were under a spotlight. She looked up and her ankles wobbled. “Seb, are you seeing this?”
He craned his neck. “No. Way.”
They were on a star-shaped platform jutting out from the side of a craggy mountain. Its snowy brothers rose into the blue sky for miles in either direction. The Himalayas! Ivy’s heart stirred with emotion; it was the most spectacular sight she had ever seen.
“Look over there—camels!” Seb cried.
Ivy groaned and turned to where a small enclosure of packhorses, donkeys and camels were being offered to traders needing help to carry goods. All around, uncommoners were wrestling with overflowing boxes or towing heavy carts. She cast her gaze through the crowd, looking for anyone in a black suit and bowler hat—all this natural light would be perfect for Octavius Wrench.
“This must be the equivalent of the arrivals chamber,” Seb decided. “So…where’s the skymart?”
On the opposite side of the platform, a doorframe the size of a three-story building stood astride one of the star’s points. In place of a door there was a brightly colored beaded curtain decorated with chrysanthemum flowers and hanging chimes.
“Through there, I guess. Whatever’s behind it must be invisible.” Ivy angled her head and caught flickers of a thin dome of light surrounding them. From the poster she’d seen of Strassa, she knew the skymart was constructed from a number of different platforms slotted together. Maybe the reason they couldn’t see the adjoining one was because each had its own invisible covering. That would also explain how commoners couldn’t see the skymart.
Seb stripped off his hoodie and tied it around his waist. “Hopefully Valian and Judy haven’t already gone inside; we’d better start looking.” Ivy removed her duffle coat; the sun was surprisingly warm.
Meandering through the crowd, Ivy caught alternative wafts of manure and sweet incense. She scanned for Judy using her whispering, but there were so many races of the dead around, it wasn’t easy. Seb picked up a freshly printed copy of Strassa: Farrow’s Guide for the Traveling Tradesman and borrowed Scratch from Ivy’s pocket in order to read it.
“ ‘…advanced uncommon technology controls the temperature and air quality inside Strassa and offers year-round protection from wind, rain and snow,’ ” Scratch read. “ ‘The control hub of the skymart is situated inside the mountain, where technicians also manufacture uncommon equipment for other undermarts in the world. Officials estimate that the skymart will be finished in two years, once expansion inside the mountain is comp—’ ”
“Found her!” Ivy interrupted, picking out the soothing voice of Judy’s broken soul among the crowd. “This way.” She stuffed Scratch and Farrow’s Guide in her pocket and dragged Seb in the direction of the giant beaded curtain, where a mass of people were waiting to pass through.
Valian’s face lit up when he saw them running over. “You’re here!” Without thinking, he hugged them firmly. “What about your mum and dad?”
“They’ll be OK,” Ivy said. That heavy feeling in her gut hadn’t gone away, but, seeing how much their being there meant to Valian, she knew they’d made the right choice.
“Glad you came,” Judy said, smiling at Seb. “Strassa is twelve hours ahead of Nubrook. Right now it’s seven in the morning on the first day of trade. There are ID checks to get in—it’ll be busy.”
Ivy saw men in green-and-silver uniforms standing in a line across the entrance. Large silver bells etched with a fingerprint symbol stood on tables beside each officer.
“Must be a reaction to Monkshood’s appearance on top of Breath Falls,” Valian commented. “There are more skyguards on duty here than I’ve ever seen before.”
While they got in line, Ivy nervously fingered the copy of Farrow’s Guide, hoping that their last-minute drawer-hopping hadn’t raised any alarms in Nubrook. The paper felt crisp and unwrinkled. Curious, she took a look at the author’s biography on the back cover. “Frederick Ignacio Farrow,” it said, “is the pseudonym of a writer who started traveling at a young age, after the death of his intrepid explorer parents left him an orphan.” The Strassa guidebook was the most recent Mr. Farrow had written.
“Gloves on?” Seb asked. Everyone in line around them was pulling on a different pair.
Ivy cringed at her dress gloves, now mud-stained and grubby. “Yeah.”
At the front of the line, she was asked to ring one of the large silver bells. “Ivy Sparrow. Junior trader. Primary undermart: Lundinor in the United Kingdom,” the bell said in a clear, high voice.
The skyguard stepped aside to let Ivy pass. As she waited for the others to join her, she listened to the bells announcing their details. Instead of “junior trader,” Valian got “scout” and Judy “waitress.” The bell also told everyone that Judy was “Dead. Classification: Phantom.”
The four of them walked through the beaded curtain together. The chimes tinkled as chrysanthemum petals fell into everyone’s hair. On the other side, Ivy saw a city of modest wooden buildings arranged around a stunning jade temple on a hill. The structure had translucent green walls and a roof decorated with silver crescent moons. In the streets below, Tibetan writing decorated the brightly colored shop fronts, and rich fabrics embroidered with gold thread hung from the balconies. Ivy noticed that, like Lundinor and Nubrook, Strassa had its own special streetlamps—shaped like tall flowers with white petals. Every door had a colorful rope knocker.
“Does that include a map?” Judy asked, pointing to Farrow’s Guide.
The Lundinor guide didn’t, but Ivy flipped through the Strassa guide anyway. Inside she found what she assumed was a street plan. The names were all written in code, but the grids were numbered. Judy checked the coordinates on the cufflink against the map. “Looks like Mr. Rife’s pram is not too far away. Follow me.”
She led them to a stable courtyard filled with yurt cafés selling everything from yak meat wraps to thenthuk—a Tibetan noodle soup. The stables were used to store various vacuum cleaners, doormats and rolled rugs. Seb spotted Mr. Rife’s pram in one corner, and after checking the coast was clear, they crept over.
The pram was covered by the same see-through silvery sheet that Ivy had seen draped over it before. “The covering is uncommon,” she told the others. “What does it do?”
Valian took a step back. “It must be a security blanket. They read fingerprints. If anyone other than the official owner touches it”—he pulled a gross face—“imagine being covered head to foot in a sticky spiderweb, unable to move from the spot.”
Ivy looked closer, careful not to make contact. The gold magnifying glass, which Mr. Rife had said he was delivering to the mysterious Midas, was wrapped in a neat bundle inside, along with Mrs. Bees’s flowery apron and Mr. Rife’s feathered hat. “If that magnifying glass is still here, they can’t be meeting the buyer yet. Where do you think they’ve gone?”
“I don’t know,” Valian said. “We’ll have to stake out the site until they return.”
They took a table outside Yak-Attacks Yurt House. Seb brought over some fried meat dumplings and two jugs of water. Ivy tucked in: she hadn’t eaten since her bagel that morning…or rather yesterday morning. She kept forgetting it was Friday in Strassa now.
“If it’s called the Sands of Change—it must be able to transform things,” Seb guessed, guzzling from his glass. “Perhaps you wear it around your neck and it changes your appearance.”
“That might explain why no one’s ever seen Rosie,” Valian said. “She could look completely different.”
As they cleared up their empty plates, they heard cheering from the street. Ivy and Judy went to investigate. A parade of costumed dancers was moving along the road, performing a series of solemn movements. They each wore a crown of small skulls and a menacing mask painted red, yellow and black. Musicians clashed cymbals and banged drums at the rear of the procession. Ivy overheard a few English-speaking tourists discussing how the traditional Tibetan costumes were meant to represent demons and angry spirits.
“Must be a celebration for the opening day of trade,” Judy guessed. “Wait—look.” Watching the dancers from the other side of the road were Mrs. Bees and Mr. Rife…with the gold magnifying glass in his gloved hand.
As if on cue, Valian and Seb came running out of the courtyard. “It’s gone!” Seb said. “The pram. The blanket. Everything. We must have missed them.”
“Not quite.” Ivy pointed. Rather than tapping his feet to the beat, Mr. Rife was carefully scrutinizing the parade. One of the masked dancers broke formation and slipped to the side of the road. The dancer nodded at Mr. Rife and Mrs. Bees before guiding them away, wheeling the pram beside them.
“That must be the buyer, Midas,” Valian said. “Let’s go.”
They crossed the road and trailed Mr. Rife, Mrs. Bees and the masked dancer at a distance, ducking behind stalls and snaking through the crowd. Skirting the jade temple, the masked dancer turned toward the mountain and ventured into an area of the skymart still under construction. It was eerily quiet in this part. Trucks and diggers stood idle, piles of earth lay abandoned beside the sandy makeshift roads. Ivy noticed cotton reels, kitchen whisks and high-heeled shoes dotted about the site—all uncommon building tools. She guessed that all the workers had taken the day off, as it was the first day of trade.
Suddenly Mrs. Bees screamed. Valian pulled them all behind a stack of paving slabs and they looked out. Mr. Rife, his hands held up in defense, was edging away from the masked dancer. “Midas?” he spluttered. “Is that really you? What is the meaning of this?”
The dancer held a long white electric cord as if it were a whip. On the tip was a three-pin plug…except the pins looked more like stainless-steel claws. They gave a hissing laugh and lashed the cord through the air, striking Mr. Rife in the leg and tearing at his flesh.
“Gah!” Mr. Rife cried, and fell to his knees, trying to protect his head with his arms. The dancer threw something toward Mrs. Bees, and her wrists sprang together as if they were connected by elastic. An uncommon paper clip. Ivy had been restrained in a similar manner before. She fumbled for her yo-yo as the dancer began to drag Mrs. Bees away.
“Come on, we have to do something!” Dashing from her hiding place, Ivy spotted Mrs. Bees and the masked dancer vanishing around the corner of a newly laid brick wall.
“No!” Mr. Rife yelled, staggering to his feet. “Whoever you are, take the necklace and let the girl go!” Judy and Valian hurtled past him in pursuit; Ivy and Seb stopped to help Mr. Rife.
“Slow down or you’ll make your leg worse,” Seb said, pushing his shoulder under Mr. Rife’s armpit to keep him upright. “You’re too weak to chase after them.” Ivy tried to brace Mr. Rife’s other side. His trousers were torn and soaked with blood from his wound, which was bleeding badly.
“I’ve got to help her,” Mr. Rife persisted, dragging his injured leg forward, but it wouldn’t support his weight and he crumpled in Ivy’s and Seb’s arms.
After a few minutes, footsteps sounded as Judy and Valian came running back. “They’ve flown into a dark tunnel on the back of a carpet,” Judy said. “It leads into the mountain. We tracked them to a T-junction, but it was impossible to tell which way they’ve gone from there—they were too far ahead.”
Valian marched up to Mr. Rife. “Where is my sister?” he demanded.
Mr. Rife muttered a curse, rubbing his bad leg.
“Tell me!” Valian kicked the floor in frustration, possibly to avoid kicking Mr. Rife himself. “You lied to us—you have seen her. You shook hands with her on the day she disappeared.”
Ivy noticed something glittering in the sand and bent down to pick it up. “A crooked sixpence…?” She beheld Mr. Rife. “You are a member of the Dirge?”
“Wh-what?” he stuttered. “No…no—the dancer in the mask dropped that.”
Ivy wasn’t sure whether to believe him, until she remembered that Mr. Punch had told them he’d seen Valian and Mr. Rife embracing as friends in the face of an uncommon clock. Surely Valian wouldn’t do that if Mr. Rife was lying now?
“The dancer must be a member of the Dirge,” Ivy realized. “But—I thought they were your mysterious buyer, Midas?”
“As did I, at first,” Mr. Rife said, “but the real Midas wouldn’t have done this; I’ve traded with Midas before. Whoever the dancer is, they’re an imposter.”
“I don’t get it,” Seb said. “What would the Dirge want with Mrs. Bees?”
“You don’t understand”—Mr. Rife rubbed his face with his hands—“I’ve failed her.”
Ivy considered what Seb had suggested when they were eating dumplings—that the Sands of Change must have the power of transformation. “You said just now, ‘Take the necklace and let the girl go,’ ” she reminded Mr. Rife. An idea lodged in her head. It seemed unlikely, and yet…
“Is Mrs. Bees…Rosie?”
“Steady,” Seb warned, trying to keep Mr. Rife upright. “Let me help you sit down.” He carefully lowered Mr. Rife to the ground and propped him up against a wooden post that formed part of a building frame. The pram creaked beside them.
Ivy rolled up Mr. Rife’s torn trouser leg and considered what their mum—a nurse—would do. “I think we need to put pressure on his wound to stop the bleeding.”
“Here, we can use this—” Judy tore off a section of her waistcoat and ripped it in two. Ivy tied one strip around Mr. Rife’s thigh to stem the flow of blood; the other she wrapped firmly around the wound. Judy pressed down on the lesion with both hands.
Valian hadn’t moved a muscle. “Is that true? Is Rosie really Mrs. Bees?”
Mr. Rife rubbed his hip and took a long sigh. “Six years ago, I found a girl hiding in the Dead End of Lundinor. She was all alone and crying, kept muttering something about her murdered parents and brother. I shook her hand to reassure her. She told me her name was Rosie.”
“What?” Valian swayed. Ivy took his arm and helped him sit down.
“I heard underguards calling her name and assumed she was in trouble,” Mr. Rife continued. “Being an orphan myself, I took pity on her and offered to help her escape. You must believe me, Valian: I didn’t know you were alive. I thought Rosie’s entire family was Departed.”
Ivy could feel Valian trembling, but whether with shock or anger she wasn’t sure. A lump formed in the back of her throat.
“Rosie was wearing a necklace that I’d only seen once, seven centuries ago, in China: the Sands of Change—one of the Great Uncommon Good. I knew how it worked, so I decided to use it to disguise Rosie so that she wouldn’t be recognized leaving the Dead End.”
Seven centuries ago…Ivy contemplated how long Mr. Rife had been dead. It didn’t surprise her that he’d heard about the Great Uncommon Good if he’d been around for that long.
“Disguise?” Valian retorted. “You turned her into a different person! I met Mrs. Bees—she didn’t know who I was.”
Mr. Rife studied the ground, his voice weary. “Please, just let me explain. There’s no time. A principle of some ancient philosophies is the belief that the natural world consists of pairs of interconnected contrary forces—summer and winter, fire and water, yin and yang—which all rely on each other to exist. These opposites are present inside every one of us too. The Sands of Change works by taki
ng one of these forces and flipping it around.”
…Light to darkness, life to death, Ivy thought, remembering the words from the rhyme in Amos’s journal. “The most obvious difference between Mrs. Bees and Rosie is their age,” she said carefully. “Did the locket convert Rosie’s youth into old age?”
“Yes,” Mr. Rife answered. “Only, that wasn’t all. Unbeknownst to me, the clasp on the necklace had been sabotaged, so I was unable to remove the Sands of Change from around Rosie’s neck after we had escaped. The pendant continued to alter more aspects of who Rosie was until only Mrs. Bees remained. Mrs. Bees isn’t aware that she has a brother. She doesn’t even know who Rosie is.”
That was why Rosie had never come looking for Valian, Ivy realized. She scanned his face. His expression was taut. “There’s got to be a way to undo the transformation and get Rosie back,” he said decisively.
Mr. Rife sighed. “The process could be reversed if the Sands of Change clasp was repaired. I spent my fortune trying to find someone with the knowledge to fix it, but eventually it became too risky. That’s why I didn’t contact you when I learned you were alive—I was worried it would put Mrs. Bees in danger if anyone discovered what she was wearing around her neck.”
Valian scowled, his hands curling into fists.
“Amos Stirling knew more about the Great Uncommon Good than anyone,” Ivy said. “I bet he had a theory in his journal about how to fix the necklace. Mr. Punch must have read it before he gave it to me—he might be able to help us. We need to work out where Mrs. Bees and that dancer went.”
“It sounds like they took one of the engineering passages into the core of the mountain,” Mr. Rife said. “They all lead to the control center of the skymart.”
Ivy wondered how he knew so much about Strassa. She lowered her voice in Valian’s ear. “If we get close enough, I can use my whispering to track Mrs. Bees by listening for the broken soul inside the Sands of Change.”
The Uncommoners #3 Page 14