‘I don’t feel right,’ Seb said, remaining crouched. Ivy wondered whether the shrinking sensation 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 dimensions. 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’ stone-washed jeans; the texture of the slate tiles – even the odours 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 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 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 into the print of their scarf; Ivy even noticed one tattooed onto someone’s wrist.
As Johnny Hands glided further 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:
Ivy saw that several sections of the main article had been highlighted, but they were passing too quickly for her 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 read. ‘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 know that there is a way for them to finally be at peace.’
‘You could say the news is “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 sombre-faced dead traders she’d seen wearing signs around their neck. The objects they were searching for must be 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 up.’
Johnny Hands and Curtis stopped at a table which had a large gumball machine sitting on top. It was packed with multicoloured 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 grey 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 the 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 business card Johnny Hands had given her last spring. He didn’t seem 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 it. Surely it would have been safer with him.
‘Well, how were we meant to know?’ Seb protested, peering up and over 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 on 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’ 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 were 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 its 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 paperclips to scissors and rubber bands.
Seb’s eyes gleamed. ‘Cool … uncommon spy gadgets!’
The commander stopped at a 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 centre 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 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 tunnelling 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 the TV that morning. ‘We’ve intercepted several encrypted messages between Alexander and the Fallen Guild. Three phrases are repeated often – nuevo amanecer, 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 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 from a giant floating trainer 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 ear muffs …
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 labelled 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 trainer. Ivy hastened after them, trying not to imagine what death by wall-smooshing would feel like. It was only a few centimetres to the floor, but as they were the size of beetles, it looked more like five metres. 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.
Valian managed to land on his shoulder and roll onto his feet. ‘Everyone all right?’ he checked, just as, high above them, Johnny Hands vanished through the wall.
‘I think so,’ Ivy said, rubbing her jaw.
Seb lengthened the tape measure between his fingers. ‘We only have to wrap this around us to reverse its original effects. Now’s our chance.’
Within moments, all three of them had returned to normal size. From their new perspective, the room looked completely different. Ivy noticed Curtis’s boots stuffed inside the RETURNS bin they’d planned to hide under, so she guessed she must have visited the room before them.
‘Hey, I recognize that,’ Seb said, inspecting a velvet tray resting on top of one of the cabinets. It contained pairs of cufflinks arranged in neat rows; one link was missing. Seb reached into his pocket to retrieve the cufflink Curtis had planted on them and held it against the single gold one in the tray. ‘Hmm, identical,’ he murmured. ‘This is the cufflink we saw Curtis reading earlier.’
Before Ivy or Valian could stop him, Seb twisted it out from under its fastening. Immediately, the drone of a horn filled the air. It was deep and resonant, like an ancient war cry. Ivy clamped her hands over her ears, her body quaking. The lights flashed as a voice bellowed over a loudspeaker: ‘UNKNOWN INTRUDERS DETECTED. All agents report to the Equipment Room.’
Grinning sheepishly, Seb tucked both cufflinks into his pocket. ‘Oops, sorry …’
Ivy glared at him. ‘We need to go.’ They dashed out into the hallway and found the mirror portal they had passed earlier. ‘I can’t think of another secret to tell it,’ she cried frantically.
‘I�
�ve got one,’ Seb groaned, ‘but I’m not going to share it with you two. Cover your ears.’
Ivy did as he asked. Despite her curiosity, she was determined to give him his privacy. If the situation had been reversed, she’d hate it if he listened in on her. Seb was staring at his feet as he spoke and, without meaning to, Ivy understood one word: Judy.
But there was no time to dwell on that. One by one they disappeared through the mirror and emerged inside a derelict block of toilets. Judging by the stale air and lime-scaled taps, the place hadn’t been used for ages. Ivy spotted one of the vanity mirrors returning to normal behind them; a forked arrow was stencilled onto the corner of the glass.
‘What happened?’ Seb asked, taking in the cracked floor tiles and empty cubicles. ‘This isn’t where we were before.’
‘We used a different mirror,’ Valian reminded him. ‘They must each hide a different entrance to the Tidemongers’ base.’ He went over to the only door and poked his head through the opening. ‘Looks like we’re in some sort of depot. It’s all clear.’
They found an unlocked fire escape and rushed out into a quiet street in the Third Quarter. There was no one around.
‘Do you think the Tidemongers will know it was us?’ Seb asked guiltily. ‘That voice said “unknown” intruders.’
Ivy’s head was swimming with questions. ‘They’re spies – they’ll figure it out soon enough.’
‘And, when they do, we’re in trouble,’ Valian added. ‘We snuck into their base, listened to secret intelligence and stole a pair of cufflinks. We have to hope they don’t catch up with us until after we’ve found Rosie.’ He stopped at a T-junction and looked up and then down the adjoining road. ‘I think I know where we are. The Bureau of Fair Trade isn’t too far away, but we have to be quick. It closes soon.’
The Frozen Telescope Page 5
