The Uncommoners #3

by Jennifer Bell

  The next morning, after complying with the Tidemongers’ protection scheme, Ivy sat tapping her feet against the polished ebony floor of the underguard station. The windowless waiting room was a lot bigger than the one in Lundinor but featured comparably creepy décor: pumpkins with carved screaming faces adorned the flint gray walls, and uncommon lime squeezers spilled eerie green light over the ceiling. Officers in navy blue uniforms peered out from behind the main desk, which was constructed from three lacquered coffins stacked on top of each other. If it wasn’t late November, Ivy would have thought they were getting ready to celebrate Halloween.

  “I cannot believe they put us in the cells overnight,” Seb growled, folding his arms. “I had to sleep on a bench made out of an old gravestone with a blanket that only came up to my knees.”

  Valian huffed. “At least you had fresh air. I was sharing with a sootsprite named Claude who had a serious wind issue.” He scrunched up his nose and shuddered, as if revisiting the experience.

  For Ivy, the hard bed and small blanket had been the least of her problems. Without the lava lamp at Guesthouse Swankypants to soothe her to sleep, she’d been haunted by nightmares about the Dirge’s army of the dead. At one point, she’d dreamed of Octavius Wrench rising from the bowels of the earth as a giant—his bowler hat as big as a football stadium—stomping around the planet, gobbling up undermarts. It made her shiver just thinking about it.

  Over by the main entrance, Ivy spotted Judy skating through the automatic doors. A pair of underguard officers stopped her before she could come any closer. With the handles of their toilet brushes resting over their shoulders, they looked like soldiers holding bayonet rifles. They grumbled a few words, and Judy shook hands with them. Finally she was allowed to pass.

  “I can’t stay long,” Judy whispered as she reached them and took a seat opposite. “Visiting time is half an hour, apparently.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Seb muttered. “You’d think we were the criminals.”

  “Did you manage to plant one of the cufflinks in Mr. Rife’s pram?” Ivy asked.

  Judy patted the pocket of her patchwork waistcoat. She was wearing a new Hobsmatch combo with her roller skates—a tutu, tiger-stripe leotard and ankle warmers. Her hair was braided away from her face, so her cheekbones looked even more prominent. “I’ve got the other one safe here. I’ll keep checking the coordinates to see if anything changes.”

  Ivy caught Seb staring at her and gave him a subtle elbow.

  “Mr. Rife didn’t set foot in the building all day yesterday,” Judy continued. “But while I was sneaking around, I found something interesting in one of his cardboard boxes. Hidden beneath a collection of Farrow’s Guides was a whole pile of old newspaper articles about the murder of Valian’s parents.”

  “Old?” Ivy’s brow crinkled. “You mean—he’d had them for a while?”

  “So he must have known exactly who I was when I walked into his office,” Valian said angrily.

  Judy checked the skull-clock on the wall. “The auction house opens in two hours, at midday. I’ll go straight there from here. You three need to figure out a way of breaking out so you can come and join me.”

  Over her shoulder, Ivy noticed an underguard officer escorting a prisoner through a black door labeled DISCOCOMMUNICATOR. “What’s through there?” she asked Valian, knowing he’d seen the inside of many underguard stations. “I’ve never heard of a discommunicator before.”

  He turned to look. “You’re reading it wrong,” he corrected her. “There’s an extra ‘co’ in the middle: it says ‘discocommunicator.’ Every underguard station has one. It’s a device that allows you to send live images to and from anywhere on the planet.”

  “Like an uncommon video call?”

  “It’s a bit better than Curtis’s phone,” Valian replied with a smirk. “Discocommunicators can transmit light, sound, aroma and taste; and they work thousands of miles underground. They’re used exclusively by underguards to give them more powers during an emergency.”

  Like the flashing blue light on an ambulance, Ivy thought. Underguards were also permitted to use uncommon body bags inside undermarts when, for everyone else, bag travel was forbidden; she guessed this device had a similar purpose.

  “This discocommunicator…,” Ivy continued, “…if it’s that powerful, do you think we could use it to contact Mr. Punch? I’m worried that his featherlight yesterday contained an important message and we haven’t worked out what it is.”

  Judy’s expression darkened. “That might be a good idea. I wrote to him this morning, asking if he knew any more about Mr. Rife. I’ve had no reply yet.”

  “They won’t just let us use it,” Valian said, considering the black door. “We’ll need a distraction before sneaking in.”

  The four of them huddled closer, making a plan. Ivy observed the flow of people in and out of the discocommunicator room. As soon as it was empty, Seb and Judy stood up and went over to the coffin desk. A pair of stern-faced male underguards sat behind it.

  “Ooh…er…I’m not feeling well,” Seb slurred, holding his tummy. He convulsed just enough to make the performance realistic. Ivy wasn’t surprised how convincing he could be; he’d had enough practice at it, after all. One of the guards—a young man with dark hair and glasses—looked up and startled. Seb’s face was pea-soup green. Ivy could tell by the set of Judy’s jaw that she was concentrating hard to achieve the effect. “I think it might have been a dodgy burrito,” she explained, rubbing Seb’s back. “Can you call your medical officer, please?”

  The officer exchanged a suspicious glance with his colleague.

  “Please?” Judy begged. “I don’t want your lovely clean reception area to be spoiled.”

  The young man wrinkled his nose. “Wait here,” he said, and he rose from his seat and disappeared through a door at the back.

  Ivy and Valian hopped a few chairs closer to the discocommunicator door.

  Seb leaned over the coffin desk. “Urgh…,” he gurgled, approaching puke mode, “I can feel it coming.”

  “There, there,” Judy soothed. “Perhaps we can find a bag?”

  The remaining officer leaped from his chair and yanked open the rear door. “Frank!” he yelled. “Hurry!”

  While his back was turned, Ivy and Valian shot to the door of the discocommunicator room and, using Valian’s boat shoes, unlocked it from the inside. The room was circular with a slanted floor that dipped in the center. Rows of benches ran around the perimeter; in the middle a glittering disco ball was suspended from a wire in the ceiling. That explains the name, Ivy thought. She was surprised Guesthouse Swankypants hadn’t acquired one.

  A steel truss rigged with various stage lights and spots stood on one side. Valian fiddled with the controls on a few of them, and the room filled with tiny squares of light. “I once tried to use one of these to speak to Rosie, but it can’t dial people; only places,” he clarified. He pressed a button to start the ball rotating and the lights began sweeping across the walls. “I’ve set it up to give us a direct view into Mr. Punch’s Curiosity Shop. If he’s not there, we’ll have to try a few other spots in Lundinor.”

  A hot-tub-sized circular hologram sputtered into life above the mirror ball. It showed a room with curved gray stone walls and narrow slits for windows. Outside it, Ivy caught glimpses of castle turrets and battlements made from the same smooth, square stone blocks. The floor was dotted with various trunks, crates and cases, all stamped with Mr. Punch’s logo: a black top hat. Valian was right about the discocommunicator being able to transmit smells, because the scent of rain lined Ivy’s nose.

  “This is it?” she said, surprised. The last time she’d seen Mr. Punch’s shop it had looked like a giant purple tent. Before that, it had been a brick-built shop with leaded windows.

  “The Stone of Dreams is in the corner, over there,” Valian wh
ispered, pointing to a gray plinth carved with winged horses and five-pointed stars. A battered copy of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green lay open on top.

  Ivy was familiar enough with the fairy tale to know that it was set in medieval England. “That explains the castle,” she muttered, knowing that the Stone of Dreams had the extraordinary power to manifest certain aspects of whichever book rested on its surface. Mr. Punch used it to change the appearance of Lundinor every trading season; Ivy was curious to see what the rest of the undermart looked like.

  As she and Valian waited, a tall man dressed in a black tuxedo strode into the room. The short fuzz of brown hair on his scalp was the same length as that on his chin. “Mr. Punch,” Ivy said quietly. “He might not be wearing his usual Hobsmatch, but it’s definitely him.” She could tell because, as she watched, his appearance kept shifting—a phenomenon she was able to perceive using her whispering. First he was slim with freckles and a dimpled chin; then he was short and hunched with a wrinkled face and white hair. She’d only seen him change this quickly when he’d been under extreme pressure. She wasn’t sure what Valian could see.

  When the red-bearded quartermaster took shape, he turned to face them. “Ivy? Valian?” He squinted toward what Ivy presumed must be a hologram of herself and Valian in the castle tower.

  Before they could respond, however, Mr. Punch altered into a beefy-looking man with a stubbly beard, who grunted, “Why are we talking to them?”

  “This is a waste of time,” said the next guise—a smartly dressed gentleman with a cravat. He had a well-spoken voice. “I don’t see how we can make progress.”

  Ivy double-checked, but there was no one else in the room. Mr. Punch was talking to himself…if you could call it that. “Are you OK, sir?” she asked. In all her experiences with him, he’d still only ever felt to her like one person.

  “Let me find my soulmate and become Departed, and this won’t be an issue!” demanded another guise.

  “That could destroy us,” the next pointed out. “I, for one, vote we don’t risk it. Some of us want to stay around.”

  “Some of us shouldn’t have kept the knowledge of soulmates from others,” one of them stated bitterly.

  Ivy understood from the snippets of conversation why they were arguing. Some of the souls within Mr. Punch wanted to be reunited with their soulmates so they could become Departed, while others didn’t. It sounded like they weren’t even sure what would happen if one of them did depart. Perhaps the conflict between them explained the strange featherlight Mr. Punch had sent Ivy, the one that had looked like it had been written by multiple people.

  “Mr. Punch, sir? Can you hear or see us?” Valian asked.

  The quartermaster appeared again. His top hat sat off-kilter, his red beard was ruffled and there were dark circles under his swirly green-blue eyes. “I don’t have long,” he warned. “At the moment, it takes a lot of persuasion for my other friends to allow me to talk to you.”

  Ivy imagined what it might be like to share her body with several broken souls. You would all have to compromise with one another in order for one of you to assume control. It would need to be a relationship based on trust and understanding.

  Valian asked hurriedly, “Do you know anything about Mr. Rife? Why did you give me the invitation to the auction house?”

  “For the same reason I gave Amos Stirling’s journal to Ivy. Because fate decided you should have it.” He looked over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to sneak up behind him. “A powerful uncommon clock foretold to me that you and Mr. Rife would meet. The invitation was to point you in the right direction.”

  Valian gritted his teeth. “Mr. Rife lied to us. We know he shook hands with Rosie on the day she went missing, but he said he’d never seen her before.”

  “He is not your enemy,” Mr. Punch said firmly. “The vision I had was of you two embracing as friends.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Valian said. “I don’t even know him.”

  “I received another premonition yesterday morning,” Mr. Punch continued, urgently. “I sent you a featherlight to explain—” His words were cut short as his face widened into that of the beefy man with the stubbly chin. Before he could say anything, the quartermaster returned for a split second. “It was a warning—”

  Ivy grew more and more frustrated as the quartermaster continued to vanish and then reappear briefly, struggling against his colleagues. On each occasion he managed to utter a single word or short phrase.

  “…Great Gates…Blackheath…using the sword…commoners in danger,” Valian repeated. “The sword must be the Sword of Wills; and Lundinor lies under Blackheath in London. Any idea what the rest of it could mean?”

  “It’s got to be something to do with New Dawn,” Ivy decided. “Perhaps that’s what Mr. Punch saw a prophecy about; he said it was a warning.”

  Valian shivered. “ ‘Commoners in danger’…That would fit with all that rubbish Octavius Wrench said in Central Park—about commoners being inferior and their numbers needing to be controlled.”

  The door behind them thudded open. Ivy spun around to see a red-faced underguard officer standing in the opening. “Out,” he barked. “NOW!” He flicked a switch on the wall and the disco ball began to slow down.

  “No, wait!” Ivy studied the flickering hologram, trying to capture every detail. Just before the transmission died, Mr. Punch appeared as the red-bearded quartermaster one last time. Ivy tensed as he uttered two final words:

  “…attack London.”

  Six heavily armed underguard officers escorted Ivy, Seb and Valian along the road toward Guesthouse Swankypants. Ivy caught the nervous expressions of traders peering at them through shop windows. With everyone watching, it wasn’t going to be easy to slip away.

  “I’m very disappointed,” Curtis said, stomping behind them. “I had assumed, given the seriousness of your situation, that you’d conduct yourselves properly.”

  As Curtis continued to scold them, Ivy reached for Scratch with her whispering. Mr. Punch saw a prediction about New Dawn in the face of an uncommon clock, she told him. The Dirge are going to attack London.

  Her satchel trembled. But what Dirge stoppings can we do? Scratch replied.

  I don’t know. Ivy’s mind was racing. She remembered Octavius Wrench boasting that the Dirge had far greater ambitions than attacking undermarts. Now that she thought about it, the Dirge’s map hadn’t actually shown any undermarts on it at all…perhaps it was the common cities above them that were the real targets.

  Scratch beings scared, he said in a little voice.

  Me too, Ivy admitted.

  The lobby of Guesthouse Swankypants fell silent as they all marched in. A cleaner looked up from polishing the marble floor only to leap up from his knees and scamper away. A similarly quick exit was made by a porter tidying a vase of orchids. One of the underguard officers went over to reception; the others waited for instructions.

  “Their suite is on the second floor,” Curtis told them. “I’ll need you covering the windows, doors and fire exits. Nobody goes in or out until we’ve left.” The officers promptly dispersed. One went outside, while another stationed herself by the front door; the remaining three ran to the stairwell.

  Curtis guided Ivy, Seb and Valian to the central elevator. “You’ll have fifteen minutes to get packed. Take everything you need; we’re not coming back.”

  “Why the rush?” Seb asked, checking his watch. He stared pointedly at Ivy and Valian. “It’s only just midday.”

  Ivy tensed. The auction house had opened; they needed to get there fast.

  “No more questions,” Curtis said dismissively. “Just do as I say.” When they got out of the elevator, she marched them along the corridor and paused outside their room. “I’ll be stationed here, covering the hallway. Your time starts no
w.”

  Ivy swiped her glove against the door handle; it buzzed loudly before opening, and the three of them stepped inside. As Valian shut the door behind them, Ivy saw immediately that something was amiss: fragments of colored glass lay scattered across the thick carpet, cabinet drawers hung open and curtains had been ripped down. She spotted her pajamas hiding under the upturned coffee table. Someone had been in and ransacked the place.

  A rustling noise sounded in one of the bedrooms. Seb reached for his drumsticks.

  “Wait,” Ivy whispered, pulling him back. “Shouldn’t we get Curtis?”

  “Not till we’re sure we need her,” Valian hissed. “This might be the only chance we get to escape.”

  They crept toward the bedrooms; the door to Ivy’s was ajar. Valian put a finger to his lips and signaled for Ivy and Seb to get back.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted. There was no reply, but the rustling stopped. Valian nodded at Ivy and Seb, and then burst in, and they hurried after him.

  Ivy stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Alexander Brewster standing at the foot of her bed. In one hand he held a test tube filled with transparent liquid. In the other was a small round tin painted with a geometric pattern; a steel handle protruded from the top of it.

  “Alexander—” She lost her breath.

  His Hobsmatch—a simple shirt and trousers—were baggier than before, and his skin and fiery-red hair were dirtied with oil and blood. He blinked once, then, with a menacing grin, smashed the test tube on the floor. As Ivy, Seb and Valian shuffled back to avoid the spillage and shards of glass, Alexander rotated the handle on the colorful tin. It emitted a high-pitched, tinkling tune that made the hair on Ivy’s neck stand on end. Worse, at the sound of the music, the puddle at her feet crystallized with a loud crackle, and tiny spores of chalky powder began lifting from its surface.

  The air turned cloudy. A dry chemical coated the roof of Ivy’s mouth, reeking of plaster. She heard Seb coughing, but when she tried to reach for him, her arms wouldn’t budge. Her limbs felt numb, as if the flow of blood had been cut off. As the room cleared, she saw that Seb and Valian were having the same problem: their bodies had ground to a stony halt, like robots drained of battery power. Ivy wanted to shout to them, but her mouth was frozen shut.