The Luck Uglies

For Caterina and Charlotte, whose magic makes dreams come true. And for Wendy, who stayed in the ring.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Map of Village Drowning

Prologue: A Word About Villains

1. THE GARGOYLE

2. THE WILLOW’S WARES

3. THE O’CHANTERS OF MUD PUDDLE LANE

4. SCUTTLEBUTT AND SECRET ROOMS

5. BLACK MOON RISING

6. THE WIRRY SCARE

7. THE DEAD FISH INN

8. CURIOUS BEASTS

9. WATCH WHAT YOU EAT

10. THE MAN IN MISER’S END

11. THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

12. LONGCHANCE

13. UNMASKED

14. LEATHERLEAF

15. TROUBLE AFOOT

16. THE SPOKE

17. LAST ROOM AT THE DEAD FISH

18. GRIM GREEN

19. THE KEEP

20. A BLACKBIRD CALLS

21. COLD, DARK PLACES

22. A LADY’S LAST RESORT

23. HOUSE RULE NUMBER FIVE

24. A SHADY SITUATION

25. LUCK UGLIES

26. THE GLOAMING BEAST

27. THE LUCK BAG

Epilogue: What Tomorrow Brings Us

Tam’s Pocket Glossary of Drowning Mouth Speak

Copyright

About the Publisher

A WORD ABOUT VILLAINS …

Mum said the fiends usually came after midnight. They’d flutter down silently from rooftops and slither unseen from the sewers under a Black Moon. Luck Uglies, she’d call them, then quickly look over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t listening. Father said the Luck Uglies weren’t monsters. Outlaws, criminals, villains, certainly, but they were men, just like us.

I still remember the night the Earl’s army marched through the village, forcing them north into the toothy shadows of the forest. Soldiers were sent to follow, but none ever returned. With time, the Luck Uglies faded into ghosts, then whispers. And finally, after many years, it was as if they had never existed at all.

Anonymous Villager

RYE AND HER two friends had never intended to steal the banned book from The Angry Poet – they’d just hoped to read it. In truth, it was nothing more than curiosity that had brought them to the strange little bookshop wedged between a grog shop and the coffin maker. But the shop’s owner overreacted so strongly that they fled without thinking, the illicit tome still clutched under Rye’s arm.

The accidental thieves tore back out on to Market Street, bouncing off villagers who shared the winding, cobblestone road with horse-drawn carts and pigs foraging in the sewers for scraps. The street was narrow and congested at the noon hour, its alleys clogged with foot traffic blocking their escape. The poet himself, hefty and determined, ploughed through everything in his path. With a quick nod as their unspoken signal, the children changed course. Their escape turned vertical as they scattered in different directions, each searching for footholds in the jagged bricks and mortar of the Market Street shops.

Rye had never been comfortable on the rooftops. They had scaled them once or twice before, but only as an avenue of last resort. She scrambled up the steeply pitched timbers, darting between the twisted chimneys, scowling gargoyles and leaking gutters of Village Drowning. Black smoke billowed up from the shops and markets, fogging her cloak with the smell of cured meat and birch bark. She didn’t pause to look back at her pursuer – she’d been chased enough times to know better than that. Clearing the ridge of a gable, her momentum plunged her down the other side, legs churning uncontrollably to keep up. She stopped hard at the edge of the thatch and shingle roof, peering down past the toes of her oversized boots to the unforgiving cobblestones far below.

In front of her was freedom. Quinn Quartermast had already made it across a narrow alleyway on to the neighbouring roof. He was all arms and legs, built perfectly for jumping.

Somewhere not far behind Rye was a poet with bad intentions, one who had proved to be a remarkably agile climber for someone of such large proportions.

“I don’t think I can do it, Quinn,” Rye said.

“Of course you can,” Quinn yelled and waved her on.

“No, really. I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”

Rye looked out at the village around her. Drowning was more of a sprawling town than a village, one built on a foundation of secrets, rules and lies, but mostly just mud. It straddled the edge of the brackish River Drowning, close enough to the sea for residents to smell the tide in the mornings and watch the brash gulls waddle into the butcher shop and fly off with a tail or a hoof. North of the river and the town’s walls were creeping bogs blanketed in salt mist, and beyond that was the vast, endless pine forest rumoured to harbour wolves, bandits and clouds of ugly luck. Villagers referred to it only as Beyond the Shale. Nobody respectable believed it to be full of enchanted beasts any more, but old rumours died hard, and there was still a general notion that the great forest teemed with both malice and riches for those brave or foolhardy enough to go looking.

Footsteps pounded the roof behind Rye. They belonged not to the angry poet, but to a small, cloaked and hooded figure that stormed right past her, arms pumping. It leaped into the air and landed with a thud and a barrel roll on the opposite roof next to Quinn. The figure popped to its feet and pulled off its hood to reveal a crazy nest of hair so blonde it was almost white. Her big blue eyes shone like marbles.

“He’s right behind me,” Folly Flood said between gasps.

“Just run and jump,” Quinn said to Rye. “It’s really not far.”

“You’ve jumped that distance a hundred times on the ground,” Folly added.

“Yes, but this is different,” Rye explained, looking down again. “Something will happen. It always does.”

“You can make it. Come on,” Quinn said.

“I’ve been told that I’m a little bit clumsy.”

“Nonsense,” Quinn said, without conviction.

“Absurd,” Folly scoffed unconvincingly. “Now jump.”

“He’s a poet,” Rye said. “How bad could it be?”

“He’s angry,” said Quinn.

“And big as a humpback,” Folly added.

As if waiting for just such an introduction, the poet in question pulled his ample belly on to the far side of the roof. He was indeed angry – for a variety of reasons, Rye supposed. For one, nobody paid much attention to poets any more. Most villagers wanted to hear words sung over harps or stomped out by actors in tights and feathered caps. Plus, as far as Rye could tell, books weren’t exactly flying off the shelves in Drowning, its residents more partial to fishing, fighting and fortune hunting. In fact, the Earl who oversaw the affairs of Drowning had not only banned women and girls from reading, but went so far as to outlaw certain books altogether. None was more illicit than the book Rye now pressed close to her body, Tam’s Tome of Drowning Mouth Fibs, Volume II – an obscure history textbook that had been widely ignored until the Earl described it as a vile collection of scandalous accusations, dangerous untruths and outright lies. Even an eleven-year-old could work out that meant there must be some serious truth to it.

The Earl’s soldiers had collected and destroyed every copy they could find. Rye had heard rumblings that the poet kept a copy of Tam’s Tome in a secret back room. On certain nights he would hold private readings for rebellious nobles with inquisitive minds. Rye and her friends had no silver shims to buy their way in, so they had held their own secret reading in the shop’s broom cupboard. Unfortunately, the poet had picked an inopportune time to sweep the floor.

The poet seemed none too pleased that they’d now made off with Tam’s Tome, accidentally or not.

“Come on, Rye,” Quinn and Folly yelled together. “Now!”

Rye took a deep breath. “Here goes.”

She took five steps back to prepare for her run. She adjusted her leggings. She puffed her cheeks, clapped her hands together and then made a critical mistake.

She glanced over her shoulder.

The poet had cleared the ridge behind her. The roof shook with his heavy footfall as he steamed towards her, and Rye narrowly escaped his lurching grasp as his momentum carried him right past her. Rye froze wide-eyed as the enormous man hurtled to the edge of the roof, flailed to regain his balance, teetered on his toes and somehow managed to avoid plunging off the side. He glared accusingly at Rye.

Rye turned and darted over the next gable to the village’s tallest bell tower. Its rusted whale weathervane loomed over her as she crouched among the stone gargoyles and grotesques under the tower’s shadowed eaves.

Quinn’s and Folly’s urgent calls were muffled by the throbbing pulse in her ears. The gargoyles stared with gaping mouths as they waited for her next move. A rook perched on the shoulder of one gargoyle, grooming its inky-black feathers with a sharp grey beak. This was no place to hide for long.

Rye could hear the wheeze of the poet’s gasps as he made his way towards her. She knew she had to move. She wiped her damp hands on her leggings, but her muscles refused to budge.

The solitary rook cocked its head at her and made a clicking sound with its beak. Rye twisted her face into a scowl and shook a fist, hoping to threaten it into silence. Drowning was overrun with the ugly black birds. The locals had taken to calling them roof rodents.

That was when she noticed that the bird’s perch was not like the other gargoyles. If this gargoyle had wings, they fell over its shoulders like the folds of a cloak. Its angular black eyes and long pointed nose jutted forth from its cheeks, its face more leathery than stone. Like a mask.

Rye did not come from a home with many rules, but the ones she lived by were absolute and unbreakable. The first House Rule flashed through her mind.

House Rule Number One: Don’t stop, talk or questions ask, beware of men wearing masks.

Rye swallowed hard. An agitated warble vibrated in the rook’s throat. Then, inexplicably, the gargoyle raised a gloved finger to its masked, lipless mouth, as if to tell the bird, “Shh.”

Now that got Rye moving.

She burst from the eaves, the poet himself jolting in surprise as she rushed towards him. Throwing Tam’s Tome at his feet, she sped past and called to her friends.

“Folly! Quinn! I’m coming! Get ready to catch me!”

Rye heard Folly’s shriek and the throaty caw of the rook. She timed her jump as she ran and, with great focus and concentration … snagged her boot and fell off the side of the roof.

RYE WAS AN expert when it came to falling. Landings, not so much. They could be bone crunching if you slipped backwards on to frozen ground. Or piercing if you tumbled headfirst into a thicket of thorns. They were seldom soft. Falling from such a height, Rye assumed this landing would be her last. Much to her surprise, it was just wet.

Rye swallowed hard to make sure her heart wasn’t actually in her throat, and promptly coughed up a mouthful of run-off that tasted worse than bog water. Dragging herself to the edge of the shallows, she hiked her dripping dress past her leggings and up round her chest. The first clothes line had left an angry red welt straight across her belly. She quickly looked above her. For the moment, neither poet nor gargoyle had followed.

“Riley, put your dress down, please,” a woman’s voice scolded. “The whole village can see your business.”

Luckily for Rye, her fall from the rooftop was slowed by several clothes lines full of laundry before she landed in the foul-smelling canal that drained swill from the village to the river. Not so luckily, that’s where Mrs O’Chanter had found her. Rye dropped her dress back into place and tried to flash a smile as the thin green stew flowed around her feet. Mrs O’Chanter frowned and extended a hand.

Mrs O’Chanter suspected that Rye must have swallowed a horseshoe as a baby – she would have been a cripple ten times over if not for her otherworldly luck. She took the opportunity to mention this to Rye once again on their walk back to her shop, The Willow’s Wares. Rye glanced warily at the rooftops as they went.

After Rye had changed her clothes and was good and dry, and just when she began to think she was out of hot water, Mrs O’Chanter sent her down to catch the basement wirry that haunted the crawl space under the shop. Rye didn’t believe in wirries, and neither did Mrs O’Chanter from what she could tell. Still, she seemed to assign Rye this task once or twice a week, often after Rye had cartwheeled into a shelf of glassware or asked one too many questions about the jug of cranberry wine kept under the counter. Apparently, stealing from local merchants and plummeting from rooftops amounted to a similar offence.

Rye left her dress in a neat pile and opened the trapdoor to the dark crawl space below the floorboards. She wore her sleeveless undershirt and tight black leggings so she wouldn’t further scrape, bruise or otherwise scar her well-worn shins. She tied her hair in a short ponytail and stuffed it under a cap to avoid accidentally lighting it on fire with her lantern. That was something you didn’t want to happen more than once. She insisted on wearing the damp leather boots that had belonged to her father when he was her age – in case she stepped on anything sharp or hungry. They were far too big and probably contributed to some of the scars on her knees, but she filled the toes with fresh straw each day and wore them everywhere she went. Sitting on the edge of the trapdoor, she dangled her boots into the darkness as bait, an iron fireplace poker at the ready. In the unlikely event that an awful beasty really was running around down there, she fully intended to impale the little fiend.

Rye spent most of her afternoons helping out Mrs O’Chanter at The Willow’s Wares – the finest jewellery shop in all of Drowning. Of course, The Willow’s Wares was the only jewellery shop in Drowning, and more of a curiosity shop than anything else. It was not the type of place you would find the noble class shopping for golden heirlooms or silver wedding goblets. In fact, the only nobles who turned up in Drowning were usually hiding, and were quite often followed by whoever was trying to lock them in a dungeon or lop off their heads. Instead, Drowning attracted wanderers, rapscallions, rogues and other adventurous souls who were long on courage and short on sense. The Willow’s Wares offered the charms and talismans these mysterious travellers needed – or thought they did, anyway.

It had been an hour, and Rye had caught four spiders, a blind rat and something that looked like a worm with teeth, but no wirries. Rye’s boredom was interrupted when she heard footsteps overhead. She put her wirry-hunting tools aside and set off to investigate. The Willow’s Wares’ customers always had tales of misadventure or, at the very least, some good gossip to share.

The hawk-nosed man in the shop had watery eyes and stringy hair and did not look particularly adventurous. He looked like someone who spent most of his days locked in a room full of books. In fact, he had brought one with him. He hovered over the black leather journal he’d laid out on a workbench, a quill in hand. The two soldiers who accompanied him milled around, thumbing the hilts of their sheathed sabres and looking suspiciously at the curiosities lining the shop’s shelves.

“And what is your name, boy?” the man asked, in a voice that creaked like an old iron chest.

“I’m a girl, thank you very much,” Rye said. She was still in her tights. Her arms, legs and face were covered in basement grime.

“Oh. Indeed you are,” he said, eyeballing her disapprovingly.

“R-y-e,” Rye spelled. “Rhymes with lie.”

Mrs O’Chanter frowned and gave her a harsh look.

“Sorry,” Rye said. “Rhymes with ‘die’.”

That didn’t improve Mrs O’Chanter’s mood. She scowled at Rye as the man carefully made markings in his book.

He raised a thick eyebrow and looked up. His eyebrows resembled the grey dust balls that accumulated under Rye’s bed.

“The girl can spell,” he noted. “Interesting.”

“Of course I can spell,” Rye said.

“I see,” he said and made some more markings.

“What she means,” Mrs O’Chanter interjected, “is that she knows how to spell her name. You know how children are these days, Constable Boil. Always curious. You need to indulge them sometimes otherwise they won’t leave you a minute’s peace.”

“In my house,” the Constable said, “I find a good thrashing on the tail does the trick.”

Mrs O’Chanter did not seem at all pleased with the conversation. She stared out at the soldiers from the pile of black hair on top of her head, held fast with a simple blue ribbon and two wooden pins that had come from the shop. One soldier fingered a display of charms made from beeswax and alligator hide. He wasn’t gentle. Rye knew that Mrs O’Chanter hated it when people touched with no intention to buy and she could be downright scary about it – but she said nothing this time.

“Mrs O’Chanter,” the Constable continued, then paused to look her over. “Is it still Mrs or do you finally go by Miss now?”

“It’s ‘Mrs’, thank you very much.”

“How patient of you. Well then, there was quite a disturbance at The Angry Poet today.”

“Was he reading those off colour limericks again?”

“No, Mrs O’Chanter. There was a robbery. Children no less.”

“My goodness,” Mrs O’Chanter said, without alarm.

“Indeed,” Constable Boil said. “They took a bag of gold grommets and two flasks of rare wine.”

Rye’s ears burned. She knew that was a lie. She picked her fingernails as she listened.

“Gold grommets?” Mrs O’Chanter said. “Who would have thought the poet was doing so well? I can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone actually go into that shop.”

Mrs O’Chanter placed a hand on Rye’s shoulder. Rye stopped picking her nails.

“Yes, well, nevertheless,” the Constable said, eyeing Rye, “Earl Longchance takes the upbringing of the village’s youth very seriously. Wayward children must be moulded early. Tamed. The Earl’s sweat farm has been known to do wonders for the strong-willed child.”

Mrs O’Chanter just stared at the Constable without blinking.

“This child,” the Constable continued. “Where has it been today?”

Rye began picking her fingernails again behind her back.

“She has been with me since first light this morning. Working here in the shop.”

Rye held her breath.

“All day you say?”

“Indeed.”

“I see,” Constable Boil said, tapping his bony chin. “Well, do keep your eyes open, Mrs O’Chanter. Roving bands of child thugs are a pox on us all. I shall certainly keep my eyes out for you.”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”

“No bother. It will be my pleasure,” he added with a leer.

The Constable turned to leave. Rye started to sigh in relief, but she caught her breath when the Constable stopped and pivoted on his heel.

“Oh, yes,” he added, “since I’m here – it occurs to me that although Assessment does not officially commence until next week, I might as well have a look around now – to save a trip. You don’t object, Mrs O’Chanter.”

It couldn’t possibly have been mistaken for a question.

“No, of course not,” Mrs O’Chanter said.

“Splendid.”

The Constable strolled around, hands behind his back as if shopping. He paused in the doorway and faced the street.

“As you know, it’s illegal to feed pigs on Market Street. That’s a fine of ten bronze bits.”

“That’s a bird feeder,” Rye whispered to Mrs O’Chanter.

Mrs O’Chanter nudged her to stay quiet.

Constable Boil leaned outside and cast his watery eyes up over the door. Of all the weathered grey shops that lined Market Street, each adorned with drab and unremarkable signs, The Willow’s Wares was the only one that flew a colourful flag. Colours had once been used as signals by certain unscrupulous characters, and the Earl now frowned on their overuse by anyone other than his tailors. That day, The Willow’s Wares’ flag was a rich forest-green, adorned with the white silhouette of a dragonfly.

“That flag is too bright,” the Constable said, pointing to the green flag over The Willow’s Wares’ door. “Fifty bits.”

Fifty bits! Rye’s ears burned again.

Constable Boil shambled back inside. He approached Mrs O’Chanter and studied her closely, squinting under his dustball eyebrows.

“No woman may wear any article of blue without the express permission of the Honourable Earl Longchance.”

Rye looked at the ribbon in Mrs O’Chanter’s hair.

“Two shims,” the Constable said, his tone severe. Then he smiled, revealing a mouth of nubby yellow teeth. “And you shall remove it.”

“He’s making that up,” Rye whispered to Mrs O’Chanter too loudly.

“Riley,” Mrs O’Chanter scolded under her breath.

Rye fumed. “This is—”

“Riley,” Mrs O’Chanter interrupted, “why don’t you go and clean up in the back until I finish.”

“But—”

“Riley, now.”

Rye heard the finality in Mrs O’Chanter’s voice, so she turned and marched towards the storeroom. She gave Boil and the soldiers a glare as she passed through the curtain in the doorway. As soon as she had made it through, she quickly turned and peeled back a corner.

Normally, Mrs O’Chanter only sent Rye to the back when she was about to do something she thought Rye shouldn’t see. Maybe she would loudly chastise the Constable and soldiers, letting everyone on Market Street know what they were up to. Rye hoped she would chase them out of the shop. Even though it was against the Laws of Longchance, Rye knew that Mrs O’Chanter kept a sharp boot knife strapped to her thigh under her dress. She called it Fair Warning. Rye had watched her chase away a gang of thieves once – one of them had almost lost a thumb. That was a lot of fun.

Instead, she heard Mrs O’Chanter say, “Of course, Constable Boil.”

Rye frowned as Mrs O’Chanter untied the blue ribbon and handed it to the Constable. She removed the pins too and her dark hair fell past her shoulders as Boil pressed the ribbon into his pocket. Mrs O’Chanter unlocked a small chest and emptied a pouch of bronze bits into his hand.

Rye pulled away from the curtain and slumped down in a corner. She crossed her arms and her ears went scarlet with anger.

Even after all these years, it seemed her mother could still surprise her.