‘Up a little!’

‘A bit to the left!’

Cordelia, Sam and Goose burst through the front door of the Guildhall and tumbled into the Great Chamber to find an array of Makers smiling fixedly at them from across the vast circular room. They skidded to a stop at the bottom of the sweeping staircase.

They could even see themselves standing in the unblinking group: Cordelia holding a filigree-feather hat, Goose posing with a silver-buckled boot, Sam smiling at a firefly on her fingertip.

‘It’s finally finished!’ Goose whispered.

A life-sized portrait was being winched on to the wall. Beneath their painted selves, many real-life Makers milled about, admiring the artwork.

‘Mrs Cloakmaker, you look positively regal!’

‘Mr Watchmaker, you are magnanimous!’

‘Look at Violet picking her nose!’ someone sniggered.

‘That’s not me; that’s Vera!’ protested Violet Glovemaker.

‘Perfect!’ a voice called. ‘Just there!’

The painting came to a stop high above the Makers’ heads. It was very wide, stretching between several tall stone pillars that lined the circular room. Every Maker belonging to the Guildhall – twenty-five in total – was depicted in the painting. Cordelia had to admire it: not only had the painting taken several weeks to complete, it had also meant that the Makers – sworn enemies until recently – had had to stand very close together and be polite to each other for hours on end.

Suddenly the painting disappeared from view and Cordelia was consumed by darkness.

‘UUHUUHUUHUUH!’ Cordelia heard her own voice juddering in her throat. She was lost in a grey tornado, spinning furiously. ‘Help!’

With a jolt, a scrap of light tore through the darkness and she was spun out of the whirlwind and across the Great Chamber, where she ended up sprawled on the floor. This time all the unblinking eyes looking down at her were real, not painted.

‘Dilly!’ Cordelia’s aunt, Ariadne Hatmaker, exclaimed. ‘What’s happened?’

‘In the park!’ Cordelia gasped, pinning the lace gloves to the floor to stop them from poking her eyes. ‘Miss Prim!’

‘Maker clothes gone haywire!’ Goose cried, holding up the headmistress’s shoe. It bucked in his hands, trying to kick him.

‘It was madness!’ Sam added, dragging the cape away from Cordelia. It thrashed wildly, raring to ensnare its next victim. Makers gathered warily around it as Cordelia clambered to her feet, looking around for her father to show him the strange cloak.

She realized he wasn’t there. He must have been at the shipbuilder’s yard, overseeing the second tarring of Little Bear’s hull. But her uncle, Tiberius Hatmaker, stepped forward and poked the cape with his toe.

‘What is this roguery?’ he muttered. ‘Looks like it’s got bits of hurricane stitched in it.’

‘That isn’t ours!’ Mr Cloakmaker cried. ‘I’ve never seen such a naughty piece of clothing in my life!’

‘And we certainly didn’t make this!’ Mrs Glovemaker declared, snatching a lace glove from the floor. It promptly slapped her in the face, and she dropped it. ‘OUCH!’

‘It’s got a mind of its own!’ Buster Glovemaker shrieked, chucking the glove across the room to start a violent game of catch with his twin, Bernard.

‘That’s not normal,’ Aunt Ariadne muttered, watching the lace fingers making rude signs as the glove arced through the air.

Cordelia understood what her aunt meant: usually clothes woven with Maker magic only became animated when they were worn. But Miss Prim’s clothes seethed with frenzied energy all on their own.

The glove began smacking Bernard round the head, and Cordelia rushed to his rescue.

Mrs Bootmaker examined the shoe. ‘Look at this stitching!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s clearly been done by a lunatic!’

‘Don’t blame me, Mother,’ Ignatius Bootmaker spluttered. ‘I didn’t make it.’

‘None of us made any of these blasted things,’ Uncle Tiberius growled, picking up the bonnet. He immediately threw himself across the floor in a series of forward rolls, bowling over the Watchmakers as if they were skittles.

‘Tiberius, careful!’ Aunt Ariadne yelped.

Uncle Tiberius collided with the wall, and the bonnet, thankfully, rolled away from him.

The young Watchmakers, Hop and Tick, levered their grandfather slowly to his feet, as though he was the hand of a clock striking twelve.

‘I suspect this was the work of the Troublemakers,’ Tyde Watchmaker announced gravely.

‘They must be stopped!’ Mr Bootmaker blustered. ‘It’s getting ridiculous! First the attack at the Winter Ball –’

‘Bah!’ Uncle Tiberius interrupted from the floor. ‘The Sensible Party had that coming!’

The lords who had been tormented at the Winter Ball by Biting Boots and Whistling Wasps were a group of politicians called the Sensible Party. Their leader was a particularly pompous man named Sir Piers Oglethorne: the father of Prudence Oglethorne, who had been snatched from her bed by the Troublemakers in their very first act of mischief.

When Cordelia had found out that a collection of politicians was known as a ‘party’, she thought it a rather strange joke. The Sensible Party were quite the opposite of a party: they disapproved of fun and did not believe in dancing under any circumstances. Once, they had tried to cancel Christmas for being ‘too frivolous’.

After the Winter Ball, Sir Piers had stood in the palace foyer, raging that the Makers had played a scandalous trick. It turned out that each member of the Sensible Party had received a parcel that afternoon, containing a pair of shiny shoes and a handsome new hat. Flattering handwritten notes had accompanied the parcels, urging each lord to wear the items to the ball that evening. Each one had been signed From an Admirer.

The Makers had stoutly denied they had created the clothes that had caused the politicians such embarrassment and had pointed out that the Troublemakers had in fact proudly claimed responsibility. But Sir Piers, who often railed against the Makers in Parliament for being ‘fanciful’, declared: ‘You can’t spell TROUBLEMAKER without MAKER!’ and refused to believe the Guildhall Makers were innocent.

In the aftermath of the ball, Prospero had inspected the gentlemen’s gifts, finding twitchy purple leaves tucked into the soles of every shoe, which explained the wild dancing. Wriggling strands of seaweed had been woven into the hatbands, and sinister frills of pulsing orange fungus had been discovered inside the hats.

‘They’re such rare ingredients that I don’t recognize them,’ Prospero had said, frowning. ‘Something about these clothes is quite unhinged. They should go in the Menacing Cabinet.’

While more unrecognizable ingredients were detected in Miss Prim’s clothing, Ignatius Bootmaker stood by and bellowed: ‘The Sensible Party are right! The Troublemakers are DANGEROUS! They kidnapped a child OUT OF HER OWN BED!’

Mr Cloakmaker drew his two children closer, while Mrs Glovemaker clasped her daughters’ hands and Hop Watchmaker’s eyes grew round as clocks.

‘The only reason the snivelling Sensible Party care about catching the Troublemakers is because they made them look RIDICULOUS!’ Tiberius ranted, very loudly.

A face peered out of a nearby workshop. Cordelia met Delilah Canemaker’s anxious gaze and remembered that the last time the Makers had quarrelled badly, Delilah – then just nine years old – had ended up abandoned in a workhouse.

‘BUT THEY’RE MAKING US REAL MAKERS LOOK BAD!’ Ignatius bawled.

Delilah twitched anxiously. Even though she was now a fully grown adult, squabbling among the Makers made her very uneasy.

Uncle Tiberius opened his mouth to yell again –

‘STOP!’ Cordelia roared.

She grabbed a fistful of Hush Buttons from Mrs Cloakmaker’s basket and threw them in the air. The Great Chamber was suddenly so quiet that everyone could hear the thrum of buttons landing on the floor.

‘We mustn’t argue with each other!’ Cordelia whispered.

Vera and Violet Glovemaker and their brothers Buster and Bernard, along with Hop and Tick Watchmaker, Charity Cloakmaker, Goose and Sam all nodded sombrely. It had been this group of Makers – the children – who had put aside their families’ quarrels and become friends. They all knew how hard-won this precious friendship was.

‘Make peace,’ Cordelia demanded, staring fiercely at her uncle.

‘All right,’ Uncle Tiberius muttered. ‘Sorry.’

‘Yes – sorry,’ Ignatius mumbled.

Hatmaker and Bootmaker stuck out their hands and shook. The painting of the Makers looked down on the scene, smiling.

‘Now, we need to see if there are any ingredients on the clothes that might give clues about where they came from,’ Cordelia said calmly.

One by one, the Makers pinned down the items Miss Prim had been wearing. They unpicked stitches, removed buttons and examined ribbons. Within the lining of the cape, they discovered dozens of mysterious wriggling bright-green seeds, along with several unidentifiable orange feathers in the bonnet, and a handful of fleshy red flower petals that no one could name tucked into the shoe. There were even a few strands of long, knotted hair twisted round the fingers of the gloves.

‘But hair from what, I have no idea!’ declared Mrs Glovemaker.

Cordelia ran to fetch a jar for the wriggling seeds. Once the lid was screwed on tight, everybody passed the jar round to peer at the seeds seething against the glass.

‘I’ve never seen seeds like this in my life,’ Uncle Tiberius admitted.

‘Nor have I,’ said Tyde Watchmaker. ‘Where on earth do they come from?’

‘My father will know,’ Cordelia said confidently, taking the jar. ‘He’s sailed all over the world seeking ingredients; he’s bound to have seen these somewhere.’

‘We may not know where they are from, but I think we can all agree on where they should go,’ Aunt Ariadne said sternly, pointing at the Menacing Cabinet.

Six keys were fetched from the six Maker workshops. One by one, each Maker family put their key into the matching lock and turned, until the heavy iron door of the Menacing Cabinet opened with an ominous creak. The dancing shoes that had been on the unfortunate feet of Sir Piers Oglethorne at the Winter Ball tried to escape, tapping frantically towards the light, but Goose pounced on them and hurled them back into the darkness. All of Miss Prim’s magicked clothes were swept safely away with them.

It was a relief to hear the six locks click once more.

‘I wonder what was on the watch,’ Sam said, after Delilah Canemaker had turned her key in the final lock.

‘Which watch?’ Aunt Ariadne asked tensely.

‘I forgot!’ Cordelia cried. ‘There was a pocket watch, too, that made Miss Prim go backwards.’

‘Into the pond,’ Goose added, his mouth twitching.

‘Oh no!’ Aunt Ariadne groaned. ‘Come along, Tyde. We should go to the park and see if we can find it.’

‘There’s also a shoe somewhere in the undergrowth!’ Goose called.

After gathering a Calming Cloak, Pacifying Hat and pair of Serene Slippers, Ariadne Hatmaker and all three Watchmakers hurried off to the park.

‘Back to work, everyone!’ Mrs Bootmaker instructed bossily.

All afternoon, the air of the Guildhall fizzed with something that tasted a bit like wickedness and smelled of old fireworks. It always did after the Menacing Cabinet had been opened.

Cordelia found it quite difficult to concentrate, with Uncle Tiberius grumbling under his breath about the Sensible Party as he curled Flinty Feathers around a hot poker.

‘Uncle, don’t forget Sir Piers’s daughter was kidnapped by the Troublemakers from her boarding school,’ she said gently. ‘Sir Piers must be very –’ She dropped the Whorl Ribbon she was holding. ‘Prudence Oglethorne was kidnapped from – oh, mon chapeau!’ she gasped. ‘Why didn’t I realize before?’

‘Realize what?’ Uncle Tiberius asked, but Cordelia sprang from the room, leaving the ribbon unspooling across the floor. She urgently beckoned Goose out of the Bootmaker workshop when his mother’s back was turned, and towed him up to the hexagonal tower at the very top of the Guildhall.

The tower had, long ago, been a fitting room. When Sam had become an honorary Maker, the tower room had been transformed into a special workshop for the weaving of light. There were instruments to catch sunlight and sieves for starlight, cool pillars of moonbeams stacked in a dark cupboard and a great net to collect swathes of colour-changing dawn. The throng of Dulcet Fireflies, which could often be seen orbiting Sam’s head, were currently hibernating in the rafters, a cluster of slow-throbbing light pulsing like a heartbeat.

But the most precious thing to be found in the tower was Sam’s brother, Len Lightfinger.

Len had been sent away three years ago on a prison ship for the crime of stealing a chicken. Thanks to Cordelia, he had been pardoned and brought back to England some months ago. Len was a kind, bright-hearted lad, but quiet, haunted by his time on the penal colony. He could usually be found hidden away in the tower, whispering light to life in the stamens of flowers and carefully peeling the shine off apples to be used on boots.

The Hatmakers had welcomed Len into their home just as they had welcomed Sam: wholeheartedly and with good square meals. He and Sam had kept the Hatmakers entertained through the dark winter nights, weaving tales using flame and shadow. Great-aunt Petronella suspected that the Lightfinger siblings were, in fact, descendants of the ancient Lightbringer family, who had been famous far and wide as wondrous workers of light.

Today, Cordelia found them busy making candles that would fill a room with merry music, using the tuneful beeswax of Zebedee Bees.

‘Hello, Len!’ Cordelia panted, collapsing against the door frame.

Len was gently winding threads of melody on to bobbins, ready to be braided into candlewicks. He looked up, smiling.

‘I told him about the trouble in the park!’ Sam called over her shoulder, digging through a stack of clinking moonbeams.

Len ducked his head to the warbling threads again.

‘I try ’n’ stay outta trouble,’ he murmured. ‘You should too, Sam.’

‘Cordeliawhyhaveyoumademerunupallthestairs?’ Goose gasped, clambering up the final steps into the tower.

‘I’ve just realized something!’ Cordelia told him. ‘Something I don’t think is a coincidence.’

Sam, Goose and Len all looked at her curiously.

‘Prudence Oglethorne was kidnapped from Miss Prim’s boarding school.’

She was pleased to see expressions of amazement spread like the dawn across all three faces.

‘The Troublemakers kidnapped Sir Piers’s daughter, then attacked Sir Piers and the Sensible Party at the Winter Ball,’ Cordelia said. ‘Now they’ve attacked Miss Prim herself.’

‘There is some kind of weird pattern there,’ said Goose, nodding.

Sam darted to a shelf, riffled through some panes of sunlight wrapped in old newspapers, and pulled one down. She unwrapped the pane carefully and shook out the newspaper.

It was the front page of The Rude Awakening. This particular edition was from the morning after the Winter Ball. Across the entire front page was a large advertisement, with thick black words proclaiming,

WE ARE THE TROUBLEMAKERS!

WICKED AND TERRIBLE TROUBLE WILL BE VISITED UPON ALL WHO HAVE WRONGED US!

YOU WILL SUFFER TWICE AS MUCH AS YOU MADE US SUFFER!

THE WINTER BALL WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING.

Everyone stared at the strange proclamation.

‘All who have wronged us?’ Cordelia frowned. ‘Does that mean … that the Troublemakers think that Sir Piers and Miss Prim caused them suffering somehow? And that’s why they targeted them?’

‘The more important question,’ Len said quietly, ‘is: who’s next?’