That must have been why Treacher chose this neighborhood to house his other printing press, the one the Guild didn’t know about.
She stopped at a door that was sturdier than the rest, shackled with a large lock. In daylight, the observant passerby would see that the hinges were new and sturdy, and the lock an ingenious one of a new patented design. Yvienne fumbled the keys out of her boot. She inserted the first key and, using all her force, she turned the stiff lock. The tumblers fell, and she inserted the second key, giving a precise half-turn. The lock gave, and she let herself in and closed the door behind her.
The smell of lead and ink and paper and the sharp smell of spirits overwhelmed her and she sneezed. She found a match and scraped it, and the light flared. Yvienne lit the simple candle on the roughhewn table in front of her, and lifted it up. The darkness gave way grudgingly, lighting up the low-ceilinged little room. She was tall for a young woman, and the dirty ceiling brushed her head in a way that had bothered her when she first came up here.
She set the candle in its little dish on the table, next to the wooden tray of neatly arrayed type, and pulled the tarp off the printing press. She rubbed her hands together and took out the plate she was working on. Even before she knew what she would find in Trune’s study, she had already laid out the preamble.
Hark the good people of Port Saint Frey! A snake coils among you, hissing cleverly, telling you all the right things, but you have slept uneasy despite his smooth assurances. And so his perfidy is unveiled, shed like his skin and left crackling on the doorstep of the new day. He has slithered away into ignominy, but here is the work he’s left behind.
She laid out the papers next to her, lit by the candlelight, and put a pair of borrowed spectacles on her nose. With the dexterity of several weeks’ practice, she began to set type.
Chapter Sixty-Six
As always, Yvienne lost track of time. Selecting and setting type was firstly an act of rhythm; sorting, pulling, pressing each lead letter up against its fellow, selecting dingbats and inserting them for effect, her hands continuing to pull and drop and push and pull another, as she glanced over at the paper for each phrase. Treacher had collected type for decades. Some of the letters were dulled, no longer as crisp as they should be, but she certainly didn’t have time to pour any more letters, and so they would have to do. The manifesto of Trune’s greed and criminality was still readable, and that was all that mattered.
For a second, something caught her ear and her hands paused in mid-air, a tiny letter between her fingers. But there was nothing and so she kept going. From the ache between her shoulder blades and the dullness of the heavy spectacles pinching the bridge of her nose, she knew she had been at it for hours, and she still hadn’t finished the page. One page was all she needed, of six-point close-kerned type, because Trune had been so meticulous in recording his theft, but she still had to run the printing press, and that would take hours, too. She looked up, took off the specs to rub her eyes, and reckoned she had some hours of work left, and then she could hand the broadsheet to the newsies who plied the early morning streets.
She suddenly hoped that Tesara had made it home all right. She wondered what made her think of such a thing. Then she heard the noise again and recognized what she had been hearing.
Someone was outside at the door, and they were breaking the latch.
Yvienne stopped. With great deliberation she rolled up her papers and slid them beneath the table where two joints came together. The pages fit neatly into the space. She put her hand inside the satchel and drew out her pistols.
“Don’t even think it,” came a familiar voice behind her. “Put them down.” She heard the sound of a hammer being drawn back. Yvienne set down the pistols, sweat springing out on her forehead. “Hands up.”
She obliged. “Mathilde,” she said. “How did you get in?”
“You aren’t the only one with secrets, Miss Yvienne,” Mathilde said. She crossed in front of Yvienne’s line of sight, scooped up the pistols, and went over to the door and pulled it open. In came the ginger man. She handed him the pistols. Yvienne took a deep breath and glared first at Mathilde and then at the man. He glanced over at her with no small amount of smugness.
“Told you we had our eye on you. We’ve been following you,” the ginger man said. “Watching everything you did.” He leaned forward and grinned at her with his crooked teeth. Her heart sank a little; and she lost the rest of her remaining respect for Mathilde. How could she consort with this street thug? With all of her dignity she turned to face the housemaid.
“Was it worth it, what they paid you?”
“Worth it? No,” Mathilde said. “I didn’t do it for the money, hard as it is for you merchants to understand.”
That stung, Yvienne had to admit. “Why, then?”
“Why? Jakket Elwin Angelus, is why,” Mathilde said. The housemaid wore a long duster over her shirtwaist and skirt and sturdy, laced-up boots. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and her face was set and dark, her eyes gleaming in the warm dim candlelight like onyx beads. “Sent to the bottom of the sea by your family. Don’t bother denying it,” she added, at Yvienne’s expression. “Sink the ships, get the insurance money, and the devil take the poor souls who go down beneath the waves. Your family has quite a reputation in
