“Stop!” Yvienne shouted. Then there was fumbling, and there was light again.
Tesara took in the scene. Yvienne was covered with ink and dust, and Mathilde looked quite wild in her long leather coat. Tesara supposed she looked about as strange in her servant’s dress and tangled hair. The ginger man groaned at her feet, clutching his head where Tesara had clocked him with the bellows. Mathilde trained her imposing pistol on the man.
“Right,” Yvienne said. She quickly got the pistols away from the man, checking them for damage. “Mathilde, which side are you on currently?”
“Um, yours?”
“Good.” Yvienne uncocked the pistols and tucked one in her boot, holding the other one. “Tesara, bless you. I am so glad you never listen to me.”
Aware that she was still holding the bellows high in the air, Tesara lowered it. She had never been so happy to see her sister take charge.
“Well, you should have known I would come to save you,” she said. “Who is he?”
“One of Trune’s henchmen. Help me find something to tie him with.”
There wasn’t much in the cottage, but Mathilde surrendered her scarf, and they stuffed a scrap of leather in his mouth. Goodness, Tesara thought, this will teach me to always carry rope from now on. They propped him up in a chair. The man tried to curse, but he was thankfully unintelligible, and he subsided when Mathilde raised her pistol meaningfully.
“This proof of yours,” Mathilde said. “What is it?”
“All of the Guild’s notes on the ships they diverted, the cargoes, and how much they paid off the captains and crews. It’s all very official and tidy – merchant recordkeeping at its finest. I’m going to publish it as an Arabestus broadside.”
Tesara gasped, and suddenly everything fell into place. How Arabestus always seemed to know more about the family’s situation than anyone could, and his – her – grudge against the Guild. “You’re Arabestus!”
Yvienne grinned, a little smugly.
“Yvienne, how could you? And you didn’t tell me!” It was unfair, it really was.
“Yes, but I couldn’t have told you. It was too dangerous as it was.”
“What do we need to do now?” Mathilde asked, all practicality. She tucked her pistol into her demure hand warmer, and set it aside.
“Help me finish typesetting the page, and then we’ll start the press.”
Keeping an eye on the trussed-up henchman, and now and again tightening up his bonds, they helped Yvienne with the typesetting. No wonder her sister came back from some of her forays with an aching head and back, Tesara thought with sympathy. She had been hunched over the small bits of type for hours, creating her controversial broadsheets. After fifteen minutes of searching for the backward letters and pushing them together with stained fingers, her eyes burned with the effort to focus in the dim light.
But they moved faster than just Yvienne alone. They each took paragraphs and handed over their type to the master plate when finished. And after about two hours, the broadsheet was done, the plate mounted onto the press, and the ink painted over all.
They took turns feeding paper, painting the plate every time the ink got too thin, and pulling the heavy arm that pressed the plate onto the paper. Soon the pages stacked up, pages and pages of perfidy laid out for all to see.
The night had lightened and the skies of the eastern horizon were limned with impending sunrise. The air was still and cold, and in the bare gray light of morning, the tumbledown row of cottages looked peaceful and lovely. There were pretty climbing roses over most of the cottages, and a spotted ivy, and the grass had grown up between the cobblestones. The neighborhood had a pretty air.
Together the three of them carried the ginger man out of the cottage. He was limp and made himself heavy and groaned, but Yvienne suspected humbug, because she caught the gleam of his eye as he looked at them from beneath slitted lids.
They found another length of tattered rope and trussed him more securely.
“It won’t hold him long,” Mathilde warned.
“It won’t have to,” Yvienne said. “We’ll take the pages to the newsies and by the time he gets free, the news will be out.”
“Let’s hurry,” Tesara said. “Because Trune will have been doing all sorts of mischief in the meanwhile, and I want him out of my house.” She didn’t sound woolly-headed or fearful. She sounded bitter and angry. She sounded like a girl who could destroy a fleet from her bedroom window. Yvienne was reminded of her premonition of weeks ago – Tesara Mederos was the most powerful person in Port Saint Frey. She thrust away the discomforting niggle of fear.
“One more thing,” Yvienne said. She knelt and took out the gag from Bastle’s mouth. He spat and glared at her. “Tell me, did you kill Treacher? The printer?”
His eyes widened, and she could see him put two and two together. “’Twasn’t me,” he protested. “Frey’s bones, girl. The Guild don’t send one man to turn out the lights and clean up the mess both.”
“But the Guild did commission Treacher’s death,” she said, her throat clogged.
“He was going to talk,” Bastle protested, as if that explained it all, but his voice was weak.
Mathilde looked from one to the other. Yvienne saw the question in her eyes.
Her voice throbbing with fury, she said, “Mathilde! You told them you saw me coming out of Treacher’s didn’t you?” Mathilde jerked out a nod. “Well, you sealed his death warrant.”
She turned away before they could see her tears, and before she had to listen to Mathilde’s excuses. They left Bastle in a patch of grass and went back in for the broadsheets. The last lines burned in Yvienne’s memory.
Some may say that the Guild’s crimes are but a matter of money, and what is money after all? And yet they did not stop at fraud – the Guild under Trune commissioned the murder of Treacher, publisher of the Almanac, and a man
