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 some parts.”
Yvienne laughed. She couldn’t help it; it was so absurd, after everything she and Tesara had gone through, that the Mederos name had come down to this. Mathilde’s expression changed at Yvienne’s strange outbreak.
“Oh, Mathilde,” she said, shaking her head. “I think it’s wonderful that you believe that story that my sister believed, that she sunk the ships when she was twelve years old by making magic out of her bedroom window. Someday I’d like to hear how you found that out. But the simple matter is–”
“What are you talking about?” Mathilde said. She glanced at the ginger man. Yvienne thought back to what Mathilde had said.
“What are you talking about?” she countered. How did Mathilde think the family sunk the ships?
“You expect us to believe in magic?” the ginger man said.
“Er… no,” Yvienne said. Mathilde flicked her pistol menacingly under Yvienne’s nose, and she realized that she needed to get to the point. “We didn’t sink the ships because the ships didn’t sink. Trune lied. He’s been stealing ships for decades, diverting the cargo to other ports, and buying off the captains. Sometimes the ships show up back in Port Saint Frey or in the Harbor of Ravenne, under a new name and flag, but usually they make it back home.” She held off on showing them the pages – she didn’t trust either of them to believe her, especially after the disappointing turn Mathilde had taken in her estimation.
The ginger man snorted, but something in the way Mathilde’s expression changed to a more considering and thoughtful look heartened Yvienne. The gun drooped a bit. She looked at the ginger man.
“Hmm. That makes more sense, actually.”
“Tildy, what?” the ginger man said. “You’re not going to believe her, are you?”
“I have proof,” Yvienne said. “I’m typesetting it now, and I plan to run a broadsheet for the morning. Trune’s going to leave town.”
“So, what happened to my brother?” Mathilde challenged. “The Guild gave us the seaman’s portion and a letter, and said that it was due to the fraud of the Mederos family. He’s never come home; none of them have. Are you saying that no sailor would come home to his wife and family? Do you even know what his death did to my parents?”
She didn’t want to have to say it, because if it came down to it, she didn’t know what Mathilde would prefer to believe – that her brother went to his death when his ship was sunk by magic or other perfidy – or he was shot and thrown overboard by a crooked captain and his first mate.
“I’m sorry,” she said instead, and it came out softly because she could see by the strain in Mathilde’s expression that the girl had loved hers dearly. “I don’t know what happ
ened to him. I only know that his ship didn’t sink.”
As Mathilde thought through the options, her face crumpled and she burst out with a short cry. Then gathering herself, gripping the pistol, she said, “You’re coming with me. You’ll explain it to the magistrates.”
“The magistrates are in the Guild’s pocket,” Yvienne countered, trying to still her panic. “If I go to them, they’ll just throw me in gaol and the scheme will still go on. They’ve been doing it for years, Mathilde. You have to believe me.”
Mathilde looked indecisive and Yvienne felt hope spring alive. No more sailors have to die, she wanted to say, but held back. No use wasting a blatant attempt at sympathy, she thought, unless it was absolutely necessary. Let Mathilde come to the same conclusion on her own.
“That’s doing it up,” the ginger man said. With strong thumbs he cocked the pistols that had been thrown to him and aimed at Yvienne. “Trune isn’t going nowhere and you’re going to the Guild. You give me that proof you got.”
“Bastle, stop it,” Mathilde snapped. Bastle aimed one pistol at her and kept the other on Yvienne, who kept her hands in the air, eyeing them both carefully.
“No,” Bastle said. “I have my orders and they don’t include you siding with the girl. You’re supposed to help me nab her. That was the deal. Now, hand over your proof.”
It was staring right in front of him, or at least the half-typeset plate was. The type must look incomprehensible to anyone not used to reading it backwards, and if he couldn’t read at all… She gave him a stony look in return.
“Bastle,” Mathilde said. “What if she’s right?”
“It doesn’t matter if she’s right, she’s going up against the Guild,” he said. “Let them sort it out.”
“You mean let them kill me and imprison my family,” Yvienne said.
“Didn’t bother you none when you was in with them, did it?”
No, it hadn’t. She hadn’t thought about it like that, actually.
“I can stop them,” she said. “Then you’d never have to kowtow to the Guild or Trune ever again. No sailor will ever–”
“You can’t stop them,” Bastle said. “You’re just a girl, and I’ve got the drop on you. Cough up your proof. Now.”
A whooshing noise came up from nowhere and snuffed the candlelight, plunging the three of them into darkness.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
It wasn’t magic that blew out the candles. Rather, Tesara sneaked quietly into the old house through the open back door, and while she absorbed at one glance the fact that her sister was held at bay by Mathilde and the man with the ginger beard, she also saw old leather bellows hanging forlornly by the cold, ashy hearth. She picked them up and squeezed the handles. As much dust as air blew forth and the candle went out.
There was still enough light to see the indistinct shapes of all three people at the table and she could hear the difference in masculine and feminine alarm, enough to tell her where to step up and swing the bellows. She connected, and the man gave a pained grunt. There was a thud. Tesara swung again, but hit only air; the man was no longer there.
“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 prot
ested. “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 most dedicated to printing the truth that all may know it. Their hands are free of blood but their souls are not.
My final manifesto, she thought, and she hoped never to set type again as long as she lived. Her back ached, her shoulders ached, her head ached, even her jaw throbbed because she had been clenching her teeth with effort. She was desperately hungry, and she was covered in ink and dust. She fancied she could taste all of that and the paper, too.
The Sisters Mederos Page 28