Chapter 34
Abitterly cold wind railed through buildings, churning up snow and stinging Maeve’s cheeks. Nan clutched a fistful of her cloak, pinning herself to Maeve’s back as they forged through the labyrinthine streets, their misty breaths mingling in the frosty air. The city teemed despite the cold. People wove around them, faces tucked into scarves and fur muffs, but none wore courier raiment; no one had tracked her, and yet the distant sounds of carriage wheels clattering against cobblestones set her teeth on edge.
Faster—go faster, Maeve told herself, keeping up a brisk pace despite Nan’s grumbling. Every now and then, Maeve’s fingers would twist into knots in her pocket, grasping for the love letter that now lay buried deep inside her saddlebag.
There was nothing to clutch anymore. Nothing left for her to hide behind.
When they were near the south side of the river Liss, Nan pulled Maeve to a stop before a ramshackle stone building with a small sign for the Herald in the front window. Fortunately lights still flickered inside. They slipped in through a back entrance, then halted in a dimly lit hall, the walls adorned with old articles. Their dusty frames jostled as the clank and clatter of a printing press reverberated through the building.
The machine was still running, at least. Hopefully Nan was right, and her contact was still here, overseeing everything.
Maeve sucked in a breath and wrinkled her nose, preferring the stark winter winds to the scents of cheap pipe tobacco and old coffee clouding the air.
“I love the smell of this place,” Nan said.
“The burnt coffee or the sweat?”
“The smell of secrets buried in the walls.” Nan inhaled deeply.
“If you inhale any more secrets, I might have to finish this on my own. Let’s go. We don’t have much time.” Ten minutes would go by quickly. The clock was ticking.
Nan led the way past rooms of chugging machinery helmed by men covered with printers’ ink and day-old stubble, then past a room of crates and packing straw strewn about the floor. They halted at the base of an unlit stairwell.
“The reporters all work out of offices upstairs.” Nan twisted her fingers together. “Before we meet my contact, there’s something I should warn you about.”
She seemed nervous; Nan never seemed nervous.
“It isn’t a jilted lover, is it?”
There was no time to deal with anything of the sort.
“It’s my father.”
Maeve recoiled. “You mean your father is the man who wouldn’t give you a job? The reason you forced yourself to try out for the courier apprenticeship?”
Nan rubbed a hand over her bedraggled hair. “I can’t begin to know why my father makes his decisions. I’m fairly certain that he’s never liked me much.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“He’s told me. Upward of ten times during every visit we have.”
“But you’re his daughter.”
“Yes, and he doesn’t care a whit.” She offered a nonchalant shrug. “My mother dropped me on his doorstep one day, and that was it. He was stuck with me. I look just like her, you know? Sometimes I wonder if he doesn’t like the reminder and guiding me into the apprenticeship at the Post was a way to get me out of his hair.” Nan gave a feeble attempt to muster a smile, but her mouth drooped. “He’ll be happy we brought him the article, at the very least.”
Maeve was tempted to turn around and forget about giving this dreadful man her article, but they were running on borrowed time.
“I think that after tonight, you should find a new editor to submit to at one of the other Leylish papers,” Maeve said. “I’ll help you. I know some people.”
“You do?”
“Not a soul. But I’ll do what I can, and I’m sure Shea has some sway.” Maeve squeezed Nan’s hands. “Now let’s go. I have about eight minutes to spare.”
They took the dingy stairwell to a second-floor hall lined with offices. Most were dark for the night save for an office at the end with a tarnished brass nameplate affixed to the wooden door. It read Marcus Ferro in bulbous letters.
The man behind the door had the same dark hair and wide-set eyes as Nan, but that was as far as the similarities went. His gray mustache dropped over a short upper lip that caused his yellow-stained teeth to stick out. A smoking pipe dangled between them. Bags hung beneath his bulging eyes, which didn’t so much as look up. They remained trained on his desk—strewn with papers, dirty cups, half-written notes, and a host of uncapped wells of ink that made Tristan seem like a god of tidiness in comparison.
Nan took a long breath, then sauntered inside and sat down across from her father. An empty cup fell to the floor as she put her feet up on his desk, crossing her ankles.
Without removing an eye from his writing, Marcus Ferro shoved Nan’s feet down. “If you haven’t brought me an article, I don’t have time for you.”
Maeve came to stand behind her and pulled the article from her saddlebag, clasping it to her waist as she watched the second hand tick away on the small silver clock behind Marcus’s desk. Five minutes. Then they would leave.
She cleared her throat.
Marcus dragged his eyes up. “Who the hell are you?”
“May I present Maeve Abenthy, Jonathan Abenthy’s only daughter,” Nan said before Maeve could take a breath.
Marcus blinked, his methodical gaze sweeping over Maeve, assessing her in detail.
She didn’t expect him to believe Nan. Even Nan seemed surprised when he rested his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands. “Very well, Maeve Abenthy. What can I do for you?”
“The article you speak of—I’ve written it myself. I’d like it to run.”
Nan turned to her. “I thought you wanted to only run it if you can’t get answers.”
“I know I said that, but I’ve decided that I want it to run anyway. If I don’t get answers, I’d rather people know the truth. I want truth out there in tomorrow’s paper for everyone to see. Then if Sibilla doesn’t talk, maybe someone else will.”
“Tomorrow’s paper?” Marcus said. “That’s a smidge too quick. My typesetter has left for the night with the compositing sticks, and it takes a few hours to prep for anything new. Why don’t you two come back in the morning?”
“But couldn’t you at least read the article and see what you think?” Nan took it from Maeve’s hands and slid it across Marcus’s desk.
“All right, then,” he said.
He lifted it and ripped it in half.
Maeve looked on, struggling to make sense of what just happened.
Nan shot up. “What was that for? That’s an important article.”
“I’m sure it was, but I think you should both follow me.”
Maeve didn’t have a good feeling about any of this, but Nan took her hand and told her not to worry as Marcus led them down to the printing floor.
They passed men in leather aprons and sturdy leather boots pulling reams of paper from the large machinery. More piles of cut papers were stacked against the walls. Marcus took a sheet from a tall stack and handed it to Maeve.
It was the printed front page of the Herald . A bold headline read:
Maeve Abenthy Has Infiltrated the Otherwhere Post
The article described how Jonathan Abenthy’s daughter had been living at the Post and impersonating an apprentice for the past few weeks, and in doing so was able to steal dangerous scriptomantic journals from deep within the Post’s archives, how the journals contained instructions for scribings deadly enough to kill. It speculated that she was planning something as catastrophic as Inverly.
Panic seized Maeve’s chest by the time she read to halfway down the page. This paper would unravel everything that she wanted to print. It would damn her and send every person in Gloam after her, hunting her.
But…if she’d left when Sibilla sent the letter earlier—when Sibilla wanted her to leave—nobody would be able to find her. And this slanderous article would have made it impossible for her to come close to Gloam ever again. Sibilla had wanted Maeve to run away and never come back, to run for the rest of her life.
“We’ve already sent cases of the paper to the north side of the city. Merchants should be stocking it within the next hour,” Marcus said with a smug expression.
The next hour? It would take her nearly that long to meet up with Tristan.
She glanced around for a clock on the wall. Her time was nearly up; she had to leave, but she needed answers.
“Who wrote all of this?” Nan asked before Maeve could get a word out.
“An anonymous source,” said Marcus. “I thought it was faked until I received a box of evidence earlier today that’s currently on its way to the constabulary.”
“What evidence?” Maeve pressed him.
Marcus didn’t respond. Instead, he took hold of Maeve’s shoulders, digging his fingers into her. She choked at the stink of tobacco on his breath and kicked out, but he was a large man, and there wasn’t much she could do.
“Father? What are you doing?” Nan shrieked. She tried to wrench Maeve free. It was useless. Marcus tossed his daughter off in a single heave.
Maeve gagged as he clamped a sweating palm over her mouth and dragged her along the floor, toward a door in the back wall. A closet by the look of it. Her feet scrambled for purchase, but he was too strong.
“Stop or I’ll swing this,” Nan said.
Marcus turned around with Maeve still gripped in his arms.
Nan held a metal stool above her head like a club. She was breathing hard. “You have to let her go.”
“Get back to the Post, Nanny. You don’t belong here,” Marcus spat. He spun Maeve toward the door, dragging her. Shoving her. If he forced her inside, that was it.
Nan must have realized it as well because a foot from the door, Maeve heard a thunk , and Marcus staggered. His hands slipped from Maeve as he crumpled to the floor. Nan stood over her father with an unfathomable expression on her face, hefting the stool like a billy club.
Maeve dragged in a breath. “I think he’s out cold.”
“Good. That’s what I was aiming for.” Nan tossed down the stool. “Though I think I’ll have to take my articles to a different paper in the future.”
“Yes. I think you will.”
Maeve backed away from Marcus’s prone form, then heard a shout from across the room. A pair of workers in ink-smeared leather aprons stood at the door. They started toward them. One of the men shouted Maeve’s name. He pushed his way past the others. A large man with slicked hair wearing dark slacks and a decorated gray uniform jacket buttoned to his neck—a jacket that Maeve recognized instantly. A constabulary courier, holding a piece of paper in front of him. Letting it guide him. It must be a tracking scribing with her name written on it.
Nan pointed to a small door a few feet behind them. “Go. Get out that door.” She ripped the crematory ash satchel from her neck and pinched some in her fingers. “If he tries to follow you, I’ll null his scribing. Hurry!”
Maeve staggered backward at the scene. Nan would be arrested for helping her escape…But if she got Sibilla to talk, it could all be forgiven.
She would never be able to do anything if she didn’t leave now.
The courier started toward her.
Maeve turned and raced for the door. Halfway through it, Nan cried out. Ash plumed in the air, but Maeve couldn’t see if the courier’s tracking scribing was dusted. There was no time to look.
She hurried outside, gulping in the bitter air, then shot into the back alley, crouching in a shadow.
A second passed, and the door she’d just exited wrenched open.
Maeve ducked down—shoving her body against the cold building side as the constabulary courier pushed his way out the door, searching the darkness.
“Where’d you go?” he shouted, then kicked the ground with frustration. His paper was crumpled in his hand. A hand coated with crematory ash.
Nan had nulled his scribing. He had no idea where she hid.
After a long moment, the courier muttered a string of curses and ducked back inside the building.
At the sound of the door latching, Maeve took off. She raced down the alleyway, then around the adjacent street and across the river Liss in a flash. Gas lamps cast gloomy reflections in the water that might have been pretty to stare at if she wasn’t being hunted. But there was no time to catch her breath. Tristan would be waiting, and she had to move.