She would not cry.
“Well,” said Father, sounding both entirely too lighthearted and quite near tears himself. “It seems a fine place.”
“Yes.” Catherine fought back the lump in her throat. “Very fine.”
Indeed, it was. Four stories of neat, dark brick, lined with sash windows. There was a polished front door with a heavy bronze knocker—like something out of a story.
A fortnight ago, Father had written ahead and secured her a job here. Now, in the dim, watery streetlight, he told her, “You don’t have to go.”
She curled her hands together in her lap. Those were the words she’d said to her older brother the previous year, when he’d left to go work in the mines.
They’d had another year of poor harvest, and just two months back, a storm left their roof badly damaged.
Working at the city’s newspaper, Catherine could make good money. Her family knew that as well as she did.
“I’ll manage.” Her voice came out high, trembling, and that wouldn’t do. She said again, “I’ll manage,” and this time she spoke clear so as to make it true.
Father got down off the cart to tie up the horses. Catherine followed and reached up to stroke their necks.
“You must write,” said Father. “And if you… if you wish to come home, for whatever reason, for any reason, Catherine—”
“I know.” She suspected she wouldn’t be seeing home again for some time. “I’ll write.”
He went around to retrieve her trunk from the back of the cart, and Catherine looked about the cobblestone street. Everything was rain-dark and slick; the smell of the river hung heavy in the air. It was so far from the green fields she knew, the clean, wet earth and the open sky. But it was home to her now.
She put her shoulders back, lifted her chin. Father appeared carrying her trunk, and she walked alongside him to knock on the door.
Two years had passed since then.
On the third floor of the print shop, Catherine sat at her desk in the room she shared with Bridget. Early-morning light shone over papers and inkpots through the leaded rectangles dividing the window glass. There wasn’t time to go to bed after returning from the cemetery, and the piece of type she’d used to wake Mary Watt was still tucked in her coat. It was one of several Mr. Ainsworth had purchased from Stewart and Sons type foundry. A space, blank of any letter, crafted finely and made to be susceptible to magic.
She took up the letter she’d written to her family the night before and sealed it in an envelope, intent on bringing it to the post office later.
There were things she hadn’t realized back when she’d started working here. The Invercarn Chronicle printed all sorts—local news and events, shipping news, a wide range of advertisements—but Catherine was often tasked with printing the obituaries. And for the first year, she hadn’t worked any graveyard shifts. Since the recent establishment of the newspaper across town—the Journal—Mr. Ainsworth had introduced the farewell service as another means of profit. It wasn’t something put into the advertisements, but word of mouth brought clients to the door.
Catherine stood up and attempted once more to scrub the grave dirt from her nails. Along with the desk and the washstand, there were two wrought-iron beds on either side of the room, two chests of drawers, two bedside tables spotted with dried candle wax. The wallpaper was peeling in parts where it met the ceiling, but altogether it was clean and dry, with a view of the street below. She pinned up her hair and smoothed her hands over her dress before making her way down to the print floor.
Light came in through the front windows, illuminating tall sheaves of paper and type cabinets, tins of ink and composing sticks. It lent a gilded quality to the room, as lovely as gold leaf, and gleamed across the iron hand presses. Printed sheets were hung to dry on racks along the ceiling. Work desks were piled with tidy stacks of paper, information to be typeset and printed. A few employees were already behind them, composing sticks in hand or scratching down notes with their dip pens.
Catherine took an ink-stained apron off a peg and slipped it on. She pulled free a type case from one of the cabinets, carrying it over to her desk. With the first of several death notices before her, she began composing type, adding letter after letter to the composing stick she held.
She said, “Good morning, Spencer,” as her foreman walked by her desk.
He stopped. “Morning, Catherine. Last night went well, I take it?”
She nodded, holding back a yawn. Her shifts at the cemetery were infrequent enough she didn’t much mind the sleeplessness that came part and parcel with the extra pay. Spencer folded his arms, his head tilted to the side. With his brown hair slicked back and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, he looked neat and managerial despite his youth. He was twenty-two now, once a compositor himself, before Ainsworth promoted him. It was Spencer Carlyle who had answered the door when she had first arrived. She could still recall that younger version of him: the bright snap of ambition in his eyes.
He asked, “And are you well?”
Once, when Catherine was a child, she’d seen a man in town selling enchanted keys that could open any lock. She remembered how her grandmother had guided her away, telling her magic couldn’t darn stockings or mend holes in the roof and it was best to attend to more practical things. Catherine’s parents quite agreed. So did Catherine herself. Yet here she was, in the city, making use of it. At least it gave people a chance to say goodbye. Even so, her magic was faint and fleeting—she couldn’t bring anyone back to life, after all. There were times she felt she ought to notice the absence of the hours she’d lost bringing back the dead, to be able to root around and find the hollows, like gaps from missing teeth.
She told Spencer, “Perfectly so,” and cast her eyes back down to her work. He tapped his knuckles against the desk and left her to it.
The print floor was soon filled with mechanical clatter, the swish of paper, the squeak of ink rollers. Catherine conveyed the lines on her composing stick to a metal chase. There were blocks of wood, furniture pieces, made to hold the type in place. Once the news was typeset, she’d lock it up tight with a quoin key, before carrying the completed forme over to the press to be inked and printed.
From across the shop, the front door opened, the bell above it chiming as Jonathan Ainsworth stepped inside, a cold gust of city air following in his wake. Catherine set down her composing stick. His gray eyes alighted upon her as he removed his gloves. In his well-tailored day suit, he looked sharp as cut glass. “Follow me, please, Miss Daly.”
Catherine folded her hands in front of her as she shadowed him up the stairs. The Chronicle was once a maze to her, the openness of the print floor at odds with the corridors and locked rooms of the upper floors. The staircase was steep and narrow, lit by gas lamps in brackets along the wall. The second floor was where they took meals, the third made up of rooms for lodging, while the fourth contained the newspaper’s archives, as well as Ainsworth’s office. It was a grand room positioned at the front of the building, with a fireplace and several armchairs, a large window overlooking the street. Through it, omnibuses and private carriages vied for space as they sped along, rattling to and fro on the narrow roads. They crossed the dark, winding stretch of the river by way of North Bridge, to where the copper-clad spires and peaked roofs of finer establishments prevailed.