Ash and Quill(52)

"Where's Diwell?"

"Privy," Thomas said. "Something he ate disagreed with him. I offered him food I'd saved up. It was nicely rotten. It isn't my fault he decided to take it. I gave him a choice. Don't worry, I don't think it will kill him. Just make him wish he was dead."

"And I remember when you were just an innocent farm boy who wouldn't hurt a fly." Jess's smile quickly faded. "I got in contact with my brother."

"And?" Thomas slid out from beneath the frame of the machine to look at him. "The tunnel?"

"We're not going out the tunnel."

"Then it's good I made the Ray," Thomas said.

"Where is it?"

"I haven't put it together yet."

"Wait. What?"

Thomas slid back under the press. "All the component parts are completed. All it needs is assembly. It will work."

"Have you tested it?" 

"It will work."

That, Jess thought sickly, wasn't an answer. "Thomas! We recycled old glass and I polished it by hand. With terrible supplies! These are not fine manufacturing conditions!"

"I know," he replied calmly, voice muffled by the machine looming over him. "And the great Heron had far less to work with when he invented it. So it will work well enough."

Sometimes, Thomas's cheerful optimism could be painful. Jess stepped back and looked at the towering machine that now stood in the middle of the room. It wasn't a pretty sight-no elegance to it at all, in fact-but Thomas had assembled it while Jess was still sleeping, and it was very nearly . . .

"Done!" Thomas said, and slid himself out from under it again. He stood up and shook the frame, but he did it carefully. It didn't look entirely stable; the woods were mismatched, and though carefully braced, the entire structure had the look of everything in Philadelphia: cobbled together. "I think it's ready to test," Thomas said. "Paper?"

Jess found one of the sheets of paper they'd cut carefully out of Blanks and brought it over. He saw that Thomas had already laid in metal lettering, in English and in Greek. Reading it backward in the dim light was difficult, so he said, "What are you printing?"

"Something that will whet Beck's appetite." Thomas wiped dirty sweat from his face with an equally filthy sleeve. "All right. One test only."

Jess reached for the pot of ink that they'd begged from the meager stores, and swabbed the letters in a thick black coating, placed the paper, and stepped back. He looked at Thomas, who placed his hand on the lever.

"Do you want to do it?" Thomas asked.

"No. It's your invention."

"I suppose we should say something important."

"I just hope the damned thing works."

"I guess that will have to do," Thomas said. "Do we risk it?"

Jess looked at his friend's grin, at the sweaty, exalted expression on his face, and threw caution out the door. "What's life without risk?"

Thomas pulled down on the lever, and springs engaged to snap the press down-paper against ink against metal, a sudden and violent collision. Nothing shattered. Both of them stayed quiet for a second, and then Thomas let out a gust of breath that ended in a shaky laugh. "I admit I was not as confident as I seemed. Now, for the second part." He turned a wheel and cranked the plate back up again, revealing the paper adhering to it. Jess peeled it off, and he had to admit, there was a spark of real wonder as he held it up to the light.

"English and Greek," he said. Jess stared at what they'd made from that simple pull of the lever. The ink stood out clear and crisp on the creamy paper, chillingly perfect. They'd done something so world breaking that he couldn't even imagine the waves that would ripple out of this moment, out of something he and Thomas had built from sweat and pain and hope.

It was the start of something. And the end of something else. And in that moment, he couldn't find the thread of what was right, or wrong, in any of it.

Thomas set the catch to hold the plate in place, and came to look. He put a heavy arm around Jess's shoulder, and together they stared at the page they'd printed. The ink still glistened wet, giving the letters an almost supernatural gleam. We did this, Jess thought. We did.


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He couldn't speak, he found, and he looked at Thomas and saw tears in the big German's eyes. He couldn't fully understand what this meant to him, either; it had started as a pure thing, and then it had become the reason he'd been dragged into torture and imprisonment. Was this anger? Joy? Was he crying for what had happened, or what was still to come? Or just from the same wonder that Jess felt pressing inside him?