The air in the composing room on the second floor of Master Barnaby Thorne’s printing house tasted of antimony, lead dust, and cold river damp. Six animal fat candles, set in clay pot saucers filled with salt to prevent guttering, lit up the long pine composing frames where four journeymen typesetters worked with silent, clockwork speed.
Each man held a brass composing stick in his left hand, his right thumb and forefinger flicking into the compartmentalized wooden cases of lead type—the lower case for the small letters, the upper case for the capitals. Click, chink, click. The sound was as rhythmic and relentless as the ticking of clockwork escapements. Each tiny rectangle of lead had to be set upside down and from right to left, spaced out with leaden quads to ensure the line justified perfectly against the brass side-stick.
Nessa Vale stood over the central composing stone, a massive slab of polished marble two inches thick. Her brass sound horn was slung over her left shoulder, its aimed silver tube angled toward the journeymen. In her right hand, she held a set of finely tuned brass measuring tongs, checking the lead slugs of the headline against her land-mapper’s rule.
