The Truth

still filled one wall all the way to the tin roof. There was a shelf of corroding paint tins. Brushes had fossilized in their jars.
    The press occupied the center of the floor, with several dwarfs at work. William had seen presses. The engravers used them. This one had an organic quality, though. The dwarfs spent as much time changing the press as they did using it. Extra rollers appeared, endless belts were threaded into the works. The press grew by the hour.
    Goodmountain was working in front of several of the large sloped boxes, each one of which divided into several dozen compartments.
    William watched the dwarf’s hand fly over the little boxes of leaden letters.
    “Why’s there a bigger box for the E ’s?”
    “’Cos that’s the letter we use most of.”
    “Is that why it’s in the middle of the box?”
    “Right. E ’s then T ’s then A ’s…”
    “I mean, people would expect to see A in the middle.”
    “We put E .”
    “But you’ve got more N ’s than U ’s. And U is a vowel.”
    “People use more N ’s than you think.”
    On the other side of the room, Caslong’s stubby dwarf fingers danced across his own boxes of letters.
    “You can almost read what he’s working on—” William began.
    Goodmountain glanced up. His eyes narrowed for a moment.
    “‘…Make…more…money…inn…youre…Spare…Time…’” he said. “Sounds like Mr. Dibbler has been back.”
    William stared down at the box of letters again. Of course, a quill pen potentially contained anything you wrote with it. He could understand that. But it did so in a clearly theoretical way, a safe way. Whereas these dull gray blocks looked threatening. He could understand why they worried people. Put us together in the right way, they seemed to say, and we can be anything you want. We could even be something you don’t want. We can spell anything. We can certainly spell trouble.
    The ban on movable type wasn’t exactly a law. But he knew the engravers didn’t like it, because they had the world operating just as they wanted it, thank you very much. And Lord Vetinari was said not to like it, because too many words only upset people. And the wizards and the priests didn’t like it because words were important.
    An engraved page was an engraved page, complete and unique. But if you took the leaden letters that had previously been used to set the words of a god, and then used them to set a cookery book, what did that do to the holy wisdom? For that matter, what would it do to the pie? As for printing a book of spells, and then using the same type for a book of navigation—well, the voyage might go anywhere.
    On cue, because history likes neatness, he heard the sound of a carriage drawing up in the street outside. A few moments later Lord Vetinari stepped inside and stood leaning heavily on his stick and surveying the room with mild interest.
    “Why…Lord de Worde,” he said, looking surprised. “I had no idea that you were involved in this enterprise…”
    William colored as he hurried over to the city’s supreme ruler. “It’s Mister de Worde, my lord.”
    “Ah, yes. Of course. Indeed.” Lord Vetinari’s gaze traversed the inky room, paused a moment on the pile of madly smiling rocking horses, and then took in the toiling dwarfs. “Yes. Of course. And are you in charge?”
    “No one is, my lord,” said William. “But Mr. Goodmountain over there seems to do most of the talking.”
    “So what exactly is your purpose here?”
    “Er…” William paused, which he knew was never a good tactic with the Patrician. “Frankly, sir, it’s warm, my office is freezing, and…well, it’s fascinating. Look, I know it’s not really—”
    Lord Vetinari nodded and raised a hand.
    “Be so good as to ask Mr. Goodmountain to come over here, will you?”
    William tried to whisper a few instructions into Gunilla’s ear as he hustled him over to the tall figure of the Patrician.
    “Ah, good,” said the Patrician. “Now, I would just like to ask one or two questions, if I may?”
    Goodmountain nodded.
    “Firstly, is Mr. Cut-My-Own-Throat Dibbler involved in this enterprise in any significant managerial capacity?”
    “What?” said William. He hadn’t been expecting this .
    “Shifty fellow, sells sausages—”
    “Oh, him. No. Just the dwarfs.”
    “I see . And is this building built on a crack in space-time?”
    “What?” said Gunilla.
    The Patrician sighed.
    “When one has been ruler of this city as long