The Truth

grabbed his hand and shook it.
    “Amazing, sir, amazing!” he said. “How did you do it? It must be magic! You put that notice in your newspaper and when I got home, blow me down if the watch wasn’t in my other jacket! Gods bless your paper, say I!”
    Inside, Goodmountain gave William the news. The Times had sold eight hundred copies so far today. At five pence each, William’s share came to forty dollars. In pennies, it came to quite a large heap on the desk.
    “This is insane,” said William. “All we did was write things down!”
    “There is a bit of a problem, lad,” said Goodmountain. “Are you going to want to do another one for tomorrow?”
    “Good gods, I hope not!”
    “Well, I’ve got a story for you,” said the dwarf glumly. “I hear the Guild of Engravers are already setting up their own press. They’ve got a lot of money behind ’em, too. They could put us right out of business when it comes to general printing.”
    “Can they do that?”
    “Of course. They use presses anyway. Type isn’t hard to make, especially when you’ve got a lot of engravers. They can do really good work. To be honest, we didn’t reckon they’d cotton on this soon.”
    “I’m amazed!”
    “Well, younger members of the Guild have seen the work coming out of Omnia and the Agatean Empire. Turns out they’ve been looking for a chance like this. I hear there was a special meeting last night. A few changes of officers.”
    “That must have been worth seeing.”
    “So if you could keep your paper going…” said the dwarf.
    “I don’t want all this money!” William wailed. “Money causes problems!”
    “We could sell the Times cheaper,” said Sacharissa, giving him an odd look.
    “We’d only make more money,” said William gloomily.
    “We could…we could pay the street vendors more,” said Sacharissa.
    “Tricky,” said Goodmountain. “A body can only take so much turpentine.”
    “Then we could at least make sure they get a good breakfast,” said Sacharissa. “A big stew with named meat, perhaps.”
    “But I’m not even sure there is enough news to fill a—” William began, and stopped. That wasn’t the way it worked, was it. If it was in the paper, it was news. If it was news it went in the paper, and if it was in the paper it was news. And it was the truth.
    He remembered the breakfast table. “They” wouldn’t let “them” put it in the paper if it wasn’t true, would they?
    William wasn’t a very political person. But he found himself using unfamiliar mental muscles when he thought about “they.” Some of them had to do with memory.
    “We could employ more people to help us get the news,” said Sacharissa. “And what about news from other places? Pseudopolis and Quirm? We just have to talk to passengers getting off the coaches—”
    “Dwarfs would like to hear what’s been happening in Uberwald and Copperhead,” said Goodmountain, stroking his beard.
    “It takes nearly a week for a coach to get there from here!” said William.
    “So? It’s still news .”
    “I suppose we couldn’t use the clacks, could we?” said Sacharissa.
    “The semaphore towers? Are you mad?” said William. “That’s really expensive!”
    “Well? You were the one who was worried we had too much money!”
    There was a flash of light. William spun around.
    A…thing occupied the doorway. There was a tripod. There were a pair of skinny, black-clad legs behind it and a large black box on top of it. One black-clad arm extended out from behind the box and was holding a sort of small hod, which was smoking.
    “Nice vun,” said a voice from behind the box. “The light vas shinink so good off the dvarf’s helmet, I could not resist it. You vanted an iconographer? My name is Otto Chriek.”
    “Oh. Yes?” said Sacharissa. “Are you any good?”
    “I am a vizard in zer darkroom. I am experimenting all the time,” said Otto Chriek. “And I have all my own equipment and also a keen and positive attitude!”
    “Sacharissa!” hissed William urgently.
    “We could probably start you at a dollar a day—”
    “Sacharissa!”
    “Yes? What?”
    “He’s a vampire! ”
    “I object most stronkly,” said the hidden Otto. “It iss such an easy assumption to believe that everyvun with an Uberwald accent is a vampire, is it not? There are many thousands of people from Uberwald who are not vampires!”
    William waved his hand aimlessly, trying to shrug off the embarrassment.
    “All right,