“Well, I suppose it may have been true,” Pertellis suggested.

“No, I think not.” Miss Kitely herself had drifted in, carrying a dish of coffee for Pertellis. She was a thin, pale woman whose heavy lids could have been ugly but instead just made her eyes acutely blue. “He bought coffee for himself, and anyone who would talk to him, and never asked them to return the favor. I had my girl overcharge him, and he didn’t complain. Then he started to talk about how interested he would be in reading fresh-written tracts, and to ask whether anyone could show him some.”

“Did anyone tell him anything?” asked Pertellis.

Copperback exchanged a look with Miss Kitely, who lowered her heavy lids in a slow blink, then raised them again. Copperback traded glances with several others in the room, who nodded slightly or raised their eyebrows expectantly, then he faced Pertellis again and folded his arms.

“And why would you be particularly interested in knowing that?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Pertellis—are you running this infernal printing press?”

Pertellis paused in lifting his coffee dish to his lips.

“Goodness. Well, that is a question. How would you react if I was?”

Copperback flung his hands up over his head and, finding nothing he could usefully do with them, settled for meshing their fingers and letting them wrestle for a moment, before swinging them down against his thighs with a slap.

“I knew it had to be you. It has your stamp all over it. Pertellis, by Pipshriek, Protector of the Rash, why did you not tell us? You should have given us the chance to shake some sense into you! You will bring the Stationers down upon every one of us—we shall all have our noses cut off at the next Assizes!” Copperback flashed a furious and apprehensive glare round the room.

Every regular at the Laurel Bower would have risked arrest as a radical if his papers had been searched and his sympathies investigated. Their views differed, but they shared a passionate belief that the world was arranged unfairly. It was like a broken leg that had healed crooked and would have to be broken again if it was ever to grow straight. They all understood the danger they faced by holding to this belief.

“I see.” Pertellis sipped thoughtfully. “And how would you react if I said that I was not responsible?”

“Pertellis . . .” Copperback gestured in frustration. “Pertellis, we’ve all guessed that it must be you, what with your indomitable passion for circulating tracts. Most of us possess a copy of ‘Upon the Inequalities of Law’ copied out by the children of your Floating School.”

“Yes, I . . .” Pertellis cast a beleaguered smile downward. “I think most of my children now write a pretty fair hand.”