Read Chapter 8: The Apprentice's Rival

Dawn came cold and gray over the river. Thomas stood across the lane from his master’s shop—his master’s dead master’s shop, he corrected himself—and watched Marcus Rye hammer a new sign above the door. The boards read RYE & SONS, PRINTERS, the paint still wet enough to shine in the pale light.

The window displayed fresh broadsheets. New type cases gleamed behind the glass. The smell of ink and oil drifted across the street, familiar enough to ache.

Marcus stepped out, wiping his hands on a cloth. He was older than Thomas by three years, broad-shouldered and clean-jawed, the sort of apprentice who had always made Thomas feel like a boy playing at a man’s trade. Their rivalry had been a quiet war of margins and misprints—Marcus had called Thomas’s cipher work “counting tricks” and his father a “runaway debtor.”

Now Marcus spotted him. A grin spread across his face, slow and cruel.

“Finch,” he called. “Come to gawk, or to beg for your old station back? I might have room for a devil’s boy. Someone to haul the wet sheets.”

Thomas crossed the lane before he could stop himself. “You had no right to this shop.”

“I had every right.” Marcus folded his arms. “Your master’s debts were due. My patron paid them and took the lease. That’s how the world works when you’re not hiding behind a dead man’s apron strings.”

“My master wasn’t dead when you took it.”

“He is now.”

The words landed like a slap. Thomas felt his face go hot. He wanted to grab Marcus by the collar, to demand answers about the honey-gum ink, about Master John, about the order slip hidden in his coat. But Marcus would only laugh. Marcus had the shop, the tools, the future. Thomas had a half-burned ledger and a death warrant.

“Who’s your patron?” Thomas asked, keeping his voice level.

“A man with money and patience. More than you’ll ever have.”

“And what does he want with a print shop?”

Marcus’s grin thinned. “What does anyone want with a print shop? Paper, ink, and silence.”

Thomas felt his pulse quicken. That phrase—silence—echoed in his chest like a bell tolling in an empty church. He looked past Marcus into the shop. The old press stood where it always had, iron and oak, but the layout had changed. Tables of fresh type occupied the back corner. A small writing desk sat near the window beside a stack of correspondence, the top letter half-covered by a paperweight shaped like a tower.

The tower.

Thomas’s breath caught. He forced himself to look away, to keep his face dull and stupid. “Suppose I wanted my apprenticeship back. Who would I petition?”

Marcus tilted his head, studying him like a curious cat. “Why would I take a rival who knows my trade?”

“Because I’m good.”

“You’re decent with figures,” Marcus said. “But that’s all. Numbers don’t print books, Finch. They don’t set type, they don’t run a press, and they certainly don’t keep a shop profitable when the Crown’s censors come sniffing.” He leaned in, lowering his voice. “Word is the Crown is sniffing around you already. Something about a drowned clerk and a stolen ledger.”

“I didn’t steal anything.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

Thomas’s hands curled into fists at his sides. He could feel the order slip in his inner pocket, the paper wearing thin from his constant touching. He imagined pulling it out, showing Marcus his own handwriting, watching the smugness drain from his face. But that would reveal everything. The cipher, the leak, Cecil’s deadline. Marcus would burn the evidence and smile while he did it.

“Alright,” Thomas said, stepping back. “Enjoy the shop while it lasts.”

“I intend to.”

Thomas turned and walked away. He made it ten paces before he stopped, feigning a stumble, and glanced back. Marcus had already retreated inside. Through the window, Thomas watched him sit at the writing desk and pull a fresh sheet of paper toward him. He dipped a quill in ink, scratched a few lines, then paused—and in that pause, Thomas saw him reach for a small knife and sharpen the quill tip with three short, precise strokes.

Three strokes. Thomas had seen that habit before.

In his father’s burned notes.

In the order slip for the honey-gum ink.

In the tavern note that read *The debt is due.*

Thomas’s mouth went dry. He forced himself to keep walking, his heart pounding so loud he was certain someone would hear it. Marcus Rye had written the tavern note. Marcus Rye had ordered the ink. Marcus Rye had printed the coded letters that led Robert to his death.

But Marcus was just an apprentice, a journeyman at best. He didn’t have the coin to buy a shop or the connections to reach French agents. Someone was paying him. Someone had told him to take over the shop and keep it quiet, to print letters that no one was meant to read and burn evidence that no one was meant to find.

Thomas turned down a narrow alley and pressed his back against the cold stone. He pulled the order slip from his coat and stared at it. The handwriting was Marcus’s—he was sure now, as sure as he knew the shape of a Press’s inking plate. But beneath the writing was something he hadn’t noticed before. A small mark in the corner, almost invisible. A symbol.

An eagle.

The same eagle that had appeared on Robert’s ring. The same eagle etched into the hidden paper in the ledger’s spine.

Marcus didn’t work alone. He worked for the eagle. And if the eagle was not Robert—if the dead clerk had been a pawn, not the traitor—then Cecil’s household still held a viper in its breast. And Thomas had just handed Marcus a perfect description of his desperation.

He had to get back inside that shop. Not to reclaim his apprenticeship—that was a fool’s dream. But to find the letters Marcus was printing, the cache that would prove who the eagle truly was. Dawn was no longer possible. The shop was guarded by its new master.

But night would come. And Thomas knew every shadow in that building, every loose board, every hidden shelf his father had built for reasons Thomas had never fully understood.

Now he understood.