Page 36 of Rears & Vices

“What happened? You couldn’t find a bent print shop? In Philadelphia, the city of liberty? Last I was there, one could not turn the corner without getting a face full of paste and broadsheet.”

“Oh, no. The printer was an honest one, or I thought him so.” Vitaliy slung his hands in pockets. “But while I knew hardly anybody was successful getting a press to the Americas, I did not realise the Spanish were willing to do violence to anyone to prevent it.” He frowned, and despite their being in plain air and on the street and hatless, stopped and rucked up his shirt high, and twisted enough for Everard to see a pink-black, ridged scar on his lower back, quite near where one would aim for the liver.

“Déu meu,” Everard cursed.

“Yes. And it was almost my mother in my place—she knew the printer.” He let the shirt drop, not bothering to re-tuck. “A dangerous thing, ink on paper.”

“Absolutely,” Everard agreed. “All this and you don’t care to find out who betrayed you?”

“No. It had nothing to do with Varfolomey.”

“Hmm.” Everard wasn’t convinced.

“It was the first time I’ve used personal connections for pirating. It will be the last.”

They walked on.

Everard asked, “But where did the Navy come in, arresting you?”

“They came in on the Delaware.”

“Funny.” Everard smiled despite himself.

Vitaliy shrugged. “A ship pulled me out; they were Navy.”

“And someone just happened to recognise you?”

“It does happen, time to time,” Vitaliy said. “You see? No conspiracy. No plot.”

But what if someone had somehow connected the two anyway? Clearly, Vitaliy had taken pains to keep his identities separate; but what if?

“It surely looks that way. Or was meant to look that way. But who recognised you? What ship pulled you up?”

Vitaliy grunted. “That none of it matters.”

“Hmm.” Everard couldn’t tell which: if Vitaliy honestly didn’t care or if he was merely keeping things close to the chest. He let it drop for now. “Who in the Gulf wants presses?”

“Everyone,” Vitaliy said frankly. “But especially México. New Granada. Haïti. Those previously controlled by the Inquisition, mostly. They seek uncontrolled presses to publish something beyond scripture.”

“What kind of press were you for? The new Stanhope? Columbia? A standard Gutenberg? And London-manufactured or American?”

Vitaliy cocked his head. “It was a press. It was expensive. It came in many crates. More than that…ehh?” He made an unknowing, dismissive noise, very Slavic. “You were in printing?”

“I was. Haven’t been, for many years.” Everard paused. “The past three in particular.”

“Ah,” Vitaliy said, thoughtful. “Left-handed.”

A heated flush of memory: Everard’s left hand round both their pricks, slick and hot against the snow-damp, Canadian spring air. Groans and gasps and bitten lips.

“Er… yes,” Everard said wryly. “I get on all right with the other now. Though there was some accommodation involved.”

The look that Vitaliy shot him said he hadn’t missed his meaning—or the memory. “I’m sure. What did you produce? Books? Pamphlets? Handbills?”

Everard hesitated. If there had been any one thing, besides fucking other men, and before rescuing a criminal, that would’ve got him court-martialed and cashiered, it was his political plates and writings. His alter ego as an anti-monarchy, anti-capitalist writer and satirist wasn’t something he’d admitted to anyone except D’Arcy. It did contrast rather strongly with twelve years’ officer’s service to the Crown, after all.

But if he said yes, they were pledged matelots. If Vitaliy was fucked, then so was he; he imagined the reverse was true as well. And a pirate wasn’t likely to be threatened by a handful of borderline legal scratchings, was he?

“Some books. Children’s, a frontispiece or two; I’m no William Blake. I did the simplest sort of block print. Newsprint, broadsheet, cartoon.”