Her eyes practically glow. But—" Do you have to manually set each page anyway?"

"You mean, do you have to manually arrange the stamps? Yeah, that's the idea. Maybe an artifact could make that part faster, or some other machine, but I haven't thought as much about that. You'd have to be careful about how wide each one is and stuff, or a word might go on two lines."

"My word, that idea's ingenious... Probably a bit tricky, though, and how do I shape the metal into letters? I'd need to settle on a size and a font..."

She glances at Kaede and mentally asks how to say a couple of words and then, "...Have you heard of, um, plaster mold casting? I read about it once. Apparently pouring hot metal into a plaster mold makes pretty good quality pieces, maybe good enough to make recognizable letters, but you have to use copper and not iron."

"Yeah of course. Hmm..." Squint. "How did you hear about this?"

"Oh, I hung out with a bunch of inventor types about... Six months, maybe a year back. This whole thing was sort of a half-formed baby idea back then and I thought about it some more and I think worked out some of the kinks."

"D'you have, you know, basic designs? Concept drawings, stuff?"

"Yep!" That's what she spent yesterday evening drawing out. And from her sheaf of papers come two well-drawn (but sparse on exact detail) sketches. "Two basic designs got thrown around - hinge press, and roller press. The roller press is - heavy and more complicated, there was another idea that could have helped with that but that's not relevant for now. So, hinge press. Paper goes here, the frame with stamps swings right into this bin of ink, then left onto the paper, then up to the center... Or you could go the other way and have the type and ink sitting flat and swing the paper down onto it. That'd be, like, blocks with holes instead of raised letters."

She takes the papers, greedily, and looks at them like they're a piece of delicious cake. Then stops—" You're not pulling my leg? You literally came up with this all with a bunch of people and never made it?"

Another nervous glance. "Well, things got a little complicated and it's not all my story to tell? But, I did work with and for a lot of smart people who came up with this, and other things, and... Yeah, you're not about to get competition that's been working on this for a decade if you start on it."

Kaede, is she going to steal the idea?

I have no idea—do you not want her to?

"I don't care about competition, but if this doesn't work and you're wasting my time..."

I want to profit on this, so we have money to spend on other ideas.

"It works. I've seen it in action. The books it will make are... Not as good as scribed ones in some ways. But they will be cheap and fast to make."

Well I don't know her but you could offer to work with her on it.

"Where? How? Why haven't I heard of it?"

She sighs slightly. "A prototype. A messy, inefficient prototype. You haven't heard of it because it was very far away and because of that big mess I mentioned. I get it, unproven ideas, it's a big risk. I'll put time and effort into it myself, I believe in this concept. Money, too, depending on how many artifacts need recharging around here. So maybe you don't believe in the concept - would you still take a commission to build pieces of the printing press and let me take all the risk?"

She looks at Kaede. "And her?"

"I'm just a friend."

"Uh huh." She squints at Gren a bit more.

She shrugs. "Just a friend." Pause. "...If you're not interested, I'll take my sketches back and we'll be on our way."

"—what no I'll take it this is gold when can we start?"

She grins. "Well, let's decide how the money will work. I'm not going to be stupidly greedy about it but I do want to see money out of this once it's running, I have other big ideas that will be much easier with cash."

"Uh huh. Hold your horses with the big ideas, novice, we have a system here. You gotta be my 'prentice."

"...What are the duties and pay and restrictions - I mean like, keeping at it for such and such a time - for apprenticing?"

She looks at Gren for a few seconds, then at Kaede (who shrugs), then turns around and says, "Tap, you tell her stuff, I don't have the time." She strides off to the back of the shop, muttering to herself.

The nervous apprentice tries to smile but it ends up looking like a grimace. "Um. H-hi."

"...Hi. Uh. I just don't want... Um, where I'm from apprenticeship is also a lot of authority, time commitment. I'm not sure that's how I want to do this thing."

"It—changes? Depends on what you want. If you want to work on a, a project with her, she kinda wants you to help her with stuff while she works with it. Um. Yeah."

"Oh, that's not- I was thinking 'apprentice' meant 'I control your life for the next five years'."

"Well, there's some of that, but not always, it changes from person to person."