Living in Vaïma · Broadsheets

The Broadsheets

The papers of the Empire — sheets of record, remark, and reasonable doubt, from Kivarro to Culvë's Crossing to the canals of Fortuna.

About these papers: The broadsheets are real documents of the Vaïma archive — written as newspapers, printed (in two cases) as newspapers. Excerpts below are verbatim, with sources named. The Unfortunate survives as two hand-set printed broadsides; they are shown here as images, exactly as printed, and the summaries beneath them are readings of those images.

The Unfortunate · Fortuna

Fortuna's Paper of Watermen, Wives, and the Drowned. “We print what the water brings us.” Printed at the sign of the Drowned Bell, the Undertow. Price: one bit.

The Unfortunate, Fortunan broadside, afternoon edition, 15 Latesummer 7094 — lead headline: The Moon Was Stolen in Broad Daylight
The afternoon edition, 15 Latesummer 7094. Lead: THE MOON WAS STOLEN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT — beneath the ninth arch sits a woman who is not wet, and is not breathing, and asks only for stories. The same page carries the assault on Minister Mercutio Botticello — Minister of Truth & Justice — attacked at his city estate during the festivities, “losing half a leg or more in consequence,” and a simultaneous double homicide: the gatekeepers Ezra & Toss. Information is requested to Detective Obrex at the Watchtower, for a substantial reward.
The Unfortunate No. 16, Wednesday 16 Latesummer 7094 — lead headline: She Came Back
No. 16, Wednesday 16 Latesummer 7094. Lead: SHE CAME BACK — the Listener of the ninth arch, named in the sidebar as Mirella Vass, 41, net-mender of the Saltmarsh Stair, lost on 11 Latesummer. The Botticello case continues: Franco Tarantino, son of the Transportation Minister and fiancé of the Minister's daughter, has been taken into Watch custody, protesting — “Find Blake! He knows I didn't do this! Just ask B.B.!” — while the paper asks, in headlines, WHO IS ZTACA?, WATCH RAIDS TRIPLE, and WHERE IS LAYRA JAMES??

The Plinth

Kivarro · Threadneedle Row · Two coppers (four at the Orb) · Fivesdays · No. 1,109, 21st of Sunspeak 7094

At the head of every number since the first, and never yet retracted: EVERYTHING STANDS ON SOMETHING.

No. 1,109 leads with the Museum dragon: a skeleton sold to Kivarro's Museum of Antiquities as a genuine elder dragon, assayed by the Office of the Bite at 11.4 per centum genuine — “chiefly in the skull, four dorsal vertebrae, and the left forelimb — which is precisely what a knowledgeable buyer inspects, and precisely what a knowledgeable seller therefore makes sure is real.” The warranty, however, promised only that the specimen was correct in some particulars, and the Registrar's finding has become the most-quoted sentence in Kivarran civil practice:

“A warranty which promises only partial correctness cannot be breached by partial correctness, and that the Committee, having accepted a clause which concedes in advance that most of the thing may be wrong, is not now heard to complain that most of the thing was wrong.”

The Museum has kept the skeleton on display, and rewritten the placard — which the Plinth reproduces entire:

“The Museum was defrauded in the purchase of this specimen. The matter is before the Bench. The Museum has chosen to say so on the label rather than in a pamphlet, because a museum that will not correct its own placards has no business correcting anybody.”

From The Plinth, No. 1,109. The Plinth corrects its errors in the same size of type in which it made them. Its colophon: “It has no proprietor and eleven subscribers who think they are the proprietor.”

The Kivarro Ledger-Courier

Kivarro's Paper of Civic Record · Investigative Desk

The Ledger-Courier investigated the same dragon from the other side: the contract “arranged, negotiated, and personally guaranteed by Alderman Cosgrove Thistlewood,” the savings distributed over six years to the Alderman's companions in jewelry, property, and yachts — and the accident at the fraud's heart: the Children of the Dragon's reanimation rite required a genuine-remains threshold “considerably higher than twelve percent,” so the fake skeleton could never have been raised at all. The fraud, entirely by accident, saved the city.

The Museum's curator, asked for comment, confirmed the assay “with the flat, exhausted precision of a woman who has clearly already had this exact conversation several times this nine-day,” and added, unprompted:

“The placard has been amended. It now reads 'Elder Dragon Skeleton (Partially Correct in Some Particulars).' Legal insisted. I did not fight them on it. I no longer have the will.”

The Children's own closing public statement, issued after High Adherent Nell's arrest, reads in full: “We remain committed to the Great Work. We would ask, in future, that the Museum's procurement office consider a more rigorous verification standard, as a matter of basic professional courtesy to serious practitioners.” The Ledger-Courier has no further comment, and suspects, respectfully, that none is required.

From The Ledger-Courier, Investigative Desk, and its Literary Desk's “The List.”

The Crossing Courant

Culvë's Crossing · Printed Sixesdays on the Mid-Span presses · Distributed by hand, barge, and the usual arrangements

The Courant covers the Crossing's long war with the Controlled Magical Manifestations Act — twelve volumes and counting, the Act itself having become sentient during a floor debate in 7042 and amended itself ever since — and reports, as a standing item, the health of Kivarro's mayor:

“KIVARRO — Mayor Wren Kellani survived another week in office, which the Courant reports not as an achievement but, at current actuarial rates, as news. Five parties are, at last confirmed count, still independently planning the Mayor's murder. The Mayor, we are told, remains 'cautiously delighted' by the attention.”

From The Crossing Courant. Its colophon: “We regret that we cannot verify everything we print, and regret rather less than we probably should.” Complaints regarding the arc-lamp humming should be lodged with the Ministry, and good luck to you.

The Culvëen Toll

Culvë's Crossing · “The Ravia Takes Its Toll. So Do We.” · Every Ninesday · Set and printed aboard the Persistent, moored at the Third Pylon

The Toll declares its news at the arch, at full weight, and stands behind it — tolls, tonnage, and the Toll Master's ledger being public revenue instruments, and therefore printable. It has been published for one thousand one hundred and sixteen weeks, “less the four weeks in which we were cut loose.” Its standing features include the bridge news, the hex-survey scandal (the Toll Master's Tower stands in a different hex from the arch it collects on), and Ask the Threshold, the advice column of a Bankside sweeper of fifty-one years' standing.

“We do not correct our advertisers. We correct ourselves, in the Ninesday following, in the same size type in which the error appeared, and we have never once used a smaller size, and we would like the Ærran Ægis to notice.”

From The Toll. Also the source of this site's Society column — and of the sand-pearls count.

The Culvëen Catch

Culvë's Crossing · “Vora kora — what the river brings, the bridge holds” · Vol. XIX, No. 212 · Printed mid-span, Third Archway · Beholden to neither bank

The Catch is registered with the Imperial Office of Revenue as a bill of lading with attached commentary, and is thereby exempt from the press stamp: everything below the Manifest is, in the strict legal sense, a footnote to the Manifest. The Kivarro philologists write regularly to say its motto is not grammatical Old Vaïman; the Catch thanks them, and observes that the water is eight fathoms and they are welcome to swim home and think about it.

From The Culvëen Catch, 23rd of Harvestmoon 7094. The Catch does not distinguish between news and advertisement. Neither does the world. We simply charge for both.

Errata

A Corrigendum Sheet · Issued to Subscribers · Not for Sale · No. 566, Moonfall 7094 · Set and corrected by T. Quire, at the back of the printing-house on Cordwainer's Stair, Mid-Span
“ERRATA is not a newspaper. ERRATA asserts nothing. A corrigendum sheet is a trade document by which a printer amends work already issued. It states no fact of its own. It says only: there, in that other document, on that page, at that line, a thing is not so. It is a subtraction. It cannot be seditious, because sedition requires a proposition, and I do not make propositions.”

Quire corrects the Catch, the Crown, the Toll, the Roar, and the Aurora, and the notices and advertisements printed in all five, and the almanacs, the playbills, the Guild schedules, and the Ministry's returns. He does not correct what is unwise, ill-judged, cruel, or vulgar — those are matters of opinion, and he has no opinions. Subscribers: ten. (Last number gave eleven. It is ten.)

From Errata No. 566, among the papers of the archive. This site's own corrections box aspires to the standard.

Also published in the Empire: the Ærra Ægis (society pages; still describes Ivy as “the family's spirited youngest”), The Spandrel (classifieds of the Underspan), the Kivarro Chronicle, The Crown, The Roar, and The Aurora — whose rate card, one copper the quarter-column, it prints in every issue regardless, having had four advertisers in eleven years.