The fever took Thomas Foster on a Tuesday.

  Nathaniel remembered this clearly because Tuesdays were delivery days, when his father would bundle up the newly bound books and take them to the nobles' quarter. Nathaniel, eleven years old and small for his age, had been helping his father prepare the packages since dawn. His slender fingers were perfect for tying the delicate twine bows that secured the brown paper wrappings.

  "Careful with Lord Harrington's treatise," his father had murmured that morning, his voice already scratchy. "He pays triple for the gilt edging."

  But by midday, Thomas Foster could no longer stand upright. By evening, he could no longer recognize his son. And by the time the midnight bells tolled from the cathedral towers, the small apartment above Foster's Bookbindery held one less person than it had that morning.

  Nathaniel sat beside the bed, his father's hand still warm in his own. He didn't cry. There wasn't time for that yet.

  "Nate?" His mother's voice came from the doorway. Eleanor Foster leaned heavily against the frame, her nightdress hanging loose on her once-full frame. The consumption had been eating away at her for months now. "Is he...?"

  Nathaniel nodded, not trusting his voice.

  Eleanor closed her eyes briefly, then straightened as much as her weakened body would allow. "We need to send word to his customers. And to the creditors."

  The creditors. Nathaniel felt a chill that had nothing to do with the autumn air seeping through the poorly fitted window. His father had been borrowing money for months, trying to keep the business afloat while caring for a sick wife. Lord Keller's men had visited just st week, their polite words barely disguising their threats.

  "How much do we owe?" Nathaniel asked, finally releasing his father's cooling hand.

  Eleanor Foster crossed the room slowly, each step deliberate. She reached for the leather-bound ledger that Thomas kept beneath his side of the bed. Even in death, his arm had been flung across it protectively.

  "Too much," she said after studying the pages in the dim candlelight. She closed the book with a soft thump that sounded like finality. "And the shop won't cover it."

  Nathaniel watched his mother's face. Despite her illness, her eyes remained sharp—calcuting, assessing. It was a look he recognized from his earliest memories: Eleanor Foster pnning their survival.

  "We'll sell everything," Nathaniel offered. "The press, the leather, the tools—"

  "It won't be enough," Eleanor interrupted gently. "And even if it were, what would we live on afterward?" She coughed, a rattling sound that seemed to shake her entire frame.

  When the coughing subsided, Eleanor wiped her mouth with a handkerchief. Nathaniel pretended not to see the flecks of blood that stained the white cloth.

  "Get some sleep, Nate," she said softly. "Tomorrow will be difficult enough."

  But sleep wouldn't come. Instead, Nathaniel y awake on his thin mattress in the workshop corner, listening to his mother's bored breathing from the bedroom and wondering how the world could change so completely in a single day.