Scribbles for a novel in the works.
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Oliver made his way through the tunnels slowly, clambering up steep staircases that seemed like cliffs when he was little. Dim yellow lights shone from recesses in the walls. They were clogged up with grey dust and the tiny dots of coalmoths, which still lived in the tunnels decades after the last trains had been exiled from Rhyme. Oliver wondered vaguely what they ate. The tunnels branched off in other directions, but only one path was lit - the path back to the city. After a while of slow climbing, the air began to feel fresher, and a few turns later Oliver reached a short steel ladder at the end of a stub of a passageway. Climbing out, he came up in a tiny, long-ago abandoned basement, its brick walls stacked high with crates. As Oliver clambered over one of them to get to the door, which was set half-way up the wall, he knocked a smaller crate to the ground. It was labelled 'ROPES' in stamped letters. A half dozen objects tumbled out of it - widgets, Alexandria called them, the eventual result of leaving things in storage for too long. Oliver bent down and put them back in the crate. They seemed outdated without it being obvious what they were; one of them had some sort of horn and another could have been a cheese grater if it had, itself, been grated. Oliver stacked the crate out of harm's way and clambered outside.

He emerged in a deserted street. The houses here were old and shabby, and many were empty. It was Oliver's aunt who had discovered this entrance into the tunnels undernearth Rhyme, years before he was born, years before the Lucubratory existed. It had never failed them. At the end of the street, Oliver spotted a familiar shape, looking for all the world like a crumpled up piece of yellowed newspaper the size of a short person. Upon Oliver's approach, the crumple noticed him and formed, indeed, into a man, covered neck-down in a ghastly yellowish cloak. He coughed at Oliver cheerfully.  
"Hello, Ariatous," said Oliver, feeling awkwardly tall. Ariatous was almost half his size, though how tall he would be if he stopped hunching, nobody knew.  
"Hullo," said Ariatous. "Got anything for me?"  
"No, sorry," said Oliver. "I didn't know you wanted anything."  
"'Course I want something," hacked Ariatous. "I'm down to my last copies of _A Bang and a Whimper_ and _Delayed in Augury_."  
Oliver smiled delightedly. "That's marvelous! People are buying, then?"  
"Buying?" asked Ariatous. "They're buying, yes. They're buying trash."  
"I can't help that," replied Oliver. "We need what money we can get. The presses need fixing, the ink needs replacing - it's all things we can't get cheap."  
"Oliver the businessman," said Ariatous, looking at him sharply. "Well, well."  
"Stop it," said Oliver. "You know it's not my fault. If I could print better things, I would."  
"If your mother-" began Ariatous, but Oliver was expecting this. He had had this conversation many times before.  
"I know, Ariatous," he said sharply. "But she's not. So don't start." Ariatous looked hurt and sullen, and Oliver regretted snapping at him.  
"I'm sorry, friend," he said. "Look, I'll get you books tomorrow. No, wait, we're printing tomorrow. The day after. I'll ask Alexandria."  
"I asked Alexandria," said Ariatous, with another dry cough.  
"She's been busy," said Oliver. "I'll get it done. I promise."  
"Your mother didn't need to promise," said Ariatous. Oliver didn't reply. He walked on down the street, glancing once behind him at the now tiny shape of Ariatous Heap, looking once again like a forgotten and crumpled sheet of newspaper.  

* * *

Madame Dolour, Oliver Dolour, Rosita (?) Staedler-Parker, a Printing Demon...