Read Chapter 12: The Baker's Loaf

The cathedral’s burning skeleton loomed behind Tom as he staggered through the smoke-choked streets of Southwark. His stomach made a noise like a collapsing roof. Hunger was a sharper blade than any red-cloaked soldier’s sword, and it had been cutting at him since Woolwich.

He passed a row of shops whose fronts had caved inward, timbers splayed like broken fingers. Most were blackened shells, but the third one—a bakery by the faded sign of a wheat sheaf—still stood half-upright, its oven chimney intact and a thin wisp of smoke rising from the ruins behind it. Not fire smoke. That was different: black and angry. This was grey, lazy, content.

Tom pushed aside a dangling shutter and ducked inside.

The heat hit him first, but not the brutal furnace heat of the flames. This was a homely warmth, the kind that clung to a kitchen in early morning. The floor was scattered with flour that had turned to paste under falling water, and a cascade of roof tiles had taken out most of the far wall. But the great brick oven at the back stood solid, its iron door slightly ajar.

A boy crouched beside it, no older than twelve, with flour dusted across his cheeks like powder on a lady’s face. He was pulling a blackened loaf from the oven with a wooden peel, moving with the practiced ease of someone who had done it a hundred times before. When he saw Tom, he didn’t scream or run. He just lowered the peel and watched.

“You’re not a soldier,” the boy said.

“I’m not,” Tom agreed.

“Red cloaks come by twice since the fire started. They look under the counter and in the flour bins. Don’t know what they’re looking for.” The boy set the loaf on the broken counter. It steamed gently, a small miracle in the ruin. “They don’t look up. That’s how I been staying alive. Up in the rafters.”

Tom glanced up. The rafters were black with soot but sturdy-looking. A thin blanket was twisted around one beam like a nest.

“Clever,” Tom said.

The boy shrugged. “Hungry?”

Tom’s mouth flooded with spit so suddenly he almost choked. “I have no coin.”

“Neither do I.” The boy cut the loaf with a small knife, and the crust cracked open to release a steam that smelled like a memory. “But the fire took my mother and my master both. What’s mine is yours, if you’re not a soldier.”

“I’m not,” Tom said again. “My name’s Tom. Tom the Flea, to my friends.”

The boy’s face split into a gap-toothed grin. “The Flea? Like you hop about?”

“Like I’m hard to catch.”

The boy laughed and pushed a hunk of bread into Tom’s hand. It was still warm, and Tom had to stop himself from shoving the whole thing into his mouth at once. He tore a piece off, chewed slowly, and felt his body remember what it was to be alive.

“What’s your name?” Tom asked.

“Miles. Baker’s boy. Well, was. Now I’m just the boy who bakes in a ruined city.” Miles broke off a piece for himself and sat on an overturned flour sack. “Where’s the box?”

Tom froze with bread halfway to his mouth. Miles pointed at the coil of burlap slung over Tom’s shoulder, inside which the iron box sat, silent and cold as a stone.

“Saw you walking down the street. You hold your arm like the thing weighs more than a dead horse.”

Tom relaxed, but only by a fraction. He’d need to be more careful. The box was heavy, yes, but a normal thief wouldn’t know he had a box at all. That was the sort of observation that got a man noticed.

“It’s just goods,” Tom said. “Property that fell my way.”

Miles shrugged, unconcerned. “Don’t matter to me. You want some butter? There’s a crock in the back that the fire hasn’t found yet.”

“I’d marry you,” Tom said, and meant it.

Miles hopped up and vanished through a narrow doorway behind the oven. Tom let his shoulders drop and took another bite of bread. For a moment—a fragile, idiotic moment—he let himself think that everything might be all right. He could hole up here. Sleep in the rafters with Miles. Eat bread. Let the world burn without him.

The box chose that moment to press against his hip. Not warm. He could feel the cold through the burlap, but it was a dense cold. Watchful.

The key was what he noticed first.

It was inside the bread. He had taken a second bite, and his teeth struck something hard and metallic with a *clink* that sent a spike of panic through his chest. He fished it out of the soft dough with two fingers, wiping it on his tunic.

Small. Iron. Simple. No ornament, no craft, just a straight shaft with three teeth and a circular bow at the top, worn dull from years of use.

“Miles!” Tom’s voice came out sharper than he intended.

The boy reappeared in the doorway, a clay crock in his hands. He saw the key in Tom’s palm and his face did something complicated—relief, fear, then a wary settling.

“You found it.”

“Found what?” Tom’s grip tightened on the key. “What is this?”

Miles set the crock down and didn’t meet Tom’s eyes. “I was going to tell you. But I thought—I thought maybe I’d wait until you had enough bread in you to not throttle me.”

Tom’s jaw worked. “Talk.”

“You’re running from the red cloaks,” Miles said. “That much is clear. You don’t look like the fleeing kind—too calm for that—but you walk like a man who’s choosing his route. And the only people the red cloaks are hunting this hard are runners.”

“And?”

“And three days ago, before the fire spread here, a woman came to the shop. Fine lady. Not Southwark. Velvet dress, but it was damp at the hem, and she had mud on her boots. She didn’t want bread. She wanted me to keep something safe.” Miles swallowed. “She said the key would find the lock, and the lock would open when the flame chose. She told me to put it in the bread I’d give to the next man who was running from the cloaks.”

Tom stared at him. “A woman. What did she look like?”

“Pale. Sharp eyes. Dark hair with grey at the temples. She walked with a limp.” Miles gestured vaguely at his own lower back. “And she had a mark on her thumb, like someone burned her with a hot coin.”

The phoenix mark. Mother Redcap had warned him the box could only be opened by the right person at the right time. A person like that would know the key—know where it was hidden.

But why lead him through this maze? Why not just give him the key herself?

“What else did she say?” Tom pressed.

“That’s it. She paid me two shillings and left. I found the key in the dough when I kneaded it that night.”

Tom turned the key over in his palm. It was unremarkable in every way, the sort of key that unlocked a hundred thousand cellar doors across London—which made it perfect, in a terrible way, for one very particular lock.

The box clicked.

It was a subtle sound, like a tongue against the roof of a mouth. Tom felt it through the burlap before he heard it, a tiny shift in the weight of the thing. He looked down.

Where the cold had been, there was now a faint warmth. Barely there. A suggestion of heat.

“What was that?” Miles whispered, eyes fixed on the bundle.

“The box.” Tom drew it out of the burlap and held it in both hands. It looked the same as ever: dark iron, heavy, its phoenix emblem raised against the lid. But the surface was no longer cool to the touch. A gentle warmth radiated from it, like the side of a sleeping body.

He raised the key to the lock, and the warmth intensified.

“Don’t.” Miles’s hand closed around Tom’s wrist. The boy’s face was pale beneath the flour. “Don’t open it here. Please. My master used to say some doors only need to be opened once because they’re not doors at all—they’re cages. When you open a cage, something comes out.”

Tom met the boy’s eyes. The smart thing would be to ignore him. The key was practically humming now, begging to meet its lock.

But Tom was a thief, and thieves know better than anyone that certain things are best left alone until you know their price.

He lowered the box to the floor and slipped the key into the leather pouch at his belt. The warmth faded immediately, like a candle being pinched out.

“I need a place to rest,” Tom said. “A few hours. Can you keep an eye on the street?”

Miles nodded slowly, his eyes still fixed on the pouch at Tom’s belt.

Tom lay back against the wall and closed his eyes. His hand drifted to the key, tracing its worn teeth through the leather.

A woman with a limp and a phoenix mark on her thumb. A key hidden in bread. A box that warmed when it was near.

Someone was leading him by the nose. He just couldn’t tell yet whether it was toward salvation or a trap.

And the girl at Mother Redcap’s shop had known something too. He remembered her terrified face, the way she’d pressed her hand to her own locked box hidden beneath the counter. There were webs within webs here, and Tom was stuck in the middle of them.

He was still thinking when the box clicked again, separate from any touch.

Tom looked at it.

For the first time since he’d pulled it from the burning mansion, the box was warm—not from anger or fear, but with anticipation.

Something was coming.