Read Chapter 17: The Shepherd of Flames

The river stair ended in black water and a stench that made Miles gag. Tom pressed a hand to the boy’s mouth, listening. The lapping of the Thames against stone, the distant roar of the burning city, and above it all, the whistle of arrows cutting the air where they’d stood a moment before.

“They know the crypt,” Miles whispered, his voice thin and shaking.

Tom didn’t answer. He was already moving, boots slipping on algae-slick steps, dragging Miles along the waterline. The current here was fast, fed by the fire’s insatiable thirst. A small dock jutted into the river, half-collapsed, its mooring posts charred and leaning. He could see the dark mouths of warehouses lining the wharf, most already gutted, their roofs open to a sky that bled orange and ash.

“Where are we going?” Miles asked, stumbling.

“Away,” Tom said. “Anywhere but here.”

They scrambled up a mudbank and into the skeleton of a burned wool warehouse. Beams still smoldered. Embers hissed in pools of rainwater that had gathered in the building’s stone troughs. Tom pulled Miles behind a stack of collapsed scaffolding, pressed his back to the wall, and forced his breath to slow.

The box was cold against his chest. Colder than the river. The key hung around his neck, a dead weight that had done its work but still demanded its price.

“They’re not following,” Miles said, peeking through a gap in the boards. “I don’t see them.”

“They don’t need to follow,” Tom muttered. “Percy’s got hounds and men on every street. We need water, we need a boat, we need— ”

A sound cut him off. Not footsteps. Not the fire’s distant groan.

It was laughter. Soft, easy, echoing through the warehouse’s hollow shell.

Tom’s hand went to the knife at his belt.

A figure stepped through the far door, silhouetted against the burning street beyond. He wore a long black cloak, and his face was shadowed beneath a wide-brimmed hat. Beside him, two more shapes moved out of the darkness—men in red cloaks, their swords drawn, their eyes fixed on Tom.

Percy.

The spymaster walked forward slowly, unhurried, his boots crunching on broken glass. He stopped twenty feet away, hands clasped behind his back, and smiled with all the warmth of a winter grave.

“Tom the Flea,” Percy said. “I did tell you, didn’t I? There is no hole deep enough, no shadow dark enough, no river cold enough to hide from me.”

Tom stood. He kept his body between Percy and Miles, his knife low, his eyes scanning for an exit. There was only one door behind them, and it was blocked by two more red cloaks who had appeared silently in the frame.

“You want the box,” Tom said, pulling it from his shirt. “Here it is. Let the boy go, and it’s yours.”

Percy’s smile widened. “How noble. The thief, suddenly a protector of orphans. I would weep, but I’m rather short on tears tonight.” He snapped his fingers. The red cloaks took a step forward.

And then another voice cut through the air like a bell.

“Stop.”

The word was quiet, but it carried with a weight that made even Percy freeze. A third figure emerged from the shadows behind Percy—a man in a priest’s cassock, gray-haired, gaunt-faced, with eyes that burned like embers in a hearth. He walked past Percy as if the spymaster were furniture, his gaze fixed on Tom, on the box in Tom’s hands.

“You,” the priest said, his voice a low, rolling thunder. “Give me what is mine.”

Percy’s composure flickered. “Father Aldous. You were not invited.”

“I am never invited,” the priest said, not turning. “I am simply there. And tonight, Lord Percy, you have overstepped your bounds. That box does not belong to you. It never has. It belongs to the Church. To the faith.”

Tom’s grip tightened on the box. The cold bit into his palms, numbing his fingers.

“You’re the one who made it,” Tom said.

The priest turned. His eyes met Tom’s, and there was something ancient in them, something that had seen too many fires, too many secrets. He raised his hand, and with a flick of his wrist, his cloak fell open.

Around his neck, on a chain of black iron, hung a medallion. A phoenix, wings spread, forged in silver and enamel, its tail curling into the shape of a key.

Tom’s breath caught. The woman by the river. The burn on her skin. The pattern on the box’s base. It all snapped together like the final tumblers of a lock.

“Tom the Flea,” the priest said, pronouncing each word with care. “Son of Edmund Hawke. Firefighter, craftsman, and the man who betrayed me eighteen years ago by hiding what was mine.”

Tom’s heart stopped.

“You knew my father.”

“I made him,” the priest said. “I made him everything he was. I gave him purpose, I gave him tools, I gave him a role in a great and holy work. And he stole from me. He hid what he could not understand, and then he died before I could reclaim it.” The priest stepped closer, his hand outstretched. “But his son found it. Fate has a sense of humor, doesn’t she?”

Percy moved to interpose himself. “Father Aldous, this is a matter for the Crown.”

“The Crown,” Aldous repeated, spitting the word. “The Crown would burn this city to ash and call it God’s will. But this box does not hold names, my lord. It holds a key. A key that opens something far older, far more dangerous than your petty lists of conspirators.”

Tom’s mind raced. Percy thought the box held Catholic names. Aldous said it held a key. A key to what?

The cold in his hands deepened. The box seemed to pulse with it, humming against his skin like the drone of distant thunder.

“Give it to me,” Aldous said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Give it to me for the good of the faith. For the good of the world. Let me put right what your father’s cowardice broke.”

Tom looked at Miles. The boy’s face was pale, his eyes wide, fixed on the priest with something between fear and awe.

“Don’t,” Miles whispered. “Don’t give it to him.”

But Tom was already moving. He stepped forward, holding the box out, and Aldous’s eyes glowed with triumph.

Then Tom threw it.

High. Too high.

The box arced over Aldous’s head, spinning through the ash-filled air, and the priest lunged, leaping after it with a howl of rage and greed.

And Tom grabbed Miles by the collar and ran.