Read Chapter 29: The Barmaid's Warning

The Scorched Pheasant squatted at the crossroads like a toad after rain, its thatched roof steaming in the damp dawn. Tom had watched it for an hour from the barn loft, letting the ache in his legs settle into something dull and familiar. The box sat beside him, cold and heavy, a second heartbeat against the hay.

He needed food. He needed information. He needed to see if the gatekeeper’s tongue had already been loosened by silver or by pain.

Tom pulled his cap low, shrugged into a farmer's smock he'd lifted from a clothesline a mile back, and crossed the mud-churned yard. The common room was half-empty at this hour—a few drovers nursing ale, a toothless man asleep in the corner, and a girl in a stained apron wiping the same spot on the counter with mechanical precision.

He ordered bread and small beer, keeping his voice rough and his eyes down. The bread was stale. The beer was weak. Both were the most luxurious things he'd eaten in two days.

The barmaid brought his plate and lingered a moment too long. "Traveling far?"

"East," Tom said, mouth full.

"East's a big place." She glanced toward the door, then leaned in, dropping her voice to a murmur that scraped like a blade on stone. "Word's gone ahead of you, flea. There's a priest in London—black robes, silver cross—offering a king's ransom for a young thief with an iron box."

Tom's jaw stopped moving. "Don't know nothing about that."

"Don't play me for a fool." She straightened, but her eyes stayed hard. "I've got three brothers who light fires for a living. I know the look of a man who's been running hard and has farther to go. That box of yours—" she nodded toward the sack at his feet, "—it's got a weight to it that don't come from bread."

He felt the room shift. The drovers hadn't moved. The toothless man still slept. But the air had changed, gone tight as a drumskin.

"Who told you about the box?" he asked quietly.

"Priest's men came through two hours ago. Tall bastard in a red cloak, asking questions at every inn between here and the river. Paid well. Talked softly. The kind of soft that makes men nervous." She wiped the counter again, not meeting his eye. "They're three hours ahead of you if you're fast, but they'll double back. That red-cloaked one, he's not the sort to trust a single pass."

Tom's hand drifted toward the knife at his belt. "Why are you telling me this?"

The barmaid looked at him then, and for a moment the mask slipped—something tired and angry underneath. "Because the priest's men burned a farmhouse outside Deptford last week. Family inside. They said it was an accident, cookfire overturning." She shook her head. "I knew that farmer. He didn't own a pot big enough to boil a chicken, let alone start a fire that took the roof off. You're running from those men. That makes you the closest thing to an ally I've got."

She slid a wrapped bundle across the counter. "Food for the road. There's a tanner's shed a half-mile east, past the old chapel. You can hole up there till dark. The priest's men ride the main roads, not the game trails."

Tom took the bundle, weighing it against the box at his feet. "What's your name?"

"Mary." She smiled, thin and sharp. "And if you're caught, I never told you nothing."

He nodded once and left, the box's weight pulling at his shoulder. The road east stretched empty and brown under a pewter sky. He didn't take it. Instead he cut across a fallow field, skirting the chapel, and found the tanner's shed exactly where Mary had said—a sagging structure of blackened beams that stank of lime and old blood.

Inside, he bolted the door and sank down in the shadows, the box cradled in his lap.

The confession was in there. His mother's note. A name—Percy—that could topple lords and maybe a throne. But it might as well have been written in a language he couldn't speak, locked away in iron and blood and some puzzle he hadn't solved.

He pulled the box onto his knees and ran his fingers over its surface. The keyhole gaped, dark and empty. He'd managed to wedge it open a finger's width in the cathedral—enough to see the paper, to touch the lock of hair—but it had snapped shut again before he could pull anything out. The key was still warm from his pocket, still humming with that strange, low vibration it had taken on in the crypt when his blood had touched the iron.

Tom drew the knife across his palm. The cut was shallow, practiced. He let the blood drip onto the key, watching it hiss and steam like water on a griddle. The box grew warm. A faint glow seeped from the seam, the color of embers. He pressed the key into the lock and twisted.

Something inside clicked. Shifted. The lid rose a half-inch before stopping with a sound like grinding teeth.

Tom cursed and threw his weight against it. Nothing. The lid might as well have been nailed to the frame.

He sat back, breathing hard, blood still dripping from his hand. The lock of hair. Gray, tied with black ribbon. He'd thought it belonged to some old woman—his grandmother, maybe, or some servant. But what if it belonged to the priest? What if the box needed not just any royal blood, but the blood of the one it was tied to?

The thought settled into his chest like a cold stone.

He bound his hand with a strip torn from his shirt and tucked the box back into the sack. Outside, the light had begun to fail, the sky going the color of a bruise. He found a stream behind the shed and scrubbed the road grime from his face, cut his hair short with his knife, and used soot from the shed's old fire pit to darken his eyebrows and the line of his jaw. When he looked into the water, a different man stared back—harder, older, less like a boy who'd once stolen pies from window ledges.

The priest's men hunted a thief with an iron box. They'd described him as young, nimble, running scared. Tom the Flea had been all those things.

That man had died in a barn outside Blackfen.

He headed back toward the road, taking the long way around the village. He'd find another inn, another road. He'd keep moving until he found a way to open the box completely, or a way to use what was already in it. The confession existed. His mother's name was on it. That was a weapon, even if it was still sheathed in iron.

Then he heard it—hoofbeats, fast and hard, coming up the road behind him.

Tom dove into the ditch, pressing himself flat against the cold earth. Three riders thundered past, cloaks streaming. The last one turned his head as he passed.

The red cloak.

Their eyes met for half a heartbeat. Then the rider was gone, disappearing around a bend, but Tom knew—the pause, the almost-imperceptible tug of the reins—that the man had seen him.

He lay in the ditch, heart hammering, and waited for the sound of hooves to return. It didn't.

They were three hours ahead of him, the barmaid had said. But the red-cloaked man had just passed him, heading back toward London at a gallop.

Heading back.

Not hunting him. Returning.

Tom's mind raced. Why would they abandon the chase? Unless they'd found what they were looking for. Unless they'd decided they didn't need to follow the thief—

Because they already had the bait.

His sister. They'd had her since the fire. And if Percy's men had decided the box wasn't worth chasing, it meant they believed they could force him to come to them instead.

Tom stood slowly, brushing mud from his clothes. The box dug into his shoulder. London burned behind him, and the only person he had left in the world was somewhere inside that fire, being held for leverage.

He started walking west, back toward the smoke-stained horizon, and the weight of the iron box suddenly felt heavier than the whole burning city.