Read Chapter 34: The King's Decree

The wind had shifted. Tom felt it first on the back of his neck—a cold, wet breath rolling off the Thames, cutting through the smoke like a knife through tallow. Behind them, the city roared and crackled, a beast feeding on its own bones. But ahead, where the river bent toward the ruins of the old wharfs, the air was thin and gray.

Alice stopped at the waterline, her boots squelching in the mud. She turned the parchment over in her hands for the tenth time, her lips moving silently as she read. Tom watched her face, watching the firelight from across the water paint her cheeks in shifting oranges and reds.

"Well?" he said.

She looked up. Her eyes were wet, but she was not crying. Not yet. She handed him the parchment.

"You'd better read it yourself."

Tom took it. The paper was heavy, thick enough to have survived a century in a locked box. The ink was faded in places, but the script was clear and bold—the hand of a king's clerk, not a whisperer in shadows. He read.

*By the grace of God, Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, to all who shall see these presents, greeting.*

*The bearer of this instrument, having rendered signal service to the Crown by the apprehension of the individual known as the Sower of Discord—he who hath kindled flame within the walls of London and scattered the King's peace to the winds—shall be granted a full and free pardon for all crimes, treasons, and felonies committed before the date of this writ. Moreover, the bearer shall be entitled to a reward of two hundred pounds sterling and the favor of the Crown, to be claimed upon the presentation of said Sower to any officer of the King's justice.*

*Witnessed under the Royal Seal, this fifteenth day of August, in the eighteenth year of Our Reign.*

Tom read it twice. Then a third time. The words did not change.

"Pardon," he said. His voice came out flat, like a hammer on cold iron. "It's not a pardon for me. It's a pardon for whoever catches—" He stopped. The name on the page burned: *the Sower of Discord.*

Alice nodded slowly. "The fire. The monk. He's not just a madman torching his own city. He's the Sower—the man the King has been hunting since Thursday." She pressed her palm against a blistered wall. "And Percy, the red-cloak—they're using him. The monk starts the fires, the King's men chase him, and in the chaos Percy moves his soldiers and his money and his hate across London without anyone asking questions."

Tom stared at the river. The water was black and silver, churning with debris—a broken chair, a drowned dog, half a lute bobbing like a corpse. He thought of his father, crushed under a collapsing beam in a fire that should have been put out. He thought of the sulfurous phial in the box, the Greek Fire that would not die no matter what you poured on it.

"This is it," he said quietly. "This is how I clear my name."

Alice's head snapped toward him. "Tom—"

"No, listen." He grabbed her arm, his grip urgent but not rough. "I don't use the fire. I don't touch the Greek Fire. But I deliver the monk—the Sower—to the King's man. I present the writ. The pardon names the bearer, unbound, unconditional. It doesn't say I have to be a noble. It doesn't ask my bloodline." His mouth twisted. "And Percy watches the city burn looking for a thief with an iron box. He never thinks the thief will walk into the heart of the King's court and ask for his reward."

Alice pulled her arm free. "You'd be walking into the fire's heart to do it. Percy has ears in every stone of this city. The first time you show your face in front of a magistrate or a captain of the guard, he'll know. And he'll have you cut down before you can say a word of pardon."

"Then I don't show my face." Tom looked down at the box. "I show the paper."

They stood in silence. The river hushed against the stones. Somewhere upstream, a bell rang—not the frantic tocsin of alarm, but a deep, slow, mournful tone. A proclamation bell. The King's voice carried over ruined streets.

Alice frowned. "Do you hear that?"

Tom squinted through the smoke. In the distance, lights moved along the north bank—torches, many of them, moving in disciplined lines. Soldiers. He saw them gathering at the base of a stone arch that had somehow survived, its span rising like a rib from a dead animal. A figure climbed onto the arch, holding a parchment wider than his own chest. Even at this distance, Tom recognized the shape of a herald's tabard.

"The King's decree," he breathed.

The herald's voice carried across the water, thin and tinny but unmistakable:

*By order of His Majesty Charles the Second, all who bear arms in defense of the realm shall henceforth answer only to the Crown's high marshal. The city of London and its environs are placed under military governance until the fires are extinguished and the Sower of Discord is taken. Any man harboring the Sower, or possessed of stolen property belonging to the Crown, shall be hanged without trial.*

Tom's stomach dropped.

"Possessed of stolen property belonging to the Crown," Alice repeated. "That's the box."

"That's the box."

The herald went on reading—penalties, curfews, new muster points for the watch—but Tom had stopped listening. His mind was spinning through the streets of his own memory: every safe house, every friendly face, every shadowed alcove where he had ever slept. The monk had wanted this. The monk had lit fires precisely to push the King into this decree. Martial law meant roads blocked, houses searched, strangers stopped. It meant the city would close like a fist, and Tom the Flea was already inside the hand.

He knelt by the river. The mud sucked at his shins. He set the box down on a flat stone and worked the clasp with shaking fingers. The phial sat inside the nest of papers—a small green glass bottle, sealed with black wax, containing a liquid that moved like oil and smelled of sulfur.

"What are you doing?" Alice said.

"Percy's men will search us. The moment they find this box, we're dead on the spot, no trial, no pardon, nothing." Tom lifted the phial, careful not to shake it. "This is the weapon. Without it, the box is just paper. With it hidden, they can't prove what the box was for."

He waded into the water. It was cold, shockingly so, and his feet went numb before he took three steps. He looked back at Alice. She did not speak, but her eyes were bright with something between fear and respect.

Tom uncorked the phial. The smell hit him like a slap—rotten eggs, burning iron, his father's screams in a smoke-filled room. He drew his breath, held the phial over the deep channel where the river ran fastest, where silt and shadow would swallow it whole.

He didn't want to let it go. It was the only evidence of Percy's plot—the only thing that could tie the red-cloak to the fires, the to the scheme of ashes and ruin. But evidence meant nothing if he was dead.

He let it fall.

The phial struck the surface with a dull plop and was gone.

Tom stood there for a long moment, chest-deep in the Thames, watching the swirl of water where the weapon had disappeared. He could still smell the sulfur.

He waded back to shore. Alice had closed the box, but she hadn't locked it. She held it out to him.

"They'll still hunt the box," she said.

"They'll hunt the box," he agreed. "But now they'll hunt an empty one." He took it, heavy as a stone around his neck. "And when they find it, they'll find me ready to give them the Sower."

Alice's brow furrowed. She was sharp—sharper than she'd been when she was a girl chasing him down alleys. She knew an unfinished thought when she heard one.

"Ready how?" she said.

Tom looked past her, toward the city. The flames were still growing. The soldiers were already moving.

"I need a name," he said. "A name I can trade to the King—not the monk's. Not the Sower's." He turned the parchment over in his hands. "The name of the man who made the Sower. The man who wants to drown this whole city in fire and call it rebirth. That's the name I need."

He looked at Alice.

"And I think you know it."