Read Chapter 4: The First Demand

The voice behind him was flat, unhurried. “Tom the Flea. I’d know that crouch anywhere.”

Tom froze with one hand on the church’s broken doorframe. The streets ahead were a river of smoke and fleeing shapes, but the voice was too close. Too calm. He turned slowly.

A bull of a man stood in the rubble-choked lane, blocking the narrow gap between a collapsed apothecary and a half-burned cooper’s shop. He wore a leather jerkin fitted over shoulders like barrel staves, and his face was one scarred slab of meat, eyes buried deep under a shelf of brow. He held no weapon. He didn’t need one.

“Merchant Tavel says you’ve got something of his,” the man said.

Tom’s fingers tightened on the iron box under his arm. It was warm—the fire’s heat had soaked through the metal. “I’ve got a lot of things. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“The box. The one with the bird on it.” The man took a step forward. Rubble crunched under his boots. “Tavel’s a patient man, but he’s been waiting three days for that box to come out of the fire. He’s willing to pay you for your trouble. Five pounds, no questions, and you walk away with your legs intact.”

Tom almost laughed. Five pounds was more than he’d see in a year of honest thieving. But the men in the cesspit had been offering the same sum, and they’d planned to cut his throat over it. If the box was worth five pounds from a merchant, it was worth fifty from someone richer—or worth his life from someone who didn’t want it priced at all.

“Tavel can keep his five pounds,” Tom said. “And his patience. Tell him I found the box in a dead man’s hands, and I intend to find out whose hands it was meant for.”

The enforcer’s expression didn’t change. “That’s the wrong answer.”

He lunged.

Tom was ready for the move, but not the speed of it. The man crossed the gap between them in two strides, and a hand like a halter-catch closed on Tom’s collar. The world spun. He hit the ground shoulder-first, gravel biting through his thin shirt, and the iron box clattered from his grip.

He rolled before the boot could come down. It slammed into the cobbles where his ribs had been, cracking a stone loose. Tom scrambled backward on his palms, eyes darting for the box. It lay four feet away, half-buried in ash, glinting dully in the firelight.

The enforcer didn’t look at it. He looked at Tom.

“You’re quick,” the man said. “I heard that about you. Quick hands, quick feet. But quick doesn’t matter when there’s nowhere to go.”

Tom’s fingers found the knife at his belt—a short, blunt blade he’d lifted off a drunk watchman two nights past. He drew it, held it low.

The enforcer smiled. It was a horrible thing, teeth yellowed like old bone. “That’s a knife for cutting bread. I’ve been stabbed by better, and I’m still here.”

He came again. Tom feinted left, darted right, and the enforcer’s hand caught his wrist instead of his throat. The grip was iron. Tom twisted, felt the bones of his forearm grind, and the knife dropped from his nerveless fingers.

The enforcer pulled him close. The man’s breath was sour with ale and smoke. “Last chance, Flea. The box, or I break your arms and take it anyway.”

Tom looked past the man’s shoulder. The cooper’s shop behind him was a skeleton of black timbers, its roof long gone. But the supporting beam at the corner still burned, a deep red glow crawling up its length like a slow serpent. The fire had eaten most of it through.

“You’d break my arms,” Tom said. “But you’d have to let go to do it.”

The enforcer’s brow furrowed. It was the opening Tom needed.

He slammed his forehead forward. It was a blind, desperate strike, more pain for him than for the other man, but it made the enforcer’s grip loosen for half a heartbeat. Tom twisted free, dove for the box, and rolled to his feet.

He didn’t run. He ran *toward* the burning shop.

“Fool,” the enforcer growled, starting after him.

Tom grabbed the end of the cooper’s beam—the part not yet consumed by flame—and pulled. Wood groaned. Ash rained down. The beam was half its original thickness, charred to a black husk at the joint where it met the wall.

The enforcer was three strides away when Tom threw his whole weight against the beam.

It snapped with a crack like a musket shot. The end of it fell, trailing sparks, and the entire corner of the shop collapsed in a cascade of burning timber and white-hot cinders. The enforcer threw his arms up, but the beam caught him across the chest and drove him to the ground. He roared—a sound of fury more than pain—as a pile of burning debris piled on top of him.

Tom didn’t wait to see if he got up. He clutched the box to his chest and ran.

The flames were spreading faster now. The wind had shifted, pushing the fire eastward, and the street ahead was a tunnel of heat and smoke. Tom ducked through an alley barely wider than his shoulders, the walls of the buildings on either side spitting sparks at him. He emerged onto a wider lane—and stopped.

A wall of fire blocked his path.

It stretched across the entire street, a curtain of orange that reached from the cobbles to the sky. The heat hit him like a fist. He staggered back, shielding his face with the box.

Behind him, he heard a crash and a furious shout. The enforcer had gotten free.

Tom turned, ran back the way he’d come. But the alley he’d slipped through was already catching, flames licking down from the rooftops. He passed the church where he’d hidden, its bell tower now a torch, and kept going east along a narrow lane that threaded between two burning warehouses.

The fire was all around him now. There was no going back. There was no going forward.

He came out in a small square, its center occupied by a stone well. A few stragglers huddled around it—two women, a boy, an old man with a wheelbarrow full of linens. None of them looked at him. The air was thick with falling ash, the sky a dull orange like the inside of a baker’s oven.

Tom sank to his knees beside the well. His hands were shaking. He’d lost his knife, his only weapon. He had the box, but he had no idea how to open it, and every exit he’d tried was now a furnace.

He looked down at the iron box. The phoenix engraving caught the firelight, its spread wings gleaming as if alive.

He’d known the box was valuable. But he hadn’t known it was worth sending a man like that—a man built for breaking bones, not negotiating—to retrieve it. And he hadn’t known that Merchant Tavel would offer five pounds for it on one street corner while a hunting party planned to cut his throat on another.

The boy by the well pointed at the sky. “Look,” he said. “The sparks are flying east. The fire’s chasing us.”

Tom looked up. The boy was right. The wind had shifted fully now, driving the fire toward the river—the same direction Tom had been heading, the same direction the men in the cesspit had planned to cut him off.

He couldn’t go east. He couldn’t go west. North was a maze of collapsing warehouses and burning timber. And south—

South was the heart of the fire.

Tom stood, gripping the box. The iron was hot against his fingers, but he didn’t let go.

If the box was worth five pounds and a broken-arm commission, it was worth dying for. And if it was worth dying for, it was worth finding out why.

He turned south, into the flames.