Looking upon my father, I realised that the journey from Oldtown was but the prologue to my infinite bitterness. My father would not cease his talk of politics in every tavern along the way, rail against King Daeron's weakness before the Blackfyres, and carp at how his heir looked an outsider, with his dark eyes and brown hair.
I would tug at his sleeve, begging him to hold his tongue, but the pride of a man who once wore a maester’s chain is hard to break. Watching his obsession taught me a golden rule: kings are perilous, and those who speak of them end up dead. By the time the Red Keep loomed upon the horizon, I was already weary of looking after a man who anxiously sought his own ruin.
On a certain day, we chanced to see Prince Baelor with his brother Maekar; my father made sure we all well knew that Baelor looked like just another commoner, handsome though he might be. It was there I beheld royalty for the first time.
Then fate, which possesses a rather twisted sense of humour, set me face-to-face with Aelor. With his white hair and his mismatched eyes, he looked more akin to how a prince ought to look.
We met in the market. He insisted that his blood was royal—the selfsame politics I so despised—yet he spoke it with an innocence so pure that I could not help but laugh. My father was already losing his wits out of hatred for the crown, and Aelor was losing his for love of a ghost lineage.
It proved easy for me to get close to Aelor; my father had never paid much heed to me since we arrived in King's Landing, so we were free to draw near to one another. My father wished for me to become a septa, but I could not. I did not believe in gods, for I never felt that any god protected me.
Not much time passed from the moment we arrived until they executed my father. And when things come to pass that one knows will happen, it is best to walk away.
The land I love was not here, and the person I loved was far away.
Today, when I woke, I felt as though I had died inside.
I should have liked to meet my dad again, and to get to know my mum better, for I am certain we should have made a spectacular duo; though I know we shall meet again, whether it be too late or too early, it will happen.
I do not wish to keep losing people in my life—my father, my mother, and now you, Aelor.
I remember everything, and I know not how to forget them. I know not what I am going to do, but I shall do it. And when I have you back, brother, we shall throw stones at the windows where we shall never get to live, and we shall smash every single window.
Thinking of you, father, I shall use what you taught me: the ink. I shall write a letter.
To Prince Baelor Targaryen, Lord of Dragonstone and Hand of the King.
I know full well that a crumpled piece of parchment from the alleyways does not deserve the Hand of the King’s time. However, I trust that the man they call 'Breakspear' possesses a more just ear than the crows nesting in his towers.
The lad your guards are holding is no dragon, neither black nor red; with any luck, he is a sewer lizard.
There is no treason in his veins, only cheap wine and the fantasies of an orphan who has nothing more than an unfortunate hair colour.
My father was executed for using the wrong words, and I know how quickly the Red Keep cuts off the tongues it does not understand. I beg you to intercede. I do not ask for free mercy. If you release my companion, I shall owe you a life. A maester's daughter knows how to listen where nobles are deaf, and look where knights cover their eyes. Put me to the test.
— The girl from the tavern.
Now, I had only to find a way to make it reach him.
It did not take me long to find a solution for that; a kitchen boy used to frequent the tavern, so I paid him to place the letter upon the desk of the Hand of the King. All that was left was to trust in luck. Because if it were about the gods, Aelor would already be dead.
The tavern was now entirely empty, so I wiped down the tables, trying not to let the rage consume me. There was but a single customer left, and he had ordered nothing; he was merely sitting there. Did he not notice we were about to close? What a boor.
Then another arrived.
A man muffled in an expensive cloak sat in the darkest corner. I approached him to clean his table, intending to treat him ill enough to make him leave.
"Sir, do you desire something? For it is strange for you to just sit there with your cloak on, you know? We are about to close."
When he pulled down his hood, my heart stopped: it was Baelor himself.
His face was attractive for a man grown; he had dark, deep eyes and short brown hair. His nose was slightly crooked, whilst even with the cloak on, I could see that he had broad shoulders and impeccable posture.
A knot turned in my stomach, and a sudden heat rushed to my cheeks. I hated my own weakness at flushing before a man of the royalty.
"You are..." He interrupted me.
"Your logic is flawless, girl," he said, showing my letter. "My uncle Brynden sees traitors in every shadow, but I prefer facts. Tell me the truth about that lad, and I shall see what I can do."
The smell of the scorched mutton hung in the kitchen long after the range had been raked out for the night. It was a greasy, heavy scent that clung to the damp whitewash of the walls, a reminder of things left to rot because the mind was too busy calculating the cost of its own cage.
She didn't go down to dinner. She stayed in the small box room at the end of the corridor, the one where the old linens were kept in cedar chests that smelled of turpentine and dead summers. Through the floorboards, she could hear the muffled rhythm of the house adjusting itself to the presence of the London girl. There was the silver laughter of her daughter, thin and sharp as a pinprick, followed by the low, rumbling drone of Thomas’s voice—not the hard, dry snap he used when he was talking to Arthur or the clerks, but that smooth, honeyed baritone he kept for the people he was trying to buy before they realized they were for sale.
Every sound from below felt like a needle freezing under her skin. They were down there eating off the china her own grandmother had wrapped in flannel to save from the riots, while she sat in the dark with her fingernails digging into the smooth silver face of the old Queen’s crown Alfie had given her.
The hours didn't pass; they simply accumulated, heavy and gray as the soot on the window-panes.
By midnight, the house had settled into that deep, artificial silence that always felt like a breath being held under a pillow. She slipped out of the linen room, her bare feet cold against the oilcloth of the passage, and walked down toward the back stairs. She didn't want to see the parlor. She didn't want to see the silver toy carriage left on the rug like a small, shiny trap. She just wanted the air. Even the air of Small Heath, which tasted of old coal and sulfur, was better than the clean, lavender-scented suffocation of the Shelby bedrooms.
She didn't use the window this time. The door to the scullery was unbolted—one of the kitchen boys had likely left it clear for his midnight run to the beer houses—and she pushed it open, her shift sticking to her thighs in the damp river mist that was rolling up from the basin.
The courtyard was dark, but the lights from the stables were still burning, a low orange glow through the cracks in the timber. She walked toward the canal lane, her shawl pulled tight over her throat, her heart hitting her ribs with a rhythmic, frantic thud that felt less like fear and more like an old engine trying to clear its pistons.
She didn't expect him to be there. A man like Alfie Solomons didn't stay in one place unless there was a profit to be counted or a throat to be cut, but as she reached the corner where the timber wagons were backed against the wall, she saw the silhouette.
He was sitting on the same upturned crate, but he wasn't whittling now. He had a stone bottle of rum between his thighs, and his head was tilted back against the rough pine boards of the fence, his eyes closed as if he were listening to the water gurgling through the lock gates.
"You're like a bleedin' ghost, you are," Alfie rumbled, not opening his eyes as her feet crunched on the gravel. "A little white shift in the dark, walking down by the mud where the bargemen drop their dross. It’s an improper sight, mate. Proper improper for a lady of the realm."
"The house is full of her," she said, her voice dropping into the gray fog until it was nothing but a breath. "She’s sitting in my chair, Alfie. She’s giving my girl silver toys from London."
Alfie opened one eye, the dark pupil catching the faint glint of the stable lamp. He looked her up and down—from her tangled hair down to the hem of her shifts, which were already black with the grease of the towpath. He let out a low, gravelly whistle that sounded like steam escaping an old pipe.
"Aye. The Tilbury business," he said, taking a short pull from the stone bottle. "The father’s got six iron-hulled lighters and a dock that doesn't clear the customs books because the inspector's his second cousin, see? It’s a very neat arrangement, love. Very clean. Tommy’s been looking at those lighters since the frost came in November. He wants 'em. And if he has to let some blond girl from the suburbs sit in your parlor and play with the babbas to get 'em, well... that’s just the cost of the freight, ain't it?"
"I want to kill her," she whispered. The word didn't feel big; it felt small and hard, like a pebbles she’d found in her shoe. "I want to take the iron tongs from the grate and hit her until she stops making that high-pitched noise with her mouth."
Alfie stared at her for a long second, his head giving that sudden, unpredictable twitch to the left. He didn't laugh this time. He stood up, his heavy oilskin coat rustling like dry parchment, his massive bulk blocking out the light from the stable lane until she was completely in his shadow.
"Come here," he said. It wasn't an order, and it wasn't an invitation; it was just a statement, like a doctor telling a patient to hold their breath before the iron went in.
He took her by the wrist—not where the scratches were, but higher up, where the skin was still soft and white under the linen sleeve. His fingers were massive, rough as sandstone from the salt-stores, but his grip didn't have that dry, ownership snap that Thomas’s had. He pulled her into the narrow gap between the timber stacks, where the air was dry and smelled intensely of fresh resin, cedar, and the sour rum on his breath.
"You're freezing, mate," Alfie muttered, his large hand moving up her arm until his palm rested against the curve of her shoulder. "You're like a piece of mutton left out on the slab after the market’s closed. Look at ya. Shaking like a bleedin' leaf in the wind."
"I'm not cold," she said, though her teeth were chattering so hard the words came out broken. "I'm just... I'm empty, Alfie. There’s nothing left inside the house for me to look at."
Alfie let out a low, deep grunt that shook his chest against her forehead. "There’s plenty inside ya, love. It’s just all gone sour because you’ve been keeping it under lock and key like it’s Thomas’s gold. You can't keep the blood behind a gate, see? It rots the meat."
He leaned down then, his beard coarse and smelling of tobacco as it brushed against her cheek. His mouth found her ear, his voice a gravelly hiss that seemed to vibrate right through the bones of her skull. "You want to know what the dirt feels like, eh? You been asking me since the night you jumped out of the frame. You want to see the ledger where the numbers don't add up?"
Before she could answer, his mouth was on hers.
It wasn't the kissing of a husband who was checking his boundaries; it was a rough, heavy consumption that tasted of salt, iron, and the raw fire of the rum. He pressed her back against the rough pine boards of the timber stack, his massive weight pinning her until the resinous bark bit into the skin of her bare shoulder blades through the thin linen of her shift. She let out a sharp, small gasp against his lips, and he took the breath right out of her mouth, his tongue thick and demanding as it forced its way past her teeth.
The sheer mass of him was terrifying, but it was a terror that had air in it. He wasn't trying to make her neat. He was tearing the lace off her mind with every stroke of his mouth.
His hands went to the hem of her shift, his big, calloused fingers catching the rough linen and bunching it up around her waist with an impatient, jerking motion that made the fabric rip along the seam. The cold air of the canal lane hit her thighs for a fraction of a second before his palm replaced it—hot, heavy, and rough as salt-cake against the inside of her knee.
"Alfie," she choked out, her hands coming up to catch his beard, her fingers twisting in the thick, graying hair as she tried to find her balance in the dark.
"Shut up, mate," he growled against her throat, his teeth biting down on the soft skin right above her collarbone until she felt a sharp, bright point of pain that made her legs go weak. "Don't go talking about names now. There ain't no names out here in the dark. There’s just the weight of the wood and the water, yeah? Just the bleedin' trade."
He lifted her easily, his arms hooking under her thighs until her back was sliding up the pine boards, the wood shavings catching in her hair. She wrapped her legs around his hips, the rough wool of his trousers abrasive against the bare skin of her thighs, her shift completely bunched up between their bellies like a discarded rag.
The contrast between them was total—she was nothing but thin white linen and cold, unexercised skin; he was a mountain of oilskin, heavy wool, and a heat that felt as if it had been generated by an iron foundry in the middle of winter.
He unbuttoned his trousers with one thick hand, his breath coming in short, heavy snorts like a horse that had been dragged up a steep hill. When he pushed into her, it was a sudden, blunt invasion that made her cry out into the dark, her voice instantly smothered by his broad palm coming up to cover her mouth.
"Easy, love," he hissed, his eyes wide and dark just inches from her own, his thumb pressing into her cheek until her teeth bit the inside of her lip. "The watchman’s only fifty yards down by the coal bins, yeah? We don't want no bowler hats coming to see what’s making the timber rattle."
He began to move, a heavy, rhythmic thrusting that was completely devoid of the elegant, clinical precision Thomas used in the dark. Alfie moved like the river—slow, heavy, and with a terrible, crushing force that carried all the dross of the city with it. Every time he drove against her, her back hit the pine boards, the scent of the fresh cedar rising around them like incense in a cellar.
She closed her eyes, her fingers digging deep into the thick wool of his coat shoulders, her face buried in the crook of his neck where the skin tasted of salt and the greasy grease-works soot. It was painful, it was rough, and it was the first time in five years that she didn't feel like an entry in a ledger. She felt the skin tearing slightly at her thighs; she felt the bruises forming on her hips where his massive pelvic bones slammed into her with every surge.
"That's it," Alfie muttered, his voice breaking into a frantic, rhythmic chant that matched the heavy shift of his hips. "That's the dirt, love. That's the real bleedin' thing, ain't it? No lace curtains here. No silver carriages for the babbas. Just the salt... just the salt and the oil, mate."
The pleasure came upon her not like a wave, but like a fever—a sudden, hot flush that started in the small of her back where the bark was scratching her and rushed up to her throat until she was biting his shoulder through the wool to keep from screaming out into the fog. Her body tightened around him, a frantic, desperate clenching that made him let out a long, gravelly groan, his movements becoming faster, wilder, until he was simply pinning her against the wood with the sheer, dead weight of his completion.
He stayed there for a long time, his forehead resting against hers, his chest heaving like a bellows after the iron had been poured. The mist was gathering on his hat brim, dropping small, cold beads onto her cheeks that mingled with the sweat on her skin.
Slowly, his grip relaxed, and he let her feet slide back down to the wet gravel of the lane.
She stood there with her knees shaking, her shift falling back down around her ankles in torn, damp folds. Her skin was burning, covered in gray smears from his coat and red marks from his hands, but her head felt clear—clearer than it had since the day Thomas Shelby brought her to the house on the hill and told her she was safe from the world.
Alfie adjusted his clothes with two short, business-like movements of his wrists, his face already settling back into that heavy, unpredictable scowl. He picked up his stone bottle from the crate, took a long swallow, and wiped his beard with the back of his hand.
"There," he said, his voice returning to its usual Cockney cadence, as if they’d just settled the price of a load of barley. "Now you know what the bottom of the sack looks like, mate. It ain't pretty, is it? No. But it’s real wood, see? It don't go changing its name when the London lawyers come down with the papers."
"Thank you, Alfie," she whispered, her hands trembling as she tried to smooth down the torn linen of her shift.
Alfie let out a short, cynical bark. "Don't go thanking me, love. I’m a businessman, yeah? I’ve just taken a very large risk on an unlisted asset, and if Thomas finds out about it, he’ll have my balls on a silver plate before the milk wagons come in. You go back to your room. You wash the grease off your legs, and you sign whatever the fuck he wants you to sign until the Sunday comes."
He turned his back on her then, sitting back down on his crate and picking up his pocket knife as if she’d already vanished into the fog. "Go on," he muttered into the dark. "The babbas’ll be waking up for their porridge soon, and you look like you’ve been through a threshing machine, mate. Proper awful."
The return to the house was a long, cold dream.
She washed herself in the scullery with the cold water from the pump, the yellow soap stinging the raw skin between her thighs and the deep purple bruises that were already rising around her hips. She didn't care about the pain; each mark felt like an entry she’d written herself, a piece of capital that Thomas Shelby couldn't touch because he didn't even know the archive existed.
When she reached her bedroom, the light was just beginning to break—a thin, watery yellow that made the lace curtains look like old cobwebs against the glass.
She changed into her proper morning dress—the dark gray wool with the high collar that covered the bite mark on her neck—and went down to the kitchen before the cook had even struck the matches for the boilers.
"Madam," the cook said, starting as she entered. "You're down early. The master said you’d be having your tray upstairs today."
"The master is mistaken," she said, her voice sounding perfectly level, perfectly dead. "We have guests from London. It’s only proper that the mistress of the house is at the table to see to the tea."
When Thomas entered the dining room at eight, she was already sitting at the head of the table. The London girl, whose name she now knew was Lilian, was sitting to his right, her hair perfectly curled, her green velvet coat replaced by a morning gown of pale cream silk that made her look like a lily grown in a cellar.
Tommy stopped at the door, his eyes instantly fixing on her face. He didn't say anything, but his fingers went to his waistcoat pocket, his thumb flicking the gold chain of his watch with that tiny, rhythmic click that usually preceded an interrogation.
"You look well, drawing," he said, his voice quiet as he took his seat at the foot of the table. "The rest seems to have done you good."
"I slept perfectly, Thomas," she said, lifting the heavy silver teapot and pouring a stream of dark, boiling liquid into Lilian’s cup without a single tremor in her hand. "The air in Small Heath is very settling once you get used to the soot."
Lilian smiled, a small, patronizing thing that didn't reach her pale blue eyes. "Your husband has been telling me all about the new warehouses by the basin, Mrs. Shelby. It sounds like the company is going to be very busy after the spring thaw."
"The company is always busy, Miss Vaughan," she replied, keeping her gaze fixed on the girl’s small, white hands—hands that had never held a yellow soap bar or felt the bark of a timber stack. "My husband doesn't believe in idle capital. He likes everything to be working for him, every hour of the day. Even the things he keeps in the dark."
Tommy paused with his fork halfway to his plate. He didn't look at Lilian; he looked straight down the length of the table, past the silver salt cellars and the white linen cloth, right into her eyes. There was something different in his gaze now—not that flat, dead evaluation he’d used yesterday, but a faint, sharp curiosity. He was looking for the crack. He was looking for the reason why the bird wasn't beating its wings against the bars this morning.
"Arthur’s back from the registry," Tommy said, his voice dropping into that low Brummie drone. "The Warwickshire deeds are clear. The company account is fully balanced."
"I'm glad to hear it," she said, taking a small sip of her own tea, ignoring the fierce burning between her thighs as she shifted on the hard oak chair. "A balanced book must be a great comfort to a man with so many... liabilities."
The meal passed in that tense, artificial performance of gentry. Lilian talked about the theater in London; Thomas nodded and made notes in his little black book; and she sat there like a stone monument, her dress covering the geography of her own rebellion, the silver crown Alfie had given her pressing hard against her breastbone beneath the stays.
By noon, the business had moved from the dining room to the study.
The door was shut, but she could hear the voices through the heavy oak panels—Arthur’s loud, whiskey-thick laugh, the dry rattle of old Vaughan’s London accent, and Thomas’s steady, rhythmic dictation of the terms. They were signing the lighters over. The Tilbury dock was entering the Shelby ledger, and Lilian Vaughan was standing by the window in the drawing room, looking out at the rain with the expression of a girl who had already chosen which room she was going to take when the old tenant was removed.
She walked into the drawing room with a tray of fresh glasses.
"Miss Vaughan," she said, setting the tray on the side table. "You must be tired after your journey. The weather in Birmingham is rarely hospitable to people from the south."
Lilian turned, her silk skirts rustling with that grand, expensive sound. "Oh, I don't mind the rain, Mrs. Shelby. My father always says that where there's muck, there's money. And there seems to be a great deal of both here."
"There is," she said, walking over to the window until she was standing just inches from the girl. The scent of Lilian’s lavender water was thick, but beneath it, she could still smell the sour mutton from the kitchen and the dried river mud on her own boots. "But the muck here has a way of sticking to things, Miss Vaughan. You think you’re just buying into a shipping line, but the grease gets under your nails before you even know you’ve touched the wagon."
Lilian’s smile faded, her eyes narrowing as she looked at her high collar. "I assure you, Mrs. Shelby, I am quite capable of taking care of my own hands."
"My mother thought that too," she whispered, her voice dropping into that low, flat cadence she’d used with Alfie by the canal. "She thought if she killed the spiders in the house, I wouldn't be afraid of 'em. But all she did was show me that there were things in the corners that needed killing. You should look at the corners of this house before you sign your father’s name to the ledger, love. Thomas doesn't keep his eyes on the sky because he likes the view. He keeps 'em there because he’s afraid of what’s crawling around his boots."
Before Lilian could answer, the study door opened and Thomas walked out, followed by Arthur and the old man. Tommy had his coat on his arm, his flat cap already in his hand.
"The registry needs one more document from the town hall," Tommy said, looking between the two women with that quick, dead evaluation. "Arthur and I are going down to the square. Miss Vaughan, your father tells me you’d like to see the stables before the evening feed."
"I would love to, Mr. Shelby," Lilian said, her face instantly recovering its bright, artificial sweetness as she stepped away from the window.
Tommy looked at her then—the long, pale stare that usually made her feel as if she were being measured for a shroud. "You stay here, drawing," he said softly. "The kitchen needs the orders for tomorrow’s bacon. Make sure the weight is right this time. We don't want the clerks complaining about the short measures."
"The weight will be exactly what's required, Thomas," she said, dropping her head in that small, obedient nod he liked so much.
The men left, their heavy boots rattling the brass umbrella stand in the hall, and Lilian followed 'em with her little green velvet bag held tight against her side.
The house was empty again.
She didn't go to the kitchen. She went down to the cellar lane, her shawl thrown over her head, her feet moving with that same frantic, rhythmic purpose that had carried her to the timber yard the night before. She didn't have the thin leather shoes on now; she’d taken an old pair of Arthur’s working boots from the back scullery—heavy, iron-shod things that made her walk look clumsy and thick, but kept her feet out of the grease.
She didn't go to the canal turn. She went to the back of the legal betting shops, where the coal wagons were backed up against the railway arches.
Alfie Solomons was there, but he wasn't alone. He had three of his London loaders with him, heavy men with iron bars in their belts and faces that looked like they’d been broken and mended with old solder. They were lifting heavy wooden crates from the back of a Shelby wagon, transferring 'em to a dark, unmarked dray that had the horses already harnessed.
"Move it, you absolute nonces," Alfie was barking, his stick hitting the cobbles with a sharp, cracked sound. "We ain't got all day for you to admire the grain on the timber, yeah? The train from Euston’s already at the junction, and if those cases ain't on the brake van before the inspectors have their tea, I’ll have your bleedin' skin for a rug, mate!"
He stopped when he saw her standing by the archway, her heavy boots covered in gray lime dust, her shawl pulled tight under her chin.
The loaders paused, their eyes darting between the big Jew and the woman in the gray wool dress.
"Get on with it," Alfie spat at them, not looking away from her face. "Go on. Take the dray down to the siding. I’ll be along when I’ve settled the account with the lady from the estate."
The men grunted and dragged the horses away into the dark of the archway, leaving the two of them alone under the dripping brickwork.
"You're like a bad shilling, you are," Alfie rumbled, his voice dropping into that quiet, serious rumble that always made her skin go tight. "Always turning up when the books are being cleared. What do you want, love? I told ya last night, the trade is finished. The account is settled, yeah?"
"He’s taking the lighters today, Alfie," she said, her chest heaving against the stays. "The old man’s down at the town hall with Arthur now. They’re signing the port register."
Alfie stared at her, his head giving that sudden, short twitch. He let out a low, whistling breath that smelled of wet tobacco and salt. "Aye. The port register. That means the Tilbury dock is registered under the Shelby name before the sun goes down."
"And the girl," she said, her voice breaking through the flat stone of her face. "The girl’s staying in the guest room until the spring expansion. He told me she’s a guest, Alfie. But she’s looking at my children like she’s already paid the tax on 'em."
Alfie walked over to her, his heavy oilskin coat brushing against the brick wall, his massive bulk blocking out the rain until she was back in that wide, dangerous shadow where she could breathe. He didn't touch her this time; he just stood close enough for her to feel the heat coming off his chest through the damp wool.
"Listen to me, mate," he hissed, his eyes narrowing until they were two black points of iron. "The girl... the girl is nothing. She’s just a bit of lace he’s putting over the slaughterhouse, like I told ya. But the *lighters*... the lighters are the whole bleedin' game, see? If Thomas owns the lighters in Tilbury, he don't need the London registry anymore. He don't need the customs clerks. He can bring the whiskey straight from the cut down to the Thames without a single man in a bowler hat putting his pencil to the page."
He leaned closer, his voice dropping into a gravelly whisper that was almost lost beneath the rattle of a passing coal train on the high line above 'em.
"So, here’s what we do, love. You want to see the fence come down, eh? You want to see the big man look at his book and find a hole that he can't fill with all the gold in Warwickshire?"
"Yes," she said, her fingers curling tight around the silver crown in her dress bosom. "Tell me what to do, Alfie."
"The port register," Alfie muttered, his grin returning like an old wound opening up in the dark. "The old man’s signing the original copy, yeah? But there’s a duplicate. A little blue slip that stays with the harbor master down at the basin office. If that blue slip... if that blue slip happens to go missing before the clerks take the mail train to London tonight... then the registry don't count, see? The lighters stay in the old man’s name, but the money... the money’s already gone from the Shelby account. Tommy’s paid the freight, but he don't own the boats, mate. He’s left with an unresolved liability that’s three thousand pounds wide, and no name on the deed to show the inspectors."
The sheer, beautiful madness of it hit her like a flush of hot rum. *An unresolved liability.* He’d be looking at his ledger at night, his pale blue eyes staring at the column that didn't add up, his gold watch ticking out the seconds of his own failure while the blond girl sat in her parlor and played with the silver toys that didn't belong to anyone.
"The harbor master’s office," she whispered. "It’s by the third lock. The one with the green door."
"Aye," Alfie nodded, his hand coming up to touch her chin, his thick thumb brushing the dry skin of her lower lip with a sudden, rough tenderness that made her heart skip a beat. "The bloke there... his name is Higgins. He’s an old sailor from the China run, and he likes his gin, see? He likes it very much. If a pretty girl from the big house goes down there with a bottle of the master’s best whiskey and a smile that says she’s looking for her lost dog... he don't look at the blue slips on the spike, mate. He don't look at nothing but the labels on the bottle."
He stepped back then, his hand dropping to his side, his face instantly recovering its frantic, theatrical Cockney scowl as the loaders came back through the archway with the empty dray.
"Go on," he rumbled, turning his back to the rain. "Get the bottle from the cellar before Thomas gets back from the square. And mind your boots, love. The mud down by the third lock... it’s deep enough to swallow a whole family if you ain't looking where you’re stepping, yeah? Proper deep."
She turned and began walking back toward the hill, the heavy iron boots making a sharp, metallic ring against the wet cobblestones with every step. She didn't look back at the timber yard or the arches. She kept her eyes fixed on the gray slate roof of the house on the hill, where the chimneys were smoking and the ledger was waiting for its first missing page.
The grease-works behind the canal had their own distinct voice at three in the afternoon. It wasn't the high, clean whistle of the locomotives up at the junction, nor the sharp, rhythmic ring of the anvils in the small workshops off Garrison Lane. It was a low, fat bubbling—the sound of lard and horse-tallow settling in the iron vats, heavy and thick enough to muffle the boots of the draymen as they moved across the yard.
She carried the bottle of Thomas’s twelve-year-old malt under the heavy folds of her blue woolen shawl, her forearm pressed tight against the glass to keep it from clinking against the steel stays of her corset. Her thighs still burned from the splinters of the timber stack, the raw skin sticking to the coarse calico of her drawers with every long, heavy stride she took in Arthur’s old boots. The iron studs in the soles bit into the black grease of the towpath, leaving deep, flat prints that the river mist swallowed up almost as soon as she cleared the corner.
The duplicate blue slip was small, no larger than a lady’s pocket handkerchief, but it felt heavy against her ribs where she’d tucked it beneath the silver crown. She’d taken it from Higgins’s desk while the old man was still staring into the amber depths of his third tumbler, his grey head lolling back against the whitewashed stone of the lock box while he muttered about the tides in Shanghai. It had been almost too simple. The paper was greasy, smelling faintly of lamp oil and salted cod, its edges stamped with the seal of the Birmingham Navigation Company—the tiny blue mark that stood between Thomas Shelby and six iron-hulled lighters that were currently sitting in the muddy water of the Tilbury basin.
She found Alfie in the vault beneath the third arch, where the coal dust fell through the cracks in the sleepers every time the heavy coal trains rumbled toward the gasworks. He was alone this time, sitting on a low wooden bench with a tallow candle stuck to a broken brick beside him. A large calfskin ledger was open across his knees, and his thick, stained fingers were tracing a line of neat, tiny Hebrew characters that looked like rows of black ants marching through the grease of the parchment.
"The little bird," Alfie rumbled, not lifting his chin from the dirty wool of his waistcoat. His voice was a gravelly rattle that seemed to catch the vibration of the iron rails overhead. "The little bird with the iron feet. I could hear ya coming from the half-mile, mate. You walk like an infantryman with the trench-rot, you do. Proper heavy. No style at all, love."
"I have it," she said, her voice dropping into that flat, stone-cold cadence she’d learned from the walls of the house on the hill.
She reached into the bosom of her dress, her fingers brushing past the cold silver face of the crown until she found the folded blue paper. She laid it across the open page of his ledger, right over the rows of ants, her hand staying on the parchment for a second until she felt the dampness of the vault settling into her skin.
Alfie stopped his finger. He looked at the paper, his head giving that sudden, short twitch to the left—the one that usually preceded a row or a sudden change in the price of flour. He didn't pick it up immediately. He just stared at the blue ink of the stamp, his broad, flat nose wrinkling as he sniffed the grease-stained edge.
"Higgins’s ink," he muttered, a slow, yellow-toothed grin spreading through the graying hair of his beard like mold over an old loaf. "The old bastard always puts too much vitriol in his wells. It eats the paper, see? In five years, that line won't be nothing but a row of little black holes, mate. But right now... right now it’s three thousand pounds of Thomas Shelby’s money sitting in the water with no owner's name on the iron."
"Burn it," she whispered, her hands curling into the wool of her shawl. "Burn it now, Alfie. Let the soot go up into the arch."
Alfie let out a low, soft chuckle that didn't have any mirth in it. It was the sound of a man who had seen forty years of bargains and had never found one that didn't have a dead man's teeth at the bottom of the sack. He reached out, his massive hand covering the blue slip, his thick fingers curling around the paper with a gentle, lingering slowness that looked almost like an embrace.
He didn't put it near the candle. He folded it twice, his thick thumb creasing the line until the paper groaned, and then he slipped it into the small leather watch-pocket of his waistcoat, right next to the heavy silver chain he used for his scales.
She froze, her eyes narrowing as she watched the pocket close. "What are you doing? You said we were going to make the liability unresolved. You said the ledger wouldn't add up."
"Aye," Alfie said, leaning back against the damp brickwork of the arch, his dark eyes wide and blinking in the yellowish glow of the tallow. "I said that, mate. I did. But let me explain something to ya about the nature of the transaction, love, because you’re a girl from the country and you’ve got these very grand, very romantic ideas about how the world works when the lights go out. You think a bloke like me... you think a bloke who’s got five hundred men in London looking to stick a blade in his liver every time he goes for his supper... you think I do things for the sheer, bloody pleasure of seeing Tommy Shelby look a bit miserable on a Tuesday morning?"
He stood up then, the bench groaning under his bulk, his shadow stretching up the curve of the brickwork until he looked like something that had been built to hold up the railway line itself. He stepped into her space, the sour smell of the rum and the damp wool of his oilskin coat washing over her face until her throat went dry.
"This little bit of blue," he said, tapping his waistcoat pocket with two fingers. "This isn't a firebrand, mate. This is *leverage*. Do you know what leverage is, love? It’s when a man’s got his boots on your neck, but you’ve got your fingers around his bleedin' windpipe, yeah? If I burn this paper, Tommy’s out three grand. He’s cross, he has a look at his books, he shoots a couple of horse-dealers from the cut, and then he goes down to London and he buys six more lighters because the Epsom bins are full of gold this month. It don't stop him. It just makes him move his pencil to another column."
He leaned down until his nose was nearly touching her forehead, his breath hot and damp against the cold skin of her cheek. "But if I *keep* it... if I go down to the legal betting shops on Thursday and I say to Thomas, *'Listen to me, mate, I’ve been having a look at the Tilbury registry, and it seems there’s a bit of an error regarding the registration of those iron hulls, yeah? A very serious error that might result in the Port of London Authority seizing the whole bloody lot unless a certain percentage of the London whiskey distribution is transferred over to the Solomons account...'* well, then, love... then we’re talking about real business."
The truth hit her right in the center of her chest, a cold, greasy blow that felt exactly like the water Higgins had been drinking out of his iron mug. He hadn't been helping her. He hadn't been taking the fence down because he cared about the bird or the scratches on her wrists. He was a broker. He’d looked at her misery, evaluated the access it gave her to Thomas’s drawers, and he’d used her like an iron bar to pry open another door in the Shelby empire.
"You used me," she said, her voice staying level only because the stays around her ribs were too tight to let her breath shake. "You sat there on the wood and you took my shift off because you wanted the blue slip."
Alfie’s face didn't change. The scowl stayed exactly where it was, heavy and dark beneath the greasy brim of his hat, but his eyes narrowed until the white was gone entirely, leaving nothing but two dull, flat circles of basalt.
"I took your shift off, mate, because you were shaking like a dog that’s been kicked into the canal, and you wanted to know what the dirt felt like," he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravelly rumble that was more terrifying than his shouts. "And I gave ya the dirt, love. I gave ya the real, bloody thing, wood shavings and all, yeah? And don't go telling me you didn't like the taste of it, because you were biting my shoulder hard enough to leave a mark that my own missus is going to have a look at when I get back to the docks. But business... business is separate, mate. Business is the thing that keeps the salt in the beef and the coal in the grate. You want to ruin Thomas Shelby because he’s an unfaithful bastard who’s put a fence around your life? That’s very nice, love. Very proper for a woman of your class. But I have to live in the world he’s building, and if I don't take a bit of his meat when he’s looking the other way, he’ll have my whole shop down around my ears before the winter’s out."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out another silver coin—not the worn Queen’s crown he’d given her the night before, but a heavy, raw piece of silver from the Levant, its edges irregular and rough as if it had been bitten out of the bar by a blacksmith’s tongs.
"Take that," he said, dropping it onto the open ledger between them. "That’s your commission, mate. For services rendered to the London registry. Go on. Pick it up."
She looked at the silver. It lay there on the white ants of his Hebrew letters, dull and gray under the candle flame, looking exactly like the pieces of mutton that had burned at the bottom of the kitchen pot. If she took it, she was a whore—not the grand kind that Thomas hired for his business transactions by the railway line, but a small, muddy thing that worked the timber yards for sixpences and old silver. If she didn't take it, she had nothing but the bruises on her hips and the certainty that Thomas would find the missing slip before the mail train cleared the city limits.
She didn't touch the coin. She reached out and took the bottle of twelve-year-old malt from under her shawl, setting it down next to the candle with a sharp, heavy thud that made the grease sputter.
"He'll know it was me," she said, looking straight into Alfie’s dark, unblinking eyes. "He knows Higgins is a drunk, but he knows I’m the only one in the house who knew about the blue slips. He’ll look at the desk, and then he’ll look at my arms."
Alfie looked at the bottle of whiskey, his tongue coming out to lick his dry lips before his smirk returned, that wicked, knowing twitch that made him look like a madman who had just found the key to the cellar.
"Then you tell him, love," Alfie whispered, leaning in so close she could see the gray hairs in his eyebrows. "You look him right in those pretty blue eyes of his, and you tell him you went down to the lock to find your lost dog. And if he don't believe ya... well, then you ask him how his own little dog’s doing down at the Tilbury registry, yeah? You show him that you know the name of the wagon, mate. A man like Thomas... he don't shoot a woman who knows where the ledger’s kept. He just puts a heavier lock on the door. And by the time he’s bought the new padlock... I’ll have those lighters registered in London under a name he can't even pronounce, mate. Proper kosher, yeah?"
The walk back to the house on the hill felt shorter this time, as if the city had shrunk around her boots.
The rain had stopped, leaving the air cold and clear, the black slate roofs of Small Heath shining like fish scales under the gray afternoon sky. When she reached the gates, the carriage was already back, the horses steaming in the yard while one of the stable boys rubbed their hocks down with straw.
She didn't use the back scullery. She walked right up the front steps, her iron-shod boots leaving gray lime streaks on the polished flagstones of the hall before the maid could even reach for her shawl.
"Madam," the girl whispered, her eyes wide as she looked at the heavy woolen wrap and the mud on the gray skirt. "The master’s in the study. He’s been asking for the ledger from the grain account."
"Tell him I have it," she said, her voice sounding perfectly hollow, like a well that had gone dry during the summer droughts.
She didn't change her dress. She walked straight down the long corridor toward the oak door, her boots making a loud, rhythmic *clack-clack-clack* against the parquetry that sounded like the mechanism of a loom clearing its threads. She didn't knock. She turned the brass handle and walked in, the heavy scent of Thomas’s tobacco hitting her face like a wet cloth.
He was sitting at the big desk, but he wasn't alone. Lilian Vaughan was standing by the globe in the corner, her cream silk dress looking impossibly clean against the dark mahogany of the book-cases. She was holding a small glass of sherry, her finger tracing the gold line of the Equator on the brass stand with an expression of idle, quiet dominance.
Tommy didn't look up when the door opened. He was dipping his pen into the inkstand, his left hand holding down the margin of the large calfskin book that contained the names of every tenant from Small Heath to the Saltley gates.
"The grain account, drawing," he said, his voice the low, flat drone he used when he was reading the weights from the railway vans. "Arthur says the carter from the mill’s short by three sacks of barley. I want to see the entry from Friday."
"The carter isn't short, Thomas," she said, stopping in the middle of the Persian rug, her boots leaving two dark, greasy circles on the red wool. "The barley was transferred to the London dray. Alfie Solomons took it before the frost came on Tuesday."
Tommy’s pen stopped. He didn't lift his head, but his shoulders went perfectly still under the gray wool of his waistcoat—that absolute, cat-like freeze that always meant he’d found a line in the book that didn't add up.
Lilian turned from the globe, her pale blue eyes drifting over the gray skirt and the mud on the shawl with a small, sharp movement of her chin. "Mr. Shelby, your wife appears to have been spending her afternoon in the timber yard. The smell of the cedar is quite... remarkable."
"Leave us, Lilian," Tommy said. He didn't raise his voice, but the drawl was gone entirely, replaced by that short, cold snap he used when the police inspectors were at the gate.
Lilian paused, her glass hovering near her mouth for a fraction of a second before she set it down on the brass stand with a tiny, sharp *clink*. She looked at the protagonist with a look that was half-amused, half-venomous—the look of a girl who had already seen the ledger and knew who was going to be written off at the end of the quarter. She gathered her silk skirts and walked out, her small, neat shoes making no sound at all as she closed the heavy door behind her.
The silence in the room became total, save for the slow, heavy ticking of the mahogany clock on the mantelpiece.
Tommy stood up. He didn't adjust his cap because he’d taken it off when he entered the office, his dark hair falling over his forehead in damp curls that made him look younger than he was, almost like the boy who had gone into the tunnels at Thiepval before the world turned into scrap iron. He walked around the desk, his movements smooth and economical, until he was standing just two feet away from her, his pale eyes fixing on her high collar where the gray ointment was still visible against the lace.
"You’ve been down to the third lock," he said softly. It wasn't a question. He’d already seen the lime dust on her boots; he knew the color of the mud by the green door because he’d bought the land it sat on three years ago.
"Higgins was lonely, Thomas," she said, looking right back into those blue circles, her chin lifting until the silver crown inside her dress pressed against her ribs like an iron stay. "He’s an old sailor. He likes to talk about the ships. He told me the lighters in Tilbury are very grand. He said they have iron hulls that don't leak even when the river’s full of ice."
Tommy didn't move an inch. His face was perfectly calm, a white stone mask that had been carved by the grey light of the window, but his right hand—the one with the gold ring on the little finger—went to his waistcoat pocket, his thumb flicking the watch chain with that tiny, rhythmic click.
*Click.*
"The duplicate blue slip is gone from the spike, drawing," he murmured. "Arthur went down to fetch the mail train, and the harbor master was asleep on his desk with an empty bottle of my twelve-year-old malt between his knees. The London clerks won't take the transfer without the blue mark. They say the registration’s incomplete."
"Then I guess the ledger’s wrong, Thomas," she said, her chest rising against the wool of her dress until she could feel the sharp edge of the silver crown cutting through her shift. "I guess you’ve paid the old man his three thousand pounds, but the lighters still belong to the London registry. It’s a very neat arrangement, isn't it? Like the ones you make by the railway line when the women are waiting for their allowance."
Tommy stayed still for three long ticks of the clock. Then, slowly, his hand left his watch chain. He reached out, his long, pale fingers coming up to touch her neck—not with the rough, consuming heat Alfie had used by the timber pile, but with that dry, clinical light touch he used when he was examining a horse's hock for the wind-galls.
He didn't choke her. He just slipped his thumb under the edge of her high lace collar, pulling it down just half an inch until the dark purple bruise—the sharp, deep mark of Alfie’s teeth—was fully exposed to the gray light of the room.
He looked at it for a long second, his eyes not widening, his breath not changing its slow, even rhythm through his nose. He knew the shape of those teeth. He’d sat across from 'em in the London hotels and the cellar bars of Small Heath for two years; he knew the size of the jaw that had made that mark just as well as he knew the name on the wagons.
"He's a very loud man, Alfie," Tommy said, his voice dropping into that low, Brummie drone that sounded like the water gurgling through the lock gates after the timber had passed. "He shouts a lot down by the docks because he thinks it makes the loaders move faster. But he don't understand that when you shout in Birmingham, drawing... the echo always comes back to the house on the hill."
"He has the paper, Thomas," she whispered, her teeth clicking together as his thumb pressed gently against the center of the bruise, right over the raw skin where the splinters had bit. "He has the blue slip in his watch-pocket. He’s going to take your London distribution before the spring thaw."
Tommy let go of her collar. He turned his back to her, walking over to the fireplace where the logs had burned down to a pile of gray ash and red coals. He took his silver cigarette case from his hip pocket, struck a match against the iron fender, and watched the small blue flame catch the paper before he lifted it to his mouth.
"No, he won't," Tommy said simply, exhaling a long, thin stream of grey smoke toward the dark cornices. "Alfie’s a businessman, drawing. He knows that if he uses that paper to pinch the London whiskey lines, I’ll have the Sabini boys down on his warehouses before the week's out. He knows I’ve got the names of every one of his draymen in my book under the capital account. He won't use the leverage to take the distribution. He’ll use it to get a penny more on the bushel of barley we send down from the mill next month. He’ll take his little profit, and then he’ll burn the blue paper himself because he don't like an unresolved liability on his books any more than I do."
The coldness of it was like a bucket of canal water thrown right over her face. He wasn't angry. He wasn't going to go down to the arch with his razor-hat and shoot the Jew between the timber stacks. He’d already calculated the cost of her rebellion before she’d even cleared the mud from her boots. To him, her night in the wood and her theft from the dock office wasn't a tragedy—it was just an adjustment in the price of barley. A small, muddy fraction of a penny that would be balanced out by the time the spring accounts were closed.
"And me?" she cried out, her voice finally losing its gélida mask, sounding small and broken against the high ceiling of the study. "What happens to my entry in your book, Thomas? Am I just a fraction of a penny too?"
Tommy took a long drag from his cigarette, his blue eyes shifting through the smoke to look at her mud-stained skirt.
"You’re my missus, drawing," he said softly, his voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm indifference that made the walls of the house look like stone bars. "And the missus stays in the house. Arthur’s going to bring a new padlock down from the iron-works tomorrow morning—a nice, heavy brass one from the foundry by the station. The scullery door’ll be bolted from the inside after six, and the kitchen boys’ll have their beer in the yard from now on."
He walked back to the desk, sitting down and picking up his pen with that smooth, unhurried precision that made her feel as if she were already dead and buried under the floorboards.
"Get yourself cleaned up for dinner," he murmured, his eyes dropping back to the neat rows of names in his calfskin book. "Lilian’s father is coming back from the town hall at seven, and I don't like the look of lime dust on the carpets. It makes the place look like a warehouse, and we’re trying to move into the dry now, drawing. We’re trying to keep the soot off the lace."
The bedroom was dark when she reached it, the maids having forgotten to light the tallow candles because they were down in the hall helping Lilian dress her hair for the naviero's arrival.
She sat on the edge of the mattress, her fingers trembling as she unbuttoned the front of her gray wool dress, letting the fabric fall away from her neck until the cold air of the room hit the bite mark on her collarbone. She reached down into the bosom of her shift and pulled out the old Levant silver coin Alfie had left on the ledger—the one she hadn't touched, but that had somehow found its way into her shawl pocket while she was watching the loaders drag the horses through the arch.
The coin was heavy, its edges rough and sharp enough to scratch the skin of her palm as she squeezed it. It didn't taste like Thomas’s twelve-year-old malt, and it didn't look like the clean, polished shillings he gave her for her weekly allowance. It was dirty, foreign silver that had been through a dozen cellars and salt-stores before it reached the Small Heath arches.
She looked at her forearms—at the tight red lines from the window latch that were now covered in gray grease and river lime. They weren't going to heal clean; the soot of Birmingham had already got into the scabs, leaving long, dark threads under her skin that would stay there until the day they put her in the ground by the railway line.
She didn't cry. The tears had gone down into the mud with the blue paper, swallowed up by the grease-works and the bubbling horse-tallow in the vats.
She stood up and walked over to the mahogany washstand, pouring the cold, greyish water from the pitcher into the basin. She took the yellow soap bar—the hard, coarse thing that smelled of lye and fat—and began to scrub her thighs, her fingers digging into the raw skin until the red blood mingled with the yellow lather, running down her legs in thin, dirty streams that vanished into the brass drain.
She would stay in the house. She would let Arthur put the heavy brass padlock on the scullery door, and she would sit at the head of the table while Lilian Vaughan poured the tea from the silver pot. She would let Thomas write her name under the capital account until every acre of Warwickshire had been transferred to the company holding ledger.
But she wouldn't look at the sky anymore.
She looked down into the brass drain where the soapy water was gurgling away into the dark sewers beneath the hill—the deep, wet tunnels where the rats lived and the dross of the city accumulated until the river rose to sweep it away. She tucked the Levant silver deep under the mattress, right between the horsehair and the ticking where Thomas’s long, pale fingers would never search when he came to check the boundaries of his property at midnight.
The fence was high, yes. The brass locks were heavy, and the books were always balanced before the clerks took the train to London. But the dirt... the dirt didn't have a name on the deed. It was just there, waiting under the cobblestones, waiting for the first long frost to break the stone apart from within until the whole bloody shop came tumbling down into the mud.
And when the stones began to crack, she’d be ready with her iron-shod boots to tread the pieces into the grease.
There was no Tommy anymore; there was only Thomas. One month of being treated like a spy in her own home, of watching her children turn into strangers, and of counting the bruises on her wrists. She tried to escape the cage, but the doors are always open just enough for her to hear the locks click.
The morning light in Birmingham never brought warmth; it just made the dampness in the stone walls look gray and unforgiving.
She woke up with her forearms stinging. The thin, angry red scratches from the window latch had dried into tight lines across her skin. She pulled the sleeves of her silk dressing gown down to her wrists, hiding the evidence of her midnight clumsiness before she’d even cleared the sleep from her eyes.
Downstairs, the house was already functioning like a well-oiled machine. The cooks she’d dismissed the night before were back at their stations, the heavy scent of frying lard and boiling tea rising through the floorboards. Everything was back to its proper place. The neat little family structure she’d tried to shatter was perfectly intact, as if she hadn't been dangling from a windowsill a few hours ago.
When she entered the dining room, Thomas was alone. The kids had already been swept away to school by one of the drivers. He was sitting at the head of the table, the morning paper folded neatly beside his plate. He hadn't touched his breakfast; a single cup of black coffee was steaming near his right hand, right next to his gold pocket watch.
He didn't look up when she sat down. He just reached into his waistcoat, pulled out a cigarette, and struck a match.
"Your arms," Tommy said, his voice quiet, almost lost beneath the crackle of the fireplace. "You’re dragging your sleeves, drawing."
She froze, her hand hovering over the teacup. "I scraped them in the library. Moving some of my mother's old trunks."
Tommy took a long drag, his blue eyes finally shifting over the rim of his cup to look at her. There was no anger in his face, just that flat, dead evaluation he used when analyzing a ledger or a new shipment of whiskey. He knew she was lying. He always knew. But what made her stomach turn was that he didn't seem to care enough to argue.
"Right," he murmured, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. "Arthur’s coming by at noon. We’ve got business with the London registry. Some land properties that need a signature."
"A signature?" she asked, her voice tighter than she intended. "Whose?"
"Yours," Tommy said simply. He tapped the ash from his cigarette. "As my missus, your name is on the deeds for the house out in Warwickshire. I’m transferring it over to the company's holding account. It’s safer there."
The breath caught in her throat. Warwickshire. That was the estate he’d bought after the first big expansion—the one place she thought she might be able to claim if things went completely sour. He wasn't just watching her moves; he was systematically cutting the strings before she could even try to run. He was taking away the safety nets she hadn't even realized she had.
"And if I don't fancy signing it?" she asked, trying to keep her hands from shaking under the table.
Tommy paused. He didn't threaten her. He didn't raise his voice. He just looked at her with a terrifyingly calm indifference. "Then we'll have to discuss why my wife is suddenly so concerned with independent assets, won't we? And I don't think we want to have that chat, drawing. Not with the kids upstairs on weekends."
He stood up, adjusting his flat cap over his eyes, and walked out without another word, leaving his black coffee to go cold on the table.
By mid-afternoon, the walls of the Shelby estate felt less like a home and more like a beautifully furnished cell. She needed air. She needed a reality that didn't involve Thomas’s suffocating quiet or Heather's paid-for loyalty.
She took a small leather purse—counting the few shillings she had left, realizing with a bitter pang how completely dependent she was on the money Tommy allowed her to have—and walked down toward the canal turn, near the boundary of the legal betting shops.
She didn't expect to see him, but in Birmingham, Alfie Solomons stuck out like a stray wolf in a sheep pen.
He was standing by the side of a horse-drawn cart, arguing fiercely with a local baker over the weight of a flour sack. His heavy wool coat was unbuttoned, and he was gesticulating wildly, his voice carrying over the rattle of the coal wagons.
"Listen to me, you absolute melt," Alfie was barking, pointing a thick, flour-dusted finger at the baker's chest. "I don't give a toss about the frost on the road, yeah? A stone of flour is a stone of flour, unless you’ve been letting your bleedin' rats have a go at the bottom of the sack, which, looking at the state of your trousers, seems highly likely, mate!"
The baker quickly nodded, terrified, and scurried away with the cart. Alfie let out a loud, gravelly sigh, wiping his brow with a handkerchief before his intense, erratic gaze swung around and landed right on her.
The fierce scowl on his face instantly melted into that wicked, knowing grin.
"Well, well, well," Alfie rumbled, stepping away from the canal edge and walking toward her with his heavy, uneven stride. "Look who’s crossed the border into the wild country. The little bird from the window. Hello, hello."
"Alfie," she said, looking around nervously, her heart doing a frantic dance. "You shouldn't be standing out in the open like this. Tommy said Arthur is out running errands near the registry."
"Oh, did he now? Did Thomas say that?" Alfie tilted his head, his eyes narrowing as he watched her pull her shawl tighter around her wrists to hide the scratches. "Let me tell you something about your fella, mate. Tommy Shelby thinks he owns the sky because he bought a couple of aeroplanes, yeah? But he don't own the dirt. And right now, you and me, we are standing on the dirt."
He stepped closer, his presence massive and smelling faintly of tobacco, rum, and stale bread. His tone shifted from his usual frantic energy into that sudden, quiet seriousness that always caught her off guard.
"You look proper wiped out, love," Alfie muttered, his eyes dropping to her hands. "He’s squeezing you, ain't he? Squeezing the air right out of your lungs."
"He’s taking the Warwickshire deeds," she whispered, the truth slipping out before she could stop it. "He’s making me sign them over to the company today."
Alfie stared at her for a long second, his head twitching slightly as he processed the information. He let out a low, cynical chuckle that sounded like grinding stones.
"Of course he is. Because he’s a businessman, see? And a businessman don't like an unresolved liability on the books. That’s what you are to him right now, mate. A little question mark in the ledger." He leaned in a bit further, his voice a gravelly hiss near her ear. "So, what are you gonna do, eh? You gonna sign the paper like a good little missus, or are we gonna have to find you a much bigger window to jump out of?"
Another chapter I forgot to upload years ago, hehe. If you notice the writing isn't like it is now, it's because it's from years ago. After this chapter, the others are up-to-date.
The people who have built me. My mother had me, gave birth to me, and took me in her arms.
But who built me? I’ve been built by memories, by attitudes, by beliefs. Every single part of me will always represent the folk who have been there. Each wound has a name, each pain has a reason, each fear a memory. All the scars are no longer noticeable, but I still feel 'em. I still live 'em.
I don't think spiders have always scared me. They began to scare me when I was still a little babba, back in those fields where they abounded. They were big, yeah, but they’d never frightened me until I saw my mother kill one inside the cottage.
She explained that she did it so I wouldn't be afraid when I saw it—so that I could kill it myself. But how could I tell her that my own ignorance had helped me a lot to keep going without fear?
A few days ago, I wanted to continue without fear. I’ll never make it. I’ll only make it the day I become ignorant again, the day I stop learning from my experiences. We grow, we suffer, we make others suffer. We just have to start over. Keep us company.
The sight of Alfie definitely didn't help her paranoia. What if Thomas ran into him? The very thought of it troubled her in unimaginable ways. Not because her fella would find her with another bloke—she knew she wasn't cut out for that kind of row. It was more because she desperately didn't want to cause any trouble for Alfie.
In the short time she’d known him, she’d seen that Alfie had relatively different ideals than Thomas. He was more refreshing. Analyzing herself, she’d come to realize that, in one way or another, she actually liked the man. Not necessarily in a romantic way—or at least not for now—but she liked the way he made her feel.
"What the fuck are you doing here?!" she hissed. If the whisper was supposed to be quiet, it turned out to be a proper low-voiced scream.
Alfie just stood there, his eyes darting around the yard. "Trying to help you in your little sort of... escape, innit? Which is very awful indeed, mate!" She didn't understand how he could say that with that mocking half-smile on his lips; it was almost as if her running away was the funniest thing that had happened to him in a long stretch.
Meanwhile, she was frantically thinking about how to get down without Thomas finding out. Jumping seemed the only way, which would probably mean hitting herself at least once, but it was well worth it.
She decided to swing one foot out first, figuring that would make the fall better, but it only resulted in that same foot losing its grip, dragging her entire torso forward. The fall came soon after, scraping her calves and bruising her all over. As she tumbled, she faced Alfie, who seemed a bit distracted by the sheer chaos of the situation. She decided to get his attention by talking to him.
"How did you even know I was going to escape?"
He gave her a long, deeply questioning look before he answered, his voice a gravelly rumble. "Because your plan, mate... your plan was absolutely horrible, yeah? Who the fuck hires a prostitute for these sorts of business transactions? You clearly have no bleedin' experience in the area, love. None at all."
"Oh, and I suppose you do?" she asked, a mocking smile on her face.
"Yes, yes, absolutely," Alfie said, nodding seriously. "I’ve escaped from a few husbands myself, mate, over the years. Quite a few."
His comment actually made her laugh, only for her to quickly realize they were still far too close to the house and someone might hear 'em.
"Can we walk a bit?"
He grunted in agreement, and they started moving into the shadows. The night wasn't entirely quiet—you could hear the distant murmur of people talking and the hum of the town—but they managed to get away from the windows to have a proper chat.
"Alfie... do you care about me?" she asked, looking right at him. The question had popped into her mind from one moment to the next, so she just said it without thinking.
Alfie looked at her sideways, his head tilting in that eccentric way of his. "I think so, yeah. Yes... a little bit," he said quietly, looking away from her this time, his gaze fixing on the gravel.
She stopped walking right there and caught him in a sudden hug.
Alfie froze, his arms stiffening as he repeated at least twice, "Not too much, mind you. Not too bleedin' much, yeah?"
As he did his absolute best to hug her back in the most awkward way he could possibly manage, she began to feel like she was picking up the broken pieces of herself that had fallen along the way. Alfie wasn't exactly great at supporting a person who wanted to run away from reality, but he definitely understood. He understood exactly why she wanted to bolt.
"Where do you actually plan on going then, eh?" he asked, gently releasing her from the remarkably awkward embrace they were stuck in.
"To the town where I was born. To start a new life."
Alfie let out a low, scoffing noise. "How dreadfully boring. I expected a far more interesting future for you, mate, to be completely honest. How are you going to take care of yourself when you arrive, then? What's the scoff situation?"
"I'll see."
"You can't just go making these kinds of big plans and not have the foggiest what you're going to do next, love. That's just stupid. That is proper stupid, yeah?"
She smirked at him. "Wow. I guess you really *have* run away from a husband before."
"I'm being serious, mate," Alfie murmured, his tone dropping into something surprisingly grounded. "Dead serious."
She stared at him for a few seconds until the harsh reality finally hit her—her grand idea was really a bit silly, wasn't it? What money was she going to leave with? What on earth was she going to do with her life once she actually arrived?
"Not that the whole 'going back to your roots' business is wrong," Alfie added, scratching his beard. "But it's kinda weird, innit?"
"You're right," she said softly, the adrenaline completely fading. "I have to perfect it. I think it's about time I go back inside."
She turned and began walking in the opposite direction, back toward the house. She noticed it seemed as if he wanted to say something else to her, like he was weighing up the words in his head, but he couldn't quite make up his mind to do it. So, he just kept his peace, walking beside her until they reached the edge of the yard. Little by little, she moved away, and thus, the two of them took different paths in the dark.
When she got back to the spot beneath her window, she found a bit of a problem. The prostitute was still standing there.
"You haven't gone yet?"
"Evidently," the woman said, shivering slightly in the cold air. "I'm waiting for you to tell me what to do, ain't I?"
"Oh, no. That's off. The whole thing is off." As the words left her mouth, she looked up, wondering how on earth she was going to get back up to her bedroom window. "Well... actually, can you help me with something?"
She explained her idea to the relatively tall woman, asking her to carry her up. Stepping carefully, she managed to plant her shoes right onto the woman's shoulders, stretching until her hands finally gripped the stone sill.
It took every bit of strength she had, but in the end, she got her arms over the window frame, pushing herself awkwardly back inside. Even so, she ended up with her arms proper scratched to bits by the sharp window fittings.
Looking around her bedroom, everything was exactly as it always was. Exhausted, she quickly changed out of her torn dress and lay down on her bed. All those miserable problems could wait until tomorrow.
short chapter, character depression (mostly) angst, your kids dont like u, Tommy is his own warning.
This chapter is from 2023; I forgot to keep updating it. In AO3, the story is already at nine chapters, since I started working on it this year. So I've decided to combine chapters 4 and 5 into one, since they're both super short. This is essentially two chapters in one. I'm pretty bad at tags, but I hope you understand.
She was proper disappointed. Not with him, though, but with herself, for actually believing that at some point her life might change. It was stupid to think like that, she knew it full well, but it was hard to stop yourself from holding onto some scrap of hope.
She’d already told herself a thousand times in her own mind what a miserable bastard he was, but this time, her head went completely blank. There wasn’t a single thought going through her mind, not even when she had so many questions rattling around. Questions that felt small and insignificant compared to the heavy weight in her chest right now; questions she wasn't ever meant to answer anyway.
After all, what good is having the answers if you can’t do a bloody thing with them? Everything felt dead monotonous. Following that row with her fella, she didn't know what to do with her own conscience. She felt like she ought to make a change, but she hadn’t the foggiest where to start. Her life just seemed like an endless cycle of unhappiness, no matter what happened.
She even felt completely numb toward the kids. She watched them play, watched them eat their scoff, but she felt as far away from them as a half-forgotten dream.
It didn't matter a toss if she had a nice time with 'em in the park if they were only going to sell her out to their dad the second they got home.
And it didn't matter rolling in the hay with another bloke either, if it didn't change a single thing in the end.
Despite that, she’d kept in touch with Alfie.
Just to have someone to talk to who wouldn't run straight to Thomas and spill everything. She didn't fancy having sex again; the very idea of it didn't appeal to her one bit, and she supposed she had her own miserable troubles to thank for that.
She had no one.
And she was nobody. No one would ever remember her as anything more than the unhappy missus of Tommy Shelby. And that was assuming they even bothered to remember her at all.
But she remembered. She was absolutely consumed by resentment, constantly wondering if the real problem was her.
For a whole month now, Thomas had been treating her like she was some sort of undercover spy in her own home, constantly throwing it in her face that he didn't miss a single move she made. And despite all his digging, she just didn't have the energy in her to snap back at him anymore.
Desperate for a proper chat, she went to see her friend Heather. She spent a good while opening up to her, letting out some of the awful things she’d been feeling inside.
But it turned out Heather didn't give a toss about her problems. The wench was on Thomas’s payroll, telling him every single word that passed her lips.
Truly, she had no one.
She thought about running away from him, about packing up and starting a completely new life somewhere else, but even that idea didn't quite convince her. The only thing she desperately wanted right now was to stop giving her fella a reason to keep hunting her down.
The separation. Separation was the real answer. Maybe that’s what he wanted deep down anyway. To stick her away somewhere out of sight, let him keep the kids, while she tried to live out whatever was left of her youth. Starting fresh would finally let her think about her choices as her own person—to figure out exactly how she’d ended up in this ditch, and how to climb her way out of it so she’d never make the same bloody mistakes again.
It was an absolute cracker of a day at home. The kids were heading off to school, Thomas was out doing whatever it is Thomas does, and she was sitting there, plotting exactly how to slip out of the house without being found. Brilliant. The bloody perfect family.
She was experiencing a rush of what she’d have called an insane desire a few years back.
What would it have been like, she wondered, the very first time she’d ever felt proper anger or fear? How did it feel when she laughed for the first time? All she knew was that, for the first time in years, she was feeling more than one single emotion.
There was sadness that her fella was cheating on her. Shame for what the neighbors would say if they ever found out. But right now, there was something else swirling inside her, a strange new emotion she couldn't quite put a name to.
She wandered into the house library. It was an average-sized room, packed with the books Thomas liked best and others that guests might fancy. Standing there, she liked to remember her mother reading those very books back in the small town where she’d grown up. The locals hadn't thought much of her mother either, truth be told, but the woman had never given a toss.
She wished she could be more like her mother. As a little girl, she’d always looked up to her; they used to spend almost all their time together. Her mother had looked after her, and their cottage had always felt warm and welcoming.
She remembered that flowery field from her childhood, bursting with bright colors and a gentle, moving breeze. She remembered running around barefoot on the grass, playing carelessly with her little mates. Small eyes, where everything in the world seemed to be just fine.
When her mother passed away, she’d decided to move, and that was where she’d met Thomas. She had tucked her mother’s old belongings away in this library when she was newly married, thinking that one day she’d show the kids where their grandmother used to live before she got hitched. Now, she was bloody glad she hadn't. Glad she hadn't shown a soul where she truly came from—not even Thomas.
"And where do you come from then? You don't look like you're from around here," the young man she’d just met had asked all those years ago.
"You don't honestly think I'm telling a bloke I don't even know where I come from? I don't even know your name," she’d replied, teasing.
"How do I know you aren't some madman out to do me harm?"
"Fair point," he’d smiled. "My name’s Tommy, but you can call me whatever you fancy."
She’d laughed at the young man’s words as she told him her name. He hadn't brought up her past again; apparently, he wasn't all that bothered about where she’d come from, only where she was planning to go.
And right there, standing in the library, she found her answer. Perhaps the right place to be was the place where you were born—where the earth naturally placed you, and from where she’d once run away just to chase a life of luxury. She began digging through the old papers, looking for the address of that house, far away from the busy towns and cities, completely isolated with just three or four folk living nearby.
Finding the coordinates, she started thinking about how she’d get there and what kind of plan she’d need to organize to finally get her own way for once in her life. But first, she was going out for a proper walk.
She made sure to give the family cooks the night off so she could clear the path for her plan. She wanted to have one last dinner with them.
It probably wasn't going to be the last time she’d ever see them, but it would certainly be the last time she’d ever sit down with her kids and her husband to eat as a family. She served up the dish she’d prepared herself—a recipe her mother had taught her back in her native place.
She piled Thomas’s plate the highest, seeing as he was supposed to have had a very, very tiring day at work. He started shoveling it down almost immediately, without waiting for a soul.
"And what have you been up to at school today then?" she asked the kids, trying to sound genuinely interested. She knew she probably wasn't going to have many more chats with them once she bolted. She had no intention of taking them along to the new world she was planning to build for herself.
"Nothing," they both mumbled in unison, looking down at their plates. It was like they *had* done things, but they didn't want to tell her because they assumed she wouldn't understand. She couldn't blame them; she didn't think she understood a bloody thing at this point either.
"And what about you, Tommy? What did you get up to today?"
Thomas stared at her for an absolute eternity, his blue eyes cold, before answering with a few flat words.
"Some business with Arthur. Nothing you’d understand, drawing," he concluded, his tone dripping with dismissal.
She just nodded and started eating in complete silence, until Thomas broke it again.
"It’s greasy. This is all proper greasy," Thomas muttered, pushing his fork away. "I think the chef’s completely lost his knack for cooking."
"I made it," she said quietly.
"Oh."
She wasn't even disappointed. She knew full well that anything she did would never be appreciated in Thomas’s eyes, which meant she was completely free to do whatever she bloody well liked. After the meal, she retreated to her room, her mind racing with the logistics of how she was going to escape.
And that was where the clever part of the plan came in. The change of identities.
During her walk earlier that day, she’d devised a scheme with a young girl who’d just started out in prostitution. She’d made sure the girl didn't get a proper look at her face in the dark, so she couldn't go running to her husband with the news. The girl’s hair was a very similar shade to her own, so she’d paid her extra to cut it a bit to match her style. The girl was supposed to sneak into her bedroom and sleep in her bed starting at five in the morning, giving her plenty of time to leave unnoticed.
Suddenly, she jumped out of her skin as she heard something rattle against her bedroom window.
When she peered out through the glass, she saw the young girl letting her know she was already there—a bit earlier than planned, it seemed. But what made her breath catch was the bloke standing right behind the wench.
It was a man she recognized instantly. It was Alfie Solomons, standing in the shadows, waving at her with both hands, frantically flapping them about like a bloody madman.
warnings: smut, witchcraft, blood magic, reader is crazy asf, dark romance. Dreamwalking, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baelor Targaryen/Original Female Character or insert, Fluff and Angst, Erotic Dream, rough sex, reader is crazy x2
A visiting lady with centuries-old secrets. A pure prince destined for a tragic fate. Through a delicate web of dream-walking and dark rituals, she will do whatever it takes to hold him close—even if it means reshaping his nights and denying Death the permission to take him.
Deeply do I thank the Dornishmen for planting this orchard, for 'twas here that you and I first met. I pray that one day you might come to see that we are but small, fleeting creatures in a passing world, and therefore it is no sin to enjoy the time left to us.
Every seed that lies dormant in the shadows shall wake and blossom anew, and all that dies gives birth to a fresh beginning.
Whoever first spoke those words, 'what is dead may never die,' was never more deceived. There are flowers that fall solely to nurture the garden, of a certainty.
This is the sole thing that pleases me in this castle; these orange trees represent the light within something so dark and foul. In a realm consumed by war, the whispering voices repeat ever the same. Each man had his time to bury his dead, yet still they are not content.
For this were we fashioned: to remember and to be remembered, to weep and to cause weeping, to commit our dead to the earth. For this are we given long arms for farewells, hands to gather what has been bestowed upon us, and fingers to dig into the soil.”
A voice roused me from my thoughts right suddenly.
“Are you occupied, my lady? Do you require aid?”
Looking up, there I beheld him standing—the Prince.
“Though it appears you fare well enough without the need of a man's help, to be sure,” observed that pure gentleman. “Are you a tiller of the soil, perhaps? One of the Faith?”
“No, my lord. A simple lady on a visit. Pay me little heed; 'tis better to pass unnoticed.” A smile parted my lips. Scarce was I prepared for the moment I should meet my prince; for the first time in centuries, my heart fluttered with nervousness. “You are most kind, though I would not wish to prove a burden. I only seek to take a few oranges to... to press for juice.”
Praying he had not marked my falsehood, I looked into his eyes—as beautiful as I had beheld them in my visions.
“You are right humble, my lady. 'Tis long since I tasted a good draught of orange juice. I should be well pleased to try yours, if it would not trouble you.”
“Of course not… 'Twould be no trouble at all, I should like it right well.” As I rose and sought to draw near him, my footing failed me and I stumbled, falling face-to-face against him. To steady myself and stay my fall, I caught hold of his hair—an awkward grace, for he stood much taller than I.
“Where are you lodged, my lady?”
“I know not how best to explain it… When I am certain, I shall tell you.”
“Well, then, I must content myself with your word.”
Two days having passed since that hour, my mind had been spinning in its own orbit. The way to enter his dreams had finally been found. It was no difficult task, yet with what little strength remained to me of late, 'twas a miracle indeed.
Deep stillness was required for this, so I composed myself, seeking to be entirely serene.
The dream of my knight found him with his late wife, Jena Dondarrion; the pair of them lay conversing in their marriage bed as she touched him. 'Twas strange; my prince seldom dreamed of such carnal matters. Managing to thrust Jena from his side, I imposed myself in her stead. There he lay beside me in his shifts, and none could prevent the sudden fire that rushed through my veins. So fiercely did I desire him—so much so that all would have been surrendered for a single night with that man.
Upon beginning to caress him, some resistance was shown at the first, he perceiving that his wife was no longer the maiden of his dream; soon, however, he allowed himself to take his pleasure. My hand slid downward toward his member; it was not yet erguido, and I deemed my knight required a little more coaxing.
Slowly bending over his manhood, the sheets that covered the bed stirred gently with my movements. With his member before my face, my tongue began to play about the head, tracing circles whilst he trembled. To see my prince thus was past enduring; he deserved a finer worship.
Taking him fully into my mouth, I began to suck him from base to tip, quickening the pace as it pleased me until he spent his seed. The essence remaining upon my tongue was gathered with my fingers and guided inside, using it to slick my maidenhood.
That this aroused him was plain, for his member stiffened at once, preparing to fall victim further to my wickedness. He stared at me astonished, as though struck motionless, until of a sudden he seized me by the waist and pinned me to the centre of the bed, throwing his body over mine.
He kissed my breasts, suckling them gently, whilst his hand slid down to my cunt to finger me. Those rough fingers, the hands of a man who wields a sword, or better, a warhammer. Again and again he drove them inside me until, unable to endure more, I blossomed, spilling my own juice—a rare thing, for few men can bring their women to such pleasure. 'Twas then he plunged his member inside me and began to thrust hard against my cunt. I could feel his stones pounding against my backside.
Touching his back, his neck, his belly, I raised my eyes to look squarely into his as he took me. Past all control did I groan, my eyes rolling back. *”I love you,”* was whispered, and therewith we shared the most beautiful kiss I had ever conceived.
When he spent himself inside me, the dream shifted. No longer were we coupling.
Now alone, my feet wandered the galleries of the Red Keep in search of him. *This dream is mine, not his,* I thought, though 'twas so long since I had dreamed that it felt passing strange.
In the midst of one of the corridors lay a dead dragon.
Breaking from my trance, I returned to my chambers, amidst the candles and the ash. With a dagger I cut my hand deeply, pouring the blood into a vial alongside a few strands of my knight's hair, which had been plucked from him during our encounter. Lastly, the ashes were taken and cast into the vial as well.
So long as Baelor Breakspear remained the love of my life, he was denied the permission to die.
