The stench of rotting flour and stale yeast was entirely overwhelmed by the sharp, undeniable odor of bitter almonds. Elias Thorne knelt on the flour-dusted floorboards of Thomas Farriner’s bakery on Pudding Lane, holding a flickering tallow candle close to the corpse’s face. It was past midnight on the second of September, 1666. London was asleep, oblivious to the nightmare that was about to unfold.
Elias, a man of five-and-thirty with a heavily scarred jaw and eyes the color of stormy seas, was officially no longer a King’s Investigator. He had been stripped of his title a year prior for accusing a powerful lord of treason without sufficient proof. Yet, his instincts had never dulled. When a street urchin had whispered to him of a dead body hidden in the baker’s storage room, Elias couldn’t resist the pull of the shadows.
He examined the dead man. He was not a baker’s apprentice. Beneath the coarse woolen tunic, the man wore a fine linen shirt, and upon his right index finger was a callus unique to those who spent their lives firing heavy flintlock muskets. A Royal Guard, in disguise, murdered in a common bakery.
“Cyanide,” Elias murmured to the empty room, noting the blue tint to the dead man’s lips and the rigid posture of his limbs. “A swift, silent death.”
Elias patted down the man’s pockets. His fingers brushed against something hard and metallic hidden in a secret lining. He extracted a sphere the size of an apple, wrought from heavy brass and etched with strange, serpentine runes. It was heavy, filled with a sloshing liquid, and featured a complex, spring-loaded glass vial at its zenith.
Suddenly, the floorboards in the adjacent room creaked.
Elias instantly snuffed out his candle, plunging the storage room into absolute darkness. He drew his main-gauche—a long, wicked parrying dagger—from his belt. He pressed his back against the rough brick of the unlit oven, slowing his breathing until he was as silent as the corpse beside him.
The door creaked open. A silhouette filled the frame, illuminated dimly by the moonlight filtering through a high, grimy window. The figure was cloaked in heavy black wool, holding a drawn rapier.
“The guard is dead,” a gruff voice whispered into the darkness. “Set the ember and let the city burn. The Order commands it.”
Elias didn’t wait to be discovered. He lunged from the shadows, driving the pommel of his dagger toward the assassin’s temple. The man was fast, turning and parrying the strike with a harsh clash of steel. Elias spun, kicking the assassin’s knee. The man grunted, stumbling backward into the racks of dried firewood stacked near the main oven.
“You are not the baker,” the assassin snarled, recovering his balance. He thrust his rapier with lethal precision. Elias deflected the blade, but the sharp tip grazed his shoulder, tearing through his leather coat and drawing a line of hot blood.
Elias stepped into the guard, bringing his dagger up in a vicious arc, slicing across the assassin’s forearm. The man cursed, dropping his rapier. Seeing he was outmatched in close quarters, the assassin reached into his cloak and pulled out a small, glowing stick of phosphorus. He struck it against the brick wall. It flared with a blinding, terrifying white light.
“Enjoy the flames, interloper,” the assassin hissed.
He threw the burning phosphorus not at Elias, but directly into the pile of highly flammable, bone-dry faggots of wood piled beside the massive bakery oven. He then threw himself through the rear window, shattering the glass and disappearing into the alleyway.
Elias rushed to stamp out the fire, but it was too late. The phosphorus ignited the wood with an unnatural, explosive ferocity. Flames roared upward, licking the wooden ceiling rafters in seconds. The heat became instantly unbearable.
Elias remembered the brass sphere in his pocket. If the assassin was using alchemical fire, this device was likely a larger version of the same nightmare. He grabbed the dead guard by the collar, hauling the body toward the front door as smoke began to rapidly fill the bakery. Coughing violently, his eyes tearing up, Elias kicked the front door open.
He dragged the body out onto the cobblestones of Pudding Lane just as the interior of the bakery flashed over. A booming explosion shattered the remaining windows, sending a plume of angry orange fire shooting into the dry night air. The Great Fire of London had been born, not from a baker’s negligence, but from the cold, calculated hand of treason.
