Chapter Text
It wasn't like Mrs Mooney was the first to think of putting stray cats in her pies. She was just fast enough to have first pick.
"If anything-" Najwa Lahmar clubbed a cockroach with her rolling pin, making the sole diner of her shop jump, "I ought to get some credit for catchin' them pigeons with stale bread and guttin' the bastards for my pies."
The customer-- Well I guess you'd have to pay to be a proper "customer" --slowed his chewing and looked down at the large greasy bite he'd just taken from his pie. Najwa scoffed.
"How many have you eaten today?"
He swallowed. "Four."
"And you liked 'em all, yeah?"
"Yes, mum!" he gave a firm nod. "Very much, mum!"
"Then what have you got to worry about, what's in 'em?" she chastised, flicking another roach off the counter. "They taste the same whether you know or not."
He looked between Mrs Lahmar and his pie. She stared back at him impatiently. He steeled himself and took a hesitant bite, careful not to offend her with his expression. To his surprise, he didn't have to be. She was right. The creamy center of the pie, the chewy crust, the salty tang of the filling- they were all the same as the first time he bit into one. He blinked, licked the grease from his lips, then continued eating as before.
Najwa sighed and looked into the street. It was good that someone could stomach this shit because she certainly couldn't. She'd have to do much better than pigeons and very soon. But cats weren't the easiest to catch, and most things bigger and slower could bite back. She rolled the dough, eyes glued to a lawyer from uptown sitting on the curb to tie his shoe. A wandering roach crunched under the pin, wings gummed with dough.
"Toby!!" a distant voice bellowed.
Talib's head snapped to attention. He shot up from his booth and slung his bag across his back with one hand while stuffing the rest of the pie into his mouth with the other. His hand only grazed the handle of the door before he spun to face Mrs Lahmar and bowed deeply.
"Thank you for the pies, mum!"
Mrs Lahmar waved a floured hand at him. "Get on, now, don't want that charlatan boxin' your ears again."
Pirelli might have called his name two or three times by now, and he had a short fuse.
Talib bolted out the door, pushing past agitated clusters of people. They gave him dirty looks or swatted at him, and he dodged them while licking the remaining grease from his fingers. He was grateful for the free pies, yes, but there was so much more he wanted to say to Mrs Lahmar. She was the kindest soul who had ever spoke to him.
The first time he found her shop, he'd just been trying to dodge a couple of men who'd bought Signor Pirelli's "Miracle Elixir." After being laughed out of a club for reeking, they wanted more than just their money. Talib stumbled through her door heaving, bruised, and cut up.
"You poor thing," she'd said.
Since then, any evening he could sneak away for a few hours he found himself drawn to her shop. Her pies weren't all bad-- the herbs she used perfectly masked the gaminess of the pigeon --and he saw how hard Mrs Lahmar worked, but he'd be lying if he said the pies were still the only reason.
In eight years he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a hot bath and a warm meal. No one-- 'Cept a nurse, once or twice, maybe --had ever held his face so gently, spoken to him so softly, and definitely not since this apprenticeship.
Pirelli, the red-faced peacock waiting for Talib in the square, had been his only way out of a worse deal with a shady circus. Pirelli glowered down at Talib, then struck him across the face. Talib reeled, but caught himself and quickly straightened again next to Pirelli. Though his first master had towered over him as a child, Talib was much older and now stood only a head shorter than Pirelli.
"Where-a were you?" he questioned in a thick, vaguely Italian accent.
Talib knew not to answer and waited stone-faced as Pirelli spat froth and insults at him. His lecture was complete foreign-sounding gibberish for the audience of this "traditional" Italian upbringing.
While Pirelli wasn't the most skilled of the folks Talib had worked under, his network was rich. He shaved nearly all the clergy in London because he claimed to have shaved the pope. Talib just had to push through a few more months and then he'd have enough until he found something else. He'd ask Mrs Lahmar but---
Pirelli smacked him again, and Talib felt the cut of a thick gold ring across his cheekbone, just below his eye. He stumbled, then slowly righted again. A weak tear of blood glided down his cheek.
Just a few more months.
"Do you understand?!" Pirelli shrieked. "Answer me!"
"Yes, Signor Pirelli." A drop of blood fell from his chin and onto Pirelli's boot.
Pirelli sniffed down at him with a last spiteful glance before he turned back to the banker he'd been chatting with.
Talib clenched and flexed his hands at his sides, running his tongue across his molars to scoop the last crumbs of Mrs Lahmar's pies from his teeth. He'd be back soon, the first chance he had. Just as he had been every free moment of the past few weeks.
It wasn't like she got nothing out of it. Talib couldn't stand the thought of allowing Mrs Lahmar to give away her hard work for free, so he often did menial chores for her around the shop-- mostly cleaning, watching the pot on occasion so she could sit. If she had any money, she'd hire him herself. The poor thing worked himself until he dropped on any task Najwa set him to. The shop had never been so bug-free as the afternoons he spends there.
Miranda Mooney had a helper, after all. A cute little brunette who seemed to do all the real baking while Miranda socialized. She chit chatted with all sorts in there-- doctors, soldiers, politicians and their wives --and that meant she knew everything. Najwa needed that kind of leverage. Social sway was her only chance at having any kind of power as a single low-born woman, unless she felt like buttering up some swollen pig to get her name in his will. Najwa wasn't above it, but the thought of massaging some pompous jackass's shoulders for the next few years made her stomach turn worse than her pies did.
The only reason she could afford the shop in the first place was because the ghost stories scared everyone else away. Morbid tales about a tormented beauty, a stolen child, and an innocent barber who died in prison. Najwa knew the stories were true, of course. She couldn't forget the face of that poor woman wandering through the streets. Nothing much left of her, now, with her mind half gone.
The poor thing ought to have taken a steak knife to every throat in the judge's house. All those wicked aristocrats with bloated egos and cold dead hearts... There wasn't an innocent soul in the building, and if the Lord had sent the rapture that night the whole party would have been engulfed in hellfire.
Alas, the poor widow was too gentle. Wasn't much left for her to live for, with her child taken by the same brute what had violated her and her husband dead in bloody Australia or wherever they transported men. On more than one occasion a customer's rude attitude had tempted Najwa near to clobbering them with a rolling pin, but she'd hold the oven door open if the dear ever had the wherewithal to shove Judge Turpin in.
Would get a nice juicy pie outta that one, Najwa mused, watching the judge's beadle toddle off to a meeting past her window. The crust would have to be mighty thick to handle all the grease... unless I strained the meat before using it in the filling...
She shook herself from her thoughts. Not like Turpin would disgrace himself being seen in here no way. Look at me fantasizing about sick nonsense when there's work to do.
But the thought didn't go away. Now that the idea had wormed its way into her head, she couldn't help but ruminate. The judge was an impossibility, that much was clear. But if Najwa could get a spare womanizing drunkard-- Hell, if Najwa could get Miranda to stretch her neck on the chopping block, she'd have pies for days. Good and hearty ones, too, from the way Miranda's been eating.
Najwa spooned lard into the next tray of pie tins and dropped the ladle back into pot, sloshing the oily sludge onto the floor beside the oven. She leaned down to wipe it before the rats got to it, then felt something scuttle across her left foot. She yanked up the hem of her skirt and crushed the bug under her right, then used a rag to sop the mess from the floor.
With her head beneath the counter, she didn't hear the bell above the door jingle. A tall dark figure stalked into the shop carrying nothing but a small bag that he almost let drag the stones beneath his feet. Coarse black curls fell over his sunken eyes that scanned the shop. It was different than he remembered.
It certainly hadn't always been a pie shop, much less one so carelessly tended. A roach scrambled towards him. He barely lifted his toe and crushed it when it slipped under his foot. The figure glanced back up to the pies on the counter, each less appetizing than the last. They were lopsided, under-baked, and appeared as hard and cold as if they'd been sitting there for weeks.
Had it been foolish of him to hope that he'd open this door to a beautifully graying wife and their cheerful daughter, just starting to come of age? Of course. But hope was foolish, just like love. And mercy.
Focus, he reprimanded himself. He couldn't afford to be distracted, or his heavy heart would crush him. You have one goal. Finish it.
This was the place he needed to be. He was owed this, at least. The darkened room above the shop was promising. The same curtains he'd drawn the day he'd closed early to go to court, just as he'd left them. He hadn't known it, but it was his last day as many things: as a free Brit, as a gentle soul, as Benjamat Bunsuk.
Though his body lived, Bunsuk was truly dead. He was nothing without his wife, his daughter. The love had been ripped from his heart. And after fifteen years in the shithole where the blessed Queen sends her undesirables, the last of his humanity was gone with it. He was wholly unrecognizable, most of all to himself. The grim face that stared back at him in the mirror frightened him-- the dark eyes held no compassion.
"My name is Sirius," he mouthed to himself. "I'm looking for a room. Is the one above your shop available to rent?"
Frankly, it was nauseating returning to Fleet Street. Then again, everything about London sickened him. At least rooming here would provide some level of comfort. The familiarity was both an ease and an insult to his suffering. How dare the sun keep shining on London as if he hadn't been dragged from Lucy's embrace, left to wonder if she and Johanna were starved or dead in an alley?
His grip on his bag tightened as silent rage surged through him. It was agonizing constantly being reminded of his loss, but he had a mission. His purpose may not be divine, but it was more than righteous:
Until Judge Turpin's blood drained from his body, until his wretched soul was wrenched from him and damned to hell for eternity, Sirius Tosi must live.
Sirius set his jaw and turned on his heel. A deserted shop did him no good. Maybe those pies had actually been sitting out for weeks. The state of this shop didn't suggest anyone had been here for---
A light gasp chirped behind him.
"A customer!"