Chapter 29 – Small Enough to Hold

The leather creaked softly beneath Thomas. He rolled his neck, feeling the knots in his shoulders protest, and allowed the ambient warmth of the dining room to seep into the places the job had frozen solid. The missing student from the King’s Road. The morning briefing—four more cases of kidnappings and bandit attacks on the roads surrounding Dunwick, all travelers, all vanished without a trail. Eliza’s theory about cult buyers. Whatever’s brewing in the underbelly of Dunwick.

He pushed it all away. Filed it in the drawer marked tomorrow.

Tonight, his sister was sitting across from him in a restaurant that served highland stag, wearing a dress that wasn’t secondhand, and she was safe. That was enough.

He smiled at her.

Florence was sitting with her hands folded carefully in her lap—still holding them that way, he noticed, as if she didn’t trust them on the table. She was looking around the dining room with the expression of someone visiting a museum after hours: fascinated, slightly intimidated, and deeply concerned about touching something.

“So,” Thomas said, settling into the comfortable slouch that drove his superiors mad during briefings. “A bit different from home, isn’t it?”

Florence looked around the room again. At the woman in pearls laughing too loudly at a corner table. At the waiter uncorking a bottle with a flourish that could have been choreographed. At the fireplace, where a log split and sent a constellation of sparks up the flue.

“It’s… big,” Florence said.

She paused, her brow furrowing, clearly aware that the word was doing no work whatsoever.

“I mean, truly massive, Thomas. Everything. The buildings are so tall I can’t see the sky half the time. There are people everywhere—just rivers of them, all going somewhere, and nobody stops, nobody looks at each other. Back home, if you saw someone on the road you’d wave, maybe ask after their mother. Here, I nearly got trampled by a woman carrying a hat box because I stopped to read a street sign.”

She shook her head, a bewildered little laugh escaping her.

“And it’s always so noisy. Even now, even in the evening—listen.” She gestured vaguely toward the curtained windows. “You can hear the trams. The factories. It never stops. In Briar’s Crossing, the loudest thing after dark was Mr. Henley’s dog barking at foxes.”

She looked back at Thomas, her eyes wide and honest.

“It feels surreal. Like I’m dreaming and any moment I’ll wake up and be back in the bakery covered in flour.”

Thomas nodded, swirling the wine the waiter had poured for him. “It can be overwhelming. Dunwick is second only to the imperial capital of Kingsbury for the most populated city in the Empire. Some say the world. The last census put us just over four million souls.”

“Four million?” Florence repeated. She tried to imagine it—four million people, four million lives happening simultaneously within the same sprawl of stone and iron and smoke. Her mind physically refused. It was like trying to picture the ocean from a description. “That is… a lot of people.”

“It takes time to get used to,” Thomas said. He took a sip of wine, and something about the gesture seemed practiced, like a man who had learned to enjoy fine things through repetition rather than upbringing. “When I first got here, I spent the first month absolutely clueless. I got on the wrong tram three days in a row. Ended up in the Docklands at midnight once because I misread a transfer sign. Nearly got mugged by a man selling counterfeit pocket watches.”

Florence stared at him. “You got mugged?”

“Nearly,” Thomas corrected, raising a finger. “Important distinction. He reconsidered when he saw the badge.”

He set his glass down, his expression softening.

“The trick is, you don’t try to learn the whole city. You can’t. Nobody knows all of Dunwick—the place changes faster than anyone can map it. You find your routes, your shops, your people. You make the city small enough to hold.” He tapped the side of his head. “My Dunwick is about twelve blocks wide. Everything I need fits in a pocket. Yours will be smaller at first, and that’s fine. It’ll grow.”

He looked at her steadily, the fond pride back in his eyes.

“You’ll be fine, Flo. You’re tougher than you think.”

Florence looked down at her bread plate, a small, uncertain smile tugging at her mouth. “I hope so.”

“I know so,” Thomas said, with the unshakeable confidence of a man who had never once considered the possibility that his sister might fail at anything.

The bread arrived. Florence tore a piece and ate it slowly, savoring the warmth, and for a moment the table was quiet in the way that only comfortable silences between family could be.

“So,” Thomas said, leaning forward on his elbows. “Tell me about today. What did you think of everything? The tram, the Riverwalk—did you like the pies?”

Florence’s face lit up. “The pie was incredible, Thomas. I don’t know what they put in that crust, but it was flaky in a way that shouldn’t be legal. I kept trying to work out the butter ratio in my head.”

Thomas grinned. “Baker’s daughter to the core.”

“And the tram—I loved the tram. The way it just glides through the streets, and you can see the whole city from the upper deck. I could ride it for hours.” She paused, her expression shifting into something more reverent, her voice dropping half a register. “But the Cathedral, Thomas. St. Silas.”

She set her bread down.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. The ceilings were so high that the sound just… disappeared upward. Like the building was breathing. And the stained glass—the light coming through the west window, all those colors bleeding across the stone floor. I just stood there. I couldn’t move. It was like being inside a painting.”

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Thomas watched her, the warmth on his face deepening. He hadn’t seen her this animated since she was twelve and had successfully baked her first loaf without burning the bottom.

“And there was a Reverend there,” Florence continued, her hands starting to gesture as the words picked up speed. “Reverend Sophia. She saw me standing in the nave, just staring like a fool, and she came over and asked if I was all right. I must have looked lost. But she was so kind, Thomas. She didn’t rush me or make me feel like I was in the way. She walked us through the whole eastern wing and told us about the history of the arches—were you listening when she told us they took forty years to build? Forty years! And she said I was welcome to come back whenever I needed quiet. She said the Cathedral was for everyone, not just the devout.”

Florence smiled, and there was something in it that reminded Thomas, with a sharp and sudden ache, of their mother.

“I think I’ll go back,” Florence said softly. “When things get loud. It felt… safe.”

Thomas cleared his throat. “I’m glad, Flo. Really. It’s good to have a place like that. Somewhere that isn’t the boarding house or the University.” He picked up his wine. “You’ll need it. First-year medicine is brutal, or so I heard. You’ll want somewhere to hide.”

“You’re not making me feel better,” Florence said, though she was smiling.

The first courses arrived—roasted marrow bones glistening with fat, and a game terrine dense with herbs and pistachios. Thomas attacked the marrow with the enthusiasm of a man who considered fine dining a competitive sport, scooping the rich, trembling fat onto toast with practiced efficiency.

Florence watched him, slightly horrified, slightly impressed.

“So,” Thomas said, around a mouthful of marrow toast, his tone shifting to something lighter, more casual. “I hope your friend is settling in all right. Alice, was it?”