neck back to meet Malcom’s gaze. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to turn the other cheek while you steal things that aren’t yours?”
“I . . . I . . .” Tears filled Alders’s eyes, and he hugged his arms around his knees and rocked. “Please. Please, don’t.”
Using the tip of his dagger, Malcom flipped open the front of the man’s jacket. As one, his and Alders’s eyes went to the pair of watches dangling from two clever linings sewn into the article. Malcom slipped his blade into the thread, instantly severing it. With his spare hand, he caught the gleaming gold piece and stuffed it inside his jacket. Keeping his blade aloft, he motioned to the silver piece. “Now the other.”
The directive hadn’t even left him before Alders was scrambling to relieve himself of the damning item.
The findings, however, didn’t belong to this man, but another. “Now the bag.” Malcom turned those three words into an order. When Alders remained shaking in his spot, he leaned down and whispered, “Now.”
Squeaking, the burly man scrambled around Malcom, crawling on his knees through the water. “I’ve got i-it. Somewhere,” he cried, talking to himself as he searched. A moment later, he surged upright, whipping the bag from the water, sending drops flying. “’ere it is.”
Malcom peered quickly inside the sack. Even in the dark tunnels, the familiar spoils one could always expect to find gleamed back: watch fobs, miscellaneous gemstones that had come loose from whatever settings they’d once adorned. Grime-covered sovereigns. A veritable treasure existed underground, fair game for the taking, and one was able to sell them without a penalty of thievery.
“Now . . . What. Are. The. Rules?” Malcom asked, flinging the bag over his shoulder.
“Don’ttakewhat’snotmine,” the man said in a rush, his words rolling together and barely intelligible.
“From what?” Pointing his knife to his ear, Malcom shook his head. “I didn’t hear you.”
“These tunnels—”
“Sewers,” Malcom corrected. “Let us not make them more than they are,” he taunted.
After contemplating Alders for a long moment, with his dagger he motioned the man forward. “Come, come.”
Alders hesitated; tears sprang to his eyes once more, and with all the joy of a man having been summoned for his walk to the gallows, he joined Malcom.
“What else, Alders?” he asked coolly.
“I’m so sorry,” the older man said through tears.
“And you won’t do it again, now, will you?”
“No!” Alders cried. “N-never. My girl. She be the one who thought . . . said—”
Malcom lifted a single finger, instantly silencing the man. “In these sewers, my word is law. Are we clear?” When the other man hesitated, he stuck his face close and whispered, “Are we clear?”
The old tosher gave another shaky nod.
Malcom grinned. “Off with you, then,” he said with his earlier false cheer.
Alders hesitated, as if he recognized a trap and had to pick his way out of it. Then he took off racing, splashing noisily through the water, the echo of his footfalls growing increasingly distant and then fading entirely.
The old tosher forgotten, Malcom flung his things over his shoulder, grabbed his pole, and followed a different tunnel away, this one narrower.
Darker.
The dark.
And there it was . . . Despite his infallibility over the years, that child’s weakness mocked him. Attempted to drive back logic and replace it with only fear.
Malcom kept his gaze forward and forced himself not to look sideways and note the cramped walls, walls that were closing in around him.
Refusing to give in to that irrational fear, he hummed a song in near silence.
Roome for a lusty lively Lad,
dery dery downe, That will shew himselfe blyth be he ne’re so sad,
dery dery downe . . .
The corridor widened, and some of the tension eased from his frame. Malcom strode quickly forward and didn’t stop until he reached the familiar grate. Setting his belongings down, he pulled himself up and scoured the space through the slat in the grate. Waiting. Waiting. His ears attuned to every slightest sound—the distant drunken revelry, the rattle of a lone carriage.
He pushed the covering off and shoved it aside. Dropping once more to the ground, he tossed his stick out first. Clamping his knife between his teeth once more, he grabbed the brown bag, shoved it through the opening, and then climbed out fast behind it.
The moment his feet found purchase on the East London cobblestones, a faint click sounded just behind him. “Ya’ve gotten careless in your old age,” the low, rough voice containing a trace of Cockney taunted. His palms