Malcom stopped that deliberate glide of his dagger upon his palm. He took a slow step forward.
Whimpering, the other man hunched, covering his head protectively.
“Oh, come, Alders,” Malcom murmured, continuing his path toward the quaking man. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Alders peeked out from between his arms. Fear spilled from his bloodshot eyes. “Y-ya ain’t?”
“It is not as though you are stealing from someone you shouldn’t be . . . You know the rules of this place.” Every tosher grew up with them ingrained in his soul.
“Don’t t-touch another man’s t-tunnels,” Alders stammered.
Aye, they all knew the rules. Except all rules were forgotten when toshers grew desperate and started to poach the lesser-used areas—territories belonging to older, less adroit toshers.
“Does the name Fowler mean anything to you?” Malcom murmured.
If it was possible, the bastard’s skin paled all the more at the mention of one of the ancient toshers who searched these sewers.
“Ah, I see that it does. You don’t happen to know anything about the latest men who’ve come after him, do you?” Malcom dangled the question as a threat and a lure.
The man trembled with a force that had the water slapping around his sizable legs.
Deliberately drawing on the moment, and stretching the man’s terror along with it, Malcom scoffed. “You wouldn’t ever do anything of the sort . . . unless perhaps you wanted to face me?”
The blubbering, pathetic mess of a man looked at Malcom and frantically shook his head, knocking loose his wool cap and exposing his shiny, bald pate. “I wouldn’t—”
“Because,” Malcom interrupted, “the only stupider, more dangerous thing a man could do than lie to me would be to come after that which isn’t theirs.”
Alders immediately clamped his fleshy lips tight. A damp splotch marred the front of his wool trousers.
Malcom glanced pointedly at the stain. “Ah, well, that is telling.”
“I—I was s-sure these tunnels were free. Fowler is old—”
“Tsk. Tsk.” Malcom lifted his dagger blade up. “Wrong answer.”
Alders blubbered; tears spilled down his cheeks.
Where they lived, there was every danger in showing weakness. Exposing oneself in any way saw a person with their neck sliced, and a blade in their belly for emphasis. “Another wrong answer.” He closed the remaining distance, and Alders scrambled to escape. Angling his stick, Malcom caught the other man’s left foot and sent him toppling into the running water.
“Please,” Alders cried, shielding his head once more. “P-please.”
Blade in hand, Malcom leaned down, relishing in the way the attempted usurper shrank from him. “The rest of it, Alders.”
Alders slowly let his arms down and glanced at Malcom with befuddlement stamped in his fleshy features.
“Surely,” Malcom exclaimed, dropping his palms on his waist as he placed himself so that he was deliberately towering over Alders, who had to strain his 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.