He had no more rope to tie to the end, nor anything to extend his descent. Twenty feet of good stout cord were wrapped around the hilt of his bodkin, but it was not strong enough to hold his weight.

Malden ran one hand down the wall of the shaft next to him. It had been cut through solid rock with metal tools that left marks in its surface, no more than shallow dents—hardly enough to get his fingers or toes into. Yet perhaps if his strength had not completely left him . . .

He braced his feet against one wall as best he could, then pushed against the opposite wall with one hand. If he kept his legs bent and his arm straight, he could just about hold his weight up against the force of gravity. And if he used both hands, and if he was headed downward—it would not be a graceful descent. It would be more like a barely controlled fall. But that was better than an uncontrolled plummet.

It took a great deal of courage to let go of the rope. Malden might have been indolent, and not a valiant fighter, but when his life was in jeopardy, he rarely lacked for boldness. He let go of the rope and thrust both hands out against the wall at the same time, bracing himself in the shaft. The impact of his hands on the wall made a wet slapping sound that echoed up and down the walls, but he did not have time at that point to stop and listen to hear if anyone remarked on the sound. He was too busy rushing down toward the spikes, his feet and hands clutching at the tool marks on the walls for whatever small purchase they offered.

The rough wall tore and picked at his hands, already sore from the long climb up the wall of Castle Hill. The air rushing past him whispered of doom and folly and why there were so few old thieves. His teeth pulled back in a terrible rictus as he smashed his feet and hands again and again into the walls, trying anything, anything at all, to slow his descent.

The spikes hurtled toward him like javelins. If he didn’t time this perfectly—

Just as his hands reached the bottom of the shaft and ran out of wall to grip, Malden ducked his head and kicked hard with his legs against the stone. He shot forward through the air, narrowly clearing the spikes, and curled himself into a ball as he made contact with the floor beyond them, to perform a perfect somersault and wind up sitting on the floor, his breath whooping in and out of his lungs.

“Wuzzat?” someone said. Someone nearby. Someone whose voice suggested to Malden that he would be quite a bit larger than himself. A slow shuffling step started toward him, drowning out the tired wails of the unseen prisoner.