The basement of the Goldsmiths' Hall was a kingdom of sighing pipes and forgotten things. The air was thick with the smell of damp stone and hot dust from the aging boiler. Julian Croft moved like a sleepwalker between the hulking machinery, the beam of his torch shaking violently. In his other hand, clutched tight in a velvet pouch, was the Aethelred Diadem—the real one. Thorne had vetoed the replica. "If he checks, even for a second, and it's fake, he vanishes. We get one shot."
Elara and Thorne followed at a distance, shadows among shadows. They were wired, connected to Chloe and a tactical team positioned in the service tunnel and the streets above. Every rustle, every drip of condensation was amplified in their ears.
"There," Croft whispered into his throat mic, his voice a dry crackle. He pointed his beam at a section of crumbling brick wall, indistinguishable from the rest.
Thorne's voice came through Elara's earpiece, calm and controlled. "Proceed. Place it and leave. Walk straight out the service entrance to the alley. Do not look back."
Croft nodded, a frantic jerk of his head. He found a loose brick, pulled it, and revealed a dark, square hole—the mouth of the old coal chute. With a final, terrified glance into the darkness, he shoved the velvet pouch into the void. They heard a soft thump as it landed on earth a few feet below.
He didn't need to be told twice. He turned and scurried back the way he came, his footsteps fading into the hum of the boiler.
Silence descended, heavier than before.
Minutes ticked by. Five. Ten. The only sound was the rhythmic thump-thump of Elara's own heart. Had Sandys seen them? Had he anticipated the double-cross?
Then, a new sound. A soft, grating scrape of brick on brick from the other side of the wall. The sound of the pouch being retrieved.
"Tunnel team, move," Thorne breathed into his mic. "He's in the chute. Converge."
Elara heard the distant, muffled sounds of movement from within the earth—the tactical team entering the service tunnel from the access point they'd secured. Thorne gestured to her, and they moved swiftly to a heavy, iron-clad door marked 'NO ADMITTANCE'—the Hall's entrance to the same tunnel.
Thorne unbolted it, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet. He pushed it open, his weapon drawn. A wave of cooler, earthier air washed over them. Before them stretched the narrow, brick-lined tunnel, lit now by the bouncing torches of the tactical team advancing from the far end.
In the middle distance, caught in the crossing beams, a figure froze.
Leo Sandys.
He stood tall, the velvet pouch in one hand. He wasn't dressed as a monk or a scholar, but in practical dark clothing—a technical jacket, cargo trousers, rugged boots. A modern explorer in an ancient passage. For a fraction of a second, he seemed not afraid, but interested, his head tilted as he assessed the converging lights.
"Leo Sandys! Armed police! Drop the item and put your hands on your head!" Thorne's voice echoed down the tunnel.
Sandys didn't drop the pouch. Instead, he looked past the advancing officers, past Thorne, and found Elara in the doorway. Even from thirty feet away, she saw the faint, disappointed smile on his lips.
Then he moved.
It wasn't a run. It was a fluid, efficient pivot. He flung the velvet pouch, not at the police, but high into the air toward the crumbling brick arch of the tunnel roof. As every torch beam and eye instinctively tracked the glittering arc of the diadem, he dropped low and sprinted backwards, deeper into the darkness from which he'd come.
"He's doubling back! Cut him off!" Thorne yelled, surging forward.
Chaos erupted. Officers scrambled. The diadem clattered to the earth, forgotten. Sandys vanished into a side passage the initial schematics hadn't shown—a forgotten spur leading… where?
Elara, acting on an instinct she didn't understand, didn't follow Thorne into the tunnel. She turned and ran back through the boiler room, up the stairs, into the main Hall. Her mind was a map of the city, of history, of Sandys's thesis. 'The judgement must be rendered in the seat of judgement.' He'd been clear. The Old Bailey. He'd never intended to be in the tunnel to receive the diadem. That was a dead-drop, a distraction. He had another way.
She burst out of the Hall's staff entrance into the cool night air of the deserted street. The Old Bailey, its great dome illuminated against the night sky, loomed opposite. And there, a figure was scaling the ornate, stone-carved façade with a climber's terrifying grace, using grotesques and architectural filigree as handholds.
Sandys. He'd had a second entrance to the tunnel that emerged near the court. The theft was complete. Now was the judgement.
He reached a high balcony and slipped through a window left deliberately, impossibly, ajar.
Elara didn't think. She ran across the street, pounding on the massive, locked doors of the court's public entrance. Useless. She frantically called Thorne. "He's in the Old Bailey! He's inside the building!"
She heard his curse, the sounds of his team turning around in the cramped tunnel. "We're minutes away! Elara, do NOT go in there alone!"
But she was already circling the building, looking for another way. A delivery bay. A lower window. She found a recessed doorway, its lock older, simpler. Using a piece of decorative ironwork that had broken off a railing, she wedged it in and threw her weight against it, a move she'd seen in a dozen archaeological digs forcing stuck doors. With a groan and a splintering crack, it gave.
She was in. The grand, marbled silence of the Central Criminal Court swallowed her whole. Somewhere in this temple of modern law, Leo Sandys was preparing his ancient judgement. And she was the only one who could read the charges.