Thief of Destiny: The Collected Saga of the Panther Read online

  That cocksure smile Manwe had seen on the faces of lords, ladies, slavers, and enemies contracted. Nelo’s stare hardened. “And who would that be?”

  Manwe opened his hands again. “Not me.”

  Nelo tilted her head in contemplation, her rigid stance broken by the slight movement. She glanced to the ground, her mouth screwed with troubled thought before she stepped forward. “My husband might be cowed easily, but I’m not, thief. You will have to give better reasons.”

  Manwe nodded at the boxes stacked behind him. “There is no excuse beyond what it will go to—and that is the freedom of the savannah.”

  “Again, for whom?” she questioned.

  “For the living,” he answered. “Not the dead my friends would raise.”

  Nelo’s eyes flared in confusion at the answer. A fear, sincere and considered, puckered lips as second passed on in a contemplative silence. Her attention shifted for a moment before it settled again on Manwe.

  “Do what you must and begone from my house. Both of you,” Nelo said, turning away. “Do you hear me, Cleon?”

  As if summoned by name, the sorcerer’s black shape rose from the tile floor like an apparition, taking on depth. Resplendent in his crimson robe, he placed both hands on his hips in a dominant show of his power.

  “Lady Nelo,” he said, bowing with a grand flourish. “To think you expect so little of us vagabonds and thieves, it would not do to depart without paying the hostess of the house a fine gift for her kindness.”

  Nelo glared at Cleon. “I’ve had enough of you already, sorcerer.”

  “Then take this as payment for my poor behavior.”

  Drop by sparkling drop dribbled out of a pocket on the inside of Cleon’s robe, each bead blazing as The Savannah’s Tears formed a loose line of glory between his pinched finger and thumb. Manwe watched the lady’s eyes as the necklace fell down under its weight.

  She reached forward. “Give it to me. Give it back.”

  “Funny how vice works.” Cleon tossed the strand of diamonds to Nelo, who caught them like a hungry beggar catching fruit fallen from a farmer’s cart. Cradling the necklace in her bejeweled hands, the precious stones set in her rings dimmed when compared to The Savannah’s Tears. The luster burned brighter than the coldest stars.

  “Yes, funny indeed.” A pleasured smile spread across her face once more. “Boys.”

  Three slaves stepped into the intersection, dark men clad in little more than loincloths and carrying stout staves of ebony. Trembling from head to toe, these broken souls slipped between Manwe, Cleon, and their lady, their eyes to the floor.

  “You should be smarter than this, Nelo,” said Cleon, his smirk unwavering. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and addressed the slaves. “Do you know who we are, boys? Do you know that she is sending you after a sorcerer of great power?”

  “Silence,” shouted Nelo, clutching The Savannah’s Tears to her chest. “Take care of them! You serve me, not him—”

  “Did she tell you who this man is standing behind me?” Cleon asked. “That is Manwe the Panther, the greatest thief in all the lands and a talented murderer.”

  The slaves’ eyes, white and wide in their black faces, shifted in Manwe’s direction. He gripped the handle of his knife and set both feet set apart. “They’re scared, Cleon,” he whispered to his lover’s back. “I’ll not kill them.”

  “Then make whatever you do impressive,” the sorcerer said aloud. “I believe Lady Nelo needs a demonstration.” Without another word, Cleon drew his finger down his face a second time, and as before, he disappeared into the shadows like a wraith.

  “You damned trickster,” Manwe cursed under his breath when he saw Nelo’s smile curl. He drew his knife.

  The lady of the house stood tall once more, her confidence imbued in the cocksure posture. “Kill him or I’ll have you all whipped,” she said simply, half-turning to appraise the necklace again. “The first man to kill him might even win his freedom.”

  The three slaves charged.

  Meeting the first man who entered the short passage between the hall and the treasure chamber, Manwe ducked a clumsy swing of the slave’s club and pushed to the side, using his foe’s momentum to force him into the wall. Spinning into a deep crouch, he threw his leg out, sweeping the slave off his feet.

  Manwe came up and stomped on the first slave’s face, mashing his nose into a bloody pulp as the second slave chopped for his shoulder, forcing him to dodge left. He blocked the second slave’s reverse swing against the flat of his knife and jabbed the man’s floating ribs.

  Paused by the sting, the slave screamed when Manwe drove him to the floor with a brutal kick to the back of his right knee. Manwe dispatched the second slave quickly, an elbow into his temple.

  He readied the third slave’s attack. The stripling froze between him and his lady.

  Manwe stalked forward.

  The slave fled the hallway, shrieking as Manwe darted forward into a sprint. Nelo fell back against the wall as his shadow fell over her, clutching The Savannah’s Tears in one hand as she thrust both of them out to stop his advance.

  Manwe raised his knife and brought it down. The blade buried in the ebony wall next to the highborn lady’s head with a thunk, eliciting a shrill cry from Nelo as she quivered into a terrified ball.

  “I told your husband he had a year to free all the slaves in Tolivius.” Seething at the type of person he had spent most of his life learning to despise, he glowered at the wealthy abuser of his people—of all people held beneath the heel of oppression. Manwe yanked the diamonds out of Nelo’s hands.

  “Tell your husband that he only has six months now,” Manwe said as he left her there to sob and weep.

  “I don’t how I’ll fix this spat between you and Nelo, you know.” Cleon wiped down one of the bottles of sugar drink with a cotton cloth he had borrowed from the barman. “The Senate Consul won’t like it that you stabbed at his wife.”

  “I stabbed at her, not into her. There’s a difference.” Manwe watched the door from the table he and the sorcerer shared near the back of Bacchs, an old tavern the Five Fences had established in the western slums of the city. A pillar of the felonious side of his community, Manwe had been there a few times but appreciated its aims as one of the few places that would give man or a woman a decent cup of clean water and a crust of old bread without fuss.

  The bottles of sugar water, gleaming dark and green in the light of the small oil lamps and smoky hearth at the other end of the room, were lined between him and Cleon, ready for their party guests when they finally arrived.

  “I’ve had a good day, you know,” said Cleon. His brown eyes were a warm caramel.

  Manwe glanced his way. “Aye?”

  “Aye. A bit of running around, a new robe, some good-natured robbery with a very handsome thief...what more could I ask for?”

  He grinned at the compliment. “You certainly caused trouble.”

  “I had a partner who was more than willing to handle his share.”

  Manwe’s smile grew at the ridiculous answer, a quirk he found endearing. Burglary, intrusion, and intimidation were easy things, but to face those he spurned, the people who had once relied on his skills only to see them thrown away for the sake of revolution, made him wonder at the reception he would receive.

  The moody thought dampened the humor Cleon had brought him.

  “Oh, what now, Panther?” asked the sorcerer. “You went from smiling back to glum in an instant.”

  Before he could reply, the battered door of Bacchs swung inward with a bang.

  A group of five led by Legbas scuttled out of the night and into the dimly-lit bar, following as they checked the dark corners of the room for occupants beyond the Manwe, Cleon, and the elderly bartender who snoozed at the counter. The five who followed were immediately recognizable to Manwe as the Five Fences, a collection of four men and one woman who lived lavishly off the percentages they took from all thieves who pilfered Toliviu
s.

  The closest man who followed behind Legbas was Sophicus, who nodded to Manwe when they caught sight of each other.

  “Who’s he?” Legbas asked Manwe when his group reached the table. “Ain’t never seen him before.”

  “He’s with me,” said Manwe. “As sorcerers go, he’s fine.”

  “A sorcerer?” one of the Five Fences asked, a squat woman with red beads around her fat neck. Older in her years than the rest of those who made their money hawking the wares of criminals, she took a half-step back. “You brought someone with juju, Panther?”

  “Is this where I start wiggling my fingers and sparks fly, Manwe?” Cleon asked from his side of the booth, waving his hands in a mock gesture. “Should I show them a trick with shadows?”

  “He’s fine,” Manwe told Anzi, the woman who had addressed him. He glared the sorcerer. “I promise he’ll behave.”

  “So say you,” teased Cleon.

  Sophicus broke forward to lay a smooth hand on a bottle of sugar drink. Tall and a handsome face covered in a dark brown beard, he looked to Manwe as he lifted the vintage. “These for us, Panther?”

  “One for the each of you, plus a few to split up,” replied Manwe. He motioned for the Five Fences to take their bottles. “Go on, find a place to sit and drink.”

  “But we’re not here to drink,” Sophicus said. He held up the bottle against the small oil lamp on the table and grinned at the brown liquid within. “But looser tongues are usually more honest. We’ll come to you in a bit.” He looked back at his fellow fences. “Come get your bottles, you dogs.”

  The Five Fences retreated to one of the tables in the barroom, taking with them one extra bottle not left out for them. Cleon moved to say something before Manwe silenced him with a small signal, his attention focused on Legbas, who had remained.

  The old conman held one of the sugar drink bottles in his gnarled old hand, a sly smile on his lips. “You impress, Panther, even when you go off the page a little bit. The fact that those five didn’t put up a big fuss coming here is a good sign.”

  “Aye, god,” said Manwe. He looked to the door. “Are the city vodunis still coming?”

  “They better,” said Legbas. He opened the fold of his shabby robe to reveal a bunch of cannabis tied together by a small white string. “Can’t smoke this all myself, you know.”

  “I might help you with that, old man,” said Cleon. He pushed out his chair and dusted the front of his new robe. “I’m not much for drinking anyway.”

  Before Legbas and Cleon wandered away from the table and out into the night to smoke their holy herbs, Manwe called, “Legbas.”

  The old man turned back. “Yes, god?”

  “The Songbird,” said Manwe. “Is she coming?”

  “Who knows, Panther,” replied the old conman. “I left her a few notes. If she shows she shows, if not...”

  “I understand,” said Manwe, waving him and Cleon to go on their way.

  Manwe sat there at his table in silence, observing the Five Fences as they drank the liquor he had stolen and caroused, whispering secrets to each other that only those who partook in the illegal trades shared. For long minutes, maybe an hour, the five of them carried on until Sophicus rose from his chair, red-faced as he came back to Manwe’s table.

  “Mind if I…?” Sophicus asked, holding up his near-empty bottle.

  Manwe nodded toward a place on the other side of the table, the spot where Cleon had rested. “Feel free to take another bottle. I brought plenty.”

  Sophicus lowered into his seat and threw back the sugar drink in one last shot. He wiped his wet mouth with his hairy forearm. “Before you got into the business with those spear-chuckers.”

  “Careful, Sophicus,” Manwe said. He lifted his eyes to the fence. “Those are my people.”

  “No, we are your people,” he replied. “The streets were your home before the hills were, no matter if you arose from them or not.”

  Manwe scratched his woolen beard, picking out a gnat that had gotten too close to the skin of his cheek. “I didn’t come here to debate politics, Sophicus. It’s not why I had Legbas call you.”

  “Legbas didn’t fucking call me, Panther,” Sophicus said. He grabbed another bottle and pulled out a small dagger to trim off the wax seal. “I’ve been waiting for this day.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes, I have,” he continued, his tone taking on an air of annoyance. “Revolutions, activism, organization—they work for criminals but never for good men. You’re a good man, Manwe, and you finally learned the folly of it.”

  “I rebelled for my people.” Manwe gripped the edge of the round table between him and the fence. “I fought so that Juutan children didn’t have to whore themselves in the streets, or live in chains at the beck and call of some abusive petty lord who valued status over flesh and blood.”

  “And now you’re fucking a Gypian sorcerer and meeting with those same lords you drew your knife against.”

  Manwe almost lurched out of his chair; his fingers dug into the cracked wood.

  Sophicus grinned at his reaction. “What? You think you’re the only one who has friends or loose tongues? I always knew about Toba,” he said, motioning to the other fences at the nearby table. “We all did.”

  “Then why did you never say anything? Why did you do nothing when Leomachus took him?” Manwe struggled to level his voice. “Why didn’t any of you care?”

  “Because he earned it. The rules for criminals have always been clear on that,” said Sophicus. “The hard thing you revolutionaries never seem to grasp is that you make the beds you lie in.” Freeing the bottle of its cork with his teeth, he took a hard draw of the fiery liquor. He made a sour face. “Will you fucking drink with me, Panther? You make me fucking nervous when you’re this serious.”

  Paused on his adversary’s words, Manwe took the bottle and sipped. The brown drink bit his tongue with raw sugar, sweet but harsh. It rolled down his throat to form a knot in the center of his stomach. He coughed. “You demean me for having the courage to do what you and the rest of our ilk should have been doing all along.”

  “How do you think that?” asked Sophicus, retrieving the bottle to drink again.

  “We’re criminals.” Manwe loosened his grip on the table’s edge and took a deep breath. “We do not steal, smuggle, or murder because we were born to it—no, not for a moment. We’re criminals because we were forced to the bottom by those who did the exact same things we did, but they started out with the money we never had. We give them permission to do it, we work with them, but when it comes time to pay for the deed they are the last to take responsibility. They never give back. It is an unearned privilege and nothing else.”

  Sophicus stared hard. The two remained quiet, letting the chatter from the other table thread the silence with laughter and idle conversation.

  “Then why did you stop fighting them?” Sophicus asked when the quiet went for too long.

  “Because I’d rather live in a corrupt world filled with thieves, lords, and liars than one filled the dead and the damned.” Manwe retrieved the bottle from Sophicus and swallowed more of its fire. “I thought Toba’s brother would lead us right, or at least would be better than he turned out to be. He threw in with a voduni who is ready to raise the dead to destroy Tolivius, and—”

  “One moment,” Sophicus interrupted. “Toba’s brother is a leader of the rebels?

  Manwe nodded. “He was a good man.”

  “And this voduni wants to raze this city to the ground with the undead?”

  He nodded a second time.

  Sophicus glanced all around the barroom, his mouth agape as his brow knit in troubled thought. He opened and closed the hand he had placed on the table between himself and Manwe, at which point the latter handed over the bottle of sugar drink. Sophicus took four hard gulps before he slammed it down on the table.

  “I have to tell you, Panther,” he said, “I came here tonight because I was sure you were fi
nally going to fess up to the foolishness you involved yourself in.”

  “There’s more,” Manwe said, grabbing a new bottle. This time he used his own knife to whittle away the wax. “Gypus is ready to march their great armies upon us, especially after what happened to the Latian I slew. You, the rebels, lords, the entire city. The mad voduni Kosey follows wants them here. He would turn the dead created by what is coming into something to take out everyone who is not him.”

  Sophicus snatched the bottle as soon as the cork was free. He held the green glass when he raised it to his lips, his bright eyes hard on Manwe. He sipped a small amount of the liquor. “What’s your plan?”

  Manwe shrugged. “I will stop them.”

  Sophicus made a rude sound in his throat. “What, you and that sorcerer you brought?”

  “That sorcerer helped me make a deal with the powerful of Gypus,” Manwe informed him. “Our hope was that those in the dark would be ready to help as well.”

  The fence eyed him before scratching the brown scruff on his cheeks. He looked to his four friends at the other table and sighed. “You keep getting me in trouble, Panther.”

  “Does that mean you’ll help?”

  “There’s always honor amongst thieves,” said Sophicus. “Especially when it could cost us our hides.”

  Manwe exited Bacchs a few minutes after Sophicus left, armed with a bottle of sugar drink and his knife. Outside the balmy air clung to his lithe muscular form, refreshment from the smokiness of the bar. Thick storm clouds obscured the night sky, and over the howling of stray dogs and broken smatters of shouting and noise, a far-off rumble echoed to warn of the coming rain.

  Manwe spotted a cluster of folk off the right. They stood, engulfed in white smoke, in the mouth of one of the many alleys along the backstreet. Shaking the bottle in his hand to ease the nervousness, he approached the miasma of chronic and entered, his eyes immediately irritated by a hazy irritation.

  Within the fog of sweet-smelling weed, he found Cleon and Legbas, standing side by side as they conversed with two men and two women garbed in a variety of animal hides and bedecked in scores of beaded bracelets and necklaces. Their dusky faces lined and smudged with white ritual paint, they listened as Cleon waxed on snatches of a subject that Manwe tried hard to recognize.