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

  Breaking the surface of the water, Manwe emerged from the warmth of the sloshing reek. The clammy liquid soured his mouth as he searched, and seeing a dim spot of yellow on the white floor of the pool, he squatted in the water. Eyes shut by the stinging salt, he grabbed at whatever he could touch. His fingers closed on the hem of Cleon’s robe, and he yanked until the sorcerer was close enough to grab.

  Lifting Cleon from the pool’s bottom, he rose in the midst of a pitched fight.

  Roald batted the lamprey in the mouth, the Torch blazing in a divine light. The rod left black lashes on the pale hide of the monster. They knocked each other around the corners of the pool, striking and whipping until they were spent. The lamprey let out a great wail, a keening cry, and slumped back into the water.

  Manwe dragged Cleon out, leaving the sorcerer on the pool’s edge so he could check on Roald. The centaur sprawled on the pool’s bottom, his equine forelegs broken, but his human half out of the reddened water. Burns and bite marks had left bloody, black holes over his body, and yet through the agony he mustered a smile when Manwe approached. “You can come closer,” he said, wheezing.

  Manwe touched his burnt arm gently. “Can you stand?”

  “No. The Destined Beast is dead, but it has brought me to my end as well.” He winced, his arms splayed on the marble edge of the pool. “Tell me, man...was I glorious?”

  “You were better,” he said, unsure of the question. “What do I do? How do I take care of you?”

  “Take care of me?” Roald chuckled weakly. “There is no greater comfort you can provide than what comes for me. I only beg...” He coughed up water and blood, and slowly reached out with the Centaurian Torch, the rod unblemished from the fight. “This cannot reach your world again. It must be left behind or it will set kingdoms ablaze.”

  “What can I do?”

  “When you reach the columns at the temple’s entrance, touch them all with the Torch and throw it back into the first hall. My gods will take it from there.” He gasped, tensed as he whispered his final words. “Do it for those who live today so they will not… be damned… like we were.”

  He touched the rod to the first column on the right. Manwe ran from one end of the temple’s entrance to the other, banging the Centaurian Torch on the stone the way a child ran a stick across a piece of fencing. The tings of the metal rang odd notes, which were lost as the roof groaned. Cracks appeared in the columns, small at first, until the fluted lengths were covered in fissures.

  With Cleon set on his shoulder, he tossed the Torch into the waiting maw of the entrance and ran, never looking back to watch the ancient place fall to pieces with a rumble. The ground shook beneath them until Manwe found his way to the cave’s mouth. The jungle air outside was cool and fresh, a welcome relief to the stale underground.

  Leaving the sorcerer in the grass, he recovered his knife and plopped down beside Cleon, caught in the middle of a starless night. Animals called, the trees roared the wind’s song, and past the darkness, the world moved. With no way forward and nothing to do, Manwe sat there and thought on everything that had happened: his choices, the loss of Toba, these mad quests for riches and objects of power.

  He wondered if there was a point.

  Hours passed by, and the coming day crusted the sky bronze. Cleon sat up on his elbows, his eyes closed to slits as he tried to gain his bearings. “Ah, Panther. Still here?”

  Manwe flipped his knife in his long fingers, the blade’s iron cold to the touch. “What did you think I’d do?”

  “I thought you’d run. Or cut my throat.” The sorcerer sat up straight, brushing off the elbows of his dirty yellow robe. “I take it you left the Torch behind?”

  “I collapsed the temple as well. Nobody will ever use it. Not my side or yours.”

  He blew a breath though his pursed lips and chuckled. “And here I thought you’d at least think better.”

  “Cleon,” said Manwe, “how close am I?”

  He laughed at the question. “With your little knife?”

  “I’m close enough that you won’t get the words out in time for a spell, I’d imagine.” Manwe looked hard at him. “Aren’t I?”

  Cleon swallowed, his smile strained. He relaxed his posture. “So I’m to die.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t kill unless I have to.” Manwe sunk at the explanation, remembering the lord he had murdered for the death of Toba. Part of him wanted to murder Cleon in the same way, but another part, one shrouded in the subterranean past, felt a tug of temptation. “We lost today. I lost my prize. You failed your mission. There’s no need to end this in further ruin.”

  “So what now?”

  Manwe rose to his feet and looked westward, where he knew his savannah waited. “I’m going home. You can follow, but if you try to harm me, I will do what I must.”

  Cleon moved to his feet, brushing off the skirt of his yellow frock. “And if I do try something?”

  Manwe left his enemy behind as he searched for a path in the trees and brush of the jungle. He had almost left the glade when Cleon called to him.

  “You surprised me, Panther,” said the sorcerer. “A thief is a thief. And you are truly a master.”

  He stopped at the edge of darkness and turned. “You surprised me as well.”

  Cleon beamed with his handsome smile. “How so?”

  “A sorcerer is just a sorcerer, it seems. I expect better trickery.” Manwe returned to his trek. “Next time.”

  THE END

  3

  By the Tears

  Manwe ducked into the narrow lane between the manor’s perimeter wall and the next home beside it, checking behind him to see if he had been followed. He palmed the linen wrappings tied around his hands and wrists in the dark, counting his lock picks until he was satisfied they were all there.

  A pair of the manor’s guards walked past the alley’s northern mouth, talking to themselves while paying little attention to the world around them. Manwe stood frozen in the shadows, clutching at the knife tucked in the back of his loincloth’s waistband. When they were gone, he eased, beginning his search of the two walls sandwiching him. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he spotted cracks in the plaster, exposed bricks that offered worthy edges for his roughened feet.

  Manwe charged to the right. He brought his right foot up and pushed off of one of the exposed bricks, propelling himself hard to the left. He kicked hard to reach the top of the barrier.

  Pulling himself up, he found himself blocked by the great girth of an old mopane tree, its butterfly leaves alive in the breeze. On hands and feet, Manwe crawled through the foliage, slinking and slipping past the branches.

  Through the boughs he spied a great party on the lawn as far as he could see. Patrons in bright linen robes and tunics traipsed about the green wearing garish masks, their wine cups loose in their hands while naked black servants refreshed them with the finest libations the Senate Consul of Tolivius could afford in a frontier territory.

  More importantly, Manwe noticed that no guards patrolled the gathering.

  These lords and ladies of the city, lost in their revelry, barely noticed when he dropped from the tree. One woman near the wall laughed and pointed as he calmly walked by, whispering something to the man she hung on about how overdressed he was in his loincloth. He ignored the pair and filtered into the crowd, grabbing a tray of half-eaten food that someone had left on one of the feasting tables. Holding up the square of bronze, he grunted under its weight as more people loaded it with empty cups and pieces of partially-chewed food.

  “Really, Taeus,” said one of the ladies he passed by, her face covered in the glaring mask of a centaur. “Have you seen her? The Senate Consul’s wife acts positively the part of a whore.”

  “Well, it is an orgy, dear,” said her partner, a slight of a man who held his annoyance behind a fine lion mask, complete with a pair of teeth and a full mane. They tottered off, mumbling more insults about their h
osts.

  The crowds thickened the closer he came to the main home, and strange cries rose over the musicians set beneath a nearby veranda. Parting the sea of bodies, Manwe pierced the multitudes until he reached a patio set before a series of double stairs leading up to the household. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the red marble terrace.

  A throng of people, naked and greased with oil, twisted and meshed together in an intense orgy before the eyes of the other guests. Women moaned in pleasure as they gyrated atop, beneath, and before their partners, nude men who ignored those watching them to focus on their singular pleasures.

  Manwe watched in shocked awe as these people, some of them prostitutes he knew through contacts in Tolivius’ underworld, slammed themselves into each other. He almost wondered why the Senate Consul would put on such a display until he scanned the party-goers mashed around him. Rich lords and ladies stared luridly, their hands lifting the hems of tunics to free their penises or probe areas no decent aristocrat would dare to in public. Some even engaged, throwing their partner onto the grass or a table to mount them.

  The satin gleam on the muscular chest of one man drew his eyes. Another’s legs and butt caught his attention, and a stirring rose from the depths of his being. This stirring was shattered when he noticed one person in the center of the orgy was having a better time than others, a woman he recognized almost immediately.

  Sweat beaded Lady Nelo’s body as she bounced atop a man who was not her husband, the Senate Consul of Tolivius. Her narrow face and high cheekbones shone in the light of the bonfires set around the patio, her pouty lips twisted in delicate ecstasy. Losing herself in a mixture of laughter and orgasm as her consort spent himself in her, she rose and moved to the next man, an amazed noble no older than seventeen. It was not her wantonness or beauty that beguiled Manwe, but the chain of sparkling lights that waved and bounced upon her full breasts. Around her neck draped a wondrous necklace, the only piece of garb on her bared form. Each bead was pure diamond, one of dozens, a rare treasure known as “The Savannah’s Tears.” An artifact of the old world where Manwe’s people had ruled the plains, such a treasure would secure more than a fat payday for a thief—he could fund a rebellion.

  “There she is,” Manwe said, more to himself than anyone around him.

  “Oh, quite,” said one of the ladies beside him in the crowd. She had lifted the skirt of her floor-length white dress up her hips, exposing her groin so she could rub herself. “But I’ll show her.”

  He ignored the noblewoman, refocused on the task at hand. He had begun to plan his theft when he caught a flash of movement at the edge of his vision. A shadow passed from the manor wall far to his right, darting into the bushes. Manwe’s attention to his prize went away against a troubling new truth:

  Someone else had decided to work the party tonight.

  Manwe entered the household, mixing with the other black servants who paid him no mind as if he were one of their own. He ambled behind a pair of servers on the way to the kitchen. Spotting an alcove farther down the side hall, he jogged past them when they turned into the busy storm of cooks screaming at each other to rush out more food. Waiting for a few minutes, he ducked out from his hiding place to hunt down the second thief.

  Passing by the chambers of the inner halls, doors lay open to more orgies, more drinking, and a few stunk of yellow lotus, a potent drug used by many wealthy westerners. The stench of burnt resin muddied the air.

  A door cracked open. A woman stepped out, no older than twenty. She wore a tight canvas shirt to flatten her breasts to her chest, as well as a loincloth much like Manwe’s. Lengths of linen wrapped her hands and forearms all the way up to the elbow, a common practice among the city’s smarter thieves.

  She looked at Manwe with curiosity, which bloomed into recognition before settling into smug satisfaction. “My, my, my... the Panther prowls.”

  “And the Songbird settles in the wrong tree. Again.” Manwe stood at his full height, a head taller than her. He held his hands out to the sides in a gesture of non-aggression. “Folami.”

  “It is quite interesting to see you here, Panther.” Folami put her hands out as well, a common sign among thieves for parlay. “I never thought these kinds of jobs attracted you.”

  “Why are you here?” he asked. “I sent out my notice to Sophicus and his fences. I claimed this party for the entire night.”

  “Did you?” she asked in mock innocence, putting a hand to her chest. “I must not have heard the call.”

  “Then rectify your mistake. Get out of here.”

  “No.”

  He balked at her. “Excuse me?”

  “I said no,” she reaffirmed, meeting his edged tone. “Just because you’re the favorite of the fences doesn’t mean you get to pick and choose your targets. I saw this house first.”

  “There are rules and traditions. They keep us from each other’s throats.”

  “Says the man who cuts the necks of his buyers.”

  He quieted at the retort, his shoulders slack. “Why are you even here?”

  “The rich throw a party, they break out their jewels and gold and silver...” Folami threw her hands up and twirled on her toes in a sensuous circle. “How could one resist?”

  “I’m here for The Savannah’s Tears. All the brooches, bangles, earrings, jewels... whatever you want, take it, but that strand of diamonds is mine.”

  “If you can get it first.”

  “I dare you to try it. If one thief steals another’s claim...well, I would be within my rights. This time, at least.”

  “Oh, would you?” Folami asked, the levity of her posture replaced with a rigid stance. “And what happens then, Panther? In the last three months you’ve lost your fence because of your recklessness, you slew a buyer, and rumor abound that you were captured by the Gypians. I doubt the fences of the city will remain as idle when they see more blood on your hands, especially the blood of a thief. There is only so much a reputation can cover.”

  “Leave it alone, Folami. I need those diamonds.”

  “For your petty revolution?” she asked, scoffing.

  “Yes.”

  She dimmed at the answer, the tension leaving her smooth cheeks and pouting her mouth. A quick smile reclaimed her a moment later. “Let’s play a game. Something simple, in the tradition of the best thieves. Fences still think you’re the best, if not the best in the entire Gypian Empire. I think they’re mistaken.”

  “Get to the point.”

  Folami nodded slightly, her grin wider. “I will let you have the Tears. If they are the only thing you are here for, why stop you? But I say I can get to them first. If I do, you will never ever step on my jobs again, no matter if you claimed them before or not. You arrive to knock over a house and I’m there, you turn and walk away.”

  “And if I win?” asked Manwe.

  “If you win, you get the necklace, credit for the job, and more importantly, I will put in a fair word for you next time I meet my fence. You know how a good word bolsters and spreads.”

  “Not as quickly as a poor one.” The idea of a better reputation aside, something old and vigorous reignited within, a call back to a time when the future was not weighted on burning cities and hard-won freedom. Manwe let go of his knife. “I want any loot that is taken during the contest, yours and mine. I will hand it over if I lose.”

  She put out her hand. “Done.”

  As they shook, a great commotion rang out, one so loud that the participants of the various room parties emerged to follow it. Swept up in the sudden traffic, Manwe and Folami marched in the surge. The lines shambled back out to the lawn at the rear of the manor, where the main orgy had paused to take in a spectacle of sight and sound.

  Fireworks sparked the night sky as writhing serpents slithered between explosions of multicolored light, leaving behind paths of flame and lightning. Fresh stars appeared, blazing as they rained glimmering sparks that faded before they touched naked flesh. Some remained as the
y fell, slowing their descent until they floated like dancing fireflies.

  Beneath this wonder of lights and explosions stood a tall man in a yellow robe, his wide sleeves pulled back to expose his sinewy and tattooed arms. Silky brown hair hung down to his shoulders to frame a narrow and handsome face fitted with a beaming smile. The sorcerer spun with his hands out, dancing as he loosed another volley of magic.

  People cheered and clapped, but for Manwe there was no happiness to be found in what he saw. “Oh, no,” he said. “Not now.”

  “Friend of yours?” asked Folami, crushed into the spot next to him.

  “That’s Cleon, a thief-chaser and sorcerer.” Manwe let out a great sigh. “And this night just became harder for the both of us.”

  Lady Nelo, still wearing The Savannah’s Tears, clapped as Cleon’s display ended, her coated body shining in the light of his lingering magic. “Fantastic, Lord Cleon,” she proclaimed loudly, wet hands slapping together. “If only my husband could have torn himself from whatever he’s doing to witness such wonder.”

  Manwe watched from afar as the sorcerer bowed deeply before her. “Lady Nelo, I am simply happy to have pleased you with my skill. I’m so very thankful to have been invited to celebrate such auspicious guests,” he replied, equally loud and equally contrived.

  “Why are they shouting?” Folami asked Manwe.

  Manwe waited for the conversation to continue between Cleon and Nelo, but the two drew closer to each other and kept their words between them. “There’s always time to reaffirm relationships between the law and the wealthy. We just caught the first act.”

  “Gypians are so odd.”

  He hummed in agreement. Lady Nelo and the sorcerer conversed, and suddenly she placed a hand on Cleon’s face. The latter froze, his smile forced as he quickly spoke a string of unreadable words. Her hand came down and she turned, not as pleased as she had been.