The Thief of Thieves

Each night after she would wait for me at the bed's edge, where she would wrap her thighs around me and make me once more speak to her with my vulgar tongue, where the languages became singular and one, and I spoke them to her better than any other.

Her humming had inspired me, and I set out to make for her a harp. I found dark wood and laboured day after day to carve it. With eager freshness, she stood over my shoulder on those days I worked, trying to understand my purpose. When at last I had strung the harp, I brought it to her and played what few notes I knew. Her mouth widened at the sound, and her eyes watered as she took it into her hands. With a big jump, she embraced me and took to playing at once, and each night she played and hummed as we sat by the hearth.

Her laugh became the most beautiful sound in the world, and I became eager to please her, tending to her every want and need. I furrowed a field that she might grow her own herbs and fruits, and I led back to her cottage two goats and three sheep found in the hills. And I promised her, one day, I would learn to build a loom if she wished.

In those days, neither of us wanted for pleasure, but I always wanted for her.

One evening, she took my hand and led me from the cottage to where I'd first had her in the grass. She pressed me down and sat naked atop me, pulling me into her. The fight and the struggle were gone out of us, and she ground against me, wrapping her hands around my shoulders as we brought one another to the edge of pleasure. She breathed and moaned into me, and I into her, and I pulled her as deeply into my arms as I could, until we folded into one another like air into air. Our wet lips kissed in the cool night and a tingle surged from my elbows to my toes until I could go no more, and I filled her with my seed.

She didn't try to stand, but lay kissing me until I slipped out of her. As she broke our kiss, her eyes shone in an arrangement of tender love and need, and so did mine.

I kissed her forehead, and we rose to return to our cottage.

As we entered, she stopped in the door, her hand clutching for mine.

Inside, there stood a man no taller than me, a wine-red cape on his shoulders. In his right hand he held one of my won rubies, and in his left was a short staff around which two serpents were wrapped and writhed with life. I knew him at once to be Mercury, the god of eloquence and divination and thieves.

"Too long have you lived in my house," he said as he set down the ruby.

My little river stone moved in front of me, her arms out.

"This may be your house,"—I stepped ahead of her—"but here I have built a home."

He looked at my river stone. "Come," he demanded, his voice rough, his dark eyes like coal as he stared past me. His voice was loud, like the roll of thunder, and she seemed to feel it too. She stepped towards him, but I stopped her with outstretched hands.

"You are unwelcome here," I said. Her fingers clenched my arm, and the fear that moved through her moved through me, too. He stared at us, his eyes as cold and uncertain as the night sky. My river stone pulled at my arm to move me back, but I held my ground before him. We were naked, and I without my blade, but with her so fearful I would do what I must.

The knife was on the table near to where he stood. All I had to do was reach it.

"You are a man of taste." He picked up another ruby. "And I respect a man who takes what he wants. So perhaps I can settle the matter here and now." He set the red stone down and, as he did, the table overflowed with rubies. Hundreds of the stones appeared from nothing on the wood, and they came in all sizes, glittering by the light of the hearth. Some spilled over the table's edge and fell next to his feet, but still others stood bright and opulent around my knife. "I do not wish to see my nymph troubled by your departure, so I offer you this gift. It is more wealth than any plebeian could want."

I looked between him and the table and settled my eyes on his. "I have already taken what I want."

He looked taken aback, but he only laughed. He waved his hand over the pile of stones and the rubies disappeared. "You have, haven't you?" He clapped. "And I must applaud the aplomb of a thief who would steal from the god of thieves and then live in the very house he has robbed. It is that vainglory which I find so deliciously human—and it is for that reason alone that you are still alive."

"A man need only try his hand to find that is not the only reason." I stepped nearer to him and the blade, my little river stone close behind.

"I have seen how this ends for you, butcher," he spat. "Manacled in Tartarus, with only ash in your mouth and cold metal against you. But my nymph seems fond of you, so I offer you one last chance to leave her with me." He held his free hand out. "Lara, if you come to me now he might yet live."

She tugged on my arm and moved it aside.

"Don't," I said, but she stepped in front of me.

Before me, she turned and looked back, her eyes darting between each of mine. There was a hopeless sadness to her, and, as she stretched on her toes to kiss me, I felt it too. Her hands went to my cheeks, and then she turned away with tears in her eyes.

Shaking, she took his outstretched hand. Mercury drew her close, looking at me with a crooked smile.

I could only clench my jaw. I would have killed him a hundred times to never see her so hurt. He turned her to face me, her cheeks red as his arm crossed her body, fingers resting just above the opening of her thighs. He dragged them up and down her skin until she squirmed.

Nearer, I stepped to the knife that laid on the table. His fingers drew circles between her legs, and my little river stone let out a whimper.

"Have you forgotten to whom you belong?" He kissed the lobe of her ear. Her own hands were at her sides, her body daring not to resist him as he teased. My face burned in fury as I watched. He cast his smile towards me, and I knew what I had to do. I stepped nearer to the knife. I could almost reach.

His hand fell sharply on her rear and she cried out in a sound I'd never heard her make before—pain. "Has he broken you? Do you forget your place?"

I could take no more. I cried out, lunging for the blade.

He was in front of me before I'd taken a step. He struck me in the chest, and I fell backwards, landing hard on wooden slats.

Then he was on top of me. His eyes were hollow, and the black in them was without love, like all the waters of the Styx. Carelessly, he reached back to the knife on the table.

How many times I had stood over a man with that look in my eye?

I looked at her, my little river stone, who stood shocked and shivering across the room.

"Run," I said, and as I did, the knife moved through me.

***

Mercury stood no taller than I as he waited at the river Lethe. The red cape on his shoulders remained still as he held his short white staff against his body. The manacles he had stamped upon me were black and heavy, their chains swaddled around me. For no more than a breath could I lift my arms above my chest, and each step I made was small and laborious.

He led me beneath the screeching gates of Tartarus, hideous hydra heads twisting and snapping like knotted ropes that whipped and broke above us.

I trudged onto those grey wastes, without hope or joy until, at last, when my legs could take me no farther, he bade me sit upon a wide flat stone. The sky was adamantine grey, meeting the horizon at a narrow black squeak of eternity, and before us the land was an artifact of despair, with not a thing but ashen stone on all those limits.

He shackled my chains to the rock beneath and crouched spryly next to me, a hand on my shoulder.

"Here," he said, "is your house." His other hand stretched out across the flat wastes. "Now may you build your home."

THE END