All thieves fall, eventually. You can only fly from man's law: nature's law is inescapable, and will inevitably cut you down, bring you back to the dust from whence you came. But still, they buried him with string and a needle. Just in case. Old traditions weren't to be ignored, after all. It wasn't a touching burial, he had only lasted a year as the Panther, and the streets already echoed with rumours of his replacement. The Underboss, Orlin, shoveled the last load of wet, stinking dirt onto the old Panther’s grave and spat, leaning on the shovel like a crutch. He had never liked the deceased man, but Orlin liked his successor even less. She was one of those new young upstarts, playing at rings in the Dyrslast and trying not to die too horribly painfully, unaware of the ancient tradition that the games really were, unaware that they were to be honoured. With a disapproving grunt, Orlin threw his shovel at his attendant and wiped his grimy hands on the man’s coat (his own was too costly, silk imported from Hallowdell with embroidery of something suspiciously like moonsilver). He’d met her only twice, he mused as he limped along the soggy dirt alleyway, away from the grave, but there was something about her that made him want to run away as fast as he could, screaming. Which was funny, considering that she was two heads shorter than he and walked slightly hunched over, as if there was a piece of her missing and it twisted her inside. Orlin reached into his pocket and grimaced when his fingers touched the silver needle and thread that he’d carried around with him since he was old enough to remember. /Silver to protect you should the Unbound ever come, String & sew to guide you back from Etrich to your home./ His mother’s voice echoed in his head and his grip on the needle tightened briefly until he forced himself to relax, fingers twitching at his sides. She was just a thief, in a city of thieves, and there was no way she was Unbound, or feyrie, as some of the locals called it. Orlin took a deep breath in, letting the smoggy air fill his lungs. However unsettling she might be, she was just a thief, and once she was no longer useful he was going to kill her, as he had all the others. He would kill her, he nodded to himself, and delight in burying her, to rot in the damp ground with all her predecessors. No string or needle- just in case.
