He would live until Athena returned. And Andie and Henry could still use him. What he began to lack in strength, he still made up for in speed.
“Hermes?” Andie asked. “Are you okay?”
He moved away before she could put a hand on his bony shoulder.
“Fine. Now come on. I want to introduce you to my old friend.”
* * *
Hephaestus welcomed them himself. No servants. No pretty blond maid. And no leg braces, that Hermes could see. He greeted them in a motorized chair, a blanket over his lap.
“I recognize them,” he said after two awkward handshakes. Henry did a decent job of it, but Andie couldn’t figure out how to lace her fingers through his gnarled grip. “But they don’t recognize me.”
“They don’t have their old memories. But they know who they are.”
Hermes nudged Andie discreetly. She hadn’t blinked since they’d walked through the door.
“He’s kind of … handsome,” she whispered after Hephaestus turned his chair away and went down the hall with Henry. “I thought he was supposed to be an ugly god.”
“He is, I suppose. Ugly for a god. But all that meant on Olympus was that he had a club foot. And I wouldn’t mention that foot, if I were you.”
Andie made a face. “He was hot from the ankle up and you called him ugly? You guys are dicks.”
“Yes, that’s a real news flash.” Hermes took her by the arm and pulled her along. They walked a few steps behind as Hephaestus led them through the various hallways and connected rooms, giving them a tour of sorts. There was a story around every corner, some architectural tidbit or the tale of this or that chunk of worked metal. They walked, and he whirred, most of his attention on Henry.
“This feels like a maze,” Andie whispered. “If I lived here I’d have to mark my way with string.”
They paused at a set of stairs. But before anyone could look uncomfortable, Hephaestus maneuvered his chair toward the wall, and it engaged with a lift mechanism. And so the tour continued, until they reached the fourth floor.
“Just how many floors does this place have?” Hermes asked.
“Not nearly as many above as it does below,” Hephaestus answered. “Why? Are you getting tired?” He looked back jovially, but his smile faltered as Hermes wiped sweat from his brow. “Just a few more rooms.”
By the time they turned through the last, Hermes had begun to agree with Andie, who suspected that the house didn’t obey any physical laws. But then they walked through the last door, and Hermes found himself looking down on the large central room where he’d dined with Hephaestus on his first visit. It was lit with the same combination of fireplaces and lamps, giving the marble floor a parchment yellow glow.
“Here we are,” Hephaestus announced.
“Back to the center,” Hermes mused. “How do we get down? Is there lunch?”
Hephaestus chuckled. He took Henry by the arm and gestured up. Hermes looked as well. What he saw almost made his stomach drop into his shoes.
The Shield of Achilles was mounted to the center of the ceiling, where a skylight might normally be. Instead the metal caught only the barest reflection of light. To Henry and Andie, it probably looked like nothing more than a black circle. Only Hermes’ immortal eyes could detect the intricate detail work: the world laid out in each ring, from the constellations and cosmos to the vast ocean. And in between, cities and cattle and war. Farmers reaping their fields. Peace and strife.
“Is that real?” Hermes asked.
“Of course it is,” Hephaestus replied. “It’s my finest work. It was never lost. When the mortal world no longer required it, I took it back.” Hephaestus studied the shield and its housing with pride. “I mounted it there in one day.”
The shield sat in the middle of a system of steel girders, welded and arranged at angles so that they formed a latticework, similar to a spider web. The last of the girders attached to the wall just above their shoulders, and similar pieces attached to the doorway on the opposite side of the open room. No doubt Hephaestus had done all the welding and construction himself. To him, no skylight could have ever been more beautiful than this dark one, reflecting mellow orange flames.
“But now let’s go down to the main level.” Hephaestus moved his chair back into the twisting hallways. “And discuss a new shield.”
* * *
Inside the large, ground-level room, Hermes began to despair of scoring another gourmet lunch. He hadn’t seen a single servant since they’d arrived, and hadn’t heard anyone humming in any room that might be a kitchen. The air smelled like iron and faintly of sulfur. He walked the length of the room restlessly, half an ear cast toward whatever dull industrial story Hephaestus was telling Henry at the moment. Henry, to his credit, appeared enthralled. Andie just seemed bored. After the initial handshake, she’d been largely ignored. Hermes wondered why Hephaestus had even asked her to come.
Maybe he’ll get to her next. Or maybe he’s just too taken with Henry.
Hermes smiled. That was good. It meant a better shield. He tapped his foot, and looked over the oil paintings on the walls and down into the shadowy corners. His eyes narrowed. What first appeared to be a black rectangle painted onto the floor was on closer inspection a stairway cut through the marble. Hermes walked toward it and sniffed. If Hephaestus kept his bellows down there, he couldn’t smell them, or detect any heat.
“Hephaestus.” Hermes gestured toward the stairs. “Does that lead to your bellows?”
Hephaestus turned his chair away from Henry and stared down into the dark space.
“I have no bellows, anymore.”
Hermes blinked. No bellows. No forge?
“I suppose not.” He looked at the robotics of the motorized chair. “You must have new ways of doing things. As long as it comes from your hand, the shield will have no equal.”
He waited for his friend to say something else, but the silence stretched out. Hermes’ stomach began to tighten.
“Hephaestus? What’s going on?”
“Hermes,” Hephaestus said quietly. “You always run in too soon.”
Andie and Henry looked up in alarm. Too soon. Too soon and too careless.
A house empty of servants. How many of these doors have locked behind us?
“What have you done?” Hermes asked.
But Hephaestus didn’t need to answer. On the opposite side of the room, from the opposite side of the house, a large set of doors opened on Achilles and the twisted, conjoined form of the Moirae. Achilles entered half-smiling, and the Moirae walked in behind him.
Walked was a strong word. Joined as they were, it was less a walk than a jerking shuffle. Each limb operated on its own in a left to right sequence. Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis. Or more accurately, Atropos, and the emptying yolk sacs that were once Clotho and Lachesis. Clotho’s arm twisted around her dark sister’s back and disappeared into her skin. Both Lachesis’ arms were still visible, but the one nearest Atropos had joined to her rib cage. Sooty purple rags draped across their parts to preserve modesty and hide whatever monstrous melding had taken place at their hips and legs.
Hermes could barely think. The only thing that popped into his head was the image of a brick wall, as if that could somehow bar the Moirae from entering his mind. One brick wall, that they’d chip and chisel at until the mortar gave and it tumbled down around his ears.
Stop. Be yourself. Be quick. Before they freeze your legs and you’re all dead.
But his legs wouldn’t budge. Whether it was due to fear or the Fates’ interference didn’t seem to matter.
* * *
Seeing Achilles again was the last thing Henry had expected. But he’d thought about it plenty. About what he would say. What it would be like to come face-to-face with the boy who betrayed them. The boy who killed Odysseus, and who had killed Henry, too, in their other life. In Henry’s imagination, their meeting was always the same. Achilles won. Now Achilles was here, and it took everything Henry had not
to turn tail and run. But he was acutely aware of Andie, standing on the other side of the room. Andie, who would probably do something very brave, and very stupid.
The fists that hung by his sides clenched tighter. No one would lay a hand on her, as long as he stood.
Achilles paced lightly in front of him, the walk of a caged lion. His eyes never left Henry’s. Not for one second. Demeter had been right. Killing Henry was all he wanted.
“You’re unarmed,” Henry said.
Achilles stopped and held out his empty hands.
“No spear in your chest today. Nothing so easy. This time I want to do it up close.”
“All that time we trained together this winter,” Henry said. “You know I don’t remember being Hector. I guess that doesn’t make a difference.”
“Not a bit. No amount of time is going to make me forget what I lost. What you took. My best friend. And you thought you were killing me.”
Henry wondered what part stung Achilles worse. The loss of Patroclus, or the idea that Hector had thought, however briefly, that he was the better fighter.
“What would you know about friendship?” Andie shouted. “Odysseus was your friend!”
“Our sides weren’t the same,” Achilles replied, as if that explained everything.
But that was how Achilles worked. In simple terms. With or against. Not in complex terms like right or wrong. Henry wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did. Another ghost of a memory, tattooed into his skin.
“It must have been hard,” Henry said, “to throw that sword into Odysseus instead of me. It must’ve been hard to pretend that you could become a friend.”
“Pretending?” Achilles asked. “Is that what you think I did?” He shook his head, almost sadly.
“I would have stayed with Athena, had she been strong enough. I thought that she was the one. The goddess of battle!” He threw up his arms and grinned. “Who could beat that?”
Behind him, the Moirae writhed. They seemed larger than they had on Olympus. They would have towered over Athena. As they towered over Achilles.
“The sad fact is,” Achilles said, “I did like you, Henry. And I loved Odysseus. As for that dark beauty there,” he winked at Andie, “who knows what might have happened?”
Andie made a crude gesture and spit on the floor.
“I think I liked your sister the best, though,” Achilles said. “She’s a scrapper. And she’ll be coming round to our side, soon enough. Where she was always meant to be.”
“No,” Henry said. “She won’t.”
“I suppose it’s hard to grasp,” Achilles said. He pointed over his shoulder toward the Moirae. “They are the Fates, but Fate is a thing. It’s an ‘it,’ and a ‘they.’” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m one of their weapons, and Cassandra is the other. You can’t fight Fate, Hector. You knew that once. I think I read somewhere that you knew that once.”
“Stop calling me that. It’s not my name.”
“It’s always going to be your name,” Achilles said.
“No it isn’t. I don’t have to be back in Troy, and you don’t, either. We can do something different. Have different lives than the shitty ones they gave us.”
For just a moment, something changed in Achilles’ eyes. The crook of his mouth faltered, and he looked somber, almost soft. They could shake hands and walk out of there. Things could change. For just that moment, Achilles considered it. Maybe he even wished for it.
“Come on,” Henry said. “Don’t let them collar you.”
Achilles’ teeth flashed white.
“Collar me?” he asked. “You just don’t get it, do you? We could have been friends. Lived our mortal lives. I could have forgiven you.” He smiled. “But now I don’t have to. I get to be a god.”
“Cassandra was right about you,” Andie said. “You’re a real shit.”
Achilles chuckled, but his jaw flexed hard. The fierceness of him made Henry take a step backward.
“Hephaestus!” Hermes shouted from the far corner. “You said you would forge us a new shield!” Poor, hurt Hermes. Sometimes he sounded as innocently disappointed as a child.
“Does it look like I’m in any condition to forge a new shield?” Hephaestus asked, and held up his gnarled hands. “With this damn death?”
He looked at Henry meaningfully.
“The only shield by my hand that will ever exist,” Hephaestus said, glancing upward, “is that one.”
Achilles followed the god’s gaze. When he saw the shield, greed and joy transformed his features. He ran to the wall and jumped, latched on to a ladder, and climbed to the first-level railing. He kept going that way, leaping from rail to rail, until he reached the third floor. But the distance between the third and fourth levels was too great, and the surface of the joining wall was carefully smooth. Achilles slapped his hands against it in vain.
Henry looked up at the shield, and at the door on the fourth floor near the crisscrossing system of steel girders.
“It’s not yours anymore, Achilles,” he shouted, and ran back the way they’d come, into the maze of hallways and rooms.
* * *
Hermes watched Henry go, still frozen. Andie called after him, but he yelled for her to stay with Hermes, which wasn’t a bad suggestion. Hermes had no desire to be left the only fly in a room full of spiders.
“Wait! What are you doing? Where are you going?” Andie shouted, but Hermes suspected that she knew. Her shouts were reactionary. Henry was going to find his way back up to the fourth floor for the shield, to beat Achilles to it and claim it for his own. It would be one brief, shining moment of sticking it in Achilles’ face.
But that’s all it would be. One shield wasn’t going to save them.
“How could you do this?” Hermes asked Hephaestus. “We met as friends. We’ve always met as friends.”
“And we are. But none of that matters in the face of the Moirae.” Hephaestus sat motionless in his chair, but as the Moirae drew close to him on their jerking legs, he had to stiffen to keep from recoiling. Atropos reached out and touched his hand. Hermes saw the joints stretch and pop back into place. He saw the wonder in Hephaestus’ eyes as he flexed his rejuvenated fist without struggle or pain.
Hermes glared at the Moirae, at Lachesis, and it almost seemed that she looked back. Even as her head lolled on her wrinkled, sunken neck, it almost seemed that she winked.
Above them, Achilles still fought the wall, trying in vain to climb it or tear it down. His impotent rage drowned out almost everything else.
(ON YOUR KNEES, MESSENGER.)
Atropos thundered between his ears, and Hermes’ knees hit the marble with a sharp crack. He hadn’t even felt his muscles give way.
“Get out of my head,” he whispered, and heard Andie’s footsteps as she ran to his side.
“Leave him alone!”
He wanted to drag her down, clamp his hand over her mouth, and provide what cover he could. He waited with held breath for her to hit the ground, too, or worse, to explode in a mist of pink. Instead, she smarted off, as insubordinate as ever.
“Can’t get into my head, can you!” she taunted. “And with your guardian hanging orangutan-style from the walls, maybe I’ll just shove a spear through your faces.” She ran to one of the standing lamps and yanked it from its socket. If any one of the Moirae got a hit in, even one who wasn’t much more than an emptying bag, they would take her head clean from her shoulders. Hermes couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
Under pressure, these mortals rose up. They became something more.
* * *
Henry ran through the house as fast as he could, back to the foyer where they’d started. He had to start at the beginning, or he’d lose his way. But he had to go fast, or he’d never beat Achilles to the fourth level. And if they both started climbing girders at the same time, he knew which way it would go.
He retraced their steps through two rooms and hallways, turning right at a vase painted with Chinese shar-peis
, bred to be protectors of the Chinese royal family, Hephaestus said. He ran fast through a study with a bust of Homer, and took one quick left and another right down the hall. Sweat stood out on his forehead, but his legs felt fresh, springy and steady as a rubber tire. Remembering the way was easier than he’d thought. He’d paid attention to Hephaestus during the tour. In each room, he’d singled out a piece of art or furniture. The stories played out in Henry’s head as he went, laying an invisible thread through the house.
“Faster,” he said, and willed his legs to run.
* * *
Henry burst through the fourth-floor door before Andie had a chance to try out her lamp-spear on the Moirae. Hermes watched him start to climb, and almost whooped, but the weight of Atropos’ will sat on his shoulders like a stone, pressing him to his knees. Her words in his mind were law.
Andie shouted to Henry and switched her target. She launched the lamp at Achilles’ back and struck a clean blow, knocking him off the railing to land face down on the third-floor carpet.
“Hermes, get up!”
Andie grabbed books off the shelves and began to lob them at Achilles as hard as she could. He batted them away and screamed in fury as he watched Henry climb closer and closer to the shield.
“I can’t,” Hermes whispered. Was she mad? It was the Moirae that held him. His own gods who held him down.
“Yes you can! They’re dying. They’re nothing. Now get up and help me!”
Hermes shook his head. He didn’t know what was greater, the fear of them or the weight, but he couldn’t move. The thought of their eyes on him made him want to weep. Andie was wrong. In the face of the Moirae, all any god could do was obey.
Hephaestus knew it. He knew it, and I can’t blame him for that.
Something flew past Hermes’ ear. A book. Flung end over end like the blade of a hatchet. It struck the Moirae with a heavy thud and a flutter of paper.
“Look at that!” Andie hissed. “Look at them! They’re nothing now, Hermes! They’re monsters.” Her voice went low, menacing, and full of hate. “And they’re afraid. They’re more fucking afraid than all of us put together.”
He listened to her voice. Saw another book fly and heard it hit. Andie. Andromache. Her name meant “man of war,” and she earned every letter.
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