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.”