“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.