“Do you think he could be persuaded to join us?”
“Who, the old man? Walker?” he said.
“Yes. Assuming the daughter fails to cooperate, we might convince him to give us the Storeroom. For a price, of course.”
The Wanderer looked at the flat horizon and shook his head. “I don’t think he has a price.”
“Not even a cure for his illness?”
His lips curled. “His illness frightens him. But he won’t try to avoid it.”
“What if we threatened his daughter?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think you could threaten them both and expect them both to give in. They’ll think you’re lying to both of them. You need at least one of them to get the prize.”
“You can bluff only one player at time?”
“Something like that.” He tapped off the ashes. “I think you’re better off threatening the daughter. She’s younger, more emotional. The older one—he’s bound to the Storeroom. He’s tied up in the same magic guarding that place. I don’t think he could sell out to us even if he wanted to.”
Robin—curse him—jumped out from behind a nearby headstone like some kind of carnival prop. He turned to lean against it, as if he’d been there for hours, hinting that he’d heard every word they’d said, whether he did or not. Bluffing with the best of them.
Hera regarded him coolly, without the least bit of surprise. “Aren’t you supposed to be guarding our pawn?”
“I can see him from here. I can be at his side in a moment if he tries anything. I thought you should know, the Greek slave is coming.”
“Should I leave?” the Wanderer said.
“No.” She’d need him to help read the newcomer.
“Should I leave?” said Robin from his gravestone.
Her voice honey-sweet, she said, “Would you even if I asked?”
Grinning, Robin didn’t move.
The Greek came up the drive that cut down the middle of the cemetery. He looked wretched. Blood covered the lower half of his shirt and most of his lap, as if he’d been stabbed and bled all over himself. He didn’t seem hurt.
He glanced at the car parked halfway up the drive, but continued toward her. She waited, dropping the cigarette and stepping it flat. Hands shoved in his coat pockets, he stopped a good distance away, eight or ten feet, not displaying excessive familiarity. Watching his step. He was wary. She wished she could read mortals as well as she could in the old days. Something else, something besides her, was worrying him.
“What happened to you?” she said, regarding his gory clothing with a grimace of distaste.
“I fell.”
“Ah. So, are you here because you have information for me? Is Evie Walker on her way?”
His expression was calm, revealing nothing. “What are you going to do to them? When you have the apple, what happens to the Walkers?”
“Why are you concerned with them?”
Here he winced, as if uncertain, and didn’t answer. Anyone could see what it meant, even without divine powers.
From his perch on the headstone, Robin said, “The Walkers have many allies. Tell her, Greek.”
The Greek gave nothing away—he’d had lots of practice hiding things. One wondered that he ever talked at all.
Robin shrugged off the silence and spoke, grinning. “I saw Merlin at the house. Arthur can’t be far behind. That Merlin. That Arthur.”
Hera didn’t bother asking why Robin hadn’t seen fit to tell her this earlier. The edge in his tone bothered her—the Greek had offended Robin, who of course had taken it personally and would goad him when he could. Hera would have to watch the hobgoblin carefully.
The news he delivered was disconcerting—what did it mean, that more magic than hers was at work here? Britain’s greatest heroes—she’d heard rumors of Merlin’s power, and if even half of them were true, he’d be an opponent of consequence. Or an ally of great worth. If she could have a word with them, show them that her plan had the greatest chance of restoring order to the world, the influence of her pantheon would increase.
By the gods, as the mortals said, what an exciting time to work, with so much magic returning to the world.
Hera stepped up beside the Greek and wrapped her arm round his, pulling him so that they strolled together down the walk, past rows of weathered granite stone decorated with plastic flowers.
“You were a spy for the Greeks, weren’t you?” she said to him. “I trust you haven’t lost your touch. Where is the girl now?”
“Maybe I could take you to her. She wouldn’t expect that.”
“Can’t you simply tell me if she’s coming?”
He held back, tugging against her like an anchor. “You’re not going to hurt her.”
Hera gave him a reassuring smile. “Of course not. I’m not a brute.” With her urging, she started him walking again, guiding him to the northern edge of the cemetery, where the town lay.
Robin and the Wanderer followed a few paces behind.
“Where did you find Robin?” the Greek said.
“Sulking in a pub in Dublin. I’ve found my lieutenants in the strangest places. I’m not picky. All I ask for is loyalty. Have you thought about joining me?”
“I served a god once. It didn’t suit me.”
“You wouldn’t be a slave with me,” she said with a laugh, putting seduction in her tone.
“Can you get rid of this?” He hooked his fingers around the chain on his neck.
She touched it, running her fingers along the skin underneath as she did. She was disappointed that he didn’t flinch. “I don’t know. I could have my friend the Marquis have a look at it.”
“The Marquis?”
“A scion of the British aristocracy and a student of magic. Formal for my taste. But he has his talents. He found the Storeroom for me.”
“Did he? He must be powerful.”
“It’s not so impressive as it sounds. He didn’t find the Storeroom so much as follow the path of one who already knew where it was.”
The Greek hesitated a step.
Hera studied him. “How did you find the Storeroom?”
“I looked for it,” he said.
She said in a low voice, “I could use someone of wisdom. Of age. That’s what my people lack. The experience that comes with the age of an immortal. We gods were thousands of years old by the time we came to Greece. We’d ruled in other lands under different names. But the old ones in all the lands are gone. The pantheons seemed to have a knack for killing themselves off. Everybody had a Ragnarök. You may be pleased to hear that you are one of the oldest people I’ve encountered in my recent travels.”
“That doesn’t comfort me, my lady,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at the ones who followed, and his voice changed, becoming colored with false brightness. “I’d like to meet this Marquis of yours.”
“He’s busy,” said Robin, overhearing them. “Spending all his time trying to crack that shell around the Walker house.”
“Having trouble with that, is he?” the Greek said.
Robin said, “He insists it’d be easier if he knew who cast the spell in the first place. It certainly wasn’t the Walkers.”
“I see.”
The Wanderer moved forward to speak softly in her ear, “He’s hiding something.”
The Greek was a game escort, holding her arm politely, if not affectionately. He walked at her pace, which was slow. She could study him at her leisure. He stared ahead, his face still.
“What do you know of that family?” she asked.
“What would you have me know?”
“You have some affection for them. For all I know, you might have been following them from the beginning. What do you know of the magic that protects them?”
His mouth remained closed. Hiding something, indeed.
“It’s a simple question, my dear. If you don’t know, say so.”
“It’s very old magic. Older than you.”
The man avoide
d the question like someone with a geis laid on him. “What if I asked very nicely?”
He didn’t say a word.
“He knows,” said the Wanderer.
Hera said, “At first, I believed that Zeus made the Storeroom. A last act before his martyrdom, to take up all our things of power and put them away. But the Marquis says no, it wasn’t him. So who? I don’t know how, my Greek, but you knew of Zeus’s plan. You were there.”
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t trust him, not a whit. If he meant to join with her, he would say what he knew. He was trying to distract her—wasting time. She glanced over her shoulder at the car, where Frank Walker sat. He was still in place.
Just as it was difficult to bribe an immortal, it was difficult to threaten one. So she didn’t threaten him.
“If I harmed them both, what would happen to the Storeroom then?”
The Wanderer moved ahead of the Greek, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. They stood like that for a long moment, the Wanderer holding his gaze. The Greek’s eyes widened. His neck strained, like he was trying to look away but couldn’t.
Hera watched with interest.
“Prometheus,” the Greek said suddenly, his voice tight.
“Ah, of course,” Hera said. She should have guessed that herself. “Thank you.”
She would have to deal with the Greek later. She couldn’t trust him, and she wasn’t even sure anymore if she could use him. But she would keep him close until the moment she decided to dispose of him.
“We’ll wait for the Walker girl here. You wait by the car. See for yourself that we haven’t harmed her father,” she said, touching the Greek’s chest. “I wouldn’t want you to cry a warning to her.” He presented her a bow that might have been mocking, if she’d had the time to be insulted. To the Wanderer she said, “Go with him. Guard Mr. Walker.”
She gestured to Robin, who followed her to the edge of the cemetery.
Softly she said, “Wait. Hide. You are my reserve.”
Robin saluted and disappeared in a flash of magic.
Hera slipped behind the hulking tomb of one of the town’s founding fathers.
In the days of Olympus, they’d made a game of shape-shifting themselves and others. When he still had a sense of humor, Zeus placed bets about what outrageous forms he could take on to seduce his latest prize. She’d never had the patience for such games. She still didn’t understand the swan.
Zeus had been the King because of the ease with which he imposed his will on others. He didn’t command or threaten; rather, his personality expanded. His moods crept out like a fog bank to encompass all those around him, so that he saw his own mood reflected back at him, in the people around him. He was like that even in the oldest of days, before they were gods, when they were little more than confused and naïve children testing small powers and talents they collected like seashells in the sand. Their sibling rivalry turned deadly at times—the stories told about them by Egyptians, Sumerians, and others hardly exaggerated, recounting chopped-up bodies scattered in rivers, swallowed infants, journeys to the land of the dead. But they always managed to put each other back together again, using the tricks and spells of nature that they’d learned.
Zeus rightfully became their King when he killed their father, a bitter old man who wasted his time and power battling the clan of Titans. Instead, Zeus befriended them. Even Hera couldn’t argue, though she had been Queen of her own lands before. Zeus’s will absorbed them all.
And when he decided that he’d had enough, that he didn’t want to rule anymore and he didn’t want to hand over his place to a son who might kill him, he wiped them all out. There was too much magic in the world, he said. It was in danger of destroying all of human civilization, not just Troy. A civilization built through the worship of gods, Hera told him. But he couldn’t hear that he was wrong, and in his righteous arrogance, he worked a spell of magnificent destruction. He destroyed magic. He murdered those best schooled in its use, the gods and goddesses who had lived for millennia.
In his ennui and guilt, he used his own life as fuel for the spell and took the rest of them with him.
Hera was his sister and his wife. She’d healed his wounds and eased his pains, though he never liked to admit it. They were never associated with love—it wasn’t their dominion. But she knew him. She knew she could not stop him. So she defended herself. It took all her power, expended in a brilliant shielding flash, and it almost wasn’t enough. The spell left her old, weak, powerless. She almost had to start from scratch, relearning all the magic she’d spent centuries perfecting. But she persevered. She lived. She was almost what she had been.
She couldn’t yet transform herself into something magnificent, like a hawk, or large like a bear or a cow. But a little thing, a quiet thing, was all she needed now.
She became a cat, a small gray creature who would not be noticed. Moving four-legged and low to the ground required a shift in thinking, a level of defensive paranoia—danger might come from any direction. But she gained a litheness and ease of movement that made crossing the cemetery, dodging headstones, and leaping the odd flower arrangement a joy.
Sitting primly, she rested under the rear bumper of the sedan and waited.
______
Evie waited behind the auto garage with Arthur and Merlin, on the opposite side of the cemetery from the caretaker’s shack, where Alex said he’d meet them. Ten more minutes. She could see the car where her father was being held. One other person was inside. Alex walked along the parallel road, arm in arm with Hera, accompanied by two of her flunkies.
“He’s betraying us,” Merlin muttered.
She didn’t think he was. This was just what he’d done at Troy—talking his enemy into betraying themselves. Merlin was being paranoid.
“Or he’s distracting her,” Arthur said. “The car is unguarded now.”
“Not for long enough to save Dad.”
The afternoon shadows were stretching.
“I’ll circle the grounds,” Merlin said. “Try to catch a hint of what they’re saying.”
He smoothed the lapels of his suit and strode off, a man with purpose. Evie watched: he looked both ways, started crossing the street, raised his hand as if calling a cab, then disappeared. A shimmer in the air remained for a moment, like a line of heat rising from the pavement. Evie blinked, and blinked again.
She said, “He could have done that and just walked into the house to take the sword, if he’d wanted to.”
Arthur shook his head. He was watching her, rather than the vanished Merlin. “When he turns incorporeal like that, he can’t affect the physical world. He couldn’t have turned the doorknob. Besides, your house is guarded.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Merlin has followed your family’s fortunes for many years. You were always the Keepers.”
“It seems like everyone knew that but me.”
They leaned against the wall like vagrants, out of sight of the cemetery. Waiting was hard, when she knew how close her father was, and what might happen to him before she could help.
She said, “When did you wake up? I mean—when did you know it was time to return?”
He looked to the distance, where her own gaze had lingered a moment before. “It happened slowly, I think. I was injured when I went to sleep. I’m still not sure how long ago that was. When I woke, they—the ladies who healed me and made me young again—told me that much had changed. I lived in the world again for a time, to learn the new ways. I was in a village in Wales. A modern version of the place where I grew up. Then Merlin came. Then I knew my destiny.”
He spoke with the simple clarity of a mystic whose world-view was uncluttered, whose path was set in a perfect line. In the midst of all this talk of magic and destiny, she wondered if there was room for a person behind the legend. If Arthur was a person—or an archetype.
“It must be hard. Not having a choice. What if you wanted to stay in the village? Get married, ha
ve kids. Be normal.”
He smiled wryly and shook his head. “I’ve learned something: What many of us call destiny is really our own instinct. We know what is right, but we don’t want to admit it, especially if what is right will lead to our own death. We call it destiny so we don’t have to accept responsibility for making those decisions. Human instinct is stronger than anyone will admit.”
“Do you miss them? Guinevere, Lancelot. The others.”
“That life—it was another life. It seems like a dream now. I slept so long, everything before waking was a dream. I would prefer to remember it as a dream, I think.”
“Hey, look.” Evie touched his arm and pointed to the cemetery.
Hera and one of her henchman—the young one whom Alex had called Robin—were leaving, walking to the edge of the grounds and presumably beyond. Another minion, a polished man in a suit and trench coat, walked back to the sedan. Alex, hands shoved in his pockets, walked with him.
Alex and the other man were with her father now.
“I like these odds a little better,” Arthur said.
With a hiss of air and shimmer of heat in front of her, Merlin appeared. Evie flinched, startled, as if a television had flashed to life nearby.
“Arthur, I think you can fetch Mr. Walker yourself,” he said before her heartbeat had calmed down. “I’ll follow the others and delay them if I can.”
“Agreed. My lady, wait for us here.”
Before she could argue, they were across the road, Arthur moving at a jog, as if to battle.
Alex might have told Hera where to find them, and told her that Arthur and Merlin were with her. Hera was probably looking for Evie, and she’d set a trap for the others. Or maybe this really was their chance.
In either case, if things went badly, she could still give Hera the apple, use that to bribe her father free. She touched the shaped gold in her pocket, warm against her fingers. For the fairest.
As a cat seated under the bumper, Hera listened to the Greek try to start a conversation with the Wanderer.
Discord's Apple Page 19
