The Villain of Ancient Greece

Several days later, after nightfall, on the Areios Pagos.

Medusa, sitting in her room, felt the bronze token on her chest give a faint glow and rose at once, using the cover of darkness, and slipping out of Athens by her familiar route, making her way to the dense grove she knew well.

”Lorne, you are back?”

”Yes. Just finished with everything.”

”And she is?”

”Atalanta. My student.”

Lorne stepped slightly to the side and introduced Atalanta, who had come along beside him, to Medusa.

Another one?

Seeing the bright and capable huntress standing close behind Lorne with easy familiarity,

Medusa could not help the wariness that rose in her eyes.

”You must be Anna, right? Master’s little sister? He talks about you often.” The straightforward Atalanta looked the violet-haired goddess in her linen dress up and down with open curiosity, extended her hand, and broke into the kind of easy, infectious grin that was hard not to like.

”You’re even prettier than I imagined.”

”Not at all, really...” Medusa’s face went pink and she shook her head in quick denial.

The hostility she had felt toward Atalanta evaporated on the spot.

Watching the two girls warm up to each other within moments and start chattering away side by side,

Lorne felt the knot of tension in his chest quietly loosen.

Just as well.

Before coming, he spent considerable effort singing Medusa’s praises to Atalanta, planting a favorable impression of her well in advance.

The straightforward Atalanta took it all at face value, and because of the sister-and-brother relationship he had described between himself and Medusa, she felt a natural trust and warmth toward her from the start.

So the first meeting between a member of the serpent family and a member of the feline family did not turn into a standoff.

If anything, it came to a rather satisfying conclusion.

First round, a success.

Lorne gave a dry cough and cut into the two of them before their private conversation went any further.

”By the way, where are the three Charites? How have they been lately?”

”Living with Lady Hestia.”

”What do they do with their time?”

”Mostly helping Lady Hestia with preparations for feasts and gatherings. When things are slow they sometimes go out with the nine Muses, working on dances together and composing music.” Medusa answered honestly and summed it up. ”They seem to genuinely enjoy living on the Areios Pagos.”

”Have Athena and the others shown any sign of being unhappy about anything?”

”Not at all. They all say they like the atmosphere now, and that the Areios Pagos is livelier than it used to be.”

”Good.”

Lorne gave a nod and let out a quiet, internal breath of relief.

Sending the three Charites ahead early to gauge the reaction of the goddesses on the Areios Pagos was a way of testing the water.

No explosions and no serious confrontations meant things were still within the range of what everyone could tolerate.

”Though Lady Athena and Lady Hestia have been asking me about you quite often, wanting to know when you would be back. It sounds like they have both been missing you a great deal.”

At Medusa’s addition, Lorne’s eye twitched.

An instinctive chill ran down his spine and he muttered to himself without letting it show.

Missing me. More like missing the chance to batter me.

As expected.

Tolerating something was not the same as pretending it never happened.

Lorne understood that the goddesses on the Areios Pagos were sharpening their blades and waiting for his return.

He quietly set aside any hope of simply slipping through and began thinking about how to handle what was coming.

”It is too late in the evening to head up now. Take Atalanta into the city first. Tomorrow morning I will bring her to the Athenian Academy to register.

She has just come down from the mountains of Arcadia and there are quite a few things about human society she needs to study properly.”

”Of course!”

Medusa accepted this cheerfully, turned, and took her new friend by the hand. ”At this hour everyone is mostly asleep. Come share my room tonight and I will go with you both in the morning.”

Atalanta gave a nod, then looked over at Lorne.

”What about you, Master?”

”I have been away for so long.

There are things I need to attend to.”

”Another work report?”

”Ahem. Something like that.”

Lorne cleared his throat and gave a vague non-answer.

”All right. We will wait for you at home tomorrow.”

Trusting by nature, Atalanta raised no further questions.

She fell in with Medusa and the two of them headed toward Athens for a brief rest.

Lorne watched until both figures faded into the night and disappeared from sight, then exhaled slowly.

Good. The groundwork was laid.

Having the genuine task of enrolling Atalanta the next morning as a cover meant that even if things went badly, he would not end up spending a week bedridden and unable to look after himself the way he had before.

And bringing along Medusa, the darling of everyone on the land, amounted to one more layer of insurance.

After all, the goddesses up there would hardly want to see the look on little Medusa’s face if things turned unpleasant.

Lorne went through his preparations one more time in his head, drew a deep breath, rose, and stepped out of the grove, dissolving into the thick darkness of the night.

* * *

The Areios Pagos, the great temple.

Athena turned through the Legal Code in her hands, a document that had gone through more than ten rounds of revision.

She read the clauses word by word, cross-referencing them against existing cases.

Many passages were still uneven and incomplete, far from the absolute justice Themis carried in her heart.

The terms and penalties involved considerable compromise and pragmatic adjustment.

But for now, there was no question that these rules fit the current reality of gods and mortals living side by side, and the particular conditions of the Athenian city-state.

They could be put into effective practice.

And being capable of effective practice was the most critical element of any legal system.

Athena turned the final page of the Legal Code, confirmed there were no oversights, closed it with satisfaction, and set it aside to hand over to King Aegeus of Athens in the morning for a trial implementation.

Practical was good enough.

Every journey began one step at a time, every meal one bite at a time.

True fairness and justice were never going to be achieved all at once.

Her gaze drifted to the signature on the cover of the Legal Code that had been crossed out and rewritten, and Athena’s good mood dissolved entirely.

A few words were all it took to bring Themis back out of seclusion.

A period of conversation and exchange was all it took to get that ancient goddess of justice, who had held firm to her convictions for ten thousand years, to accept compromise and moderation.

That little troublemaker was remarkably popular.

The grinding of teeth accompanied her eyes moving to the copy of the Hieroi Logoi transcribed by Mnemosyne on the side of the table, and to the original score of the Song of the Titans that the nine Muses and the three Charites had recently finished arranging together.

Athena’s expression darkened further.

Apollo’s nine attendant gods.

Aphrodite’s three attendant gods.

Father Zeus’s two former wives.

And then there was Echidna, the mate of the primordial monster Typhon.

Her own three attendant gods.

And Thetis, sister of the sea queen Amphitrite.

You’re really popular, aren’t you?

The more Athena thought about it the more irritated she became.

Her grip tightened without noticing. The iron stylus in her palm, no longer able to bear the pressure, let out a strained groan and snapped cleanly in two.

As the cool moonlight cast a shadow on the door and window, the goddess of wisdom in the great temple narrowed her eyes, dropped the two pieces of the broken stylus, and called out with a cold frown.

”Who is there? Come out.”

”It is me. I am back.”

Lorne in the corridor raised both hands, stepped carefully through the door, and let his eyes drift over the iron stylus snapped cleanly in two on Athena’s table.

A chill ran through him and he swallowed, manufacturing something close to a fawning smile.

”Still awake at this hour?

The building of Athens is important, but you are the core engine driving the whole enterprise. If you wear yourself out, everything suffers.”

”If certain people had not abandoned their post and left a mountain of work behind, I would not need to be here holding things together myself.”

Athena looked up at the former scribe of Crete who had disappeared for a considerable length of time after leaving a mess in his wake, and gave a long, unhurried snort.

Lorne immediately put on an expression of shared outrage, produced the sacred cup, and set it down on the table with a solid thud.

”All of it was because of this one.”

As the golden divine liquid inside stirred and shimmered, projecting the sleeping silhouette of a silver-haired, somber young man across the hall, Athena’s breath caught and her expression changed.

”Asclepios? He is still alive?”

A moment later the goddess of wisdom recovered, quickly traced out several lines of Hermes script, activated the power of the Labyrinth, sealed the entire great temple, and looked at Lorne across the table with a serious expression.

”What happened?”

With the conversation safely steered onto the right ground,

Lorne straightened slightly and laid out his chain of plans and experiences with practiced ease.

In this version, naturally, he had gone to Cyprus in Asclepios’s place because he was trying to preserve a valuable talent for Athens, and had pushed all the way into the underworld, working through enormous difficulty to muddy the waters and cover up the trouble the elixir of immortality had caused.

After that, when the situation deteriorated, he used a precaution he had put in place beforehand to recover Asclepios’s soul from the scene where the god of medicine fell.

And he had only made his way quietly back after confirming that the God king’s attention had not been drawn to any of it, not wanting to bring trouble to Athens.

”Lucky I took that precaution. Otherwise Athens would have suffered a serious loss.”

Hearing Lorne’s words, half rueful and half relieved, Athena’s expression went dark and irritation rose sharply.

”Who told you to take a risk like that? Ten of him are not worth as much as you.”

”Well, he is a good physician.

He can save a great many people.”

”The best physician in the world can save one city, one kingdom.

But what you can save is the entire age.”

Before he could argue back, Athena picked up the Legal Code and the Hieroi Logoi from the table and dropped them into Lorne’s arms, giving a cold snort.

”Until these are finished, stop putting yourself in danger.”

”Understood. I promise not to make you worry about me.”

Lorne nodded with a placating smile, then glanced at the sacred cup on the table and asked carefully.

”And him?”

”You are the one who pulled him back. Deal with him however you see fit.”

Athena, who had gone up to Olympos and confronted Zeus over the matter not long ago, waved a hand as though it were of little consequence.

She showed remarkably little reaction to the god of medicine’s return from death.

Her eyes instead kept moving back to Lorne, and only after confirming he appeared to have no serious problems did the tight furrow in her brow begin to ease.

Which of the two carried more weight in her mind was perfectly clear without saying.

That undisguised favoritism sent a warmth moving through Lorne’s chest, and a note of genuine feeling entered his voice.

”If I remember correctly, there are still a great many vacancies in the eighty-eight star palaces under your command.

Since Asclepios’s body has already been destroyed, perhaps it would make sense for him to conceal his identity for now, take shelter within a sacred cloth armor, and wait for a physical form to be remade.”

”That works. The golden sacred cloth armor of Ophiuchus you designed before would suit him well.”

Athena gave a nod, stated her thoughts simply, then looked at Lorne with a light snort.

”You do not need to report small matters like this to me from now on. The Altar Seat you hold is itself the governing authority over the eighty-eight star palaces.

Who you appoint and who you use is your decision to make.”

Lorne shook his head slightly and answered with complete sincerity.

”Some things need to be kept separate. Asclepios’s situation involves too many threads.

You are the one who holds everything together. Of course you should be the first to know.”

”I am the first?”

”Yes.”

Lorne nodded without so much as a flicker.

On the entirety of the Areios Pagos and in all of Athens, Athena was of course the first person to learn that Asclepios had come back from death.

Then Lorne’s eyes changed slightly, and he lowered his voice.

”And the news that Asclepios is still alive. I do not intend to tell anyone else. It would be best if this remained a secret between the two of us.”

Hearing those quiet words, the tension in Athena’s expression broke into something softer, and a faint, unfamiliar stirring moved through her.

A secret.

Between just the two of them.

Sensing that the look the goddess of wisdom turned on him had grown noticeably warmer, Lorne let out a sigh.

It was well established that when two people shared a secret or held something over each other, the bond between them had a way of deepening quickly.

Not that he and Athena needed a small trick like this to build a sense of trust through shared risk.

Their relationship was already well past that point.

But it was equally well established that what a woman wanted was the feeling of being someone’s first thought and closest confidence.

On the entire Areios Pagos, only he and Athena knew Asclepios was alive.

Did that not mean the goddess of wisdom before him was the person he was closest to?

Of course, given a certain someone’s thoroughly self-serving tendencies, this was clearly not done purely to win Athena’s favor.

It was the outcome of careful deliberation.

Because aside from Athena herself, whose mind was made up and not easily swayed, telling any of the other goddesses about this served Lorne no purpose whatsoever.

Asclepios’s death had become a serious stain on Zeus’s reputation.

According to Medusa, not only Hestia but the nine Muses, and even Themis and Mnemosyne who normally kept to themselves, had all expressed their contempt over it.

As the leading critic of the divine king among the gods of Greece, Lorne had every reason to want to heap more trouble onto Zeus’s name.

He had absolutely no intention of letting slip that the god of medicine was still alive and reducing the resentment the goddesses on the Areios Pagos felt toward Zeus.

Just as Lorne was quietly running through all of this, a quiet murmur reached him.

”Speaking of which, so many goddesses have come to the Areios Pagos at your invitation.

What exactly are your plans for them going forward?”

At that pointed question, Lorne felt a sharp alertness come over him.

It seemed that Asclepios had served his purpose as a shield, and having accounted for the long absence, its defensive value was now fully spent.

The truly dangerous question that followed was something he would have to face entirely on his own.

(End of Chapter)