Page 40 of Patron of Mercy

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It’d beenan hour and two minutes when Lach wandered into the graveyard, dragging his feet between stones. He’d made it all of forty-five minutes before he stopped waiting near the venue and went searching for Thanatos on his own.

Walking between the buried dead, grass bending under his feet, he could call for Thanatos, but he’d said he’d come back. Either he meant it or he didn’t, but Lach didn’t think calling would make a lick of difference. If nothing else, he might get frustrated with Lach’s impatience.

With a sigh, he lowered himself onto a stone to wait. The sun was going down, the sky turning a soft, powdery purple, and Lach worried he’d be going to see Styx all by his lonesome.

Wasn’t like that’d be any different from most of his other experiences.

“Lach?”

He spun to see Thanatos there, as put together as ever, eyes shining softly in the fading light.

“Hi. Yeah. Hey!” Lach hopped off the gravestone. Thanatos was staring at him like he’d lost his mind. “Ready to get down?”

“Excuse me?”

“Go to the show?”

In a long, exaggerated arc, Thanatos rolled his eyes. He tipped his head side to side. “Sure. I guess we can go.”

“You’re gonna love it.” Lach bumped his arm against the god’s.

And if Lach could do anything to help it, the band wouldn’t be the only thing Thanatos loved.

Temporal Arts

Music was why Thanatos sometimes thought he understood mortals.

Most mortal art was made with the intention that it outlive the artist. From modern art, to renaissance paintings, to classical sculpture, to cave paintings that predated written language, humanity had been striving to leave a mark on the future for as long as they had existed.

But music wasn’t like that. Sure, with music notation, modern musicians could write down compositions for people to recreate, but it would always be just that: recreation.

Because the act of creating music was the art, all music was temporal. It lasted only as long as the notes lingered in the air, and two performances of the same piece of music would never be the same.

Musical performances were like human lives. However similar, no two could ever be alike, and as long as they lasted, there was something fascinating in them. Sometimes, they were stunningly beautiful. Sometimes they were so awful that you wanted to cover your ears and forget they existed. But no matter what else was true, they were always intriguing.

So while Thanatos didn’t know anything about the band Lach was so enamored of, he was fascinated enough by the prospect of music to agree to go.

Lach, unsurprisingly, was obnoxious and loud. He sang along with every song, turning his bright grin on Thanatos and holding his hand out as he sang, “Come sail away with me.” All Thanatos could do was roll his eyes. He didn’t pull his hand away, though.

Thanatos didn’t realize he was in trouble until he caught sight of Dionysus, being held aloft by people in the crowd. The god of excess spent most of his time in Washington, DC, at his club, but he was still known to show up at the occasional party or festival to remind the mortals of his existence.

Or at least to make the event in question a worldwide spectacle.

Dionysus had always cared more about his own enjoyment than the effect it had on everyone around him.

Nine times out of ten, if Thanatos saw Dionysus show up to a party, he left. The tenth was usually a party in Hades, where he figured the majority of attendees could handle themselves, and he usually avoided imbibing regardless.

For reasons he chose not to examine, this time, when Lach handed him a cup of wine, he took it. Similar cups were making their way throughout the crowd—the work of Dionysus, no doubt.

“I told you this would be awesome, didn’t I?” Lach asked between numbers, yelling to make himself heard over the crowd.

The men in the band seemed energized, strutting and playing like men half their age. Thanatos suspected the concert would be the last pinnacle of their long careers, and something about it made the experience bigger.

He nodded to Lach, took another drink of wine, and smiled. “You did. And you were right.”

Lach’s snarky, arrogant grin turned into his genuine pleased one, and Thanatos remembered why he’d loved the man so damned much. So few immortals found joy in simple things like good music and a cup of wine. Either they were like his sister Eris, who had always found pleasure in horrible things, or they had turned cynical over the course of millennia and found their pleasure in ways that made Dionysus’s madness seem innocent.

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