Page 57 of Patron of Mercy

“So it’s a city on the south end of the island,” Lach said, staring off into space. “Big one? Looks like it was evacuated, right?”

She nodded, eyes narrowed to slits. “They think it was probably evacuated before the volcanic event that buried the city in ash, yes.”

Lach turned a meaningful look on Thanatos. He hoped Lach didn’t expect him to know about the island’s history. There was a reason he hadn’t already known about the scythe’s possible location: he didn’t commit things like place names and historical events to his memory unless they were enormous and pivotal, like Athens, New York, or the rise or fall of a major empire.

“Some people still think Akrotiri is the source of the Atlantis myth, you know,” Martina offered, out of the blue.

“Do they really?” Lach asked brightly, and thank goodness, that was when the waiter arrived to take their order. Any more awkwardness might have been terminal, and Thanatos didn’t want to be distracted by work.

The table was quiet for a while after that, with Lach trying to gather his thoughts and his friend giving him time. They didn’t have much to go on, just her awareness of the island’s historical importance and Thanatos’s hope that if they got anywhere near the thing, he’d feel it. It was an object of power; surely it would be obvious?

The settlement had been buried in volcanic ash, she had said. Was that something Zeus had done to keep people away from the scythe? He’d have needed help to do that, but alignment against Cronus was one of the few things the gods could usually agree upon. The universe was a better place without Cronus running amok.

“We can go visit the museum after breakfast,” she said, her patience finally cracking. “It has a lot of the art taken from the settlement. Or we could go straight to the dig site.”

Lach glanced at Thanatos, and back at Martina. “The art—that’s like, frescoes and stuff, right? Not objects?”

Her eyes narrowed. “There have been a few objects, but like you said, they evacuated. They didn’t leave a lot behind unless it was too big to move. Something in particular you’re looking for?”

Lach shook his head vehemently. “No, of course not.”

Both Thanatos and Martina looked at him dubiously. She rolled her eyes after a second when Lach clammed up. “You’re a terrible liar, you know. What makes you think there’s a heretofore undiscovered artifact on the island?”

“We’re not certain,” Thanatos interjected as smoothly as possible. “What we have is hearsay, a friend who vaguely remembers seeing something once.”

“And on that, you came all this way? Hired me? What if we don’t find anything?”

Lach sighed and scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “Then we’re all pretty screwed,” he muttered.

She didn’t get a chance to respond right away, since their food was delivered. After the waiter left, she looked up at him for a moment, brows drawn together and frown on her face, but she didn’t say anything.

Lach had been right—the pancakes were delicious, a fact he kept pointing out all through breakfast. Thanatos thought he heard a couple of tourists order them specifically because of the “loud American” extolling their virtues. Lach seemed to enjoy cultivating the feel of an American tourist, and it was the most on-brand thing he’d ever done. Only Lach would choose to garner a reputation as being loud and slightly annoying.

Good as the pancakes were, Thanatos couldn’t help thinking that he’d enjoyed Lach’s lopsided attempt at making pancakes more.

After breakfast, Martina took them to Akrotiri. It was a strange place: a whole city buried under layers of ash, perfectly preserved, like Pompeii. Unlike Pompeii, it had no remaining feeling of terror and death. It wasn’t a dead place, simply an empty one.

Thanatos had no love of Pompeii. He had helped Hermes in his work that day; so many people dying at once had been too much for any of them to process at the time. It wasn’t a kind of death Thanatos saw often, and he wished no one ever had to live it.

She led them around the dig site, pointing out interesting things and chatting with people involved in the dig. She was well educated, polite, and helpful. When she put her hand on Lach’s arm, Thanatos still had to keep himself from growling at her.

Lach, the asshole, noticed and winked at Thanatos. He also reached out and grabbed his hand, so he could be forgiven.

“Aren’t you hot in that?” she asked him as they leaned against a railing looking over the abandoned city. “I mean, the Armani is nice and all, but all black in this climate? And long sleeves?”

Thanatos looked down at himself. He supposed he was the only person he’d seen wearing so much black. Mortals seemed to favor light colors when in the desert. He shrugged. “I don’t mind the heat. Maybe I run cool.”

“That’s my Thanatos,” Lach said in his very best “I’m about to say something obnoxious” tone, grinning over at him. “He’s always been the iceberg to my Titanic.”

Martina saved Thanatos from having to respond by snorting loudly. “How very like you, to compare yourself to one of the biggest disasters of all time. I guess no one can say you don’t know your own faults.”

Lach seemed entirely satisfied with the conversation and kept bantering with her. Thanatos wasn’t terribly comfortable with the way he talked himself down so much; it had always seemed like a self-fulfilling prophesy, but it wasn’t up to him.

He stared out at the city and worried, because as fascinating as the place was, filled with history and information and an odd kind of serenity, there was one thing it wasn’t.

A repository for a powerful magical artifact.

Thanatos didn’t know if he’d be able to find the scythe by its energy, but he doubted it would feel as quiet and mundane as this abandoned place. Akrotiri might hold secrets, but Thanatos knew in his gut that the scythe was not one of them.

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