Page 59 of Patron of Mercy

She was pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’ll do some research,” she offered. “I mean, if you’re going extremely metaphorical, I guess the entire island could be a scythe—”

“I don’t think we’requitethat far gone yet. We’re looking for an actual tool.”

Martina dropped her hand. Her eyes narrowed skeptically. “Why?”

“Professional curiosity,” Lach offered at once. “Think about the kind of money you’d make on something like that. The papers you could write.”

“Uh huh.” Martina remained completely unconvinced. “Well, supposedly Zeus defeated Cronus and threw him in Tartarus with the rest of the Titans who stood against him. Then Prometheus made people—modern people. I wouldn’t know where to look for something that old.”

“An object of power, you’d think Zeus would make some kind of edifice for it or put it somewhere safe.”

“Seems unlikely that a god would leave a weapon that powerful unattended where anyone could pick it up,” Martina agreed.

“Well,” Thanatos cut them off, reaching for Lach’s arm. “Thank you so much for bringing us, Martina. That was enlightening. Now, I’m famished. Join us for lunch?”

“I think I’d better check out the archives. I’ll touch base with you as soon as I find something,” she said.

“Sounds great,” Thanatos replied.

Lach frowned. There was no way Thanatos was hungry; something was up.

“Thanks for all your help, Martina. Call if you find anything,” Lach said.

“Will do.”

Lach let Thanatos pull him out of the museum. They were walking fast enough that Lach had to double time to keep up.

“What’s going on?” he asked, tugging on Thanatos’s arm and pulling him to a stop at the edge of the road.

“Nothing.”

“You’re hungry?”

A line puckered Thanatos’s brow. “I wanted a minute alone with you.”

“Okay.” Lach waited a breath, then two, before Thanatos huffed.

“You told her everything.”

Lach chuckled. “Well”—he turned and slipped his good arm around Thanatos’s neck—“I didn’t tell her you could kill her with a look.” Thanatos scowled, so Lach pressed on. “Or that the last time I was here, it was to pillage the town before Hephaestus had his wicked away with the place.”

Thanatos’s frown cleared at once. His contemplative look spoke to the deep well of patience and intelligence that allowed him to solve a problem rather than crash straight through it. Lach fiddled with a lock of his black hair while he thought it through. “Did he have his way with the place?” Thanatos asked.

With a tilt of his head, Lach shrugged. “I guess not. When my crew docked, pretty much everyone was gone already, and they’d taken all their valuables. Usually, when a god goes all fire and fury, it’s not done so cleanly.”

Gods all had their moments—regrettable behaviors when they overvalued their own importance or undervalued mortality. But maybe, this time, Hephaestus hadn’t been trying to hurt anyone. “You think he warned them? Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know, but we should find out.”

“Now? We just got here.”

Thanatos shook his head. “You can’t come.”

“Like fuck I can’t.”

“Hephaestus is not a fan of company. He might tolerate me, but...”

“I’m too loud?”

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