Discord's Apple

13

Evie went to the Storeroom.

The instinct assailed her as soon as she crossed the threshold.

It’s not hers.

“I know, I know,” Evie murmured. She was speaking to herself, because the whispering voice was her own.

She opened the drawer that held fruit: dried fruit, jeweled fruit, some pomegranate seeds in a little crystal box—the ones Persephone hadn’t eaten. She had to dig in the back of the drawer for the apple of Discord, as if it hid from her. Her fingers skittered off it as it rolled away. She used both hands to trap it and pick it up, then secured it in the pocket of her army jacket, where it lay like a lead weight.

When she turned to go back to the door, the Storeroom had become a mess: boxes pulled into the aisles, flagpoles toppled across her path. Evie had to wrestle through the mess, shoving crates back into place, straightening spears and poleaxes out of the way. The shafts of wood were slippery, and she never imagined she could be so clumsy. She kept knocking things over.

This was taking too long. She slumped against a set of shelves and glared at the would-be museum pieces around her.

“I’m in charge of this place, aren’t I?”

Only when your father dies. She didn’t want to be in charge of it, not ever, if she had to watch Frank die.

She pushed on. It shouldn’t leave here.

“What difference does it make? Hera gets the apple, she starts a war that’s going to start anyway.”

There is no story for this.

The apple belonged to Aphrodite; that was how the story went. Paris had given it to her. She might return for it someday.

“I don’t know what Hera will do to Dad. I don’t know how else to help him.”

At last she cleared enough of her way to reach the threshold. She put her hands on either side of the doorway and waited. The apple seemed heavier than even a sphere of gold ought to be—so heavy, she couldn’t drag it another step.

She took a deep breath. She hated this. She’d escaped, she’d gotten away from this town, and now the house itself wanted to lock its hold on her. That was the destiny she’d fought against: she hadn’t wanted to grow up to manage the Safeway or be a cop in town, or at best go to Pueblo to work in a bank or in real estate. That wasn’t her destiny, she was better than that.

Better than her dad, who’d stayed to take care of the Storeroom?

He’d had a family, worked like a dog his whole life to support them, to send her to college. He’d taken care of his parents, all of it with strength and patience. She’d abandoned all that. She couldn’t wait to leave her parents, and soon they’d both be dead.

That was why he had to live, why she had to save him. She couldn’t watch over the Storeroom, because she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in Hopes Fort. She didn’t have the courage.

“Isn’t the whole Storeroom more important than one thing in it?”

No answer came.

“If I have to use this to bring him back, so he can be caretaker again, isn’t that okay?”

It was a rationalization. She didn’t need the phantom voice of instinct to tell her that.

“If I don’t bring this to her, she’ll come and take it. She might destroy everything to get it.”

Something in that rang true, because the instinct wavered, the sanctity of the Storeroom thinned.

You’ll return. You’ll stay to take your Father’s place.

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. Sacrifice this one thing to save the whole. Tracker would have understood.

She stepped through the doorway. Discord’s apple lay heavy in her pocket.

Upstairs, Evie knelt on the floor of the kitchen and held Mab’s head in her hands. “Guard the Storeroom, all right? Good girl. Good Mab.” Evie rubbed Mab’s shoulders hard, as if that made up for abandoning her, and Mab looked up with eyes so shining and beseeching, she might have been crying.

Alex had been waiting for her in the kitchen. Silently, he followed her to the car.

They hadn’t driven far when he said, “You’re planning on just giving it to her? Did you actually bring it with you?”

She had to stop at the turn onto the highway. Ahead, great fissures zigzagged across the pavement, slabs of asphalt thrust up against one another, making the road impassable. The earthquake.

Evie pulled over and climbed out of the car. She hadn’t thought the quake was that strong. Not enough to turn a highway into confetti. Hopes Fort must have been right over the epicenter.

“I guess we walk,” she said.

“This is the work of the gods.” Alex murmured. “Poseidon, the Earth-shaker, could use his power to level entire cities, yet he’d leave neighboring settlements untouched. You lived in Los Angeles. Do you think a quake that did this to a road would have left your house standing?”

The Walker house was over eighty years old and not in the least bit retrofitted for quakes.

She started walking, cutting down the sloped bank off the shoulder and onto the naked field along the highway. Alex followed.

“So it was Hera,” she said, tromping over the old furrows cutting the earth.

“Or someone working for her.”

“How many people does she have?”

“At least four, including Robin. He’s the one from the parking lot the other day. I’m not sure how many others there are.”

You, Evie thought. He was the only one who knew anything about her. What did that say about him?

They walked for half an hour, Evie trying not to be self-conscious of Alex at her heels. He was watching, she realized, like a bodyguard: scanning in all directions, glancing over his shoulders in a regular circuit. Looking for danger. She almost felt safer. Except that he made her nervous, and she didn’t know what to say to him.

“Do you have a plan?” he said as they reached the first buildings of town, a gas station and a trailer park.

She ignored him, kept walking. Probably another ten minutes to reach the cemetery.

He persisted. “Do you think she’ll really just let him go?”

She hadn’t thought about it. The main solution burned in her mind, as the apple swung heavily in her pocket. What other choice did she have but to give it to Hera?

“Evie.”

She kept walking, hoping he might grow frustrated and leave.

“Evie!” He grabbed her arm.

Instead of stopping, she spun and jerked away, batting at his arm like he was a bug. “Leave me alone!”

She wanted to run, but he kept hold of her sleeve. She could only back away, while he followed like a fisherman playing his line.

“I want to help, but you can’t just walk up to her without a plan. You can’t trust her—you can’t trust any of them.”

“What do you suggest?” Her voice was cold.

If he let go, she would have run, and he must have known that because he didn’t let go.

“Find out if Frank’s guarded. Create a distraction to lure away Hera’s people. Then we can get him away from her. Without giving her the apple.”

“That sounds like something out of Homer.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? It’s a classic.”

“Please let me go.”

“But—”

Evie couldn’t have said where they came from, or where they’d been hiding. Maybe around the last of the mobile homes on the row, or behind a truck parked on the street. They moved so quickly, Evie blinked and they appeared. Merlin took her arm and hurried her back, while Arthur faced Alex.

The warrior closed his left hand around Alex’s neck and held his sword low, with the point aimed at his captive’s belly.

“Who are you?” Arthur demanded, his voice clear and firm.

A vague smile grew on Alex’s face, a kind of mystic realization. “It’s you,” he said, his voice a breath.

“Who are you?”

Alex glanced back and forth between Evie and Arthur for a moment, as if trying to decide something. Then Evie saw where Arthur’s sword was aimed and remembered what Alex wanted more than anything.

“No!” She lunged toward him, but Merlin held her back.

Alex dropped forward and slid onto the point of Excalibur.

Arthur let go of him and tried to pull back, but that only hastened Alex’s intent. Without Arthur holding him upright, Alex fell on the sword, impaling himself before Arthur could draw it away.

Evie screamed and Arthur cursed, catching Alex by the shoulders before he could crash to the ground. The warrior eased him, cradling him on his lap. It was a scene out of Tennyson, if only they’d both been wearing medieval plate armor instead of jeans.

Arthur said roughly, “Idiot! Why did you do that?”

Blood covered Alex’s shirt and coat and pooled on the ground beside him. Wincing, he clutched at the blade. Blood smeared his hands.

Shaking, he propped himself on his elbow and lifted himself from Arthur. He hooked his hand on the sword’s guard. His voice tight, he said, “Could you help me get this thing out?”

Merlin’s grip went slack. Her scream still raw in her throat, Evie crouched beside Alex. Excalibur protruded from under his ribs, looking vaguely ridiculous.

“Please?” Alex said again. “Before it starts to heal like this?”

Arthur gripped the sword with one hand and placed the other on Alex’s chest. Holding the other man’s wrist, Alex helped by leaning away, while Arthur yanked out the sword in a clean movement. Alex’s breath hissed, but a moment later, the creases of pain on his face eased, the tension dissipated, and his hand—which he’d been holding flat over the wound, fell away. He’d stopped bleeding.

She touched his shirt, saw the rip. Pulled it open and tentatively touched the healed, unblemished skin underneath. His hand closed over hers before she could pull away.

“There, you see?” he said, smiling. “I’d die for you. If I could.”

She pulled away, lost her balance, and fell on her backside.

“Who are you?” Arthur said.

Still looking at Evie, he answered, “Sinon of Ithaca. Also Alex of nowhere. You know, I really thought Excalibur might kill me.”

“You are one of the immortal gods,” Merlin said, suspicion darkening his expression.

“No.” He started to climb to his feet, Arthur helping him. “That implies I have some power to go along with this. I don’t.”

Merlin looked unconvinced. “What is your concern with the Walker household? I’ve seen you with the lady twice now.”

“I had hoped to find something there that could break my curse. Failing that—I only want to help the lady.”

Merlin and Arthur had placed themselves between Evie and Alex. The pool of blood was growing sticky on the ground at her feet. Arthur still held his sword ready, though Evie didn’t know what good he thought it would do. He said, “You aren’t handing her over to Hera, then?”

That made sense only if Alex’s pleas for her to stay away from Hera were some kind of reverse psychology. He seemed far too desperate for that.

Alex looked stricken. “No, I’m not.” His tone was flat, as if he knew he wouldn’t be believed.

Merlin said, “Hera is holding her father. We were coming to tell you.” He gave Evie a nod.

“Is he all right?” she said.

“Yes, for now. They’re at the cemetery.”

“I have to get him back—”

“Not by yourself,” Merlin said. “You should return home. It isn’t your place to face the likes of her.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? Sit around and wait?”

That was what she’d been doing for the last week—waiting for her father’s health to fail, waiting for the world to end in a rain of bombs. Waiting to give up.

Arthur said, “My lady, he’s right. You’d be safer.”

He was talking to her like she was some character in an epic. Some wilting lady in a tower. “Why do any of you care what happens to me?”

Merlin huffed like it was obvious. “You need help. Also, you are the heir to the Keeper of the Storeroom. Your place is there. It’s your destiny.”

She didn’t want a destiny. Not like that. She only wanted daydreams, tucked safely in the pages of her writing. She looked beseechingly at Alex, like she thought he would know better—he’d read Eagle Eyes; he knew the extent of her destiny.

“I have to get my father back,” she said firmly. It was his destiny they wanted to protect.

Arthur drew a handkerchief from his pocket and cleaned the blood off Excalibur’s blade. “And you will. With our help.”

“We were just talking about that,” Alex said. “We need to distract Hera, get her away from Frank. I can go to her and find out who she has guarding your father, and what we need to do to free him.”

He must have had his own agenda, his own reasons for wanting to keep the apple from Hera. Which returned Evie to the same question: Could she trust him?

Arthur sheathed the sword in the scabbard on his belt. “I think Merlin and I can overcome them now. There were only three of them in the car.”

“Easy odds, I think,” the old man said, cracking his knuckles.

“Just like the old days.”

“Hold on a minute,” Alex said. “You don’t know who these people are, what they can do. This is Hera, the goddess.”

Merlin regarded him. “Sinon of Ithaca. Hellenikouei?”

Alex looked startled. “Yes.”

“Then you’re from a land that worshipped her.”

“I don’t worship her. Give me half an hour. I can find out what’s happening—I can spy for you.”

“And if you betray us, we can kill you?” Arthur said, indicating Alex’s stomach, amused.

Alex smirked. “Evie, I only want to help you.”

He looked as earnest as Mab would, sitting on the front porch watching her leave for the grocery store: large brown eyes, hopeful and shining. All she knew of him—besides what she’d seen, which she had to admit was just as earnest, just as loyal—was what she’d read in Virgil. That told the story of how he was the consummate actor. He could make anyone believe anything. He convinced the Trojans to break their own walls, to bring in the treacherous horse.

He was either lying or he wasn’t.

“She said for me to come alone.”

“And you can’t let her have the apple.”

“All right,” she said finally. “Half an hour. But then I’m giving her the apple.”

Slowly, he nodded. “Where will you be in the meantime?”

Evie said, “Behind the office at the northwest corner of the cemetery.”

“I’ll see you soon, then.”

“Um—don’t you think you should change your shirt?” She pointed at him, where drying blood covered his front.

He looked at himself, shrugged. “I’d forgotten. Never mind.” He made a loose-handed salute to Evie, nodded briefly at the others, and ran down the side street along the trailer park.

Staring after him, Arthur crossed his arms. “What a strange man.”

Bruce had ten minutes to pack everything he thought he’d need for the foreseeable future—surely only a week or two—into a couple of bags. Some clothes, a first-aid kit, matches, food and bottled water, sleeping bag, winter coat. A desert island book. Or five. He spent a full minute standing in front of the bookshelves, trying to pick. He had a bunch of files on his laptop, but the battery would last only so long.

It was only for a few weeks.

Then why was his stomach in knots, and why did this feel like it was going to be forever?

Callie, her auburn hair tied up in a disheveled knot, looking domestic in a sweatshirt and jeans, stood by the door, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She was tapping her foot, fidgeting, wanting to leave and trying to be patient, for him. Her face was pale. She kept glancing out the open door, to where James’s SUV waited at the curb, its motor running. Bruce almost dropped his bags and ran to hug her right then, if for no other reason than to make her smile.

She was his desert-island book.

He had one more thing to do. He dialed the number for Evie’s cell phone. The phone rang and rang, his stomach clenched tighter and tighter, until her voice mail clicked on.

He didn’t have time to wait for her to call back, so he left a message.

“Evie. Some of us—me and Callie, James, his roommates—are leaving the city. James has a place in Napa. It’s not safe here anymore. So we’re running. I don’t know when we’ll be able to come back. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to work. I just wanted you to know, Evie, working with you on Eagle Eyes was great. The best work I’ve ever done. You helped me do better than I ever thought I could. Thanks. Maybe we can do it again sometime. I’ll see you. When this all blows over.”

Sighing, he turned off his phone.

Comics took up no space at all. They were flat and inconsequential. He grabbed a few copies of Eagle Eye Commandos sitting next to his worktable and shoved them into his bag.

Three hours later, they were speeding north on 1-5. Behind them, smoke towered above the burning city.

______

Hera asked the Wanderer to walk with her along one of the paths in the cemetery. They left the car parked in the middle of the grounds. Robin was in the backseat watching Frank, who’d sat stiff and silent for the last hour. They all watched for the daughter. One way or another, she would come.

Despite his withdrawn nature, the Wanderer was handsome and polished. She could take him anywhere, and his manners would do him credit. He took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his jacket and offered it to her. She drew one from the pack, and he took one himself. He lit hers with an antique Zippo, then his own. Smoking was a way to delay, to draw out time. She knew the Wanderer used it as another way to read people: how they held the cigarette, how they exhaled, did they do so nervously, or did the movements calm them. She could let him think he was reading her, learning more about her—confiding in him bound him to her. If he felt he was a partner—or even a paramour—and not simply a soldier, he’d be more loyal to the goal.

“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 avoided 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, have 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.

He leaned on the car, near the window where Frank Walker sat. The Wanderer stood nearby, his arms crossed.

“What did she promise you to get you to join her?” the Greek said.

“Perhaps I was just curious.”

“Thought you could learn a few tricks?”

“No. Not many left to learn at my age.”

“You’re old?”

“Relatively.”

“How old?”

“I met Christ.”

Conversationally, the Greek said, “I saw him once, preaching at a village near Tyre.”

“He was a good preacher.”

“And a hell of a wizard.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause; then the Greek said, “Your friend in there doesn’t look well.”

“I’m fine,” the old man grumbled through the closed window.

“No,” said the Greek. “I think you look ill. Are you sure you don’t want to step out and get some air?”

The Wanderer said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Hera wished she could see. This was turning into quite the little show. Perhaps she’d make herself a sparrow next time.

“No,” Frank said, his voice thoughtful. “He’s right. It’s a little stuffy in here. Do I look pale?”

“A bit,” said Alex.

“I might be nauseated.”

“Come on, I’m not a fool,” the Wanderer said.

“Nor do I take you for one, which is why I think you’ll allow this fellow to vomit outside the car rather than inside.”

Hera couldn’t believe it. The Wanderer was actually going to fall prey to the charade.

The car door opened. Footsteps crunched on gravel as someone climbed out of the car.

Hera emerged from under the bumper, a gray cat racing around the Greek. She padded to a stop in front of the Wanderer, who held Frank Walker by the arm, outside the car. Out of her hiding place, she spotted a hulking warrior running toward the car.

She made herself whole and human and, crossing her arms, regarded the three men. “That will be quite enough,” she said.

________

Evie saw a startling flash of light, and the cat who’d made a dash along the driveway became Hera. She stood only a pace or two away from Alex and her father, who’d been leaving the car.

Alex had a plan. He’d been trying to get her father out of the car. He really had been trying to help.

Arthur shielded his eyes and slid to a stop. Merlin had disappeared. The other man sprang at Alex, who fell back, slamming against the gravel drive, and rolled, slipping out of his attacker’s wrestling grasp. Arthur drew his sword and lunged forward as if to run again, but he didn’t move. He stood like a statue, balanced on the balls of his feet, frozen. Hera pointed at him. Her power was stronger than the ancient king’s will.

They needed Merlin now. If Evie shouted, maybe he’d hear and come running. Unless the others found a way to stop him, too.

Alex’s attacker recovered quickly, with enough speed to grab Alex from behind and wrap his arm around his neck. Alex thrashed, struggling to break free. Her father sat in the car, gripping the edge of the door, looking bewildered.

So much for the distraction—they’d missed their chance. Evie had her ransom payment. She could end this.

She knew this corner of the cemetery because she’d visited here every time she’d returned to Hopes Fort over the last five years. She knew the grave markers here without looking at them. Irving and Amelia Walker, her father’s great-grandparents. Frank’s grandparents, her grandparents. Then Emma Doyle Walker. She walked across the dead grass like she was walking to visit her mother’s grave, like she knew where she was going and what she was doing, like this was any other walk. She reached the road leading to where the car was parked before any of them noticed her.

Alex, fighting the grip his opponent held him in, saw her first. He stopped struggling, which made his captor pause to look, and in moments, their attention drew the others.

“Evie, go back!” Arthur said through clenched teeth. His body trembled, fighting against the invisible grip that held it.

Hera stepped forward to meet her. Evie stopped ten paces or so away, before she came too close. Hera followed her lead, maintaining enough distance between them that they had to raise their voices to hear each other.

“Did you bring it?” Hera said. She wore high-heeled boots on the gravel drive, and her balance never wavered. Did she use magic to achieve her beauty and poise, or was she just that elegant?

“Yes.” Evie felt scruffy in her coat and jeans. But she had something Hera wanted. She had to remember that.

“Excellent. I’ll gladly release your father. I’ll even set your knights-errant free, though you disobeyed my instruction to come alone. But I want to see it first.”

Evie took the apple from her pocket. She kept a tight grip on it, not knowing what tricks Hera might use, whether she could yank it through the air with her mind, like any number of comic book superheroes.

Hera’s gaze softened, an awe-filled smile easing her features. Evie caught sight of Alex in the corner of her eye. He looked like he was going to scream.

“Mr. Walker, step out of the car, please,” Hera said.

Her father pulled himself out of the car. He didn’t look happy.

“Now, girl, toss me the apple.”

“Let Alex and Arthur go first.”

Hera nodded at her minion, who let Alex loose. Alex made a jump; whom he could attack or what he could get away with, Evie had no idea. But a man—the young man from the motel parking lot—moved in front of him, his arms crossed. He’d appeared from nowhere. Like magic. Alex froze.

Hera had trapped them all very well.

Next, she made a twisting motion with her hand, and Arthur fell forward, snarling. He raised his sword.

“Arthur! Stay back, please!” Evie said.

Scowling, he lowered his sword.

“Now, please,” Hera said, her waiting hand outstretched.

The apple felt firm in Evie’s hand. She didn’t want to let it go. “What are you going to do with it?”

Hera’s smile changed, turning thin and sly. Evie had the feeling she was being made fun of.

“Why, take over the world, of course.”

Evie’s grip on the apple tightened. She didn’t understand how such a little thing could rule the world.

It isn’t the tool or thing, but the one who wields it.

Then something happened. Hera misinterpreted her hesitation.

The goddess continued, “I could use your help, Evie. I need as many allies as I can find. While you may not think you have any power, you hold—or will soon hold—the stewardship of a great collection of treasures. You could be my Keeper of Treasures. I would honor you.”

She made a gesture that encompassed Alex and Arthur.

“They may have told you that I want to break this world. What else would I do with the apple of Discord but cause strife and turmoil? And they’re right. I do want to break this world. The storm of violence has already begun. All the props are in place. But I would break it so that I could make a new one. An ordered one.”

Evie had heard such claims before, many times. Every time a separatist group drove a truck bomb into a hospital, whenever terrorists crashed a plane into a building or a suicide bomber stepped into a crowded marketplace, it was in the name of a new world, or a better order that would rise up from the ashes of the old.

Evie stood twenty feet away from the grave marker of Emma Doyle Walker. Fifty-three years old, playing tourist at the Pike Place Market in Seattle when a twenty-year-old misguided activist blew herself up and murdered eighteen people.

“There’s a place for you, Evie Walker. We can work together.”

Hera didn’t use bombs, but she took hostages. She had different tools and she’d been working at it longer, but the rhetoric was surprisingly similar.

Evie had often wondered what she’d say to the woman who killed her mother, if she ever had a chance. More often than not, all Evie wanted was to punch the bitch out. She’d spent the last few years using Tracker and the Eagle Eyes to stop as many terrorists as she could.

She didn’t have a gun. She couldn’t just walk up and shoot them, as Tracker had. So if Tracker didn’t have a gun, and her compatriots and a hostage were still in danger—what would she do? If everything depended on her, and she had the confidence to act, what would she do? Because she’d be damned if she was going to give in to this woman.

She took a step, then another. Hera might have thought Evie was moving toward her. But really she was moving toward the space between Hera and the car, where her father stood. The driver’s seat was empty. The key might still be in the ignition. She didn’t dare look behind her, where Arthur stood. He could take care of himself. She looked at her father and hoped he knew her well enough to guess what she was doing. She looked at Alex and bit her lip. She needed his help. She needed him to keep Robin away.

Approaching Hera, she hefted the apple, testing its weight, getting ready to throw it. Hera lifted her chin, rounded her shoulders, getting ready to catch.

Evie threw, Hera reached, but the apple never left Evie’s hand.

She ran, shoving the apple back in her pocket. In her other pocket, she found the sprig of rowan Alex had given her. She threw this instead. Hera grasped at it, flinching when the leaves hit her face, stumbling—actually losing her poise—when her hands flailed for a target that wasn’t there.

She had to trust the others to do their parts and couldn’t take a moment to watch for them. She barreled into the sedan’s front seat and groped for the ignition.

No key.

She gripped the steering wheel, wondering if she could start the car through sheer willpower. Whenever Jeeves hot-wired a vehicle, Bruce just showed him fiddling with wires on the steering column. Evie didn’t have to actually know how to do it.

One of the back doors slammed. There was Frank, clicking the lock on.

Her father leaned over the front seat. “No keys?”

“No,” she said, a wail creeping into her voice.

“Evie! The window!” On the other side of the car, Arthur held Hera’s well-dressed henchman in a headlock with one arm, twisted at such an angle that the man had to struggle to keep his balance. Arthur raised his other arm, like he was getting ready to throw something.

The car had automatic windows that didn’t work with the engine off. She scrambled to the passenger-side door, and as she opened it, Arthur tossed. As he did, his prisoner wrenched out of his grasp and ran.

A car key on a rental company keychain landed in her lap.

She couldn’t think about how many bad guys were out there or what the others were going through to oppose them. She had her task: Take the key and get her father out of here.

As she slid the key into the ignition, her hand shaking, her mind numb, a hand slapped onto the windshield in front of her. The well-dressed man who’d been with her father, Arthur’s former prisoner, pressed his hand flat to the glass and caught her gaze. Caught it, and held it.

. . . what he’d seen over the years, the centuries, would make a man weep with despair, and he was cursed to see it all, to wander for all time, until the Second Coming of him called Christ the Lord, and that was the real curse because the wizard who named himself so would not return—he’d sacrificed himself and was gone. But the one he’d cursed had found a power of his own: He could take what he had seen and he could show others. The horrors, the despair, plague, massacre, torture, enough to shock the strongest of men, more than enough to chill a modern girl, and this showed through his eyes, and Evie felt cold, her joints aching, her muscles cramping, her eyes filling with tears.

Then she saw nothing.

“Drive, Evie.” Reaching from behind, her father covered her eyes with his hands. By feel, she turned the key, sparking the engine to life. Her muscles were her own again; the man’s hold on her was broken. Her father sat back, and she could see to shift into drive. Tires spun on the gravel and the car jolted forward. The man fell away.

She drove, hoping she stayed on the straightaway, uncertain of her bearings. She needed to find the others. Alex was wrestling Robin among the gravestones. Arthur was chasing after that strange man again. Where was Merlin?

The goddess appeared in the middle of the lane, standing in front of the oncoming car, wholly unconcerned.

Evie pushed on the gas as hard as she could.

The car stopped as if she’d slammed into a wall, and the passengers fell forward. Evie’s foot leaned on the gas, the engine revved, the tires kicked up a spray of gravel, but the car didn’t move.

Hera didn’t have to raise a hand. She only stared, lips parted in wonder.

Frank picked himself off the floor, where the sudden stop had thrown him. He put his hand on Evie’s shoulder and squeezed.

“What do I do?” she said, bracing herself on the steering wheel. What did destiny think it was doing, trusting the Storeroom to people who had no power to face such magic?

“I don’t know.”

A feathered thing rocketed from above, toward Hera. The goddess saw it at the last second and flung an arm to shield herself against the falcon that came at her, talons outstretched. She was distracted only a moment, and she struck back with a hand that had grown claws of its own as the falcon veered away. Their battle took them off the road.

Hera’s concentration was broken. The sedan leaped forward, free from her grip. They continued on the road out of the cemetery. The falcon—Merlin, a shape-shifting wizard—screeched and veered out of sight. Hera looked after the car, then after the falcon, and seemed uncertain which to attack first.

Evie could only drive and hope.

In the rearview mirror, she saw Alex running after them. No sign of Robin. She slammed the brakes. Her blood rushed painfully in her ears for the few moments it took him to reach the car. When her father opened the door and helped pull him inside, Evie was already moving again.

A thump crashed on the trunk of the car, then sounded on the roof. Evie craned over the dash, trying to look up through the windshield to what had jumped on the car.

Above her, Excalibur glinted in Arthur’s outstretched arm.

She hit the button to open her window. His hand gripped the edge of the roof.

“Drive!” he shouted. “Don’t look back!”

“Bloody hell!” Alex said with a laugh.

In command of the fiery steed, Evie drove.

The highway was destroyed because of the earthquake. In her mind, she mapped out the way she’d have to take to get home, the dirt roads around the back of town that would get her to the farmland near the house, and from there she’d have to hope for tractor paths.

She still had to get to the other side of town, which meant she still had to drive through town. A block away from Main Street, emergency lights flashed ahead. The police had the way barricaded.

“I’ll go around,” she said, thinking aloud. Front Street to Third Street, along the neighborhood—

“Stop!” Johnny Brewster ran toward her, flanked by a pair of deputies. He had his gun drawn. Evie braked, swerving sideways as the car slid to a halt.

Arthur knocked on the roof of the car. Alex opened a door and leaned back as the warrior slipped inside and tried to look natural, his sword resting on his lap.

Now that wasn’t conspicuous.

“What do I do?” she said, glancing at her father in the rearview mirror.

He looked pale, his lips pressed nervously together. “Stop, I suppose. It’s Johnny. He won’t give us trouble.”

But there was a woman following the police, walking calmly, knowingly. She was lithe and predatory. Evie’s stomach churned. She was the one who’d come to the house to tell her her father had been kidnapped.

Johnny didn’t lower his gun. Even when Evie met his gaze, when he had to know it was her, his friend and harmless, and that Frank was in the backseat.

Alex said, “You’re going to have to drive, Evie.” He stared ahead at the oncoming troopers.

“But it’s Johnny, we just have to explain—”

“We have to get out of here.”

“Evie, get out of the car! Keep your hands up!” Johnny called. The other officers moved around to flank them.

“Dad, that woman with him is working for Hera. I think Alex is right. She might have told them anything.”

Her father’s car window hummed open. He leaned his head out. Alex held his arm, like he wanted to pull him back, and Evie nearly screamed at him.

“You, too, Frank! Out of the car!”

“What’s the problem, Johnny?” Frank said.

“Those men in the car, I need to take them in.”

“Why? What have they done?”

“They’re wanted. I’ve got warrants.”

Evie shouted out her own window, “Whatever that woman told you, it isn’t true. She’s lying. They haven’t done anything.”

Johnny glanced back at the woman. She didn’t move; her expression never changed. Three cops held guns trained on the car.

“I could arrest you for harboring terrorists. Both of you! They’re terrorists, Evie. You don’t want to help them!” His jaw clenched. He was close enough that Evie saw sweat on his face.

“I can’t do much against guns,” Arthur said softly. “Not that many of them, at least.”

“I can take as many bullets as you need me to,” Alex said.

Arthur muttered something that sounded like, “Good God.”

She’d gotten a citation from the President recognizing her patriotism. She couldn’t believe she was about to do this.

“Dad, get down,” she said, and put the car into gear. She stepped hard on the gas pedal, and the car screeched forward, hit the curb, bounced onto the sidewalk, then off it again as she cranked the wheel around. The officer who’d been standing there lunged out of the way.

Shots rang out. Evie flinched, ducking reflexively while still trying to steer. She hadn’t expected them to shoot. These were Hopes Fort cops—how often did they have to shoot in the line of duty? When did they ever have to stop runaway cars?

She squealed around the next corner and was five blocks away before the sirens started after her.

“The cops here are a little slow on the uptake, aren’t they?” Alex said.

“That’s Hopes Fort,” Frank said. “Is everyone okay?”

“I don’t think they even hit the car.”

Evie drove until the pavement gave way to dirt. One car screeched to a stop at an intersection to avoid hitting them, the only oncoming traffic they encountered. Once again, that was Hopes Fort. But the sirens—two or three sets of them—were getting closer.

A flash ahead caught her attention. One of the cars was approaching from the other direction. They were going to hem her in.

Out of town now, all around them lay barren winter fields, plowed clean, waiting for spring planting.

She hoped the sedan had good tires.

White-knuckled, glancing manically in the rearview mirror, Evie leaned the wheel to the right. The car slid off the road, listing as it rolled onto the shoulder, which sloped to a ditch. Steering a wide arc meant she didn’t have to touch the brakes, and she had no faith in her ability to execute a Hollywood turn-on-a-dime at high speed. In moments, she was driving across the field, spewing a cloud of dirt behind her. She checked her mirrors and couldn’t see the cop cars through the dust.

An honest-to-God car chase, straight out of an issue of Eagle Eye Commandos. Not to mention the larger-than-life heroes surrounding her. She couldn’t wait to tell Bruce about this.

Home was about five miles ahead. She’d never considered going anywhere else. No one argued, so she kept going. Home was safe; the others must have thought so, too.

“They don’t seem to be following,” Arthur said, twisting to look out the back window.

The police cars were still there: One stopped on the road, two others slid down the embankment to the field, where, near as Evie could tell, their tires were spinning. They were shrouded in a huge cloud of dust, which was getting farther and farther away. Hopes Fort police cars: ten years old and in need of new tires. Or maybe they had a little luck on their side. Merlin was still out there, after all.

Something thudded against the right side of the car. Evie looked in her mirrors, out the window, but she couldn’t see what had struck them. It almost sounded like she’d hit an animal.

The same noise slammed against the left side, and suddenly a canine head thrust over her father’s still-open window. Paws hitched over the glass, it barked, guttural and ferocious, saliva spraying, eyes dark and shining. Alex pulled her father away, and Evie used the master control to shut the window. It slid closed slowly, and the barks still echoed, even after the animal lost its purchase and fell away.

The hits sounded all around them now, animals throwing themselves against the car on all sides.

“Coyotes,” Frank said.

Evie drove through the middle of a swarm of them. They came from all sides to intercept her, inexplicably committing suicide in their attempt to jump on the car, to claw through the metal. The prairie was filled with coyotes; they yodeled at each other through the night when she’d lived here. She hadn’t imagined so many of them, though. Hundreds of them came at her, a sea of fur.

Her instincts cried for her to stop the car. She hated driving over them, hurting them. But if she stopped, they’d rush the sedan and maybe find a way inside.

“They’re Hera’s,” Arthur said.

“Or one of her followers’.” Alex watched out the back window as the sea of coyotes, alive and dead, spilled away.

She thought she’d be driving too fast for them, even over the dirt, and that they couldn’t keep up. But new ones, seeming to spring from the earth itself, replaced the old.

“They can’t hurt us,” Frank said, but his tone was uncertain.

Alex huffed. “Yeah, until we try to get out of the car.”

That problem presented itself quickly as the Walker house appeared, a block on the flat horizon.

“Do I slow down or what?” Evie said.

No one answered, and she swerved, hoping for a solution to present itself in the extra few moments.

“You might as well stop,” Alex said. “We’ll run out of gas eventually.”

“What about the coyotes?”

“One thing at a time.”

Bouncing hard, passing from cropland to the dried-up grasses of the prairie, which was untilled and rocky, Evie aimed for the house. Her passengers braced against the front seat. She paralleled the road leading to the house and counted it a small blessing that no police cars were waiting there. The broken highway had helped them on that front.

The car’s shocks were shot. She didn’t dare slow down, but the vehicle slid and swerved under her, the wheel jerking out of her hand. She clung to it to try to keep it steady, like she was guiding a ship in a storm. She’d never noticed so many ditches and dips in the land, which she had always insisted was maddeningly flat.

One last burst of gas, one last rise to scale, and she roared onto the driveway, cut left toward the house, throwing the men to one side of the seat. She hit the brakes, the car lurched, and they were still. She gasped, and her heart pounded like she’d run the whole way from town herself.

Two dozen or so coyotes swarmed around the car, yipping and leaping to claw at the windows, which were smeared with their saliva and blood.

“Now what?” Her voice quailed.

Arthur, sword in hand, prepared to open the door. “Close it when I’m out,” he said to Alex, next to him.

“Are you crazy?” Evie cried.

But he’d already shoved the door open with his feet. Slashing a clear path with Excalibur, he gripped the edge of the roof and hauled himself up. The sound echoed inside the car as he hit the roof and steadied himself. Alex kicked a coyote away and slammed the door shut as soon as he was clear.

As the chalky smell of the dust settled, the coyotes’ scent became discernible—a musky animal odor of unwashed fur and hostility. One of them sprang onto the hood of the car. Evie flinched back as it lunged up the windshield, its claws smacking the glass. Excalibur swept down, caught the animal on the shoulder, and cut deep. It squealed and fell, rolling off the hood. Then Arthur was at the back of the car, stabbing a coyote crawling up the trunk.

“It almost makes it all worthwhile,” Frank said, his voice hushed. “Getting to see him fight.”

The sword flashed again, and another coyote yipped and fell.

Alex shook his head. “This isn’t a proper fight. It’s slaughter. This wasn’t meant to hurt us. It was meant to slow us down, annoy us. She still needs one of you alive, to get into the Storeroom.”

A new sound entered the fray, more barking, but deeper, rougher, from a large dog. Queen Mab came racing from the back of the house, eating yards at a time with her great stride.

She barreled into the nearest coyote, slamming her claws on it and closing her jaws around its neck. It yelped, and blood poured into its sandy fur. In a moment it lay still. Three others sprang at the wolfhound.

“She’ll be killed,” Evie said, her breath catching. “They’ll kill her.”

But Mab wouldn’t be left out of the fight. Her purpose was to defend the house.

Mab writhed and caught a coyote by the throat, even as another scraped its claws down her back. She didn’t seem to notice, wanting only to kill her enemies. Arthur’s sword swung again, another coyote fell, and Evie hoped that Arthur could kill enough of them to be able to help Mab before the coyotes finished her.

It would be far too close. For every throat Mab ripped out, two more coyotes rose up to sink their fangs into her legs and flanks. Arthur stood on the hood now, slashing to keep them away from her, hollering at them to get away.

A bright light flashed, like lightning, though the sky held no storm clouds. Arthur fell to his knees, shielding his eyes with his left arm, and the coyotes yipped and cowered away.

A voice rumbled a word that Evie couldn’t make out, but it rattled her bones. She covered her ears to make it stop. They all covered their ears, even Arthur. He kept Excalibur in hand, though he hunched over on the hood of the car, distracted. Vulnerable.

Evie thought the worst until the coyotes, the dozen or so that were left, gathered themselves and ran, bundles of wounded fur and muscle racing from the driveway onto the prairie.

A falcon hovered over the newly cleared driveway. Then another flash of light blazed, and the falcon disappeared.

Merlin stood before them, his sleeves rolled up, the top button of his shirt undone.

At once, they all left the car. Claw marks scored the paint all over it. Arthur jumped off the roof and met his friend and mentor, clasping his arms.

“A simple scouting mission, you said,” Merlin grumbled.

Evie and her father went to Mab, who was panting hard and trying to pick herself up. The hound was more red than gray, bleeding from gouges taken out of her neck, shoulders, back, flanks, and belly. She flattened her ears, peered up at them, wagged her tail a couple of times, and didn’t make a sound.

Cradling Mab’s head, Evie heard herself making nonsensical comforting noises, telling Mab what a good girl she was. She was a foolish dog, really—she didn’t have to fling herself into the fight like that. She should have stayed safe. But she was a dog with a mission, and who was Evie to criticize?

Her father took longer to lower himself to the ground, on obviously complaining limbs. He hissed with pain before adding his own voice to Mab’s praises. “That’s a girl, it’s okay, girl.”

Alex knelt beside her. “How is she?”

First aid didn’t seem remotely useful. Evie said, “I don’t know.”

“Well, her tail’s still wagging, so it can’t be too bad, eh?”

Mab’s watery gaze seemed to ask him if he were joking.

“Can you do something for her?” Frank rubbed Mab’s head, almost absently.

“I’ve been a soldier for over three thousand years. I ought to be able to dress a few wounds. Let’s see if we can get her into the house.”

“I’ve got her.” Arthur had joined them. He got to one knee and scooped the hound up in his arms. Mab’s immense body nearly obscured him, but he hefted the weight with seemingly little effort. He moved slowly and carefully. Mab yelped once, but didn’t struggle.

Slowly, with Frank leading the way and Alex walking near Arthur, they went into the house.

Merlin hung back, scanning the prairie around the house. Evie waited for him.

“They’re out there,” he said. “A gathering storm. They’ll lay siege to the place.”

Movement caught her gaze. She looked out to what had drawn his attention. A few coyotes remained, loping around the edge of the property. They didn’t approach or make any threatening moves; rather, they seemed to be patrolling, marking a circuit around the house, watching for anything that might approach, or try to leave.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“Wait. Plan. Pray, if you’re so inclined.”

And whom did one pray to, when deities appeared and kidnapped your father? They went to the house. Merlin backed up to the porch, keeping his gaze outward, still searching the surrounding fields.

The others had placed Mab on a bath towel on the kitchen table. Alex presided over the impromptu operating table. His tools were a bottle of peroxide, a box of gauze, and a thread and needle.

“She’s going to be fine,” he told Evie after she’d locked the door. “So long as she doesn’t enthusiastically rip the stitches out as soon as I’m done. But you wouldn’t do that, would you, girl?”

Mab gamely attempted a tail wag. Her expression was humanly woeful.

He continued conversationally, “And I suppose you’ve had your rabies shots? Never mind.”

Her father leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his stomach.

“Dad, are you okay?”

“You didn’t have to come after me like that,” he said, his voice low.

Her tone was matter-of-fact: “Yes, I did.”

“She didn’t act alone, Mr. Walker,” Arthur said.

Her father closed his eyes. “I know. Thank you. Thank you all. Alex, let me get you a clean shirt. That one’s a little messed up.”

The front of Alex’s shirt was scarlet. The rest of them had escaped relatively unscathed, but he looked like he’d seen battle. “Thanks. That’d be nice.”

Frank started to turn, then stumbled, slumping against the wall.

Evie reached his side in a heartbeat. Arthur was there as well, lunging across the kitchen. Alex, needle in hand, could only watch.

He brushed them away. “It’s the stress catching up with me, that’s all.”

“Dad!” Recriminations were laden in the word. Tension edged her voice.

Not waiting for explanations, Arthur stepped in and pulled Frank’s arm over his shoulders. “Come along, friend.”

“Bed,” he said with a sigh.

“That’s right.”

Evie followed them, wondering why her father would accept help from a mythical stranger and not from her. Though she supposed you didn’t argue when King Arthur insisted on carrying you to bed.

As a final insult, her father indicated for Arthur to pause outside the bedroom door. “Evie, stay here.”

Arthur took him inside and closed the door.

Back to the wall, she slid to the floor, pressed her face to her knees, and covered her head with her hands.

Some long minutes later, the door opened and closed again. Arthur emerged, a white T-shirt in hand, which he put over the back of a chair near Alex.

Arthur then moved to sit on the floor beside her. “He took something for the pain. He’s resting now.”

She sniffed loudly and wiped her face, attempting to hide that she’d been crying. She looked away from him, not wanting him to see. Her voice caught, though, and betrayed her. “I try to help him, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“No,” he said. “There isn’t.”

He touched her shoulder, and she took in the invitation to lean against him while he held her, his chin resting on her head.

At least she wasn’t alone anymore. How bad could things be if Arthur of legend was fighting for her? He didn’t seem much like a legend just now. He was a solid, human presence, warm and protective. She rested in his arms, grateful for the moment to catch her breath.

A throat-clearing sounded nearby. Alex, looking sheepish.

“I was wondering if I could get help carrying Her Majesty to the sofa? The dog,” he explained, gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder when Arthur looked quizzically at him.

Evie stood quickly, flushing, embarrassed that she was flushing because she had nothing to flush about. Except that Alex was staring at her like she did.

Arthur carried Mab to the sofa. The dog filled all of it but a corner where Evie sat and stroked her head. The fur there was silky, flat against her skull. She hoped to calm the dog into sleeping, giving her wounds a chance to heal. It hurt to see proud Mab so weak.

Alex stood behind the sofa and watched over them. Arthur had moved away, to look out a window.

Merlin watched Alex closely. “Three thousand years, you said. That would make you older than I am.”

“Likely,” Alex said without facing the wizard.

“How? How does one live so long and survive being run through by Excalibur? You must be one of the old gods. Like her.”

Alex looked at each of them, Evie last. His hands clenched on the back of the sofa. For a moment, she thought he was going to leave, turn and storm out as he’d done whenever she’d asked too many questions. But Merlin was difficult to refuse.

When he finally spoke, he spoke to her. “I fought beside Odysseus in the Trojan War. The day after we entered the city”—he didn’t have to tell that part of the story—“I was taken prisoner by Apollo, who was unhappy with the turn of events. He enslaved me and intended to keep me for all eternity, enspelling me, to make me ageless and impervious to harm. Things didn’t quite work out, but I was stuck.”

“Apollo the god?” Merlin said.

“He wasn’t a god.” Alex straightened and paced along the back of the sofa, his gaze downcast. “Hera isn’t a god. None of them were. They were just people with too much power who used it for their own gains. You, Merlin—you matched her in a fight. You have as much power as any of them. You could have been a god, but instead you chose to serve. That has been one of the worst frustrations of my long life—living among the prayers, the shrines, the temples, the saints and knowing all the while that the gods we worship are just people.”

Arthur had found a cloth dish towel from the kitchen and was cleaning Excalibur. The movements were slow, methodical. He said, “There is the one God. The true God.”

Alex suppressed a chuckle and shook his head. “They died. The gods I worshipped as a boy are all dead. Zeus sacrificed himself to destroy the ancient pantheon and change the world. That’s what it takes to change the world, you know: a person of great power sacrificing himself, trading his own life for the transformation. So he did, and in a few years, the footprints of the many gods faded. When the gods stopped answering prayers in so personal a manner as the myths tell, the myths changed, the many gods became one. A god who was an idea rather than a person was born. He became all gods.”

“Then what of Christ his Son?” Arthur said, true to his own legend.

“Do you know I saw him once?” Alex, brash and insensitive, continued. “He could have been the greatest wizard since Zeus himself. The power of Zeus, the charisma of Apollo—he could have been a god. But a lot of magic had left the world by that time. It’s my theory that he learned somehow of what Zeus had done—the sacrifice of self for power. It’s a story in so many cultures: the hero gives his life to restore his land, and is reborn as the king. That was what he was trying to do, I think. He succeeded, in a sense: I think he’d have been surprised to learn how far his name has spread. And how it is used. But he gave his life for that fame. His followers wait for his coming that never happens. And meanwhile, thousands of minor wizards work their magic in his name and call them miracles.”

“You are a mad blasphemer,” Arthur said.

“Thank you, my lord.”

Evie kept petting Mab’s head. The dog was breathing deeply, sleeping. “Hera lived,” she said. “And magic is coming back into the world. What do we do?”

Merlin turned from the window. “Miss Walker, do you believe that Hera will start a war if she gets what she wants?”

The apple still nested in her pocket, pressed against her hip. Long ago, Discord created the apple for the express purpose of sowing strife. Its power had not diminished. Hera would know how to use that power. Such a little thing, rolled onto the floor of the U.N. General Assembly. Metaphorically, of course. She would offer one or another country weapons, money, political dominance—and see them fight for the prize. She could offer one supremacy in space, another free trade, a third a telecommunications empire. Watch them take her bribes and do her bidding.

“She can manipulate the one that’s already starting,” she said, not certain how she knew, or where her growing confidence came from. Except that her father was dying. He succumbed, and she knew more than she should.

“Then we take our stand against her. Someone must oppose her.”

Arthur gazed at Merlin with a shadowed look in his eyes. Past battles, lost wars—who knew what memories played in his mind’s eye?

“Is that why we’re here, Merlin? To build a new kingdom from the ashes, as we did before?”

“You are here because someone must oppose her. Who better than you?”

Alex crossed his arms. “How? Oppose her how? Do you know where she is? What her next plan is?”

Merlin scowled. “She’ll come here, of course. We’ll wait for her.”

“We’d be fighting a purely defensive battle if we stay here. We can’t win.”

Arthur sided with Merlin. “I’d like nothing better than to take the fight to her, but I have no forces and no knowledge of her position. Here, our position is at least mildly defensible.”

“The house is protected,” Evie said. “No one gets in unless invited. No one gets into the Storeroom except the guardian and his heir.”

The men looked at her, but her gaze was distant. She couldn’t pay attention to them. She recognized the Storeroom, the power it had carried for centuries, as her family immigrated from place to place, carrying its contents with them—somehow they carried everything as they traveled. The knowledge of how they did it eluded her still. She could ask her father. He’d know.

“Then we’re safe for now,” Alex said. His brow was creased, watching her with uncertainty. Like he didn’t know her. “Perhaps we should get some rest. So that we’re ready when she comes back. She will come back.”

Evie closed her eyes, wanting to forget. Give the knowledge back to her father. “Yes.”

Arthur glanced out the window, his gaze searching the distant horizon. “We’ll keep a watch in shifts. Sinon’s right. You should try to sleep.”

That was astute, the try to sleep. Evie felt exhausted to her very bones, but she hated the idea of falling asleep. Even with Arthur standing watch.

“Feel like taking a walk?” Arthur said to Merlin.

“Another scouting mission?” the old man grumbled.

Arthur grinned. “I thought we’d make sure there aren’t any more of those dogs prowling around.”

Merlin made a distracted motion of assent, and the two strode to the kitchen door.

Before they went outside, Evie hurriedly stood and called to him. “Arthur. Thank you. Thank you for staying.”

He nodded and gave her a smile—a vivid smile that would inspire his people to follow him into battle. They couldn’t lose, not with Arthur leading them.

Then he and Merlin were gone, the door closed.

Alex unbuttoned and peeled off his shirt, stuffing it into the trash under the sink. He washed his hands and arms to the elbows. The water ran pink off him. Evie’d guessed right, he was well built under his coat. He had sculpted muscles on his arms, shoulders, and chest, flexing with his movements. They weren’t excessive, but they promised an efficient strength.

“You’re falling in love with him,” he said, his tone too flat to be mocking, as he stared at the running water.

She started to be angry. She wanted to be angry at his presumption. But the emotion faded.

Instead she made half a laugh and shook her head. “Of course I am. Aren’t you? But no, not really, I think. He’s too heroic. Larger than life, untouchable. Like Superman. He scares the shit out of me. I’m not good enough to fall in love with that. Not brave enough. Or beautiful enough.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.” He stalked over the chair at the kitchen table and pulled on the clean T-shirt.

She should say something here, she thought. If this were a story she was writing, the character would have to say something. She didn’t know what, so if it were a story, she’d have to walk away from it or put in some little stars to remind her to go back to it and fill it in. She liked writing because she could always go back and change things, or think of something better to say. Wittier. She had no wit.

She looked away, to the table where her work was still scattered. Uselessly, now. The comics, her laptop, the stories they contained, seemed so far away. Her phone lay on the table among the debris. The screen showed a missed message. She picked up the phone—she had reception again—played back the lone message, and listened. It was Bruce, who didn’t leave messages, but always waited for her to call back.

“Evie. Some of us—me and Callie, James, his roommates—are leaving the city. James has a place in Napa. It’s not safe here anymore. So we’re running. I don’t know when we’ll be able to come back. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to work. I just wanted you to know, Evie, working with you on Eagle Eyes was great. The best work I’ve ever done. You helped me do better than I ever thought I could. Thanks. Maybe we can do it again sometime. I’ll see you. When this all blows over.” The when sounded despairing.

Useless. It had all been useless.

She played the message again. Bruce sounded tired. She wondered how much work he’d been able to finish before fleeing. She hoped he and Callie and the others had made it out of the city.

“Evie, you’ve gone white.”

Shaking her head, she set down the phone. Sleep, rest—wasn’t that what she was supposed to be doing? She sank into the armchair, pulled up her knees. Her stomach was in knots. She’d never rest again.

“Evie?” Alex moved closer. He looked like he might be about to hover. She didn’t want him any closer. He might try to comfort her, and she might start crying.

She said, “How did you know to come here? How did you find this place?”

He set his hand on the back of the sofa. “I tracked you down.”

“But how?”

Shrugging, he glanced away. “Old-fashioned detective work. I knew your family at the beginning. When you were first given stewardship of the artifacts.”

The mind boggled. “When was that?”

“Three thousand years or so. I lost track of the family for a while. They migrated a lot. Every time there was a war, one of them took the Storeroom and left. To protect it, probably. Some of the leads were almost impossible to trace. But I had plenty of time.”

That was what she should do: collect the Storeroom and run to escape the war. But when war was everywhere, where could she go?

She admired his dedication in spite of herself. “You must be disappointed. You did all that work for nothing.”

“On the contrary,” he said, his smile softening. “I got to meet you.”

She blushed and didn’t know what to say. Witless, again.

“I have to tell you,” he said. “I might have given her the key to the house’s magic. I—I have another curse, you see. Apollo made this chain so that I must always tell the truth. I’ve found some fairly contorted ways of speaking around the truth. But sometimes I have no choice. I’m afraid I’m a terrible spy. Not like the old days.”

That was what happened when one tried being a double agent. She knew that from subplots of the comic book. As for the key to the house’s magic, and why Alex would know what that was—she didn’t understand. Still, some knowledge eluded her.

“Everything you’ve said is true?”

“That’s right. Or true to me, at least.”

He said he couldn’t lie, and that he’d die for her if he could. What could she say to argue with that?

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I want to.”

She ought to ask Alex to tell stories about her family. All of them, back through the centuries. She didn’t know anything about her family.

“I’m going to try to rest.” She smiled thinly, touched his arm as she passed him, and went to her room, shrugging off her jacket, the weight of gold still pulling at its pocket.

“This is taking too long,” Robin said as he paced back and forth near the Marquis. Through a windbreak of cottonwoods, they could see the Walker house in the distance. The intrepid heroes had successfully defeated the Curandera’s coyotes. She had collected the animals from miles of prairie and turned them to her will, but they were only animals in the end. They could harass, but they didn’t know how to break into the house.

This had all taken too long. They should have been able to overcome the mortals in the cemetery. Hera should have been able to make the girl hand over the apple. The whole affair with the elder Walker had proceeded clumsily. And now he was set babysitting the self-important magician.

He’d stopped caring about any of that.

The Marquis had cleared the weeds and brush from a space until only flat dirt remained. On the tablet of dirt he traced a series of figures in powdered chalk. A square, and in the square was inscribed a circle, and within the circle a star, with Greek letters at the points. Incense burned in a brazier. Red candles flared and flickered in the wind.

“Time is master of us all,” said the nobleman. “Please be quiet.”

“Can you really break through the magic guarding the house?”

The Marquis’s lips tightened and he managed a brief glare at Robin, who was pleased at the reaction. “Prometheus built these enchantments and his magic is very old. But now that I know their maker, I’ve learned the nature of his spells.”

He sprinkled a new powder on the brazier, which flared green. He held his hand over the star and seemed to meditate for a time. Impatient, Robin watched. This seemed like such a cumbersome way to practice magic. Artificial, structured, dependent on too many patterns, rituals, tools. Robin didn’t understand; magic had come easily to him. He’d been born in the wild and raised to its rhythms, had always felt the world’s power in his blood. He was part of that power, immortal, forever young. He had only to think, to wish, to be, and his magic came to him. He pitied the Marquis, who studied magic as a science and surely didn’t feel the power in his blood. Surely he would never be a god.

“It didn’t take this long to find the path here.”

“Yes, it did,” said the Marquis, unperturbed. “You were simply more patient then.”

Robin was five times as old as this whelp. How dare he be so smug. “I don’t think you can do it.”

“You certainly aren’t making the task easier. This is a different sort of problem, Master Robin. Finding the place was like following a blazing arrow pointing the way. It had already been found, and I had only to mark the path. This is more like storming a castle.”

“Why couldn’t Hera do this herself?” That was always the rub, wasn’t it? Did you want to serve a greater power that needed your help? A truly great power wouldn’t need anyone’s help. He didn’t need anyone’s help.

The Marquis said, “The risk. If I do it wrong, the house might kill me. Now, if you’ll pardon me.”

Robin stared at him, curious for the first time all day. Now, this could get interesting. . . .

The magician left the ritual markings and walked in a wide circle that swept around the property. Robin followed. The man had created another space, with similar markings, candles, and incense, exactly opposite the first. When they reached the other ritual site, Robin felt a tightness close in, a hum of power that hadn’t been there before. The Marquis had closed a circle of magic around the Walker house.

“Remember, Hera only wants the protection gone. She wants the magic in the Storeroom maintained.”

The Marquis sighed. “Will you let me do my job?”

Robin couldn’t interpret the gestures he made, or guess why he did what he did, but he couldn’t deny the power, the shape of it, the tremor closing in on the house. It raised the hair on the back of his neck. He wondered what would happen if he kicked a little dirt over one of those symbols. The Marquis didn’t even see him do it.

There was a presence, a force inside the house, and the Marquis was opposing it. Robin watched the house, expecting it to collapse, or burst into flames, or shoot lightning at them.

Then the feeling went away.

Expressionless, the Marquis let his arms hang loose at his sides. He said, “It’s done.”

Then the Marquis dropped to his knees. He didn’t make a sound, just worked his mouth for a moment or two as if trying to draw breath. His arms hung as if paralyzed, and the realization seemed to pass across his face that while he had succeeded, something had gone wrong. Then he fell, facedown into the dirt, and lay still, dead, after what must have seemed too short a life after all.

Robin clicked his tongue. “So much magic requires sacrifice. Hera will surely mourn you.” He kicked a bit of dirt on the Marquis’s nice coat.

Time to fly, Robin thought, smiling. Nothing had frustrated him like this in centuries. He wanted to break something. It was invigorating. He raced away, light as air.

Alex had become . . . overwhelming. If it were any other time and place, if her father weren’t dying and the world weren’t ending . . .

And why should that make any difference?

She curled up in bed, pretending that she might actually be able to sleep. Alex had said he was going to sleep in the armchair. She’d left him alone in the front room. She should go back, to keep an eye on him. Keep him company.

She should stop thinking about him at all.

A distant roll of thunder sounded, rattling the windowpanes. A winter thunderstorm. Rare, but not impossible. There might even be snow. A white Christmas. The holiday was still a couple days off. She’d forgotten. Evie pulled the pillow over her head and hugged it there. She was supposed to be pretending to sleep.

An ache caught her gut, a feeling of such profound dread, she almost vomited. She pressed her hand to her stomach. She’d felt this when she got the call about her mother’s death.

She sat up. Someone had died. Her father—

Mab started barking, loud enough to shake the house, when she should have been resting. A door opened, squeaking. Her father’s door. She heard him say, “Mab, hush!”

She stifled a sob. He was okay.

A man jumped onto the bed.

Before she could scream, he straddled her and shoved her back, pinning her with his legs and body, and locked his hand over her mouth. Glaring up at him, she struggled, but he only held tighter. Despite his slight form, he was strong.

“Evie Walker. Evie, Evie.” His nose was an inch from her face, his breath caressing her. The young man bared his teeth when he smiled, vicious. He was Hera’s henchman, Robin.

“Do you know what’s happened?” he breathed into her ear. “You’re no longer safe. These walls will not protect you. I turned myself to dust and crept in through a crack in the floorboards. What do you think of that?”

Her mind raced, even as her body tried to thrash. She heard his words, but couldn’t make meaning of them. Scream, scream for help. But she couldn’t.

He said, “Hera is coming. She can have the apple. I want you.”

After hundreds of years, the island of Ithaca grew barren and difficult, and the family’s prosperity was divided between too many sons. Niko hadn’t wanted his share of land, the wealth that lay in olive groves and flocks of sheep. He took the main of his inheritance: the contents of the Storeroom, packed away into an underground cellar. The artifacts were what he truly inherited from his mother, who had inherited them from her father, and so on, eldest child to eldest child, for generations.

When the Storeroom came to Niko, he stood on the cusp of migration. He had to leave, or be drafted into the army. Under Alexander, Macedonia was swallowing the world. While he didn’t like to be called a coward, he felt in his bones he had a different calling, a stronger calling, one that meant he had to flee.

The room was just large enough for him to turn around in. He surveyed the items, packed into shelves and nooks carved into the earthen walls. Swords, shields, helmets, lyres, winged sandals, golden fleece, woolen cloaks. One by one, he placed them in a leather satchel. The bag never grew heavier, never bulged, no matter how much he put in it. The bag itself was magic—the bag was the Storeroom, made small.

Niko knew the stories. Even if his family had no magical legacy, he’d know what many of these items were. Here was the ball of twine Ariadne gave to Theseus, to lead him out of the labyrinth. Two quivers of arrows, one silver and one gold, had belonged to the twins Artemis and Apollo. And here, a golden apple bearing an ancient inscription. The characters had long ago faded from knowledge. Niko couldn’t read them, but he knew the story, and he knew what it said: “For the Fairest.”

Gingerly, he set it into the bag with everything else.

The Storeroom didn’t used to have this much, a vague familiar memory told him. But magic was going out of the world. Here it lay, inert, the stories finished and done with. The age of heroes had ended. It made Niko sad.

All his possessions contained in a bag over his shoulder, he sailed west, to a peninsula of warring chieftains that seemed unlikely to unite and develop aspirations of empire-building anytime soon.