The Age of Zeus

64. THE MUNDANE

Days came and went on that chilly mountain peak, and Sam drifted along, numb, observing the mundane lives of gods.

The Olympians endured her presence among them with varying degrees of acceptance. Zeus was by far the friendliest, Hera by far the least friendly, and the others ranged along a scale between these two extremes but tending more towards the Hera end. Aphrodite and Dionysus did a marvellous job of pretending they were delighted to have Sam there but she could almost hear their smiles vanish the moment they turned their backs on her, and her own loathing of Aphrodite made smiling back out of the question. Hephaestus, meanwhile, seemed to grumble about almost everything, so it was hardly out of character that he grumbled about her ("Mortals have their place, and this isn't it."). He mostly kept to himself in his own temple, however, from where could be heard, now and then, the clank and groan of metal being worked.

With Apollo Sam had very little interaction, and that was probably just as well, since the sight of him, proximity to him, made her feel physically unwell. He spent all his day honing his warrior skills at the amphitheatre, or else exercising, pumping weights, running, swimming, often in the company of Ares. He paid Sam no heed — she was beneath his dignity. If he considered her in some way responsible for the death of his twin sister, there was no sign of it, although she couldn't help noticing that, a few days after she arrived on Olympus, one of the mannequins he used for archery practice had received a splash of orange paint on its head, a crude approximation of auburn hair. Whenever she passed, this mannequin was always pin-cushioned with arrows.

Poseidon was an infrequent visitor to Olympus. He regarded himself as an outsider, the one hard done by, the perpetual black sheep, although when he came he expected to be welcomed with open arms and made a fuss of. Otherwise, he got huffy and muttered about lack of kinship and respect. He didn't have much to say to or do with Sam.

Would that Hades had been the same. He liked to hang around her and engage in conversation about the most trivial, inane things, all the while eyeing her up and licking his dry lips. With his cadaverous looks and those black leather gloves he reminded Sam of the kind of man who loitered outside school gates or got caught with unforgivable jpegs on his home computer hard drive, and she made every effort to avoid him if she could, but it wasn't easy. Wherever she went around the stronghold, Hades would sooner or later appear, smiling his far too toothsome smile. "Why, hello, Miss Akehurst. Fancy bumping into you." Or: "So we meet again. People will talk." It was hard to tell what he wanted from her, beyond a few minutes of stilted chitchat, but Sam couldn't escape the impression that he was sizing her up for something. What, she dreaded to think and wasn't keen to find out.

Ares she quite liked — didn't despise so wholeheartedly, at any rate — and he in turn adopted a sort of prison officer attitude towards her. Formal, not at all kindly, but you knew where you stood with him. As long as you didn't give him any nonsense, he wouldn't give you any grief.

Athena was an altogether different matter. The least well-known of the Olympians, the one who shunned the limelight as a rule, she was stern and no-nonsense and quite frank in her resentment of Sam. Just as Sam could seldom steer clear of Hades when she was out and about, she couldn't evade the contempt-filled looks that Athena sent her way, most often during meals, which were taken in the naos — the main central courtyard — of the communal Pantheonic temple. Every time Sam so much as glanced her way across the table, there was Athena, high-browed and haughty, glaring. Usually Athena would then lean over to Hera and whisper something, still with her eyes on Sam, and Hera would nod grimly. As Sam understood it, these two Olympians were not supposed to like one another. In the myths, being the offspring of Zeus and his first wife Metis had earned Athena the undying enmity of her stepmother. But, assuming the myths had any relevance here, the two of them looked to have overcome their differences. Possibly their shared dislike of Sam was helping bring them closer together.

Demeter was also in the staunchly anti-Sam camp. So was Hermes, which didn't bother Sam in the least, since she was staunchly anti-Hermes. He was Darren Pugh, after all. Looked the same. Spoke the same. Walked the same. He might be dressed up as Hermes, and possess the requisite powers, but there wasn't a shred of doubt in her mind that this was the ex-con who had threatened her back on that first day at Bleaney and had then taken Landesman's cheque, agreeing to go away and not tell a soul about the invitation or the island.

Only, he hadn't stuck to his promise, had he? It didn't take a genius to work out how things had gone. Maybe the money had run out, trickling through Pugh's slippery fingers faster than he could hold on to it, or maybe not but he had nonetheless spotted an opportunity to make some more, or just gain himself a leg-up in the world.

She confronted him about it one afternoon, when she was heavily premenstrual and in a combative mood. Hermes was alone on the steps of his temple, burnishing his helmet with a cloth. Sam strode up and said, "Do you really not remember me?"

Hermes looked blank. "Until I hauled you off that island, I'd never seen you before in my life."

"January. In the bunker. I pegged you as a jailbird from the off. You got shirty and called me 'ginger tits,' then went off in a strop with a lot of Regis Landesman's money. Which you then, I bet, pissed away on booze, women and horses, am I right?"

The blank look remained, although the phrase "ginger tits" seemed to spark something, albeit momentarily. In his eyes had there been just that tiniest flash of recollection?

"Woman, I am Hermes the Thrice-Great, He Who Presides Over Contests," he said. "That's who I am and who I have always been."

"And after the money was gone," Sara continued, "what? You saw something about the Titans on the telly and your cunning little mind put two and two together. You remembered the bunker, you remembered what Landesman was promising us, and next thing you're in touch with the Olympians, saying you know where we can be found. But you wanted something in return for that information. You probably asked for money but they made you a better offer. Power. They needed a new Hermes, so they offered you the job. That's what happened, isn't it?"

"I've heard that you're not quite right in the head…"

"That's what happened," Sam insisted. "You traded our whereabouts for speed, teleportation and that tin helmet there. You sold us out."

Hermes smiled and shrugged. "Zeus has said you're not to be harmed, but I'm sorely tempted to take you up to a very high crag and — "

"Have they done this before?" Sam cut in, musing aloud. "Replaced an Olympian who's died with a substitute? It's conceivable. Maybe one of you was killed in action but the death was covered up and along comes a new face shortly afterwards, same outfit, same powers, but no one's looked further than that and spotted that it's an impostor. The brand continues, original packaging, new content. That really would make each of you immortal, after a fashion."

"I'm going to go now," said Hermes.

"And your memories get wiped, too. How does Zeus do that? I'm assuming it's Zeus behind all this. He gives the powers, takes away your past, somehow makes you convinced you're genuinely a Greek god…"

"Really am going."

"…and you're left none the wiser. Can it be done? More to the point, where is it done?"

"Goodbye."

Hermes vanished.

"Yes, off you go," Sam said to the empty space where he had just been sitting. "Run off and polish your helmet somewhere else. I know who you are and what you did, Pugh. You're on my shit list too, you know."

Empty as this threat was, she felt better for saying it.

Later, Zeus drew her aside for a quiet word. "Hermes tells me you were haranguing him today with this — I can only call it conspiracy nonsense. That's him in addition to me, Ares, Aphrodite, Dionysus… Anyone else? Just please desist, Sam. None of us is interested. Your convictions aren't convincing. We don't believe your disbelief. It's irksome and tiresome, and frankly your position here is tenuous as it is without you imperilling it further. Try and fit in and behave. That's all I ask."

"My position?" Sam retorted. "And just what position is that, Zeus? Because, me, I have no idea. Why am I even on Olympus? I hate it here. Everyone hates me. Why are you keeping me around? Am I a pet? Spoils of war? What? What the fuck do you want from me? "

Zeus took a step back, eyeing her with a lofty, paternalistic gaze. Behind it, though, she thought he looked hurt.

"I want nothing from you," he said, "that isn't given voluntarily."

"And that's supposed to mean…?"

He didn't elaborate.

"Zeus, either kill me or set me free. Those are the only two things I'm after. One or the other, you choose. I don't much mind which it is. Anything rather than stay on here with this dysfunctional so-called family of yours, half of who hate my guts and the rest of who either don't even notice me or else keep sniffing around me like a dog on heat."

"Who keeps 'sniffing around' you?"

"No one."

"Hades? It is, isn't it? Is he bothering you? I've seen him and you together a lot. I'll have words. You won't have to worry about him any more."

And from that moment on, she didn't. Hades kept his distance, although she often felt the weight of his stare on her, sulky now, baleful, offended. She noticed, too, that he had started making a point of removing his gloves in her presence and articulating his fingers, like a pianist warming up, practising invisible arpeggios in the air. It was a show for her benefit, and she resolved to be more careful around him from now on. A single touch of those skeletal fingers and she'd be dead in a flash, as had happened to Fred Tsang, as had happened to countless others. It didn't even have to be deliberate. A chance collision, an accidental misstep that brought her skin into contact with one of those hands, and it would all be over.

That she was anxious about Hades's hands told her a truth about herself.

She wasn't willing to die, for all that she had claimed she was.

She wanted to live.

And that meant escaping.