“Beware, Ares. My thunderbolt can strike even you.”
Ares tossed his fiery locks scornfully. “You think to frighten me with lights and noise? Me? The God of War? Am I a cold gray cowardly virgin, supplicating before your throne, speaking lies and treachery? I am Ares. If you think to bring war against me, Father, recall that war is my kingdom!”
“You see?” Athena said softly. “He is as I have told you. His madness burgeons with every passing day. If he dares defy your command, what will he not dare? Father, it may become necessary-”
“No,” Zeus said grimly. “No, Ares is not so foolish as to challenge me.” Athena saw that the Skyfather spoke one thing and thought another. Getting Zeus to place Kratos under his protection, even for a short while, had given her a great opportunity.
“Is not death the penalty for defiance?”
“I have decreed that the gods will not make war upon one another. No god may slay a god. This law is absolute and binds even me. My brothers and I destroyed the Titans because they fought constantly among themselves; their bitterness over old, never-forgotten feuds divided them until too late. The Olympians will not suffer the Titans’ fate. If Ares must be… destroyed, it will not be by my hand. Nor yours, Athena.”
She lowered her head, again to conceal the birth of a smile. “As my father commands. I have no thirst for my brother’s blood.”
“I don’t believe he would say the same about you.”
She opened her hands helplessly. “He cannot accept that Kratos and all the armies of humanity are now mine to command, while among his legions are numbered only the undead and the dark spawn of Typhon and Echidna. But he has not been tricked, nor even treated unfairly. You were there, Father. You saw the contest, and you witnessed Ares’s free agreement to my bargain.”
“Yes. And I saw at the time the very gleam you have in your eye right now. He did not consider what your bargain might mean-and you knew well that he would come to regret this deal.”
“My brother is impulsive and headstrong. Am I to blame that his lust for bloodshed overpowers his reason? Even had I offered him the gift of my foresight, do you think he would have accepted it?”
Zeus shook his head, smiling fondly despite the dire subject of their conversation. “Not even the King of Olympus can win an argument against the goddess of stratagems. What do you propose?”
“If he cannot be slain,” Athena said carefully, “he can still be humiliated.”
“A lesson in humility may well be warranted, since he cannot be allowed to ignore my commands in this arrogant fashion,” Zeus murmured thoughtfully. “How do you intend to teach it?”
“I am not the teacher Ares needs,” Athena said, still speaking nothing less than pure truth. “If my lord father would only speak with his brother Poseidon and ask that the King of the Ocean receive me and listen to my word, the lesson will teach itself.”
“Indeed?” The flicker of lightning returned to Zeus’s brow, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “This, too, you have planned, haven’t you? It seems an overly intricate stratagem for such small reward.”
“To embarrass my brother was never my goal,” Athena said.
And this, too, was truth, absolute and unmistakable. Athena’s plan had never been to shame her brother. Ever since the Kratos incident in her village temple, she had understood another truth, one that the rest of the Olympians had only begun to glimpse: Ares was more than headstrong and disobedient, far more than brutally ambitious and bloodthirsty.
The God of War was insane.
DOWN FROM OLYMPUS came the Goddess of Wisdom and War. Each step caused the singing of birds. Soon the birds’ sweet tunes became the rush of water crashing against rocky shores. Salt spray misted her face and beaded in her hair, constellations of diamond stars. Her bronze armor shone in brilliant tropic sun.
When finally she stopped, she stood at a shoreline that stretched to either side farther than even a god could see. The endless sea before her rose to the far horizon.
“O mighty Lord of the Deep, the Goddess of War would speak with you,” she said. “Heed my father’s request, and hear my word.”
Athena waited. Was this a deliberate insult? Was Poseidon still sulking about the destruction of Troy? Or was this the fruit of an earlier grudge? She had never been on particularly good terms with the King of the Ocean, ever since that squabble over the naming of what was now Athens.
Perhaps she should have brought a gift.
Finally the ocean began to boil at the far horizon. The frothing churn raced toward the shore where Athena stood, and an instant later a vast waterspout roared up to mate the sea with the infinite sky. Poised amid the mountainous column of water stood Poseidon, brawny arms crossed over his thick chest. His crown was crusted with barnacles, and his trident dripped blood and entrails.
“I bring the greetings of Olympus, Lord Poseidon,” she said, bowing deeply.
“I have no time for you, Athena.” The Lord of the Sea gestured curtly over his shoulder with the trident. “My business takes me far beyond the Pillars of Hercules.”
Athena nodded sympathetically. “Atlantis again?”
“Those people are no end of trouble,” Poseidon muttered.
“Your patience with them is admirable.”
“Admirable perhaps, but irritation is a blade that whittles my patience dangerously thin. My brother asked that I hear your petition. Out of respect for him, I listen.” The sea god leaned toward her. “Briefly.”
Athena lifted an open hand. “Let there be no bad blood between us, my uncle. Our feud should be diminished by time, should it not? It was hardly so consequential that its wounds should be inflamed still to this day.”
Poseidon reared up to an even greater height and poked his trident in her direction. “That city should be mine! I struck the rock on which the Acropolis sits and-”
“And a spring burst forth indeed, but of brine,” Athena said sympathetically. “Am I to blame that the people of the city preferred my olive tree to your saltwater spring?”
The sea god said sullenly, “Athens is a terrible name for a city.”
“Poseidia would be more melodious,” she admitted. “If my beloved uncle might be appeased by some more substantial gesture, I hope to remind you that Athenians-thanks to my lord uncle’s generous patronage-are the greatest sailors in all the known world. Their strength is in their navy, and they do honor to the Lord of the Ocean every day.”
“Well…” Poseidon grumbled, the sound of waves crashing against an unprotected cliff. “I suppose that’s true. Let us put our disagreements behind us, my niece. What business brings you this day to my endless shore?”
“My lord uncle, I have come to apologize for my brother’s deadly insult to your sovereignty.”
“What?” Poseidon’s brows of sea foam drew together, and the ground beneath Athena’s feet gave a warning rumble. “Which brother?”
“Ares, of course. What other god would so boldly dare to tempt your anger?”
“Besides yourself?”
“I know of late you have been preoccupied with Atlantis-which is the sole seemly explanation for allowing Ares’s monsters to swarm your seas unchallenged.”
“Swarm my-” His gaze went distant, and what his deific vision found caused him to gasp like a sounding whale. “A Hydra? In my Grave of Ships! The impudence -I have told Zeus, again and again, he is far too lenient with his children! Ares should have spent an entire age of the world beside Sisyphus! I am not so forgiving as my brother. I will crush him! Where is he? Where?”
“Far from your realm, my lord uncle-safe in a distant desert.”
Poseidon roared, raised a fist, and all the world trembled. “Am I called Earthshaker for naught?”
“My lord uncle, please!” Athena cried. “Let not your wrath fall upon him directly! There is no shame in being bested by great Poseidon, ruler of two-thirds of all that is. No lesser god can hope to stand against any of the brother kings. If you truly want to punish Ares, you must smite his pride.”