There’s a pause. Such a long pause that I think she’s insulted by the jibe.
“That is a question,” she says. “Are immortals human? We share the same physiology as humans, yet human also implies mortal. If you’d like me to attempt to answer that question, I can. I’ve given it great thought. However, if you wish that answer, it will take the remainder of the drive. Perhaps you wish to select another option from the menu?”
She says it deadpan, but she’s clearly riffing on my computer comparison, and not at all insulted by it.
“When were the paintings created?” I ask.
“1495.”
“By whom?”
“I can supply the name if you’d like, but it would mean nothing to you. As an artist, he was a mediocre talent. This series of paintings is his only lasting achievement.”
“Then he’s dead. Not immortal.”
“Certainly not immortal. Long dead. As I understand it, he died the moment he finished the last painting.”
“They were already cursed?”
“No, the woman who commissioned them killed him. He’d served his purpose.”
“Damn. Okay. So the bigger question is who commissioned them.”
“Also not a name you’d know. Also dead. Not immortal, but of an immortal line. Mine, specifically.”
We have to pause there for Connolly to give directions, which is good, because I need a moment to digest that.
“Whoever’s behind this said you wanted them gone because of bad memories,” I say. “Because they were commissioned by one of your progeny.”
“I do not take responsibility for the random acts of my distant descendants. That way lies madness. I only had three children. I am not Aphrodite and Ares with their endless brood. That’s no insult to them. They are happy in their domesticity, and their children are a delight to them, as they are a blessing to their children. Three was enough for me. They were fascinating projects, and they turned out exceedingly well, but children are draining. Still, even three offspring still means that I have tens of thousands of descendants. I cannot keep track of them, much less hope to influence them.”
“So the connection between you and the paintings is . . .”
“They were created to punish me. While I do not track my descendants, I attempt, when possible, to make myself available to those who wish to understand the power they inherited from me. I don’t have favorites, as Ares does with young Connolly here. I don’t train students, as Mercury wishes to do with you. But if one of my descendants wishes to seek me out and ‘pick my brain’ as they say, I am quite happy to do that.”
I wait for her to connect my question to her answer. When she doesn’t, I venture, “Did this particular descendant want more?”
“Yes. She was not interested in my wisdom nor the gift of my experience. She wanted my favor.”
“She thought you really were a god?”
“No, she understood the difference, but I still wield power as a presumed god. I am also a gifted strategist. That is what she wanted. My reputation and my assistance. My favor.”
Again, I wait, but apparently we really are doing this piece by piece.
“Your assistance with . . .?”
“Are you familiar with the hereditary noble families of Renaissance Italy? The Medicis and so on?”
“Oooh, yes. Nasty stuff there.”
“Well, her family was one of those. They were an embarrassment to me. They cheated their way to the top. Cheated everyone who could be cheated, and killed those who could not. They were in a dispute with another family, and the matriarch wanted my help in what amounted to a war, not unlike the mafia wars centuries later. I refused. She stalked off in a huff, only to return a month later, begging. Her two sons had been taken captive by this rival family, and she wanted me to help. I agreed . . . if she’d donate fifty percent of her wealth to the poor. She refused.”
“And the other family killed her sons?”
“Not intentionally. She hired mercenaries to storm the estate. Even tried to hire Ares.”
“He refused?”
“No, Ares set her a condition of his own.” Her voice rings with approval, even pride. “He would rescue her sons, as she asked, without harming anyone in the house, and in return, she would not retaliate. Her sons had been taken because she’d killed one of their sons, and so the slate would be clear.”
“She refused.”
“Yes, and so she ended up hiring brutes who botched the job and her sons ended up dead, along with one of her two daughters.”
“And she blamed you?”
“I had refused her pleas and clearly I must have interfered with Ares, because otherwise, monster that he is, he’d have happily slaughtered everyone in the house.” Her voice drips with disgust. “She knew nothing about us. Knew nothing, and cared to learn nothing. She considered my assistance her birthright, as if I were an ancestral spirit bound to her aid.”
“So she commissioned the paintings . . .”
“Commissioned them. Had them cursed. Sent them into the world to punish me. Four paintings. One for each of her children. Their fates were at my feet, as were the fates of anyone killed by their paintings.”
Her voice is emotionless, gaze fixed straight ahead. But I don’t miss the tightness in her jaw. She feels this. She must, or it wouldn’t be a proper punishment. Like Vanessa and the Necklace of Harmonia. Unleash pain on the world in the name of an immortal, and let them suffer for it. Athene suffered, no matter how untouchable she might seem.
“I know Mercy helped with the paintings. Uncursing them, I presume? Before they were destroyed?” Destroying a cursed object can lead to unintended consequences, ones far worse than the curse itself. Otherwise, there’d be little need for uncursing.
“The woman who did this—”
“Can we get a name?”
“No. That is her punishment—to remain nameless, lost to history. She attempted to trick Mercury into cursing the paintings.” Another snort. “Because clearly the way to recruit a trickster is through trickery. Mercury retaliated as only my little sister can do. She cursed her in return.”
“People can’t be cursed.”
“They can if you’re Mercury. It wasn’t a malicious curse. She doesn’t do that. It was the equivalent of, as you might say, flipping her off. Then Mercury bounded away with nary a backward glance. This woman tracked one of her most gifted progeny, forced her to curse the paintings on threat of death and then killed her afterward. My sister was as invested in ridding the world of these paintings as I was.”
“And then . . .”
“We rounded them up. It took centuries, and there were deaths, many deaths. But then we had them all. Mercury uncursed them. I destroyed them, right down to the memory of them.”
I open my mouth to ask how that’s possible. Then I shut it. There’s no “how” to ask here. That must be one of her powers. Her progeny can see the history of an object, the memories it retains. She can destroy even those.
“Okay, so not to be rude but . . .”
“Did I make a mistake? Destroy the wrong paintings? Absolutely not. I could read their history, and I knew they had been made by that artist and cursed by that weaver. I could see that they had been responsible for deaths. We destroyed all four, beyond a doubt.”