Hermes's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

By the next dusk the landing ran clean again, and Hermes was binding a fresh group of thirty when he saw the face. A thin shade near the back, hands folded, eyes too bright. A cupbearer he'd passed a hundred times on the marble stairs above. The name surfaced in his mouth like a stone. If that name reached the wrong ear up top — a jealous wife, a watchful father — they'd ask how a god had come and gone so fast. They'd find the rope. They'd find the hollow. The whole shortcut would crack open. Hermes broke the group apart and pulled the shade aside. He pressed the wings of his sandals flat against the rock so no white feather would fall and mark the spot. "Walk with me," he said. "Quietly." He led the soul back up the path, past the bronze and obsidian arch, into a side alcove behind the gate where the stone curved in on itself like a closed hand. He'd used it once to wait out a storm. Tonight it would be a closet for a secret. He lifted his staff. The snakes uncoiled and slid down the wood, circling the shade's ankles. Hermes whispered a binding into the laurel grain, and the name lifted off the soul like steam — silvery, twitching — and sank into a notch he carved beneath the upper wing. Sealed there. Unspeakable until he chose to call it out. The shade went quiet and faceless, just another pale smudge. Safe. Hidden. But not processed, and that was the danger. A low growl rolled up the tunnel. Hermes turned. Three sets of red eyes burned in the dark, and the snakes around the great dog's neck hissed in answer to his own. Behind the beast came a slower, heavier step. Hades came into the orange light with his gold-and-flame staff held loose at his side. He looked at the alcove. He looked at the staff. He looked at Hermes. "You hid one," Hades said. Not a question. "Why." Hermes opened his mouth, closed it, and told the truth in the shortest shape he could. "If his name climbs back up before he's logged in your book, someone up there will come looking. Not for him. For my route." Hades was quiet a long moment. The great dog sat. "Bring him to my hall yourself," Hades said at last. "I will enter him under a number, not a name, until the matter cools. The dead deserve to be counted. They do not require to be announced." Hermes bowed lower than he meant to. He carried the silent shade down through the gate himself, past the watching dog, and set him in Hades's keeping. When he climbed back to the landing, the route was still his — faster than ever, and now quietly shielded from above. But he had a new creditor now, one who did not take gold rings. Hades had seen the shortcut. Hades had chosen, this once, to look the other way. Hermes did not need to be told what the next favor would cost.