Hermes stood in his quarters at the top of the messenger's atrium and counted the stolen things on his bed. Zeus's second-best drinking cup. A comb from Hera's dressing table. One of Apollo's spare bowstrings. A silver spoon from Hestia's kettle. None of it mattered on its own. Together, arranged the right way at the right feast, it would be the greatest prank ever played on his father. He just had to keep it hidden until then. The problem was simple. Any god who wandered in would see the pile and know. His door had no lock that mattered on Olympus. His shelves were open. His chest of scrolls was the first place a curious sister would look. He had one afternoon before the evening council, and half the family liked to drift through his rooms uninvited. He pulled on his winged sandals and grabbed his caduceus. The snakes on the staff tightened around the wood as he moved. He whistled once, sharp, out the window. Down in the yard, his ram lifted its head. The animal was white as new marble, with curled gold horns and heavy gold satchels strapped along its ribs. Hermes had carried mortal contracts in those satchels for years. No god ever asked what a ram was hauling. No god ever looked twice at the beast at all. He went down and loaded the satchels himself. The cup went in first, wrapped in a rag. Then the comb, the bowstring, the spoon. He added three more small thefts from a loose floorboard under his bed. The ram chewed and watched him with steady yellow eyes. When Hermes buckled the last strap, the bags looked exactly as they always looked: fat with scrolls, boring, official. He scratched the animal between the horns and told it to graze near the lower gate and answer to no one but him. He was climbing back to his rooms when Apollo came around the corner of the atrium, sun-bright and bored, asking if Hermes had seen his missing bowstring. Hermes shrugged and said the archers were always losing things. Apollo looked past him, into the open door of the quarters. The bed was bare. The shelves were empty of anything that wasn't already Hermes's. Apollo lost interest and wandered off toward the great gates, complaining about the string. Hermes waited until his friend was out of sight. Then he leaned against the wall and let out a slow breath. The hiding place worked. The prank was alive. But now every piece of it walked around on four legs, in plain view of every god on the mountain, and if anyone ever thought to open those satchels, the ram would carry the evidence straight to his father's feet.