It had been the usual sort of week, which was to say that between teaching classes and grading papers, Athena had enjoyed a productive meeting with a former mentee freshly elected to the New York City Council, a less productive but nonetheless illuminating meeting with a counterpart from another pantheon (that both were Wisdom didn't mean they were both of one mind), quashed a blackmail attempt (too amateurish to even be interesting, alas), fielded several pressing demands from her father the king (who had seduced his personal lawyer's daughter, again, and presented her with the fallout... again) and talked her stepmother down from a laundry list of creative forms of retribution.
By this evening, she'd finally managed to tie a bow on her father's affairs (at least until the next time) and was looking forward to escaping into the smaller, more diverting intrigues of the Diogenes Club. But when she caught the eye of the bartender, Athena sensed something amiss.
It was Much, of the Merry Men. She didn't know him especially well, they'd only spoken in passing across the bar, but his jumpiness was hard to miss; his eyes seemed to dart at every stray movement.
They'd never gotten in contact, the Merry Men, after her chance encounter with Will Stutely a few weeks ago. Not that she'd been holding her breath. Neither Stutely nor Scarlet showed any particular inclination to trust an Olympian, and why would they? They were outlaws, and Olympus was, or had been, the ultimate manifestation of the privileged establishment.
But heroes had always held a soft place in Athena's heart. And she could never walk away from a riddle. How do you stop an immortal who isn't deterred by death? Much's anxious demeanour suggested they still hadn't found an answer to that one.
"I was going to order a drink," she said, a wryly sympathetic smile brushing her lips, "but you look like you need it more than I do."