The Dogs of Athens by Kendare Blake Page B

at each other. Then he blinks, and puts his hand to his cheek.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he says again. “For a second, I thought I knew you.”
    He’s a handsome boy. Tall, with yellow hair like her twin brother’s, and a straight nose. Looking, she thinks she might know him, too. His face is familiar. More so than most. She almost thinks, Orion, but then she places him correctly. Actaeon.
    â€œPerhaps you do,” she says.
    â€œBut I couldn’t, could I? I would remember your hair. Is it brown or silver?” He almost reaches out to touch it. “It looks both. I’m sorry. My friends … they’ve gotten me drunk, and disappeared.”
    â€œStop apologizing,” says Artemis. “Be on your way.”
    He bows his head and goes, obedient as if he really were poor Actaeon, whom she had once punished so severely, instead of only one of the millions of boys alive now who must resemble him.
    Down the street, Daphne edges into view, her black snout emerging from an alley behind a restaurant. She sees Artemis and approaches, only pausing for a few moments to bark at a panhandler. One of the restaurant workers tries to reward her with a scrap of food. She sniffs it and turns up her nose.
    â€œThere’s blood on your teeth,” Artemis says when Daphne smiles. “What is it?”
    â€œOnly a rat,” the dog replies. “But a nice fat one. Fatter than these flea-bitten cats.”
    Artemis strokes Daphne’s long nose and ears, and Daphne’s tail thumps. She leans her large body against Artemis’ leg. Daphne is a tall dog, a hound, made for running down prey. She can gallop for miles and miles alongside a stag, make it as tired as she likes before leaping for its throat and bringing it to the ground, opening its veins to slick the grass. She’s fast enough, and strong enough, to take game by herself. But the rest of the pack loves tearing into things with her.
    â€œWhere is Iphigenia?”
    â€œShe and Erigone craved a swim,” Daphne says.
    â€œIphigenia doesn’t swim.”
    â€œBut she does bark at fish,” the dog says, and reaches around to gnaw at her hindquarters. “They’ll be back soon.”
    Back soon, and smelling like sea salt. Erigone’s sand-colored fur would be stiff with it. Artemis doesn’t ask after Loxo or Phylonoe. They are somewhere in the city, or in the hills surrounding. Being dogs. Stealing and sniffing, and testing hands with wet noses and tongues. Artemis doesn’t worry about her pack. She chose them to be her immortal companions for a reason. They are clever enough to survive without her.
    â€œI saw a boy,” she says instead, and her eyes drift in the direction that he went. He’s gone now, in some bar or restaurant with his friends.
    â€œA boy,” says Daphne.
    â€œHe reminded me of someone.” Actaeon. He’d been a hunter, like her. He had spied on her while she was bathing, so she cursed him into a stag and set his own hunting dogs to tear him apart. So many hounds. Black and white and brown, with long legs and sharp teeth. They ripped out Actaeon’s stomach and savagely bit his face. They hadn’t known him, hadn’t recognized their master in his stag disguise. Artemis doesn’t remember now if that had been part of the experiment. She doesn’t remember if it was an experiment at all.
    â€œSomeone,” Daphne says, and snaps her jaws. “Who, someone? I don’t like your voice, the way it sounds, when you say that.”
    â€œHow does it sound?”
    Daphne thinks. It has been a long time since she was human enough to decode the meaning behind every tone. She licks the backs of her fangs.
    â€œGuilty,” she says, finally. “Regretful.”
    Artemis frowns. It couldn’t be regret. She hadn’t thought of Actaeon in perhaps six hundred years. He was one small lesson amidst countless others.
    â€œEvery life