The Time of Zeus Book 5: the Coup
Copyright© 2025 by Carlos Santiago
Chapter 13: The Crew
“Ya gotta be nuts, too. And you’re gonna need a crew as nuts as you are!”
— Reuben Tishkoff (as portrayed by Elliott Gould), Ocean’s Eleven (2001). Screenplay by Ted Griffin, based on the 1960 film Ocean’s 11 written by Harry Brown and Charles Lederer. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, and NPV Entertainment. Copyright © 2001 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.
The sky above Demeter’s palace had darkened slightly in the midafternoon light. Hera arrived in a flash of light from Olympus. On this day, she wore violet and deep-blue robes. Her eyes focused on the palace of her sister with intent and optimistic intentions.
The vines that clung to Demeter’s stone palace did not move under their own power, but a breeze shifted to make them pull away as if to recoil at the Queen of Olympus. When she walked within the building, she found Hestia sitting cross-legged in one of Demeter’s branch-wrapped chairs, facing the middle daughter of Cronos and Rhea.
Her auburn-reddish curls were bundled atop her head in a loose knot, and her cheeks were faintly flushed from laughter. When Hera listened, she heard Hestia was midway through telling a story about Hermes and a satyr, which was of no use to the regal daughter of Rhea.
When Hestia registered who had come to visit, she stopped and motioned to Hera. Demeter turned to see Hera stepping through the carved stone doorway.
Hestia blinked once, then gave a single dry clap.
“Oh, splendid. A dramatic entrance from our queenly sister. How good of you to visit unannounced, Hera.”
Demeter did not rise from her seat. Her green and violet gown seemed to rumple at the presence of Hera. However, the goddess did not still herself. She stood, spine straight and chin lifted. She was ever bit the equal to Hera in august imperialism. However, it had been Hera that had been named Queen of Olympus, not Demeter.
“Hera,” Demeter said evenly. “You were not invited to my home.”
“No, I was not,” Hera acknowledged. “However, this is not a social call. I have come in need of your aid, sisters.”
“Of course you have,” Hestia said exasperated. Then, she paused, grabbed a piece of bread, rubbed some butter onto it, and chomped down on it.
“I come to you both as your Queen and sister,” Hera said.
“You might have succeeded more with the latter rather than the former, Hera,” Demeter said.
Hera could not know the depths of the animosity Demeter felt for the ruling class of Olympus. After all, Zeus had laid with Demeter for his pleasure only to discard her days later. The excuse of Rhea had never been enough for Demeter, but Hera had never followed up with her sister after becoming queen, so the chasm between them grew everyday, whether they had wanted it to or not.
Hera paused, biting the stammer that would have come from the next words.
“I know Zeus has wronged you both,” Hera remarked, “but Athena and I are discreetly looking to right those wrongs.”
“How?” Hestia asked, curious
Hera took a few steps further into the chamber, letting her presence be felt without dominating the space. She knew that every motion she took was one that might bring her sisters in, and both Hestia and Demeter had fought during the Great War. If there was a need for power, it would be them that could provide the force.
While true, those like Hades or Zeus might be stronger than the other children of Cronos and Rhea, and they had only gotten more powerful since the Great War ended, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera had powers that those two did not understand. Hades and Zeus were brute force personified, but the goddesses in the family had magic that was wholly their own.
They would never be the same as their male counterparts, but they were invariably their equals.
“We intend to remove Zeus,” Hera said with a simple flatness.
Demeter’s jaw nearly hit the flow, and Hestia dropped her bread.
“Remove him,” Demeter echoed, not asking.
“Are you insane?” Hestia added, restraining her temper and tone.
“Yes,” Hera said, addressing Demeter.
She seemed to refuse to even recognize Hestia’s statement.
“We plan not to destroy him, but to imprison him as we have done with the Titans,” Hera replied. “Gaia was right to counsel us not to kill our Titan forebears. He would live, but he would no longer be in power.”
“How idealistic,” Demeter drawled, rolling her eyes.
“Who would rule, then?” Hestia asked, voice lilting, deceptively mild. “You?”
The suspicion in her voice was dripping over every syllable.
“No,” Hera said, her tone soft but firm.
“After he is deposed, the council of those that removed him from power would choose the next leader. We each would be allowed to present our case of who should rule, but every one of us would vote, and whomever has the most at the end of the day would be the singular sovereign of Mount Olympus.”
Demeter turned slightly from the window. Her rich brown hair streaked with violet and white caught in the light exemplifying the similarities and differences between herself and her queenly sister. Her eyes did not betray emotion; there was only a calculated thinking to be found there.
“And you want us to ... what?” Demeter asked. “Would we go to war for you and Zeus’ favorite daughter?”
Hera heard the inflection over Zeus’ favored child, Athena, but what she did not piece together was why Demeter was upset over Athena’s existence.
“I want you,” Hera said, “to come up to Olympus, the both of you. Help me unseat him, and after you will have a voice in choosing the next ruler. I want your voice, Demeter. Not a war.”
Demeter’s expression did not waver. Hestia seemed to be staring blankly between the two of them.
As the eldest, Hestia had always been expected to know better out of the three, but it was Hera who Rhea doted on the most and had given all of her favor, time, and energy to. As such, it had been hard to be seen as anything less than an afterthought. In that moment, she felt that sentiment far more than she had in her youth.
“Ha! My voice,” Demeter replied derisively. “You are asking me to risk my one life for a voice and safety. I cannot do that, Hera. If Zeus so much as suspects I’m aligned against him, he’ll look for weakness in me, and he will find my daughter, Hera. My daughter, who I made, as you made Hephaestus.”
She paused, shaking her head.
“I won’t place Persephone in danger for your new world,” Demeter replied
There was a terrible stillness in her voice. Chill wind at the end of a hot day
Hera opened her mouth, but Demeter held up a hand. The vines on her palace’s wall started crawling gently toward her person in recognition of her swelling power.
“You speak of change,” Demeter said. “However, I tend to root where I stand, Sister. I once tried for change, and I was harmed beyond reason. No.”
She shook her head in recollection of what had been done.
“My roots are here with my daughter. I would not risk that for a paradise, let alone your vision for the future,” she said firmly. “My answer is no.”
Hestia stood then, slowly, wiping her fingers on a napkin as she did.
“Well,” she said, stretching slightly with a sigh. “That’s one dramatic overture I didn’t see coming. Points for creativity, dear.”
Hera turned toward her. “Hestia, surely you see—”
The eldest sister waved her hand lightly. Both kindness and dismissiveness were in the motion.
“I could think of a whole host of things I’d rather be doing than getting tangled in your schemes, darling,” she said. “Like maybe actually visiting our sister without asking for something.”
Her voice held no malice, only weary affection.
“Stay for lunch if you want,” Hestia added with a shrug. “Or don’t. But I’m not picking sides. I have enough of those from when the Titans fell.”
Hera stood alone in the silence that followed. She might have lingered in silence if not for the fact that Persephone’s laughter could be heard faintly outside in the grove. The Queen of Olympus bowed her head once in acceptance of her sisters’ choice.
While she had not expected immediate success, she could not stop herself from being hurt from the sudden no.
Then she turned and left; her sandaled feet were silent against the moss-lined floor.
The air felt quieter the instant that Hera left.
Demeter stood up and looked out the open window. She saw no intruder as she believed she had before. Only her daughter playing with nymphs caught her eye.
Hestia sat again in her chair. She carefully watched her younger sister for a long moment. Since the birth of Persephone, Hestia had been the only god from Olympus that Demeter allowed to visit her with any sense of regularity.
The eldest sister did not take that for granted. It did not mean she understood her younger sisters any better though.
“Well,” she breathed. “That was dramatic.”
Demeter did not laugh.
“She’s mad,” Demeter murmured. “Truly. Even if she wins, even if she somehow pulls this absurd plan off ... there will be war. The other gods will not trust in a structure that can easily be undone. That was how grandfather and father kept everyone in line. Once Zeus is beaten, it will be open warfare.”
She turned to look at Hestia more with fear and severity in her eyes.
“Zeus is unpredictable as it is,” she said. Worry was creeping into her voice. “Take away his position of power? Corner him? Strip him of authority? He might become a rampaging beast like that Typhon.”
Hestia tilted her head, but did not react to her sister’s fear.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt that he’d be unbearable, darling,” Hestia replied, crossing one leg over the other. “There would be thunderstorms all day, every day. The seas would boil and piss off Poseidon and his Oceanid wife. In the end, he would probably blame Prometheus for everything because he tries to counsel Zeus to have patience and temperance.”
Despite herself, Demeter allowed the corner of her mouth to twitch. How easily she smiled when her sister put in the effort to be caring.
Hestia folded her hands in her lap. She was not one built for warfare. Even during the last war, she had to admit that she was the weakest member of her generation. Demeter’s elemental magic, Hera’s magic and sorcery, even Poseidon with his monster were miles better than she was. Her gifts were that of patience, age, wisdom, and of old matters that are often forgotten
Scarcely did most enjoy the sage discretion of pragmatic wisdom. People wanted to do what felt good. They wanted to give into their anger, their fear, the customs that carried them through the day. However, Hestia knew a fundamental truth: People did not grow if they did only what felt good or safe.
Changes had to be made, admitting one’s wrongs, holding back, caring even if they are not cared about in turn. Those sacrifices were what made life work. That was family to her, that was what the hearth was, and that was what the Flame of Olympus was. Soft, ancient, unyielding fire that burned, but even in its predictable nature, the licking consuming substance changed. Nothing was static in nature.
So in the end, like Prometheus to Zeus, Hestia knew she would have to give Demeter, and maybe even herself, counsel.
“Here is not wrong about him though,” Hestia said finally. “Zeus.”
Demeter said nothing.
“I mean,” Hestia continued, almost too casually, “if one were thinking logically—which I never do, of course, too busy baking and gossiping, mind you—then maybe it would be smarter to ... consider the future of the years ahead. The long one where others grow up or maybe the kind that matters for girls who haven’t aged in hundreds of years.”
Demeter’s spine went rigid at Hestia’s insinuation.
Hestia held up her hands lightly. “I’m not saying anything. Not really. Just that ... if someone, perhaps, had a daughter hidden in a forest palace ... and they did not want the father to know of his offspring, this path might allow you to protect that daughter, Dem.”
With the words freed and listened to, the two sat in silence for a time.
Hestia looked toward the palace itself before glancing at her sister again.
“You really have made this place beautiful, you know. A peaceful paradise.”
Demeter looked out across her lands. Her eyes were watering even as she saw the nymphs dancing and Perseophone arranging stones into suns.
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