The Gifts of Pandora, page 25
As she approached, some waved at her, apparently little concerned with a lone traveler come into their midst in broad daylight.
“I am looking for Koios,” she said, addressing an aging man who came to greet her. He was bundled in warmer clothes than her, black furs, dressed for the weather.
“Koios,” the man said, bowing. Then he mumbled something in a language she could only guess at. Either way, when it became clear the only thing they shared in common was her grandfather’s name, the man beckoned her to follow.
He led her inside the largest of the tents, where her grandfather sat on a bearskin rug, tossing pebbles out before him. Divining the future … Koios spoke to her guide in that foreign tongue, and the man answered before ducking back out from the tent.
“I was expecting you,” Koios said.
“You foresaw my coming?”
He motioned for her to sit, and when she had settled down before him, he fixed her with a heavy gaze. “We do not see everything we might wish.”
“Oracles?”
“Mmm.” He glanced down at the pebbles once more. “Sometimes we see hints we cannot unravel until it is too late. Sometimes we see events unfold clearly, but without context. Other times, we behold metaphors, perhaps constructed from our minds to parse information beyond our ken. It can be difficult to know the difference, in fact.”
Artemis saw naught save differently shaped stones strewn about at random. It seemed to her that any attempt to ascribe meaning to their distribution was self-indulgent … but then all knew Oracles did see things that proved true, after a fashion. “Sounds frustrating.”
“You’ve no idea, child.”
“And what do you see today?” she asked.
Koios frowned, sweeping up the pebbles in a single motion. “That’s not what you came here to ask me.”
“No, I came to ask you to return to your wife.”
“I know.” He glowered at her. “Trying to make up for your own actions, yes?” That hit too close, and she couldn’t stop from squirming. “Well, I’ve seen I do return, albeit only after completing this new city. Kolchis, they call it, after me. I owe it to them to finish it.”
So he wanted to return to his wife but wouldn’t yet because he’d seen himself not doing so at this moment? That sounded worse than self-indulgent. That sounded actively self-defeating.
Perhaps he read it upon her face, for his grimace only deepened. “You asked what I saw today, granddaughter.” He paused. “Shall I tell you?”
She spread her hands. What was the harm?
Koios leaned in and seized her jaw in an iron-like grip. “I saw that someday one of us, my dear, shall cause the death of the other.”
27
Kirke
1585 Silver Age
* * *
Nine years ago, Athene had granted Kirke a wing of the palace, and Kirke had forbidden slaves or servants from entering, going so far as to draw a tapestry over the entrance. Oh, there were only two rooms back here. Kirke’s personal chambers, where she slept, read, and planned, and a windowless storeroom she had converted into an alchemy lab.
This, she always locked for fear of anyone save Athene gaining the least idea of what she worked on behind closed doors. As now, hunched over the table, once more trying to draw out extract from the moly. She was getting closer and closer, and Athene had provided her with more resources than Kirke had ever dreamed of back in Ogygia. Limitless drachmae for reagents, a large garden beyond the palace, even cover to help her sell her test batches.
Not every batch proved a step forward, unfortunately. Sometimes she thought she had made some minor incremental improvement, only to later hear one of her customers had turned to cannibalism and torn out someone’s throat with her teeth. Which was not the desired result of a drug designed to bestow health and long life. Another time, she’d found out—to her utter horror—that sudden blindness had spread overnight among nigh three dozen people in the harbor district.
Though she had dreamed of giving them immortality, Kirke had ruined their lives, and hearing of it, she had abandoned her experiments for a month of despondency. Yeah, in such times, one had to ask if her very quest was hubris.
But always, always the work called her back. There had to be some way to achieve perfection through the moly. She had begun to suspect the blooming root might hold some connection to the great tree of the Hesperides. Perhaps the first seeds had come from that tree. Whatever the case, moly alone of all substances she had encountered seemed to have any chance of replicating the potency of the golden apples.
The lock clicked and Kirke’s heart lurched. For an instant, she cast about for a sheet or tarp to throw over the table, but, of course, she had no such thing in here.
The door swung open and Athene stumbled in, bleary eyed and blinking in the gloom of the lab. Her half-sister shut the door behind her and leaned against the wall, looking for all the world like she’d just wrestled a chimera.
“I didn’t realize you had your own key to this room,” Kirke said. Pointless, really. She should have known Athene would have taken such precautions in her own palace. Maybe her trust in Kirke had never been absolute. “Well, anyway, I don’t have aught to show you at the moment.”
“I need more,” Athene rasped, scratching at some crusting along her eyes. “I need to see it all.”
Huh. Sometimes, people who took the Nectar just wanted more and more of the stuff. Kirke was never sure whether that result increased with different batches, or if certain people lacked the ability to regulate themselves. Whatever the case, the Olympian looked like a heaping pile of Cyclops shit. “I gave you a dose two days ago.”
“Psh.” Athene licked her lips, then shivered. “I needed to see things. I feel like I’ve got this dam inside myself, and it’s so close to bursting. Almost like I can see the whole ambit of time, if I could just break open the gap a little wider. Just need a bit more of the water, is all.”
Ah. Well, shit. Kirke had only a single stool in her lab, and she took Athene by the arm, easing her to sit. “What you’re talking about sounds like a road to madness. You think you’re one of the Moirai? You think, even if you could see the vast expanse of past and future, your mind could handle that? Athene, I gave you the Nectar to help you get better glimpses. Not to tear down dams so you can drown yourself in the flood!”
Though Kirke hadn’t even seen her move, Athene was on her feet hefting Kirke off the ground by her shoulders. The Olympian’s grip was a vise and Kirke yelped from the pain of it, but her cries didn’t even seem to register in Athene’s wild visage. “I need more.”
“All right, all right, let me go.”
As if suddenly realizing she had just manhandled her sister, Athene set her down, holding her trembling hands up in warding—or horror at what she’d done. Her face had become a mask of torment and, unless Kirke missed her guess, self-loathing.
With a sigh, Kirke drew a basket from beneath the table and retrieved a tiny ceramic vial, which she handed to Athene. “Try to make it last. I need time to brew more and I’m in the midst of experimenting with some improvements.”
Without a word, Athene stumbled from the lab, leaving Kirke to wonder at just what her sister had beheld when she looked into the future.
It was a fortnight later when Athene, looking yet more ravaged, came to her again. She reeked of stale sweat and too much wine, and her eyes seemed unable to focus on aught around the lab.
There was little point in even forcing the woman to ask, so Kirke fished out a vial of her latest batch of Nectar and handed it over. Athene tucked it inside her khiton but didn’t leave.
Kirke wanted to shake her, to shout at her that she was destroying herself. She wanted to go back, to tell herself she should never have come to Kronion and certainly never should have offered Athene a taste of this. Oh, she’d thought to save herself from Zeus, yeah, but she hadn’t realized the drug would so consume her sister.
Nine years, and strong, indomitable Athene now looked more like a broken-down barn, so rotten it was easier to raze it and build anew than even think of repairing the structure.
“There’s a prince come from Mnemosynia,” Athene said, sounding half-asleep. “One of Mnemosyne’s mortal heirs, in fact. Uh … Pikus, is his name. I need … someone … to greet him. I’m feeling … not myself.”
That was akin to saying there were a few fish in the ocean. Athene was so far from herself Kirke wondered if even Mother would recognize her now. And that tragedy fell at Kirke’s feet, didn’t it? Yeah, she’d tried to save herself and damned her sister in the process.
“I, um … Yeah, of course, I’ll show this Pikus around the polis.”
After leaving Athene, she made her way down from the acropolis, then followed the Long Wall back to the harbor. It wasn’t hard to spot the Rassenian ship, with its bright green sails embroidered with the fox sigil.
“Prince Pikus,” Kirke called out to the disembarking sailors. “Prince Pikus?”
One of the men craned his neck at her call, then hopped over a pile of ropes and trotted up beside her. He had a slight beard and his dark hair hung about his face in wild, sea-swept curls. “A Heliad, eh? I thought this polis ruled by Kroniads. Not that I have complaints about the company, my lady.” He had a thick, pleasant accent that made her want to listen to him recite poetry or argue philosophy.
Kirke quirked a smile. That was presumptuous. “Kroniads do rule here, but I am kin to the Olympian Athene, and she sent me to greet you while she was … uh, attending to matters of state.” Her state, at least.
Pikus flashed a grin. “Her loss and my gain, I suppose.” Well, rather proud of himself, wasn’t he?
Kirke motioned him to follow and guided him through the harbor, wending around the bustling crowd loading and unloading. Did this place seem chaotic compared to Mnemosynia? Rassenia seemed so far removed from the politics of Elládos she couldn’t help but think of it as rural, though the last she had seen the Rassenian city—a stopover when visiting her father’s holdings in Thrinakia—it had become a sprawling metropolis.
“You are kin to the Muses, yes?”
“Distant aunts, yes. They are to me, I mean, not I to them.” Again, that flash of white teeth and overflowing confidence.
Kirke snickered. “I met them, years ago, in Themiskyra.”
The prince sniffed at that. “Ah, hmm. We do not speak of them much, you know. I think Great-grandmother has not forgiven them for going there.”
Oh, well, that was awkward. Kirke snapped her mouth shut lest any other social gaffes spring forth and take flight.
After that, she restricted herself to pointing out the few interesting city buildings in the district. The harbormaster’s office, some warehouses held by various branches of the Kroniad aristoi, and the Griffin’s Beak, a wine house that local legend claimed had served Kronos himself, though that was almost certainly a lie, as the wood would have rotted to naught centuries back.
“I could do with a cup of wine,” she admitted, gauging his interest.
Pikus perked up at the mention of it, and so she led him into the wine house. The owner, Eutychios, nodded at her in recognition as she slipped onto a stool at her usual table. Few women came here, save whores and hetairai, but the establishment knew Kirke as kin to Athene and thus offered her steep discounts.
Pikus settled down across from her. “I don’t suppose they have Rassenian vintages?”
Kirke snorted. “Yeah, I think for those we’ll have to raid Athene’s own stocks. Uh, but they’ve got some Argosian reds worth a sip or three, let me tell you.”
The serving girls kept the bowls flowing while Pikus spoke of his far-off home. As a demigod, he was older than he looked, though he had naught on Kirke’s long centuries of experience.
“Wait, you lived through the Titanomachy?” he gasped when she mentioned it offhand.
Kirke cast him a wistful look over the wine bowl at her lips. “I was in Helion, mostly, yeah. I remember when Artemis came and convinced Father to side with Zeus.” Such was hard to forgive, especially as it had earned Artemis and her twin a place on Olympus. So self-serving.
Pikus laughed at even her most puerile humor, seeming to drink in her every tale.
In the end, they were so drunk she could barely keep her stool, sputtering from laughter, and tipsy enough the room had begun to sway like the ocean. Deciding they had best save the rest of the tour for the next day, she led him to the palace where the steward granted him a room.
Kirke passed out the moment she found her own chamber.
All the next day they laughed and drank, and she showed him the acropolis and the ever-expanding agora. She took him through the markets, and they sampled Illyrian wines, which he liked more than the Elládosi ones, and Phrygian ones, which he claimed tasted of donkey piss.
He had taken to calling her ‘princess,’ too, and every time it sent jitters running through her.
In the end, maybe that was why she did it. Maybe hearing anyone address her thus once more, after long centuries of being a mere Nymph, had left her giddy as a child. Or maybe it was that she simply hadn’t had a lover in over a decade. Certainly, Kalypso did not return her letters, and few others understood her.
Loneliness was a word easily understood intellectually, but it ran deeper than words or thoughts. It was an insidious undertow that could suck one beneath the ocean in a moment and hold a person there for what felt an eternity.
Or maybe it was that they had stopped in a wine house for three bowls of wine on an empty stomach.
Regardless, as they strolled the Colonnades, she laced her fingers in Pikus’s with the impetuousness of her youth. And when he raised a brow and she ought to have broken off, still she persisted.
“My father remains lord of many lands, even still, and wealthy beyond measure. A marriage to one of his daughters could bring great weal to the House of Mnemosyne. And, you know, I’d be happy to take up life in Rassenia.” Away from Athene and her madness and addiction. Living a few decades in happiness with the prince could be just what she needed—and give her a home as far removed from Zeus as possible.
Pikus’s dashing smile morphed into an arrogant smirk. “Ah, yes, but not half so prestigious as a union with a child of the Olympians, now, is it? I mean, truly, do you think you buy a prince with a few drachmae and a pretty face?”
Kirke flinched from his mockery, struggling to even process his sudden turn. All his pretenses of friendship had been … what? Hoping to use her to get to Athene?
What in the depths of the Underworld had she even been thinking? She didn’t need a damn husband to push her about and make demands of her. Certainly not one who could muster a look of such profound arrogance. Damn him for his haughtiness. Damn him for that adorable smile. And damn herself for never being able to control her tongue or her heart. Her eyes stung with unshed tears she could never let anyone see.
“I’m quite certain you can find your way around from here, prince,” Kirke said. Which was well, as she needed to hide her face and drink a fountain-full of wine.
But the wine did not help her shame, even knowing it was more at her own behavior—childish, girlish fancy when she had a mission to follow—and she found herself instead stalking the streets of Kronion late at night, clinging to the shadows as if they might protect her.
It was in such gloom she noticed the scuffling footfalls trailing her in the harbor district. Her heart quickened at the sound of it. Probably she should have banged upon the door of the harbormaster’s office, for the lamp burning in the window meant he was still at work. Instead, she found herself darting down the adjacent alley, almost welcoming an altercation.
She drew up short.
Maybe her height alone was not quite enough for her pursuers to recognize her as a Titan. She couldn’t imagine they would try this if they guessed the truth about her. Even a Nymph had some Pneumatikoi, enough to overpower mortals.
Two men followed her into the passage, silhouetted against the faint lamplight from the street. Their features were obscured by the overbearing shadows, but to them, she must have looked almost like a wraith in the darkness.
And she did not flee, which made them hesitate. She just stood there, tall and defiant—if quite a bit intoxicated—staring them down. One of them actually took a step backward, and Kirke chortled. Yeah, mocking them was foolish, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“What, that’s it? Here I was, thinking to myself, what an adventure I’m about to have tonight. Two big strong men coming to corner me in an alley, try to rob me—or wait, I’m a helpless woman so you probably wanted to have your way with me first, huh? I’ve heard some men can’t get it up for a willing woman, though I’m guessing that’s not an issue for you as I can’t imagine you lot have too many willing women anyway. Oh! Did you forget your stones? If you want to run home and grab them, I can wait …”
Kirke’s Pneumatikoi might not have matched that of greater Titans, but pushing her Pneuma into Potency and Alacrity allowed her to cross the alley, snatch one of her pursuers up by the throat, and carry him into the main street before the other even seemed to have time to react. With a snarl, she grabbed his crotch and squeezed. “Oh, I was right. No stones, huh? Hmm. Not much of a tree there, either.”
“T-titan,” the other man gasped before breaking off into a run down the alley.
Kirke winked at her captive. “Guess he’s gonna go grab his stones. Yeah, and when he gets back, you two can go fuck yourselves.” She dropped the man and he pitched onto the flagstones, clutching his throat and wheezing.
The expenditure of so much Pneuma at once left Kirke a bit more lightheaded than she had expected, but she dare not show it.
