Still, she’d need to move with extreme caution. Spread the Nectar too fast, Zeus and his cronies might start to ask what had changed in this polis of late. Wariness, yes, but it was still too good an opportunity to pass.
“I’ll help her with whatever she desires, Mother. She is my sister, after all.”
The man knelt in the shadow just beyond the brazier’s light, his face concealed by the gloom. With a sudden convulsion he pitched forward, catching himself on his hands. Aborted gasps escaped him, like he wanted to scream, but all he managed where pained wheezes. His flesh, what little the brazier illuminated of it, it rippled like waves, as if something monstrous flowed beneath the surface.
Nausea seized Kirke and she reached for him. The utter madness of what she saw flensed her, left her hugging herself in wordless horror.
The man fell forward, face smacking the ground, a moan building in his chest. Joints popped audibly within him. Then, the awful, gut-churning sound of muscle and tendons ripping apart.
“No …” Kirke breathed.
Her victim screamed, his cries so long and agonized tears glistened in Kirke’s eyes.
His hip snapped, breaking apart as something bulged within it. Desperately, he tugged away his clothes, casting the torn and ruined garments aside, even as the bulge in his hip ruptured. Flesh shred in a shower of gore as some new limb protruded, dragging its way free from his innards.
Stumbling backward, Kirke collapsed onto her arse, hand to her mouth.
The limb distended, until a hoof clacked upon the stone beside her.
Her dreams were haunted, and Kirke could not guess at the import of such vivid nightmares, unless Morpheus again tormented her. Such were her thoughts when she joined Athene just before noon.
Their mother had not specified where exactly she had intended to head for. Not to Kirke, at least, so when Athene let slip that the woman had intended to seek out her old friend Persephone, in the cursed Underworld, Kirke had sputtered on her wine. Her coughing fits sent crimson stains seeping down the front of her khiton, and the wracking convulsions had lasted long enough to leave her flushed and breathless.
“Truly?” she asked her half-sister, while the two of them reclined in Athene’s palace on the acropolis. Kirke couldn’t even imagine how Mother would manage to enter the Underworld—save the obvious and unappealing way—but if anyone could do so, she supposed it was the great witch Hekate.
Athene nodded sternly, offering Kirke a woolen napkin with which to dry herself.
Accepting it, Kirke made a perfunctory attempt to pat her ruined clothes dry. The drink had been to help her drown out the return of her nightmares, not dye her khiton. “Yeah, well, maybe she should have bid a longer farewell then. I mean, sure, she bid us farewell, but for all I knew she was planning to visit Neshia or something, not leave the whole Mortal Realm behind.”
“Maybe she did not wish to trouble you,” Athene said, earning herself a withering glare.
Kirke thought about reminding Athene she had a couple thousand more years life experience than her, but what good would it have done? Olympians talked down to Nymphs as a matter of course, probably unaware they even did so. She might also have mentioned that Mother had trained her in the Art, while Athene herself knew precious little of truths beyond this fragile mortal world. But pointing that out would have earned her naught.
Instead, she slipped from the divan and onto the floor, trying to ensure no stains spread to the furniture, then poured herself more wine from the amphora. “Anyway, it’s fine, I’m fine. She’ll be fine.” She hoped. “Pff. Hades probably isn’t even mad.” Sure. “So what is it you hope to accomplish, exactly? I mean, make Pandion king, yeah, fine, but he’s five years old, so maybe not quite ready for the reins of power. The public might be more inclined to elect a king who has his adult teeth in. Just a guess.” She sipped the wine, watching her sister.
Athene huffed at that. “Obviously. I’m setting the stage. But I also want to see about seizing control of the peninsula. Which means, among other things, we need to weaken the closest poleis.”
Kirke smiled around the bowl at her lips. “You mean Korinth.”
“It is ruled by the demigod Sisyphus.” Athene took a sip of her own wine. “So, tell me, sister, what exactly can you do about him?”
Kirke took another drink, as much to buy herself time as aught else. Unfortunately, plenty of Nectar combinations had produced rather extreme bouts of madness in numerous subjects, even while many of those batches had actually proved closest to actual Ambrosia in other effects. It would be easy enough to recreate such effects on purpose, though until this moment, she hadn’t imagined wanting to. “You don’t want anyone to see your hand in this, yeah? I … have a means of ensuring Sisyphus destroys himself.”
Athene leaned forward, eagerness glinting in her gray eyes. “What? How?”
How much to share? Kirke would not be enough a fool to think she could trust Athene to keep secrets from her father. Not about this.
“Mother taught me a great deal of alchemy back in the Golden days. I have methods.” She set the wine bowl down. “But I’d need to travel to Korinth to apply them. I could be back in a fortnight, I’m certain.”
Oh, Athene all but bounced up and down at her offer. “Do it.”
It had, in fact, taken Kirke a little over a fortnight to brew the right concoction of Nectar, reach Korinth, and ensure Sisyphus’s wine was spiked with it. It was amazing what disaffected and ill-treated slaves would help her do when prodded just right. But then, that was part of the problem with the Olympians. They suffered from such extreme hubris they could not even conceive
