Athene took it all in as the guards dragged her by the elbows, the tips of her sandals just brushing the mirror-polished tiles of the floor. No colonnade ran the length of this hall, giving the chamber a vast, cavernous aspect. Lines of braziers rimmed the path to Mithra’s throne upon the dais, their flickering light failing to banish the gloom that flitted about the hall.
A dozen Immortals stood in the wings behind the throne, hands on the hilts of their akinakai. Along with them, a hundred more of his guards rimmed the periphery, ready to surge up on her with the slightest motion of their king.
The King of Kings himself reclined at ease, his face concealed in shadow, while firelight reflected off the emeralds encrusted into his sandals.
Her captors carried her within a dozen feet of the dais then drove her to her knees before the Babilimian monarch with such force the impact sent lances of lightning surging through her legs. Instinctively, she reached for Tolerance, but the orichalcum fetters blocked any access to her Pneuma. Of course, if the chains hadn’t bound her wrists, she could have torn through these guards in a whirlwind. Maybe she could have even fought the Immortals, though perhaps not so many of them.
“The great goddess Athene,” Mithra said, face still concealed. “Come to us at last, even as Elládos falls around you.”
Athene stared defiance at the self-proclaimed king of the world. “My father will not ransom me.”
Now, Mithra leaned forward, offering her a hint of his features, from his trim black beard to his intense eyes. “But it is not your father I am interested in, goddess.” With ponderous import, the man rose, giving the sensation of a river changing its course. “No, I have had you brought here for something far more momentous than Zeus’s petty struggles. I have summoned you forth from the farthest reaches of this world in order to bestow upon you a gift. The greatest of all gifts, in fact, Athene. I am going to give to you … Truth.”
When Pandion returned with Kirke, Athene started awake, realizing she had dozed upon her throne. Had … had she just had a vision without even the use of water? Was that oneiromancy, or had she fallen into some drug-induced trance not unlike what the Oracle Mirror had induced in her beneath Olympus?
“Leave us,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry. “Andreas, wait,” she called to her steward an instant later. “Fetch us wine.”
With a bow, the man left to do so.
“So … You called for me,” Kirke said, standing with her hands behind her back. “And I’m basically here. You don’t look so good, truth be told. Are you sleeping enough? Yeah, it’s really important to get proper rest. An overtaxed mind cannot process what it sees in the Sight, you know. I’ve heard that—”
“Do be silent,” Athene moaned, and Kirke snapped her mouth shut.
A moment later, Andreas returned, small amphora under one arm, and a pair of bowls clutched between the fingers of his other hand.
“Kirke will not be having wine this morning,” Athene said, to which her steward inclined his head, leaving the amphora and a single bowl.
“Oh, ah, I could have actually gone for a sip or three …” Kirke began, then trailed off when Athene leveled a withering gaze at her.
“I need more.”
“Yeah, clearly you’ve not had nigh enough yet. If you like, I could probably find a cart to run over your face, too, in case you need further abuse.”
Athene poured herself some wine and decided to ignore both the barb and the Nymph’s temerity. When she had downed the whole bowl, she leaned back in her throne. “Did you turn the Prince of Rassenia into …” Athene couldn’t believe she was even going to say this. “Did you turn him into a bird?”
“Well, you don’t seem to think I did, so perhaps we should leave it at that and both remain the happier for it. I mean, really, ‘turn him into a bird’ is so ambiguous after all. It could mean all sorts of things, if you really think about it. Perhaps I, err … well, that is, what it means, as a kind of euphemism you see, that I made him crow or some such thing. And you wouldn’t really want to know about it—”
Athene flung the empty bowl at Kirke’s feet, shattering it and sloshing the dregs over the woman’s sandals. “Enough. You have no idea what you’ve done now. I was building a diplomatic relationship with Rassenia on Pandion’s behalf. For all we know, they may now think to make war over this, Kirke! The sheer unbelievability of the claim those sailors will bring back may be all—if aught—that stops them from launching a fleet of ships at us.”
“Yeah … Mnemosyne retreated to the farthest shores long ago. She doesn’t want war with any Elládosi polis. She doesn’t want any involvement at all, hardly … Can’t much blame her.” That last was mumbled, but Athene caught it.
“That’s not the point!” That Kirke was right had absolutely no bearing. “You have jeopardized the peace and my son’s future.”
Kirke snickered. “Yeah, true. But, you know, maybe having his mother spiral into depravity and addiction won’t be ideal for Pandion’s prospects either. I mean, I thought you had hit the bottom of that hole, but then you just set about with a shovel and decided to go deeper, even if you buried yourself with the dirt.”
Pneuma surged through Athene unbidden and before she knew what she was doing she had closed the distance between herself and her half-sister. Still, she restrained herself from striking the other woman. Her sudden rush forward with the speed of a gale ought to serve as enough reminder of the difference between a true Titan and a Nymph like her. “You must leave Kronion this very day, Kirke. You are no longer welcome
