And her affinity for languages was one of her strongest gifts, though one she’d mostly had to develop without any formal instruction.
Dardanus had the decency to look shamefaced and recognize he’d been castigated without her actually crossing any lines. He fell into recitation of Sikarbaal with admirable effort, though Pandora imagined he had not the first clue what the philosopher meant in his writings.
It was just as well, in fact, for it meant she needed to listen only to the shape of the words, not their substance. Well, because her mind kept drifting back to the symposium and Kelaino’s damn uncle, the Titan who had looked at her as though he knew all her secrets.
If there was one truth that ever guided her life it was this: the very existence of mysteries demanded someone solve them.
When she had finished with Dardanus, Pandora made her way back into Atlantis’s middle ring. The royal island, Atlantis’s acropolis, lay at the city’s heart, formed by the inner of two concentric canals that ran down from the mountains. Smaller canals bisected the great ones, creating districts within the middle ring.
It was in this central band where Pandora had purchased her modest home by the outer canal. She stopped there only long enough to freshen up, though. A peacock had alighted in her tiny yard, so she scattered some breadcrumbs for the beautiful bird. Feeding them meant they returned oft and gave her something wondrous to study. The grace of their forms was its own fascination, but she had also been working to paint a fresco in the perfect likeness of a peacock and could not pass any opportunity to examine the tail patterns.
She had heard that the Olympian, Hera, bred a flock of peacocks and kept them within the palace walls of Olympus. Loathe as Pandora would be to ever be within a league of Zeus, she would love to see that.
After a few moments watching the bird, she departed and crossed one of the soaring stone bridges that connected to the outer city.
So far as she’d gathered, Prometheus had not taken residence in the royal palace, as she might have expected, nor in any of the other estates in the acropolis. Most visiting aristoi, Man or Titan, would have called upon friends in the city for a place to stay. If he had not done so—and yet remained in the polis—she could only imagine he must have kept a room in one of the few guesthouses in Atlantis.
All those she knew of lay in the harbor district, southeast of the city. Perhaps the Titan had fled Atlantis already, and if so, her whole walk would prove fruitless. But she had the afternoon free and, if there was any chance of understanding the enigma he’d presented, she had to take it. It had been too long since something truly unknown had crossed her path. Pandora could never turn down a puzzle, a chance to unravel a mystery, to answer the siren call of the new and break the tedium of the prosaic.
Maybe he’d not speak to her. Maybe he’d even grow irate. Vexed Titans were a terrifying sight, yes, and the thought had a slight sweat trickling down her lower back. But she’d learn naught if she didn’t try.
Out in the harbor district, overlooking the ships, stood a massive statue of Atlas himself, namesake and founder of Atlantis. The story went that Zeus had bound him in Tartarus, condemning him to support the weight of the heavens upon his shoulders. To honor their father, the Pleiades had erected a fifty-feet tall statue of Atlas, hefting the world proudly. Sometimes, Pandora had wondered whether Zeus saw this monument as petty defiance. If so, he’d never forced them to take it down.
She strolled the harbor, watching the biremes and triremes sailing in. Some were Phoenikian, of course, and maybe she could have paid for passage back to Tyros. But it wasn’t her home anymore, and she couldn’t imagine any special welcome awaited her in Agenor’s court. Twenty years she’d been gone, and Atlantis was her home.
With a last glance at the ships, Pandora turned about. She had to imagine that, were a Titan to stay in a guesthouse, only the posh Bay of Dreams would do, so she headed there first. The place offered several rooms—she’d seen one with a client, actually—and a covered portico for dining, one floor up. The portico extended out over the bay, supported by marmoreal columns cut from local stone. A curved staircase allowed access to the dining segment without heading inside, so she made her way upstairs.
The Titan, Prometheus, did indeed sit at a table there, sipping wine from a bowl and staring not at the bay, as most guests would have, but at a smoldering brazier between the tables. He had shoulder-length auburn hair, skin perhaps a shade lighter than her own, and, like so many Titans, a chiseled build most sculptors would have drooled over.
Well, she had not come all this way to feign demureness, had she? Nor did Prometheus strike her as the type to require such. Instead, she brazenly slipped into the seat across from him.
The Titan startled from whatever he saw in the flames—if he taught Man pyromancy, surely he must practice it himself—and fitted her with his soul-scouring gaze once more. As if he looked into the depths of her heart, of her innermost secret self, and read it like a papyrus roll. The moment was dread and shuddering, masochistic delight all rolled up into one.
“You were staring at me the other night,” Pandora said, trying her best to keep her voice level, indifferent even.
The Titan’s gaze relaxed a hair, and a hint of a smile tugged at the edge of his mouth. “You were spying upon me and Kelaino for rather longer than the time I afforded to inspect you. It would seem to me, yours is the greater invasion of privacy.”
Pandora flushed,
