Authors: Karen Chance
Uh-uh. They needed to
go
. They needed to go back to their families, as soon as I figured out who they all were. They also probably needed major therapy after the last couple days, but that could be dealt with once they were safely away from me.
Or that had been the plan, anyway. But now I learned that I wouldn’t be sending them home, I’d be sending them to jail, and I somehow didn’t think Jonas would be willing to talk parole right now. And damn it, I didn’t need this!
“The initiates are free to go at sixteen if they don’t choose to accept an acolyte’s position,” Rhea said, watching me.
“And until then? Are their families allowed to visit?”
“It’s . . . thought better if they don’t.”
Yeah, might interfere with the brainwashing.
But at least I knew why Agnes had so many little girls hanging around. She’d probably felt bad turning any of them away, figuring they’d be better off at court than with the Circle. And she was probably right. But that had been before the war broke out and the court ended up at ground zero and, God, the Circle pissed me off!
Sure, take a bunch of little kids away from their families, treat them like some kind of freaks, lock them up where they don’t want to be, and then get surprised when some of them turn on you!
Only my acolytes hadn’t just turned on the Circle, had they? They hadn’t ended up becoming dark mages like some of the kids who escaped those prisons. No. They’d gone for the big-time, planning to bring back the freaking
gods, w
hich, yeah, would screw the Circle over nicely but would also manage to kill off the rest of us.
So this was a problem. And I couldn’t even rely on Jonas to help me with it, because he was busy. Trying to lock up another clairvoyant who was out of his control!
And who was going to stay that way.
“Lady, is . . . is something wrong?” Rhea asked, and she was back to that meek voice again, the one I was really starting to hate. But just because right now I hated everything.
“No. So that’s how they met,” I said, looking down at the photo. “Agnes was at court, and Jonas was Lord Protector.”
Rhea shook her head. “He wasn’t Lord Protector then. And they didn’t meet here. They met—”
“Yes?”
“I—I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.”
And yet the only picture of him had been crumpled in an old drawer. There weren’t any others that I’d seen—of him or anyone else. And I suddenly realized what was bugging me about this place.
Where were the snapshots? The napkins with silly doodles on them? The theatre ticket stubs? Where were the stupid stuffed animals he’d won for her at a fair, the crappy “silver” rings bought from a vendor that turned her finger green, the postcards, the tacky souvenir shot glasses, the love notes? This place looked like it was already up for sale and somebody had cleared all the personal stuff away so a buyer would be able to see themselves in it.
And maybe they could have, but I couldn’t see her.
I couldn’t see Agnes.
“Did you find any more photos?” I asked, because maybe she kept the private stuff back here. But Rhea shook her head.
“She . . . wasn’t usually sentimental.” Her fist clenched tight enough to wrinkle the photo for a moment, but then she held it out to me.
“Keep it,” I told her. “You knew her better than I did.”
Her look of gratitude was swift, but it lit up her whole face. She’d be really pretty, I thought, if she ever got out of grandma’s nightgown. I wondered if she even had other clothes.
“And take whatever else you want,” I added. “If anything fits . . .” I broke off at her look of alarm. “What?”
“I—this is what we wear,” she told me. “The ini—the acolytes,” she corrected. “It’s tradition.”
It’s ugly,
I didn’t say, because she was clutching the neck of the thing like I planned to rip it off her. “Agnes didn’t wear that,” I pointed out.
“The Pythia wears what she chooses, of course.”
“But you don’t.”
“I—it’s part of the discipline—”
“You’re not in the marines.”
“—and tradition,” she repeated. Like maybe I hadn’t gotten it the first time.
“But somebody changed the tradition at some point, right? That’s old, not ancient.”
She looked down at the nightgown. “Lady Herophile VI designed it. In 1840—”
“It looks it.”
Rhea’s lip twitched; I saw it. “It’s better than the previous one.”
“Do I want to know about the previous one?”
“Grecian robes. They weren’t at all practical—Lady Herophile said,” she added, before I got the idea that she might have an opinion on something. “She wrote that she felt like she was in a costume all the time, and when she went out, she either had to wear an all-enveloping cape, or sneak out in normal street wear and break the rules. She was always breaking the rules—until she became Pythia, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Afterward, she was quite a proper Pythia,” she added quickly.
Why did I doubt that? “Her name wouldn’t happen to have been Gertie, would it?”
“Gertrude, yes,” Rhea said, looking surprised that I’d know that.
Cherries. Figured—she’d looked like someone who liked clothes. I got a sudden image of her sneaking out of a window of the Pythian mansion in a Grecian gown, with a pack of normal clothes thrown over her back. I could totally see it.
And I didn’t blame her one bit.
“The 1840s was a long time ago,” I pointed out.
“I—yes. Yes.”
“That looks scratchy,” I added, looking at the lace around the high neckline.
“Sometimes . . .”
I glanced around. There was everything from fringed flapper dresses to buttoned up forties-era coats to wide-legged sixties trousers to even wider-shouldered eighties power suits. And everything in between. Too bad it was all going up in smoke in a week or so.
“Did Agnes have heirs?” I asked, and then wished I hadn’t. Because Rhea had just reached out a hand to touch a glittering purple and gold evening dress, which was brushing the floor beside her.
She abruptly snatched it back.
“It’s yours. Everything is yours,” she told me hurriedly.
I looked at her, a little exasperated. “Would you please stop doing that?”
“Doing . . . what?” Her eyes started darting around, like maybe her body was doing something she wasn’t aware of.
“That,” I told her. “Stop acting like I’m a cross between Attila the Hun and the Second Coming! Or you’re going to be in for a real disappointment.”
“I—I’m not—”
“Because I’m not Agnes, okay? I’m not perfect. I make mistakes—”
“Perfect?”
“—I make a lot of them. And if you keep on jumping every time I do, you’re going to get whiplash or some—”
“Agnes wasn’t perfect,” she blurted out. And then looked appalled, although whether because she’d dared to use a Pythia’s first name or because she’d said something less than complimentary, I didn’t know.
“I meant, in comparison to me,” I clarified.
“In—in comparison to—”
“And if I’m her heir, then you can have whatever you want. So, what do you want?”
Rhea looked like she was trying to keep up, which was crazy since we were only talking about clothes.
“If you could wear whatever you want, what would it be?” I asked impatiently. It was an easy question. Although maybe not for her. She glanced around again, at the bewildering mass of colors and materials and choice. And then her eyes focused on a prim little skirted suit that might as well have been the updated version of the nightgown.
“Don’t lie to the Pythia,” I reminded her sternly.
She bit her lip and looked at me. “Jeans?” she finally whispered.
“Good answer,” I told her, and threw her one of Agnes’ spare pairs.
An hour later, Rhea was looking like a whole new woman in jeans and a pink peasant blouse. Well, the jeans were more like capris, since she was taller than Agnes, and the top was loose enough to show too-sharp collarbones. But overall, she looked good.
Unlike me. I was hot, sweaty, and had discovered a heretofore unknown allergy to whatever the heck old clothes give off. My back was killing me, my knees were sore from crawling around on the carpet, and my nose was running. I decided I needed a break and settled down cross-legged on the floor with Agnes’ huge old sewing kit.
She did embroidery. Who knew?
“And they weren’t just powerful seers,” Rhea was saying, because she’d come out of her shell when she came out of the dress, which was good. But then she’d decided I was woefully ignorant about Pythian lore, which was bad. Because she was trying her best to educate me.
I didn’t like to complain. It wasn’t like I couldn’t use it. But I was tired and my head hurt, and worse, we still hadn’t found anything.
I was trying not to look at my watch, but it was getting harder. Rosier could be back anytime, and I had to be there, and I had to have the Tears. But we’d been through almost the entire closet, and so far—nothing. Except for an old lipstick, a couple folded handkerchiefs, and a few spare coins. And I was beginning to believe there wouldn’t be anything else, because Agnes was freaking meticulous about her clothes.
This wasn’t going to work.
“Lady?”
I looked up to find Rhea’s dark gray eyes on me. They looked concerned. I blanked my face, because panic was probably number 847 on the list of things Pythias weren’t supposed to do. “Yes?”
“I was saying that the Pythias were more than famous seers. They were also some of the most powerful and knowledgeable women in the ancient world.”
I nodded.
“Themistoclea I, for example, was the tutor of Pythagoras, the father of philosophy, who said that he learned much of what he knew from her.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And Lady Phemonoe I, the first prophetess at Delphi, is credited with inventing hexameter verse. The sort used in ancient epics,” she added when I looked at her blankly.
“Oh.”
“And Perialla VI discovered the ley line system—”
“Bet that was a shock.”
Rhea nodded, looking glad to see me show some interest, however vague. “She shifted into the middle of one by accident, and was almost roasted before she could get back out! But it led to the exploration of the whole system thereafter. That was in the thirteenth century, and then in the fourteenth . . .”
She kept talking, but it was getting harder to pay attention, because I didn’t care about Pythian history right now. I cared about exactly one thing, but a potion used by a single person isn’t exactly easy to come by. And my options if this didn’t work weren’t looking good.
I’d used up the Senate’s bottle on their errand, and I doubted they had any more, since their weapons cache was currently a glass slick in the desert. And, according to Rhea, only the Circle’s potion masters knew the recipe, so I couldn’t just go out and buy some. And Jonas wasn’t likely to help me do something so dangerous, which was why I was having to hope for some of Agnes’ leftovers.
Only there didn’t appear to be any.
They never showed this part on TV, I thought vehemently. Searches were supposed to take a couple of minutes. You walked in, checked a few obvious places, and then whatever you needed jumped into your hand.
Only so far, nothing was jumping.
Except for the needle I’d just stuck halfway through a finger. Damn it!
“They were political powerhouses, too,” Rhea was saying. “Consulted by world leaders on occasions of war and strategy, treaties and diplomacy. Pythias told the Greeks how to defeat the Persians, told Philip of Macedon how to defeat the Greeks, and predicted the rise of Alexander—”
I looked up. Finally, a name I knew. “As in, the Great?”
“Yes. One of the few to ever dare lay hands on a Pythia.”
“He assaulted her?”
Rhea nodded. “He’d visited another sybil, who had flattered him by telling him he was divine—a son of Zeus, who had supposedly visited his mother Olympias one night—and he wanted the Pythia to confirm it. She chose to say nothing, rather than to enrage him with the truth, but it didn’t help. And his army had surrounded the temple complex, and she knew she couldn’t fight them all, and she feared for her people. . . .”
“Well? What did she do?” I asked when Rhea trailed off.
Her lips twitched, and, okay, yeah. She’d hooked me. “She told him what he really wanted to hear: that he was unbeatable.”
“Oh.” I felt irrationally let down.
“She didn’t tell him that he would die of poison before he had a chance to enjoy any of his conquests.”
I perked up. “Well, he should have been nicer.”
Rhea laughed. “Yes. He should have been! Like the Emperor Nero, who was thrown out of the temple by a later Pythia because he’d killed his mother.
Go back, matricide! The number seventy-three marks the hour of your downfall!
”
“Damn.” I’d have liked to have seen that. By all accounts, Nero had been a murderous little snot. “But living to seventy-three doesn’t seem so bad.”
“That’s what Nero thought. Until he was killed a few years later by a general named Galba—who was seventy-three at the time!”
“Sweet.”
“Pythias are even said to have commanded the gods. Well, demigods,” she amended. “Xenoclea I ordered Hercules to be sold into slavery for a year, to compensate for killing a man while a guest under his roof. His sale price was to go to the children of the slain.”
I started to protest that Hercules was only a myth, but considering my life lately, I just went with “Really?”
She grinned. “She even decided who he would be sold to.”
“And that’s funny because?”
“Because she selected Queen Omphale of Lydia, who was known for having a sense of humor. The queen took away his lion skin and weapons, and dressed him in women’s clothes. And made him stand around holding a basket of wool while she and her handmaidens did their spinning!”
“For a
year
?”
“For a year.” Rhea looked satisfied. Probably because this Xeno-whoever couldn’t have come up with a better torture for a musclebound he-man.
“Why haven’t I heard any of this before?” I asked.
Rhea’s smile faded. “I don’t know,” she said, her brows drawing together. But she threw it off in a minute. “And it was a Pythia, Aristonice IX, who helped to broker the treaty between the Circle and the vampires that still holds today.”
“She must have really been something,” I said, wondering how she’d managed to balance those two groups, who usually loathed each other. And if the current consul remembered her.
Guess she would, considering she was old as hell.
I sighed.
“No,” Rhea said, a little fiercely.
“No?”
“No!” She shook her head, sending a storm of fuzzies into the air. “We have to learn Pythian history growing up, and she’s taught because of the treaty. But other than that, there was nothing unusual about her. She didn’t go about battling gods, for instance!”
“Well, maybe she didn’t have any to battle.”
“No.” She was tugging little pockets inside out so fast I was afraid she was going to rip something. “None of them did. None of them had to face what you face. They didn’t have to elude Circle assassins or battle demigods or face Apollo himself—”
“I had a little help with Apollo.”
“—or any of it! Yet they had more support than you’ve ever been given! The only people to help you are the Senate, and they . . .” She threw up her hands. “They don’t know anything!”
“Don’t tell them that,” I said, thinking of the consul’s reaction.
“I would never tell anyone anything you didn’t want me to,” she said, looking faintly shocked. “But you shouldn’t have to live like that. You should have
support
. You should have
help
; you should have—” She cut off abruptly.
I was about to ask why when I heard it, too. A sound. A sound like a door opening outside.
Rhea and I looked at each other, and then we scrambled for the closet entrance.
I grabbed her arm, in case I needed to shift us away, but there was a chance it was just someone in to do the housekeeping. Only I didn’t think so. Who does housekeeping at ten o’clock at night?
And then I knew it wasn’t.
Because a sliver of the living room was visible through the mostly shut bedroom door, and those didn’t look like maids.
There were maybe half a dozen, but I couldn’t be sure since my inch of visual space didn’t give me much to work with. Just the backside of some dark leather trench coats, the kind only war mages and Nazis thought of as a fashion statement. But it was a woman who spoke.
“Did you leave a light on in the bedroom?”
“No.” Another woman.
“You’re sure?” The voice sharpened.
And
shit.
Before even waiting for a reply, the coats were coming this way. I had a split second to see the door start to swing open, and then we were landing somewhere darker and a whole lot more cramped.
Rhea gasped, maybe because her stomach had come into contact with the side of Agnes’ desk when I shifted us into the office. But she clapped a hand over her mouth the next second, and then I jerked her down, out of line of sight. We hit the ground, staring out across the darkened living room through the legs of a sofa table, at almost the same time that a man’s voice called from the bedroom.
“Looks like someone was searching the place.”
“
We
searched the place!”
You idiot
went unsaid but implied.
“Don’t take that tone with me.” A big, dark-haired man stuck his head out of the bedroom door. “And I said search
ing
, not searched. Someone was just in here.”
“Oh, so you’re psychic now?” the woman asked sarcastically. I adjusted my position slightly, until I could see something other than legs. Past a lamp and a Lucite spill of fake flowers, I saw a model-pretty face, long auburn hair, dark slacks, and a light-colored tank under a leather jacket.
Looked like someone else had decided the dress code was bullshit.
Acolyte?
I mouthed at Rhea, who nodded grimly.
“I leave that mumbo-jumbo to you,” the man replied. “I deal in facts—”
“And what facts are those?” the acolyte asked witheringly.
“That a damned rush of magic just slapped me in the face!”
“Probably the wards,” another man piped up. “They’ve been itching me since we got here.”
“It’s not the wards. I know wards—”
“You don’t know these,” the woman cut in. “They’re not the pissant things you’re used to dealing with. The Circle’s top wardsmiths made them—”
“The Circle!” one of the other coats said contemptuously. “They’re not as good as they think they are.”
“Neither are you.”
“Then it’s too bad we’re the best you got,” the dark-haired mage said, coming back into the living room. “And I’m telling you, someone just did a spell.”
“And I’m telling you, it was the wards,” the smaller man argued. He was Asian, bald, and looked uncomfortable in his skin. “These things don’t like us.”
The tall acolyte looked like she agreed with the wards. “They won’t hurt you as long as you’re with us. Now get the safe open.”
“Where is it?” the small man asked, taking something out of his coat.
I glanced at Rhea and mouthed,
Silence spell?
Because I had a few burning questions. But she shook her head. Apparently, it was powerful enough that they might pick up on it, too.
“Do you know the combination?” I whispered.
She shook her head again, looking guilty. “I only saw it opened once, and that was years ago. I’d forgotten it was even there.”
So much for the idea of shifting back a couple hours and beating them to it. But I suddenly had a serious need to get in that safe. Luckily, it looked like they were going to be nice enough to open it for me.
Or not, I thought, as the smaller mage went to the sunflower painting and jerked it open, revealing a steel-colored block. That promptly shocked the hell out of him as soon as he touched it. “Shit!” He jerked his arm back, and I swear I thought I saw it steaming.
“Looks like it’s warded, too,” the bigger mage said.
“Of course it’s warded!” the tall acolyte told him. “What did you expect? Get it open!”
“You get it open,” the small mage said, still clutching his arm. “It likes you.”
“I don’t crack safes!”
“Is there anything you
do
do?” the bigger mage asked, and one of the others laughed.
It didn’t appear to faze her. “Yeah. I communicate with the master on a regular basis. And guess what I’m going to tell him next time?”
The big man’s grin faded. “Get it open,” he told the smaller mage.
“I can’t get it open! The damned thing won’t let me near it!”
“You heard the man,” he told the acolyte, who looked like she was wondering why she’d been cursed with incompetents. “You’re gonna have to turn the wards off.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she asked. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there are a dozen Circle mages downstairs who would notice if I do!”
“Old men.” A third mage scoffed. “Useless bastards.”
“Maybe. But those useless bastards could have another fifty war mages here in minutes if anything goes wrong. You think you’re up to dealing with that?”
The big mage didn’t answer. “What’s so important in there, anyway?” he asked instead, eyes narrowing. “Must be something valuable.”
“More than you know.”
“Like what, exactly?”
“Like this.” The woman held up something I couldn’t see all that well but that had Rhea stiffening beside me.
And then I was stiffening, too, when the mage said: “A potion? That’s it?”
The acolyte started to reply, and then stopped. “Yes,” she told him. “That’s it. We want the potion; anything else you find is yours.”
The mage said something else, but I didn’t hear, because my heart was suddenly pounding in my ears. It looked like we were after the same thing. But what did an acolyte want with the Tears?