The Gifts of Pandora (ebook)

The scents of wine and olives mingled with a tinge of vomit emanating from some corner of the palace courtyard. Laughter, heated discussions, and passionate moans punctuated the silences between the chords of Pandora’s harp, and she took it all in, though wine warmed her face and dulled her senses. Being half-drunk helped, too, with whatever meagre hint of modesty she might have still had at sitting here, playing with her breasts exposed.
Such things kept the symposium guests jovial, though perhaps more of them leered at the entirely nude flute girls across the courtyard than at Pandora. Either way, the Pleiades expected as much from hetairai like Pandora, and they paid her far more custom than she’d make seducing any of these men on her own.
So she paraded herself, she strummed her harp, and she sang. This night, she chanted Adonis’s almost forgotten epic of the Ambrosial War, her voice soaring as she reached the bit about the death of Okeanus and how his mournful lover named the very ocean itself for him.
And yes, indeed, by the end of the song, nigh every eye in the courtyard was upon her, even those of some few of the Pleiades themselves, the very Queens of Atlantis. When the song at last finished, Pandora rose and offered a bow to her scattered applause, surreptitiously shrugging her khiton back over her shoulders as she stood.
She’d barely had time to grab a bowl of wine—the drinking rules of the symposiarch only applied to the guests, not the entertainment—when the men came sauntering over. They always did. Drunk and brazen, as if she ought to revel and swoon in their favour and attention. Queen Kelaino saved her from idle chatter with a pair of them, though, deftly stepping around them. Graceful, despite the fact that, like any Titan, she stood half a head taller than the Men.
The queen grasped Pandora’s elbow lightly and led her away from the garden courtyard, into a paved colonnade that ran through the central palace. “You have a gift for music, Pandora,” the Titan said, not looking at her. “You have, in fact, a great many gifts, I am given to understand.”
For a glorified whore, she meant. Ah, but much as Pandora oft found it hard to hold her tongue, there were some things one simply did not say to a queen, and certainly not to a Titan queen. With a word, Kelaino could shift Pandora’s fortunes from free hetaira to actual whore owned by some brothel. That the Titan took any interest in her, that she occasionally hired her for these functions, was a boon. A chance to make something of her life on Atlantis, even though Pandora held no citizenship here.
“I am honoured you think so.”
Kelaino snorted lightly. “Your false modesty is quaint.”
Oh, Pandora could feign modesty or most aught else, given the need, but here, she saw little reason to do so. The sharpest mind in the World was not always a blessing, not for a woman whose intellect might threaten the fragile egos of the men around her. Kelaino, though, clearly felt no threat. Titan pride scraped the very firmament, brushing the stars and claiming them as their due. In a Man, a fraction of such would be called hubris, but amid Kelaino’s kind, it was simply a fact of life.
They came to a second courtyard beyond the colonnade, this one home to an artificial lake fed by dolphin-shaped waterspouts three times her height. Within the pool swam great rays and skates and other fish. Once, Pandora had seen this place in daylight and gawked at the myriad splendour of the collected sea life. Now, though, as in most times she had seen the palace, with the shallow lake lit only by moonlight and braziers, the effect became muted.
Across the pond, she caught sight of the guest of honour, King Sisyphus of Korinth, here for his betrothal to Kelaino’s sister Merope. At the moment, though, he walked the grounds with an entourage of men, no doubt all drunk and debating the finer points of civic philosophy or some such thing. These days, men liked to quote and debate Urania’s dialogues, though most of them probably understood very little of the Muse’s actual points. Perhaps they realised their ignorance and feigned comprehension for the sake of saving face, or perhaps they were too self-absorbed to grasp their blindness in the first place.
“I wonder,” Pandora said, knowing the wine made her tongue too free but not quite able to stop herself, “if they’re on about Utopia once more.”
“It has been a favoured topic at symposiums all year,” Kelaino said, seeming more intent on watching the fish than Pandora, despite having brought her out here.
“And do you think any one of them apprehends Urania’s subtext? That a society oppressing half its population must ever wallow in discontent, even if few among the populace ever recognise its source?”
Now Kelaino’s gaze fell upon her like a blow. Here was a woman sharp enough to catch Pandora’s meaning. The Pleiades escaped the patriarchal chains that bound mortal women and most other Nymphs, at least to some extent. Save that they ruled merely at the sufferance of the King of Olympus who had destroyed their father and, over the years, forced himself on more than half of the seven queens.
But then, the queens were but a few of his victims.
Pandora felt her jaw hardening. The urge to give voice to such a grievance bubbled inside her like a boiling cauldron, almost more than she could contain. It felt she would overflow from the need to speak of what she’d seen, so long suppressed.
Had it suited her, the queen could have simply slain Pandora then and there. No one would question a Titan, least of all one who ostensibly ruled the polis and island, both. In theory, the Pleiades were all equal, but Pandora had long suspected Kelaino held more than her share of the power. Now, with Merope bound for Korinth and Elektra spending so much time in Minos’s court in Knosós, that would only increase. Taygete and Sterope were weak, and Maia, from what Pandora had heard, had never quite been the same once Zeus had finished with her.
Pandora raised her gaze to meet the Titan’s own, offering up a challenge. Despite it all, despite all that had befallen her, Pandora refused to give in. She would not surrender to the ravages of circumstance, and she would not allow the facade she wore with clients to became authentic.
“The World is how it is, Pandora,” Kelaino said after a moment more. “Your best chance at happiness may lie in accepting that. To defy the foundations of society is folly.”
“Which is easy to say when one reigns as queen of the most powerful polis in the World.”
Now those Atlantid eyes—so dark as to seem almost black—hardened further. Yes, Pandora so oft crossed lines. For the very existence of such lines deeply offended. “My sister will wed tomorrow. See to it her betrothed gets other women out of his system tonight.”
Perhaps Pandora’s look of distaste showed plain upon her face. Oh, it wasn’t as if she expected to get through a symposium without servicing a guest or two, nor even minded overmuch. Pandora was twenty-five and had been doing this since her bleeds had started. Shame over such things had become a distant memory, given way to practicality and the realisation her choice lay only in how she responded to the throws of Fate. “Shall I point out that the idea that a man who needs to sate himself upon other women on the very eve of his wedding would ever get over such a need is so patently absurd as to offend reason?”
The Titan grabbed her elbow, this time with a grip that felt like it could have torn chunks of the marble fountain clean off. “Vex me, and you may sacrifice more than a night’s pay.” And given that Kelaino tended to offer a half dozen tetradrachmae for these events, it was a hefty sacrifice. “My protection of you may expire as well.”