“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.
Chapter Ten
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 eno
ugh 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—”