Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.49

chapter 1.49

the son of rome

solus. the wind carried my name to me, a whisper with no visible source. i grunted and stood up, shrugging the weight of command off my shoulders.

“ninety-three?” selene asked, disappointed. she was perched on her scarlet tripod, legs kicking beneath her while she kept count of my repetitions. “i was sure you’d break a hundred today.” one hundred repetitions of any given exercise was the mark socrates had set for me and my physical training. once i could do a hundred i increased the weight of gravitas until i could barely do one, and then i worked my way back up.

“the spirit is willing, but the body is weak,” i lied, standing tall and stretching. when i winced it was only partly an act. i could have pushed through and reached a hundred today, but i would have suffered for every last repetition.

as an excuse it would do. i glanced meaningfully at the scarlet oracle as i stretched. her head tilted, golden hair spilling over one shoulder.

“would the barbarian like a massage?” as always, the old crone of the broken tide read my intentions before anyone else in the courtyard. the ancient woman leered at me with her blind, trisected eyes. “how conceited, to think your ugly, rugged body worthy of an oracle’s holy hands.”

“oh!” selene’s back straightened suddenly, the girl drawing her golden veil back down over her face. “i see. well, i suppose...”

“you don’t have to force yourself, dear. these things are difficult for a girl your age,” came the sympathetic sounds of a woman with nothing but bad intentions. i stared flatly at the oracle from the alabaster isles, a woman named chara with lips painted white-gold, with a line of the same color running from the tip of her tongue to the back of her throat. she smiled, her right leg curled up against her chest with her cheek resting on her knee. “i suppose there’s nothing for it. come and let this one ease your aching body.”

slim hands wrapped around my bicep, and before i could respond selene had already pulled me halfway to the scarlet oracle’s private quarters with the overwhelming strength of a heroic cultivator. melodious laughter and ugly cackling followed us all the way into the room, ceasing only when selene slammed the door shut behind us.

each of the oracles enjoyed the privilege of a personal living space, tucked away behind the walls of the late kyrios’ octagonal courtyard within kaukoso mons.

before the tyrant’s death these quarters had been reserved for sleeping and bathing only. the kyrios wasn’t cruel enough to require the holy women to do their bathing and sleeping in his presence, but he also wasn’t kind enough to give them private leisure. if an oracle was not asleep, in a bath, or in her public temple where mystikos and made men could seek her wisdom, the kyrios had decided she would be in his courtyard. waiting on one of the tripods he had chiseled himself - in case he ever had a need for her.

though there was no one left to enforce it after the kyrios’ death, some of the oracles still maintained the habit. for them - the oracles from the city of squalls, the alabaster isles, and the coast - i assumed it was the inertia of long practice as much as it was a desire for company. the other holy women mostly kept to themselves in their private quarters.

whether that was because of my continued presence, i couldn’t say. it hardly mattered. unlike griffon, i hadn’t come to olympia in search of an oracle’s wisdom.

selene pressed her back against the door to her personal quarters, the entire piece a broad slab of bone-white wood with dyed carvings of a bisected sun sprawled across it. her veiled face pointed towards me. for a long moment, neither of us spoke.

“how did i do?” she hesitantly asked. i smirked.

“well enough.”

the scarlet oracle slumped in relief, and the torchlights in the room shifted as scythas stepped out of the open air beside me.

“were you seen?” i asked him. he shook his head.

“no further than the stairway to heaven.”

“even by the elders?”

“i swung wide around each of their domains,” he said firmly. “and i waited until the oracle was lost in her fumes before i moved.”

thus far, the veil of shifting wind that scythas had been using to obscure his movements around the mountain had been flawless. though he wasn’t confident in much, the hero of the scything squall had been adamant that he could avoid detection better than selene. it was the only reason i had allowed him to leave the kyrios’ estate - if he was to be believed, the only entities on the mountain that he couldn’t slip past with his veil were the tyrants in their domains and the oracle of his own howling wind cult.

it was for that reason that we never met outside of his oracle’s working hours, while her senses were addled by the toxic fumes that holy women used to invoke prophecy. it was common knowledge that the oracles could no longer deliver prophecies, but the old practices had their own timeless momentum.

“good.” i sat down heavily on a cushioned lounge, snapping off the buckles and straps affixing my breastplate to my body with practiced motions. a gift from socrates, insomuch as he was capable of giving gifts. i’d asked the old philosopher how much it had cost him, where it had come from, but he’d only waved me off and thrown rhetoric in my eyes for my trouble.

it was a good piece of armor. strong, scraped and worn but undeniably whole. it was carved in the usual fashion, in the image of a man’s bare torso. moving in it while i trained was comforting in a way that i couldn’t explain.

“tell me what you’ve heard,” i bid scythas, setting aside the armor and rolling my shoulders, gripping the juncture between my collarbone and my neck when the muscles clenched painfully. i didn’t allow it to show on my face. not in front of him.

i tensed as slim hands brush mine aside, digging into the knots and snarls of overburdened muscle. i glanced up at selene. her veil still covered her face, golden silk with vibrant red threads winding through it like sun rays.

the scarlet oracle softly huffed, continuing on, “the second time that i attended the games, i asked my father that same question about the kyrioi. spectacular guests are bound to attend no matter what, and the athletes themselves are a joy to behold, but the kyrioi occupy a special place in the heart of our culture. if they could trust their rivals to observe the truce while their best were gathered in olympia to compete, why couldn’t they come themselves?”

within the free city-states of greece, the children of helen had long agreed that anyone willing to disdain the olympic pact of peace did not deserve their place among heaven and earth. the threat of unrestrained cooperation between the free cities was something no man had the courage to face - not since alexander took his armies east.

“what did your father say?” i asked, and scythas himself tilted his head, the hands of his influence reaching out through the space between us. one of his wind techniques, the kind that allowed him to overhear. he didn’t want to miss a word.

a tyrant’s wisdom was a currency that no man could ever be rich enough in.

“he said that having trust is like being lost at sea,” she said, rubbing her thumbs into the base of my neck. “there’s no end to it, no destination to reach, and if there was then no one on board would know how to get there. all you can do is work your oar and pray the others on board do as well. because even if they don’t, you still need to get home.”

“someone has to pull, or thirst will take them all,” i mused.

“one man pulling alone will work himself to death,” scythas added. “two won’t fare much better. it has to be everyone.”

“it has to be everyone,” selene agreed. “he said that if one man sat back while all the rest pulled, it was only natural that he’d be cast off the ship. the same for two, or three. so long as those rowing in good faith maintained the majority.”

“but the majority do still observe the pact,” i said, following the analogy to its natural conclusion. “the free cities have been at peace for over a century now. haven’t they?”

“i asked the same question,” selene said sadly. “and my father told me that our trust wasn’t broken by the majority. he told me there were other ways as well. things one man could do alone to ruin what all the rest had labored for.” her fingers paused. drew away.

“he could throw out their oars while they were sleeping,” she whispered. “he could condemn them all to the fates.”

scythas slid down the wall until he was sitting with his knees pressed against his chest.

“one man ruined it for all the rest,” he said, defeated. “the kyrioi haven’t attended the games in decades because a lack of war does not always mean an abundance of peace. since i was old enough to understand all of the conversations that i wasn’t meant to hear, the people of the hurricane heights have been living their lives on eggshells. a storm swept through the mediterranean before we were born and the city-states have only just started to recover from it.”

i nearly asked what he meant, but paranoia stopped me short. something about the way he said it, the look in his eyes, told me this was something the man he imagined me to be would know. something i should have known. i kept the question to myself, and resolved to ask griffon about it when we reunited.

instead, i said the words i knew would crack him open like an oyster.

“and yet.”

“and yet,” he echoed miserably, “these games are different now. the kyrios of the raging heaven cult is dead, and the elders have already decided to hold these games in his memory. it was acceptable that none of the kyrioi left their cults and their cities to attend his funeral, held so soon after his death. but they still have months to prepare for the games.”

“skipping the games means insulting his memory,” i said, the strands connecting one by one. the more that i learned about him, the more absurd the late kyrios became. the an insult to his memory could carry such weight. “but there’s more to it than that.”

scythas clenched his eyes shut, and i mercilessly struck down on what was left of his bleak optimism.

“there’s more to it,” i said again, layering gravitas into the words and forcing them through the curtain of wind he’d subconsciously summoned up around his ears. “because there’s nothing to say that the next kyrios of the raging heaven has to be a citizen of olympia.”

“yes,” he whispered, finally. accepting what had been in front of him all this time. “the tyrants on this mountain are readying olympia for the games, but they’re also readying themselves for a power struggle. once the kyrioi come... i don’t know. but they’ll be here, all of them. they can’t afford the alternative.”

i burned his expression into my memory. i wouldn’t coddle him for it. wouldn’t acknowledge it, not now. but i’d never forget it either. i had sent him out to find information where i could not, knowing the state he was in. and now here he was. here was the fruit of the captain’s labor.

“you’ve done well, scythas,” i said quietly. the least i could give him now was the truth. and it was all that i’d give him.

now then.

i reached out to the empty space in selene’s quarters, the space that scythas’ eyes had flickered to when i spoke a pirate’s name, and clenched my fist.

every piece of furniture in the room scraped across the floor towards me, clay pots shattering as they fell. bolts of sunray silks and papyrus sheets covered in drawings scattered through the air.

the hero of the alabaster isles stumbled out of the empty air as scythas’ veil broke apart beneath gravitas. jason stared down at his now visible hands and then back up at me, wide-eyed.

“i lied, before.” scythas waved a hand at his fellow hero, too broken down to be ashamed at being caught in the act. “i was followed.”