1.106

The Son of Rome

The storm-crowned mountain was divided nine ways – eight grand estates acting as envoys for the greater mystery cults, each with its own Tyrant ruling in their consolation domain, and the rest of the mountain serving as the truly neutral ground that the Raging Heaven Cult’s otherwise unaffiliated initiates called their own.

When night fell and the Elders sent out their scavengers, there were few truly safe places for the independent cultivators of the Raging Heaven. An ambassador from the Howling Wind Cult, for example, could rest easy at night within Aleuas domain so long as the Tyrant accepted their presence there. An initiate of the Burning Dusk knew that the First Son to Burn would turn to ash any that reached into his domain for the things he considered to be his own.

Of course, that meant you had to spend your nights in a Tyrant’s domain. It was something most avoided – when they had the luxury of avoiding it, at any rate. Jason, Scythas, and Kyno had chosen to remain in their Raging Heaven quarters, risking midnight scavengers every night when the alternative was suffering the suffocating pressure of their Tyrants’ domains. Elissa, for her part, had secured lodging in the city of Olympia, separated entirely from the mountain cult. Anastasia did whatever it was Anastasia did.

And Lefteris hid in a cave.

There were only so many places a man could go once he’d caught the eye of the Raging Heaven’s Tyrant Elders. The city of Olympia was an option, but it had no inherent protections – Elissa was gambling each and every day as much as the Raging Heaven’s neutral cultivators were. Gambling on anonymity in the masses, and the hopeful presumption that the Elders wouldn’t care enough to comb through the city’s streets looking for her.

Outside of the city? No. Not as things were. On the mountain itself, on Kaukoso Mons, there were only three places that an Elder wouldn’t dare tread. First, and most obvious, was another Elder’s domain. Second was the Oracles’ den, deep within the mountain’s heart.

The first wasn’t an option for me, no matter what Aleuas offered. I wouldn’t step into his hurricane suite ever again if I could avoid it. The second had been possible before, when I was recovering from my first encounter with the Gadfly, but that had been before – back when I was a neutral party. That left the third option as my only option, the last place on Kaukoso Mons that an Elder would dare approach.

The Storm That Never Ceased.

There was a reason that the junior initiates slept in the estates nearest to the peak of the mountain, while the Elders had built their estates almost at the foot of it. The immortal storm crown was like a ward against their presence. Even, somehow, against their perceptions. The wandering eyes of Tyrants tasted like salt and ash on my tongue, something I had noticed the night of Bakkhos’ funeral and fully understood the night I stepped into Aleuas’ domain.

That chestnut smoke had followed me into and out of his personal quarters, up the winding mountain path nearly to its highest visible plateau – and then, when I finally reached the point where Socrates had carved out his hidden cave, close enough to the storm crown to feel its cool condensation in the air, the Hierophant’s eye turned away from me. Though it was less from me, and more from the storm.

For one reason or another, the peak was a safe haven. The only safe haven available to me after I barged into the one place I had no business being and made a mess of everything. So I followed in the footsteps of the Gadfly and sequestered myself beneath the crown where no one bothered to look. For the moment, I needed a place to fully recover from the wounds I’d suffered in Thracia. I needed a place to train my body, to contemplate the new weight that I carried in a far more literal sense now than I had before.

I needed a place to think.

When I left the Hurricane Hierophant’s domain and began my slow, painful climb through the shadows up the mountain, Socrates came to me in a rage. Wrapped up in bloodied linens like an Egyptian, and far more lively than he’d been the last time I saw him cradled in Griffon’s pankration palms.

I’d been so relieved by the surgery’s success that I’d hardly registered the actual words he was saying. But I had. And they’d hit me harder than a ballista bolt.

Aleuas had invited me to his estate the day after Bakkhos’ funeral, ostensibly to thank me for ‘helping’ Scythas in his pursuit of hunting crows, and I had ignored him for a reason. As things stood on this mountain, neutrality was a precious state of being. And while it could be said that our actions as ravens were as far from neutral as one could get, the fact was that we had attacked all of them equally. We weren’t affiliated with any of them. We weren’t beholden to anyone but ourselves, for better and for worse.

I’d changed that the night I walked into the Hierophant’s estate. But it had been a necessary evil. With Polyzalus on the loose, maddened by the loss of his daughter, none of us were safe, no matter where we went. If we were fortunate, Selene might find him before he found us. If we were beloved by the Fates, he might even accept what had happened without ripping our throats out anyway for the risk we’d taken with his daughter’s life.

I was wise enough to know the Fates despised me, and luck was rarely on my side. So I did the only thing I could think to do, and I committed. I reached for the only suitably powerful ally available to me. Because this was my fault, and because it was all that I could do.

Then, afterwards, Socrates explained to me that Polyzalus was still in his domain after all. He explained that it had been a ploy, a scheme to frighten us unruly children into doing the right thing, because he didn’t trust us to do it at his word.

He told me it had all been for nothing after all. For no one.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

He’d lied.

“You want this king’s support? Those are my terms.”

“Deal.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear.”

“No. Properly. You’re a son of Raging Heaven, aren’t you?”

“I swear it. All of it, heart and soul, these terms upon the River Styx.”

“Upon the River Styx. And if either of us should waver, should either man break his word-”

“May Raging Heaven strike him down.”

Days passed.

My wounds were many and severe, but they were less debilitating every morning. The starlight marrow within me was somehow a more potent healing force now than it had been before, and after my first few hours of heavy exertion I realized the channels it had burnt through me were changed as well. They’d expanded and joined together, forming a cohesive spiraling network within my body.

While I waited out the days in Lefteris’ abandoned cave home, secluded beneath the light of the immortal storm crown, I passed the time by honing my body.