1.108

The Son of Rome

As a melting pot of Greek culture, the city of Olympia celebrated more holidays and religious festivals than even the twice-lauded Coast – it was said that a citizen of the Half-Step City worked about as rarely as a slave enjoyed a day off, and that statement wasn’t all too distant from the truth.

Over the course of my year as a servant in the Rosy Dawn’s estates, I was offered two holidays of rest. Naturally, Griffon stole the first of them from me by sponsoring me through the cult’s initiation rites. The second, the Kronia that he’d named his starlight mare after, was the celebration of successful harvest and unity wherein slaves sat at the same tables as their masters. The day that slaves were served instead of serving had been my one and only day of true rest.

The more I interacted with the various factions present on Kaukoso Mons, the more I became convinced that the saying was true after all. It seemed like nearly every morning brought with it another celebration, every night a religious ceremony. As always, it was a mystery to me that the city-states could function at all. Their citizens, it seemed, did nothing but revel.

Though there could have admittedly been other motives at play.

“Sir,” a mystiko greeted me as I stepped out of my cave, his vibrant cult cloth of white-gold and canary yellow brushing the stone as he bowed respectfully to me. Deference to the man living in a cave and clothing himself in scraps of ragged cloth. I wondered if his ancestors were spitting blood at the sight of him. “Good morning, and well wishes from-”

“Why are you here?” I asked the initiate of the Waning Wax Cult. The man blinked, looking up at me in faint apprehension.

“I’m sorry?”

He was a product of the Alabaster Isles, though which of the scattered islands he’d come from was as much a mystery to me as the location of his cult. He looked like most of his ilk here on Kaukoso Mons – fine features and an aesthetic build free of scars, with well-kept silks to accentuate the body and make their sophic nature plain as day to anyone who cared to look. He wasn’t a fighter, despite what the man himself might have thought in the privacy of his own ego.

I stepped up closer, staring flatly down into his eyes. The senior sophist went very still.

“Why are you here?” I asked him again, quietly. “When you know that the others have never come this close before?”

The mystiko from Jason’s Alabaster Isles summoned up his bravado and stood up straight, putting our eyes nearly on the same level. He tilted his chin up so we’d be looking straight on at one another, masking it as a haughty gesture.

“I’m here because the others aren’t,” he asserted. He offered up a smirk. “Why fight the other suitors for a moment when I can walk another stade and have you to myself?”

“Have me to yourself,” I mused. “Do you know why no other mystiko has ventured this far up the mountain before you, philosopher?”

“The storm crown,” he said at once. “Most can’t stand the sight of it after going through the rites – it’s one of the better passive motivators that drives junior initiates to advance through the Raging Heaven’s hierarchy. The further you progress, the further down the mountain you’re allowed to go.”

He seemed pleased with his answer. Doubtlessly, he’d been sent here this morning to invite me to his cult’s portion of the mountain for some holiday or another, and here he’d found the perfect method to secure my time before anyone else. All he had to do was suffer the storm crown for a few moments. It was noble, really.

“No,” I said, dashing his hopes, and laid my hand on the crown of his head without applying any particular pressure. The philosopher’s head slammed back down into a bow like I’d dropped a boulder on his head. His eyes flew open wide, his knees bending beneath the weight of a hand that had no business being as heavy as it was.

“Hngh-!”

“It’s disrespectful to harass a man before his morning piss,” I informed the wisened scholar of Greek virtue. “And it’s foolish to tempt him, when the perceptions of your Elder stop at the line that you’ve so brazenly crossed.”

“What?” he breathed. I nodded gravely.

“That final stade you chose to walk is a stade your Elder will not trespass.” I tightened my grip on the crown of his head. His hair was soft and slick with olive oil, like he’d just taken a bath. “Do you think he’d send anyone up here to get you, should you not come back down? Do you think he cares more for you than he does his own image?”

We both knew the answer to that particular question.

“Apologies,” the scholar of Waning Wax rasped. “This lowly sophist begs the raven-”

The raven. It was what they all called me, when they called me anything besides ‘sir’. For all of our better intentions, Griffon and I had thoroughly failed in our attempt to maintain a plausible separation between our day and night personas. I was better known as the raven on this mountain than I was as Solus.

“Enough.” I let the man go and gently pressed an open palm to his chest. He staggered back three steps before regaining his balance. For a long beat of a moment, neither of us moved. I sighed. “I’m going to take that piss now. Leave.”

“Ah- yes, sir! Apologies, again, I’ll just-”

I stared flatly at him until he shut his mouth and rushed back down the mountain from whence he’d come.

When I finally made my way down the mountain to the line that the Elders’ wandering eyes would not cross, I found a delegation from the Coast’s Broken Tide, one from the Howling Wind, one from the Scattered Foam, and of course, the man with the oiled curls that had come to speak for the Waning Wax. They offered me food, water, and wine, in different styles and delicacies according to the bounties of their respective cities. Each of them offered me a place at their tables later that day, for some fabricated celebration or another.

The man in silks of white-gold and canary yellow was the last to step forward and make his case. The knowing looks from the other mystikos made it clear that they’d been waiting here when he went strutting past the unspoken boundary that separated the storm crown’s domain from the rest of the mountain. And they’d been waiting here still, when he came slinking back down to wait like the rest of them.

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“Well?” I asked him, arms laden with gifts that reminded me all too clearly of the iron manacles I’d worn clapped around my wrists for the better part of a year. “What did you come here to say?”

Reluctantly, the man from the Alabaster Isles made his pitch.

“Today is the Adonia, you see, and the marble sisters of the cult were hoping you’d assume the role of Adonis-”

“Get out of my sight.”

His rivals watched him go with vindictive amusement, some more politely than others. The delegate from the Coast, a man with teeth like a shark’s and fishbone studs in his eyebrows, didn’t bother hiding his satisfaction at all. He chuckled openly, the flames behind his eyes dancing.

“The audacity of these juniors,” he said ruefully, shaking his head. The long braid of his dark hair swung to-and-fro with the motion, each glimpse revealing the razor sharp tooth of carved bronze hanging from it like a flail. “They’ll say anything to get what they want these days. Not a drop of shame in them.”

I eyed the Hero from the Broken Tide. “And you’re above that, are you?”

“Of course,” he said, grinning sharply. “I wouldn’t dare insult the raven by calling him a swan. Beyond a certain point, a flattering lie is more of a cruelty than a kindness, you know?”