1.32

The Young Griffon

“So, you just happened to cross paths after the funeral, and just happened to come to an accord on the topic of insurrection out of the goodness of your hearts,” Elissa said skeptically, throwing a wet towel at Kyno. He didn’t bother opening his eyes, reclined as he was at the edge of the hot bath, only grunting as the towel slapped against his face.

“To think that you marked us all from the start,” Jason murmured, shaking his head. He had disdained the hot bath entirely, back stroking idly through the cold pool after a quick cleansing. “How did you know we’d all be open to this insanity?”

Sol, upon realizing that the question wasn’t rhetorical and that I wasn’t rushing to answer it for him, paused his vicious scrubbing to think up an answer that sounded appropriately ominous.

“One of your elders marked you all that night,” he said, finally. Anastasia, from her place close by him, blinked and paused with her own olive branch scrubbing, visibly putting the pieces together. She hadn’t been there when Sol had declared the presence of a greater cultivator’s attention.

“That’s why you called out to me,” she said, caustic green eyes flickering. She then affected a pout, leaning sideways into his personal space. “And here I thought it was my beauty that had caught your eye.”

Sol sighed and shoved her back.

“One way or another, you weren’t going to suffer these maneuverings for long without acting,” he said flatly. “Not without losing a part of yourselves. Or, if the crows got to you first, having it taken from you.”

“You say that…” Kyno murmured, peeling the towel back from his eyes to look gravely at Sol. “But there were six of us that night that you called, and now there are only four.”

“Five,” Anastasia corrected idly. I raised an eyebrow, fully opening eyes that had been half lidded for most of our time in the bath house

“Ho? Did you make another friend, Sol?” I asked, curious. Sol and I hadn’t had a chance to exchange a private word since the previous night’s festivities had given way to the dawn. Our new companions had done more than enough chattering for the both of us after we’d commandeered an unopened bath house. The place was closed indefinitely for reconstruction, not because of the late kyrios’ final breath, but because an unfortunate soul had recently plowed straight through the roof and collapsed a portion of the building. It had happened a few nights back, it seemed, and the villains responsible had yet to be found.

“Just a girl in over her head,” he dismissed, though there was a pensive frown there. Of course, I didn’t fail to notice the tense looks that Jason and Elissa shot my brother at his casual statement.

“You say that,” Anastasia murmured, “but the two of you seemed quite familiar. And she was determined to tag along.”

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“Back on the mountain where she belongs,” Sol said, shaking his head. “We spoke briefly after the kyrios’ funeral. She’s just a child with a powerful father, looking for an escape from her sheltered life.”

“How immature,” I said disdainfully, and Sol snorted, lips quirking in amusement

“That is… certainly one way to describe her,” Anastasia said, amusement warring with genuine uncertainty. “The two of you just happened to run into one another?”

“After you and I split up,” he said, nodding.

“Unbelievable,” Jason muttered.

“How many of the aristois do you have tucked away in your tunic?” Elissa pressed, accepting a jug of olive oil from Anastasia and dumping a generous portion over her shoulders and arms. Jason’s eyes flickered, towards the trailing streams of oil that wound their way into the small dips of her scars.

“The aristois?” Kyno muttered, lifting his head fully and, with something like dread, asking, “This girl. How powerful is her father, exactly?”

At that, three sets of eyes flickered Sol’s way. Seeking permission to speak, for all of Anastasia’s teasing and Elissa’s surly demeanor. He nodded, glancing my way, and I realized after a moment that he didn’t know the answer to that question any more than I did. But they did.

Elissa took his permission, and said shortly, “It was Selene.”

Kyno stared at her for a long moment. He looked then, to Sol, seeking confirmation. Sol nodded.

The Heroic Huntsman of the Broken Tide tossed his head back, striking the stone lip of the pool hard enough to crack it.

“‘Zalus’ daughter,” he breathed, pressing two massive hands to his face, palms digging into his eyes. “You’ve brought Zalus’ daughter into this.”

“I haven’t brought her into anything. She isn’t a part of this.”

Zalus, I mused. I wondered why that name sounded familiar. Old Zalus, I heard in someone else’s distant voice, a faint memory.

“She isn’t a part of this, yet she joined you on your hunt? She took up arms against the ruling factions of the Raging Heaven? And she isn’t involved?” Kyno pressed, rubbing insistently at his eyes. I offered him a few pankration hands to help, and he batted irritably at them, splashing me with scalding water.

I dashed wet hair from my eyes, frowning faintly. Old Zalus, that memory mused. The name was spoken with contempt.

“She didn’t take up any arms,” Sol said, returning to his scrubbing. “And she won’t be in the future. Not with us.” Anastasia cupped a palm beneath a trickle of olive oil and overturned it on his back, adding to his scrubbing with her own olive branch. She smiled innocently when he turned flat gray eyes on her.

“And yet she promised to find us again tonight,” the caustic Heroine put forward.

Old Zalus, my father said, in a child’s vague memory. My eyes lit up.

“You’ve caught the eye of a Tyrant’s daughter,” I accused him delightedly. He mastered himself as he always had, revealing nothing to our companions, but I could see the sudden dread as his worst suspicions were confirmed. “Not only that, but the eye of our own scarlet Tyrant’s daughter! You sly Roman dog!”

“You’re not supposed to say that,” Jason despaired, ceasing his backstroke and floating miserably in the water and as he stared up through the gaping hole in the ceiling. “You’re supposed to tell us that you’re acting with the Rosy Dawn’s blessing.”

“Who said we aren’t?” I asked, unable to contain my smile. Elissa slapped her branch against the surface of the pool, kicking up a spray of steaming water.

“As if he would consent to his daughter’s involvement,” she hissed. Desert heat eyes burned with a fearful wrath. “You may think we’re fools, but we’re not! Involving her in these games is madness, and not the kind that you adore. He would never allow it.”

“The question was,” I repeated slowly, with purpose, “who says we aren’t acting with the Rosy Dawn’s blessing?” I relished the looks, the tension. “Is Old Zalus the Rosy Dawn?”

“No,” Kyno said, darkly resigned.

”Who is?” I asked gently.

“Damon Aetos,” Sol said, when it became clear that no one else would.

“This is a fine line you’re walking,” Anastasia warned, though even in her seriousness she continued to caress and poke at Sol with her olive branch. “Even for someone like you. The elders of the Raging Heaven are in conflict now, that’s true, but an outsider is still an outsider. If we prod them too hard, too fast, they may just decide to act as they should and band together to purge you from the ranks.”

“And us with you,” Elissa added. With something like disgust for herself, she said, ”We’ve thrown our lot in with you two. Don’t go dragging us down to Tartarus with you.”

That one affected Sol, hit him somewhere raw and painful. I inserted my own voice before the others could pile on.

“Of course we won’t. How could we, when we have no intention of going there ourselves?” I chuckled. “Not until we’re ready for a dip in the Styx, at least.”

“So if the elders turn against us instead of each other,” Kyno said. “You can take them all?”

Allow me to be clear.

Sol and I had amassed something of a myth between ourselves since arriving on the shores of Olympia. Something small and infirm, but no less powerful for the people that it touched. These cultivators surrounding us in this bath were true heroes and heroines. They had cut their teeth on monsters and villains, and been acknowledged by the Fates and the Muses both for their struggles.

Compared to their full splendor, Sol and I just weren’t enough. Their capacity for cultivation dwarfed ours by several factors, a question of exponents rather than multipliers. In a just world, they would outstrip us in every metric.

But they were afraid. And for reasons that Sol and I had only just begun to unravel, they were, each of them, haunted by distant troubles. They had an obligation to right what was wrong as heroes, and because they were not fulfilling their divine imperative, because their very essence told them that they were not living their lives the right way, Sol and I had stepped in to fill that void.

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But that did not mean we were delusional. Sol and I were destined for great things, and I intended to grasp even greater things than that, but a Philosopher was still a Philosopher. A Hero was still a Hero.

And a Tyrant was still a Tyrant.

Our new companions had just about convinced themselves of an absurd estimation of our relative strength. But even then, trying to claim that we could take on all of the elders of the Raging Heaven alone was a step too far. Even implying it would be an outrageous lie.

So I told him the truth. ”Of course not. We’re scavengers snapping at the heels of powerful beasts, hoping they’ll turn their irritation on their rivals before they come for us. A single mistake could be the end of us all.”

“We put on that performance last night for a reason,” Sol added, contributing to my point as naturally as if it had been his own, just the student parroting what his master had designed. “As far as your elders are concerned, you were kidnapped in the night. Go back now, fabricate a passing story of your escape, and wash your hands of this.”

We would have to flee the city, of course, and that would be a shame. But the Oracles weren’t going anywhere. The Olympics would come again in four years. And there were other ways to grow strong without devouring the starlight marrow of Tyrants.

If these Heroic cultivators truly feared death more than they despised the yoke of a tyrant, then there was nothing we could do for them.

“Dammit,” Jason said quietly. ”Dammit. I said I was with you, Solus. I won’t let you make me a liar.”

Elissa‘s jaw clenched, but she shook her head once when I glanced her way. Kyno, likewise, resigned himself with a low sigh.

“You have us netted,” Anastasia said, propping her chin up on one hand. ”If you say that Selene and her stark father won’t be an issue, I’ll choose to believe you for now. But the good hunter raises a fair point. Scythas and the archer are notable in their absence. Have you approached them yet? Will you?”

“Lefteris has been doing his best to avoid us since he incurred my master’s wrath,” I said, amused. ”But I’ve kept an ear out, and if the Fates are kind I should be able to find him before sundown.”

“And if they aren’t kind?” Elissa asked, in the suffering tone of someone who knew what the answer would be before she asked her question. I smirked.

“I’ll find him anyway.”

“And what of sweet Scythas?” Anastasia pressed, watching intently as Sol dipped his head down into the scalding bath, rising back up and running his fingers through coarse black hair.

“Scythas will find us,” Sol said with certainty. Anastasia hummed, accepting that without protest.

“We’ll have to lay low for the time being,” Jason mused, pulling himself from the bath and grabbing a towel. “Kaukoso Mons is off-limits for now. We can’t exactly be kidnapped every single night, after all.”

“We’ll have to find neutral ground,” Kyno agreed and rose at the same time, shifting aside the tail of the crocodile skin that he’s been wearing the entire time to wrap a towel around his waist.