1.38 [Lefteris]

The Gold-String Guardian

Names were strange things.

Eleftherios. Lefteris for short. Neither name had been given to him at birth, but his mother had told him from a young age, over and over until he was old enough for the sentiment to stick, that his name was too dangerous for the world to know. That it was a secret between the two of them that had to be kept at all costs.

They moved often, early on. Each place was a new home, and each home meant a new name. It was safer that way, his mother insisted. This way if anyone did find out his true name, they wouldn’t be able to track them through the fake. If every village and every city knew him by a different moniker, they would be safe.

One day, when he was five years old, he asked his mother why she had named him at all, if it was such a burden. It wasn’t the first time he’s seen her cry, but it was the one he remembered most vividly. He’d tried comforting her, blindly, the way that young children did – assuring her of things he had no understanding of and no ability at all to deliver on.

A child’s platitudes always cut deepest. Because unlike with an adult, you knew they believed them wholeheartedly. That they didn’t understand some things were impossible in such an ugly world.

He grew up, eventually, and came to understand the way of things. He took what control of his life that he could, deciding at least that if he had to live under a fake identity that it would be one of his choosing. He chose an audacious name, admittedly, but after a lifetime of hiding he felt he was due some audacity.

Eleftherios. The liberator.

He had grown up, but that didn’t mean he had entirely given up on those ideals. He would do what he could. And when he could, however he could, he would help those who suffered like he had suffered.

Until the day his name caught up to him

“Theri,” the usurper whispered. Another nickname, one that the boy had decided on himself. He was poised on hands and knees at the edge of the cave, peering out as far as he dared. The boy was equal parts curious and wary. “Who is it?”

Lefteris didn’t move, didn’t look back, didn’t even flare his pneuma in wordless response. He didn’t dare to.

Not while the gadfly was watching him.

There were some things that were universal in the free Mediterranean. Stories of people and places that every Greek child, even one such as him, cut their teeth on around crackling fires. Every young boy had shed bitter tears at least once for the tragedy of Heracles, the Champion, cut down in his eleventh labor so unjustly after completing the tenth. Every free citizen knew of the Conqueror and his greed, knew to fear him and to never speak his name directly, because there was no guarantee he wouldn’t hear them say it.

And of course, every academic with a thought in their heads knew of the Scholar and his influence. The man that existed not only in legends, but also in the same modern world that Lefteris had been born to. The man that Tyrants regarded as an unshakable pest. The man that all cultivators considered to be their master’s master, in some distant way. The philosopher that even the Coast couldn’t kill.

Socrates.

Before Lefteris’ disbelieving eyes, that man strode out of a cave not fifty feet away from the safe haven he thought he had established, within leaping distance of the alcove where his charges laid their heads to rest every night. All this time, and he had never once known that they weren’t alone. He had chosen this spot, just beneath the immortal storm crown of the Raging Heaven, because proximity to the storm was the only way to escape a Tyrant’s roving eye. And he had been fool enough to think that was enough. To think it made them safe.

Lefteris watched, frozen in horror, as the gadfly picked up the Rosy Dawn’s sly competitor by his golden shawl belt and heaved him into the storm.

Socrates turned his head, then, and looked him dead in the eyes.

Polyhymnia, Lefteris desperately invoked. The muse of sacred poetry immediately pressed her finger to his lips.

Be silent, she whispered in his ear, graver than he’d ever heard her speak, draping her cloak protectively around him as she pressed against his back. And be still.

Lefteris obeyed, as he’d obeyed since he was a boy, bowing his head and hoping for greater men to take no notice of him. For a long, long moment, he thought it was over. That he had been found out, in one way or another, and that the gadfly would surely expose him. That his destiny would come crashing down on top of him and his charges both. Polyhymnia held him steady through it, smoothed out the tension in his body so that he wouldn’t move in even the slightest of degrees.

Then it was over. The gadfly shook his head and muttered something that Lefteris couldn’t hear over his own pounding heart, and walked back into his cave as if nothing had happened. As soon as he stepped into the shadows, he vanished once again from Lefteris’ senses. He had never noticed the Scholar before, because to his pneuma, it was as if that cave didn’t even exist.

Slowly, now, Polyhymnia urged him, her veil brushing against his cheek as she pulled him back towards his own alcove, one slow step at a time. Only when he was fully inside, away from prying eyes, did she remove her finger from his lips and whisper a grave farewell.

Lefteris turned and regarded the usurper, currently fighting against a headlock that the vehement protector had put him in.

They were just boys. Young enough that they could almost pass for his sons if not for the fact that they looked entirely different, red-haired and bright-eyed where he was painted in desert shades. The usurper was the younger of the two, slightly shorter than the vehement protector and far more flagrant in his mannerisms. Which was unfortunate, because his real name was by far the more dangerous of the two of them.

“What did I tell you about poking your head out?” Lefteris demanded, before anything else, and the adrenaline pounding through his veins gave heat to the words that he hadn’t intended. Both boys froze, staring up at him. “Well?”

The vehement protector spoke in the usurper’s place, stepping in for him as he always did.

“Be wary without Theri,” The older boy answered, reciting it from memory.

“But you were right there!” The usurper protested, jerking back and forth in the vehement protector’s grip. “I only wanted to see.”

“And you saw,” Lefteris said, kneeling down in front of them, “but you were seen in turn.”

The usurper paled, and his vehement protector shook him by the neck.

“I told you,” the older boy hissed. “I told you to wait. All you have to be is patient.”

Lefteris watched them go back-and-forth, an odd combination of fondness and dread festering in his heart. They had grown so much since he’d taken them on, and their spirits were starting to assert themselves. Their sense of self was solidifying, and they were aching to live their lives. He knew they wanted to walk the earth freely, without fear of being recognized for what they were through no fault of their own. They were growing tired of waiting for a liberator.

Eleftherios. It was a name he wanted to live up to, someday. But that day evidently wasn’t today.

“Both of you, be quiet,” he finally said, looking past them at the modest conditions he’d managed to establish for them since coming to the sanctuary city. Furniture and tools for dining, a few toys and curiosities that he had picked up after months of walking through the markets, and as many tablets and scrolls as he could feasibly smuggle into a cave at the top of a mountain. Which was quite a few.

“Is it time to go?” The usurper asked, watching him as he surveyed their things. Now there was remorse in his mismatched eyes. He knew what that look meant. “I’m sorry, Theri. I didn’t know – I promise, I didn’t mean to be seen.”

Without being told, the vehement protector released the usurper from his chokehold and went over to their section of the cave, gathering their things up with practiced efficiency.

Lefteris sighed, and placed his hand upon the younger boy’s head.

“It’s fine,” he told the boy. “It might be time to go, it might not. I’m not sure yet. For now… for now I need to talk to a few people, and you two are coming with me.”

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The vehement protector paused in stuffing a toy sword and its accompanying shield into a large leather sack. “Now?”

Lefteris nodded grimly. “Now.”

§

They took the long path, the boys disguised as casually as they could afford, each wearing a straw farm hat that obscured their defining features from most casual eyes and allowed them to blend in just fine with many of the other children on the outskirts of the city.

They took the long road because Lefteris could no longer be sure that he had been at all successful in hiding them. As they meandered through the city of Olympia, the boys inevitably forgetting the tension of the situation in favor of exploring the markets and engaging with the other children out and about, Lefteris cast out with all of his senses for followers. He didn’t find any, but then, he had never found any before in Olympia, and that hadn’t stopped Socrates from stepping out of that cave within spitting distance of him.

It hadn’t stopped the revenant from Rome.

They walked the city nearly in its entirety, corner to corner, and passed through the agora several times. The usurper reveled in every moment of it, eager to explore the place that had been in his sights but out of his reach for so many months, and though the vehement protector did his best to stay vigilant, he was still only a boy. After the second pass through the agora, he was enjoying himself just as much as the usurper.

Eventually, morning turned to afternoon. Afternoon turned to evening.