1.54

The Young Griffon

Emerging from the heart of the mountain was a slightly less pleasant experience than going in. My late uncle’s sword made for a poor walking stick, and using pankration hands to steady my body was a drain just severe enough to be noticeable. The Reign-Holder’s starlight marrow was doing its best, but Socrates had put some proper force behind his throw. For now I could only endure and do what I could with the knowledge Anastasia had given me, guiding my pneuma to the parts of my body where it was most needed – which, contrary to what one might expect, wasn’t always where the wounds were.

I raised a hand against the light as I stepped out. The mystikos standing guard at the entrance to the subterranean estate looked me over, visibly pausing at the ugly bruise on my chest where the old philosopher had thrown a rock at me and shattered my ribs.

“I take it the Gadfly was down there,” one of the guards said sympathetically. I grunted. “Well, at least you found him.”

“Did you learn anything?” the other guard asked, mirth at war with pity.

“A few things,” I said, brushing past them.

“Griffon!”

“How did it go?”

The little king and his sentinel dropped the branches they’d been sparring with in a nearby mountain grotto and sprinted my way. The guards had been reluctant enough to let me through under the supposition that I was seeking Socrates, a man that I apparently had good reason to be searching for. The boys, unfortunately, hadn’t had a chance.

Now they made up for it by peppering me with questions and jumping at my shoulders. I staggered back a step as they hit me, the little king rolling his eyes at my theatrics. It wasn’t the first time I had pretended they had more sway over me than they did, after all.

He became slightly more concerned when I hunched over and coughed, splattering my blood across the mountain trail.

“You’re hurt! You’re actually hurt! Was it the Gadfly? Is he chasing you?”

“Get off him first,” the little sentinel hissed, yanking his brother down off my shoulder. The two boys circled worriedly around me, casting wary glares back at the entrance to the center of the mountain. Then Sol stepped out, both guards wordlessly parting as he passed. The boys edged behind me.

“Is that…”

“The revenant?”

Ah, right. That’s what Lefteris called him.

“Boys,” I said once I had stopped spitting blood. They looked up. “Can you find your guardian?” They exchanged a startled look.

“We told you, he’s-”

“I won’t tolerate a lie, and I’m running out of patience for misdirection,” I said roughly. The little sentinel bit his lip. The little king gazed back in defiance for as long as he could.

Sol came to stand behind me, looking down on him neutrally.

Little Leo flinched and looked away. “We can,” he muttered, and reached for a golden thread tied around his left wrist.

Sol and I watched, fascinated, as the golden thread unraveled from around his wrist and then snapped taut, as if an invisible hand was pulling the other end of it. It swiveled and pointed southwest down the mountain.

“Go,” I commanded them, and both boys visibly fought the desire to tell me no. It had been one thing for them to tag along when they thought they wouldn’t get caught. Then, when Kyno and his crocodile had caught them out, they’d comforted themselves with the knowledge that at least I’d be there with them when Lefteris found out.

But here and now, I was telling them to track him down themselves. Alone. There would be no softening the blow if they did, and they both knew it.

“You offered to face the Gadfly with me in exchange for my tutelage, and I told you it wasn’t enough,” I said, swallowing back blood as I knelt in front of them. “Have you realized why yet? It’s because you wanted to do that. It would have cost you nothing. If the two of you truly want to be my students, go find your guardian and tell him what you’ve done. Stand tall when he rages. Do not falter. And bring him back to Elissa’s home by any means necessary. Do that, and I’ll teach you mongrel children a thing or two about justice.”

It was interesting, watching them work through the dilemma of their circumstances with one another. I wondered, distantly, if Socrates had felt this way when Sol and I faced him in his cave.

They reached a decision. Leo inhaled a deep breath, offering his brother the back of his fist.

“With me?”

“Always,” Pyr said, rapping the back of his own fist against it.

“We’ll have him back by sundown,” Leo promised, gripping his golden thread tight. With that, the two boys turned and went bounding down the mountain steps, their guardian’s thread leading the way.

Sol frowned. “What was that?”

“There’s a vast expanse of things you don’t know, Sol,” I said. He rolled his eyes as we both turned down the mountain. “And even more that our companions have kept from us. Out of fear, out of paranoia-”

A soft whistle in the wind heralded the breaking of a veil once the guards were out of sight, and Sol’s toy soldiers stepped out of the open air beside us.

“-and out of shame,” I finished, glancing sidelong at Scythas and Jason. The wind walker glared but didn’t utter a word, while the disgraced captain of the seas avoided my gaze entirely. For a moment, I tried to imagine Nikolas in their place. A Hero cowed by a pair of lowly Philosophers.

“What’s so funny?” Scythas grit out. I shook my head, fighting my good humor. As I was currently, laughter would only lead to me spitting more blood.

“Nothing,” I said, smiling. “Just you.”

“Scythas, Jason.” Sol said. The Heroes bit their tongues and sheathed their rising ire. “Can you find the others? We need to talk.”

“All of us,” I added.

“We can,” Scythas reluctantly said. Sol considered the shorter hero. He sighed.

“Go.”

The Hero of the Scything Squall nodded wordlessly. The two vanished, stepping once more into the wind.

“What are you playing at, Griffon?” Sol asked me as we descended the stairway to heaven.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

A gaggle of children, no less young for the fact that each of them were in the Sophic Realm, eyed us curiously as we stepped off the stairway and through the arched gateway separating the Raging Heaven from Olympia. They waited for us with veiled impatience – the stairway to heaven was only wide enough for one man to walk it at a time. Once I had passed, and then Sol behind me, they went bounding up the steps – each chasing the other’s heels.

Sol and I watched them go. Finally, my worthless Roman brother spoke the words that were on both of our minds.

“I want to know.”

“Want to know what?” I asked blithely, as if I wasn’t suffering the same desire.

We continued on into the Half-Step City, into grand streets wide enough for three drawn carts to pass without fear of collision. The city was alive as it always was, the muted noise of the Storm That Never Ceased giving way to the thunder of humanity, hundreds of men and women doing hundreds of different things wherever you happened to look. Within minutes of leaving Kaukoso Mons I spotted a man hawking swill and calling it spirit wine, more than a dozen hetairai beckoning men and women alike from their balconies and perfumed shops, and even a group of street performers with drums and flutes and, for some reason, a snake slithering along to their beat.

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“A subordinate of mine once told me that a man is entitled to his own demons, if nothing else,” Sol said as we passed beneath an arch of tangled boughs, the product of two trees on either side of the road reaching out to one another. “Whether you’re a soldier or a mystiko, or just a man trying to provide, there will always be superiors and dependants vying for your time, your attention – and your secrets.”

I hummed, watching a pair of street rats edge towards a man selling fruit. The boy’s skin clung to his ribs, outlining each one, and the girl’s cheeks were devoid of the fat a child her age should have. Without breaking stride, I manifested a hand of pankration intent and snapped its fingers loudly beside the merchant’s ear. The man flinched and whipped around, cursing at a nearby loiterer. The urchins lunged out of the shadows and grabbed as many figs and pears from the baskets at his feet as they could carry, dashing into a nearby alley with their spoils.

“Every man deserves at least one secret, is that it?” I asked. Sol grunted affirmation. “But you want to know them anyway.”

“I do.” Beside me, he drank in the city with his eyes. There was wonder beneath the thick veneer of Roman contempt. “Aristotle told me stories of Greece, at times – its great Heroes and the arts they inspired, as well as its Tyrants.”