1.61 [Stavros Aetos]

Youngest of the Convocation

“Lord Aetos-”

“Call me Anargyros! Or Gyro if there isn’t time,” Gyro said, cutting off the slave he had brought along and freed.

“Lord Anargyros,” he amended, to our brother’s exasperation. “I don’t think this is wise.” The man was doing his best to maintain the pace, though he was struggling nearly as much as Thon in his chains.

Through good fortune or shrewd attention, Damon and Fotios had both taken on slaves with prior experience in cultivation. Damon’s slave, now a free man, leveraged the pneuma of a fourth rank Citizen as he rowed – a notable achievement for a man that had spent his adult life shackled and suppressed. My twin’s slave was even more impressive, somehow having reached the seventh rank of the Civic realm before the Rosy Dawn had bound him body and soul. I had never cared to know the man’s story before today, but I resolved to ask Fotios about it when this was over.

In contrast to his fellow freedmen, Gyro’s companion had been enslaved young. He did what he could with the strength his vital breath provided, but the distance between a man that didn’t know his place in the world and an untrained citizen of the first rank wasn’t all that vast in many ways. Though it was infinite in others.

He was able to keep pace with the man Damon had brought, but it was clear to see the effort it took him. If things kept on the way they were, he might be the first to collapse – even before Thon.

Even so, he mustered up the breath to speak, and the courage to challenge the young pillars of the Rosy Dawn on top of that. I wouldn’t forgive him for laughing at me earlier, but I could at least respect what it took for a cultivator at the foot of the mountain to challenge a group of men half a step from the realm of legend and epic.

“Which portion of this isn’t wise, Menoeces?” Gyro asked gaily, tilting his head back to regard the man as he rowed. “The portion where my good older brother abandoned all his duties as the Young Aristocrat for days without warning? Perhaps the portion where we used a holy day of festivities as an excuse to gather materials and men? Or is it the portion where we built a ship without the permission of either kyrios and sailed it into danger after our uncle demanded our presence?”

“All of those things! But especially the last one!” the freedman wheezed and ducked his head into his shoulder, scrubbing the sweat from his eyes as best he could without letting go of his oar. “Your uncle will be furious. Worse than that, if the Rosy Dawn and the Burning Dusk decide to come together to answer Olympia’s call, and Yianni Scala discovers you took a ship alone that his initiates could have shared-”

“We did no such thing,” Damon said, and then, as an afterthought, “Pull.”

It was impossible to tell whether Gyro’s freedman was gasping like a landed fish at the exertion or at the thought of directly disagreeing with the Young Aristocrat.

“I beg the Young Aristocrat,” he finally decided. “Explain it so this one can understand. How is that so?”

“We didn’t take a ship that Scalla could have used,” Damon explained, the muscles of his shoulders and arms flexing smoothly as he worked his oar. Somehow, he wasn’t sweating at all. “Unfortunately for the Burning Dusk, there wasn’t a single vessel that would take them. Those that should have been present were pushed off their courses by the crisis we’re sailing towards.”

“But the Eos,” Gyro’s man pressed in frustration. “They could have used the Eos!”

“What gave you that idea?” Gyro asked. The man stared at his back, lost for words.

“The hands of Stavros Aetos pulled from their roots the trees that served as this ship’s timber,” Damon spoke, his voice carrying easily through the wind and the crashing of waves against the hull. “The hands of Fotios Aetos wove the sun-stained cloth that catches the wind and drives the ship forward. The hands of Anargyros Aetos guided the blade that cut these materials to size, refined them to their current state.”

“And the hands of Damon Aetos designed it all,” Gyro finished, kicking our eldest brother’s knee with a fond smile. Damon smirked faintly.

“This ship was built by filial sons,” he said, the concentric circles ringing his pupils almost too bright to look at as he turned to regard us all. “By the young generation of the Aetos, for the young generation of the Aetos. Her name is Eos, and she would sink herself before she carried the weight of the Burning Dusk Cult.”

“Aye!” Fotios crowed, while I stomped my feet against the deck in agreement.

“But that’s…” Gyros freedman bit his lip until it bled, unable to go on.

“That’s tempting the Fates,” Damon’s freed slave said, his first complete sentence since launching the ship. The fourth rank Civic cultivator met our eldest brother’s eyes squarely, unafraid. “The Young Aristocrat knows that better than any of us. He knows that his uncle would have the young pillars whipped and confined to the estates for this. He knows that if Yianni Scalla finds out, the Tyrant will shatter his ego along with his brothers’. And he knows that if the kyrios of the Burning Dusk Cult ever heard what he just said-”

“He would kill us all, and make our uncle thank him for the privilege.” Damon nodded. “I know.”

“Then why?” Gyro’s man asked helplessly. Fotios and I exchanged a look. Mingling with genuine concern for the sponsor that had broken his chains, there was also fear for himself. We young pillars knew what was at stake. That our crew would share our punishment went without saying. “Why go about it this way? You know what they’ll do when you return.”

“I know what they’ll try.”

My twin and I chuckled at the look on the freedman’s face.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author’s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“A Tyrant is only a man,” Gyro said, like a prayer.

“A Tyrant’s existence is no different from ours,” Damon agreed. “Only more, for better and for worse. A Tyrant in their domain might seem to be a god, but that doesn’t make it true. The kyrioi of the Scarlet City can be opposed. They can be maneuvered against. And they are still fallible – to greed, to pride, and to fear. Do you know what a Tyrant fears more than any distant divinity or thunderous tribulation?”

The sun dipped fully past the horizon, the silver glow of thousands upon thousands of stars above casting dim shadows across the deck.

The glow of Damon’s eyes washed out all other color.

“A Tyrant fears subjugation.”

“But subjugation is a Tyrant’s trade, brother.” Gyro affected a puzzled voice. “Who subjugates the subjugator?”

“Who enslaves the enslaver?” Fotios echoed, laughing silently at the way the freedman jolted on his bench.

“It has to be a bigger fish,” I joined in. As one, on an unspoken signal, the four of us called up the Rosy Fingers of Dawn. The light spread across each of our oars, Hissing and throwing up steam where the paddles dipped into the Ionian. The oars didn’t burn, of course. Even I had finer control than that.

“A Tyrant fears the world outside of their domain.” Damon ran a hand through wild brown hair, gazing distantly at the shadowed horizon ahead. “Even more than that, they fear the world inside of a greater Tyrant’s authority.”