1.76

The Son of Rome

Thracia, otherwise known as the nation with no definite boundaries, was a barbaric land in every sense of the word. Its cultures were unrefined, its peoples were savages, and its treatment even of allies was brutally cruel. My father as well as Aristotle had both told me stories of the Thracian tribes when I was a boy, and the Greek perspective had differed little from the Roman perspective.

Northeast of Macedonia and separated from the Aegean Sea only by a thin line of coastal greek colonies, the greater territories of Thracia all too often spilled off the northern edge of any map that cared to name them – the one Socrates had given us being no exception. One of the most populous nations in the world, one of Gaius’ logisticos had once confided in me that the only thing stopping Thracians from overtaking us all was the Thracians themselves.

The only reason they weren’t a nation to rival all others was the fact that they could hardly be called a nation at all. There had been a kingdom there, once, existing in the years between the Greeks breaking the Persian Empire’s back and the rise of Alexander the Conqueror. Prior to that and since then, what the maps label Thracia has been more than anything a loose collection of tribal societies that the mapmakers couldn’t be bothered to differentiate between.

So when Socrates had marked with gold the portion of the map labeled Thracia, he had essentially pointed a finger vaguely north of the Aegean Sea and told us to begone. For all the marker implied, we could find that golden cup of wine an hour off the coast or at the northern edge of the world.

Thankfully, where the Gadfly had lacked, Scythas had provided.

Though at the moment, he didn’t have quite the right mindset to guide us.

“All this time? She was here all this time?” the Hero of the Scything Squall said in rising disbelief. “How is that possible?” He wasn’t the only one voicing such thoughts. The galley slaves that Griffon and I had freed on our way to Olympia were hollering their own complaints – from what I could discern, they were less aghast at the fact that a cultivator had avoided their notice for three days on a crowded ship, and more at the fact that said cultivator was a woman.

I was no seaman, but even I knew that the only woman a sailor would tolerate on his ship was the one carved from wood at the bow. Alas.

“You did last longer than I thought you would,” I mused, smirking at Selene’s betrayed look. “I was certain you’d crack when you realized the limits of that anonymity.”

The daughter of the Scarlet Oracle – daughter of either Elena or Calliope, unless the current Oracle was a crone predating them – huffed and tossed one of the many ragged elements of her disguise at my face.

“You knew she was here from the start?” Scythas groaned and shook his head, splinters of wood flying from his hair. He’d nearly broken the mast when he slammed the back of his head against it. “Why am I surprised, of course you did-”

“How?” Griffon asked, the neutral tone of his words betrayed by the intensity of his scarlet gaze. He didn’t need to speak to me through his shadow for his true feelings to be conveyed.

How had Selene tricked his senses for three days straight when we had both managed to see through the Gadfly’s disguise in his cave beneath the immortal storm crown of the Raging Heaven? And more importantly than that, how had I seen through it when he had not?

“Rhetoric is the art of persuasion,” I answered, addressing both questions as I met his hungry stare. “A man’s rhetoric can be refined or crude, impassioned or dull – those are secondary concerns. The only real measure that matters is whether or not his point is persuasive.”

You may not like it, the raven in my shadow spoke to his when his eyes narrowed, but your discontent won’t change reality.

Not yet, was all he said in turn.

“What does that have to do with this?” Scythas asked, mirroring Griffon’s curiosity without the corresponding belligerence.

“Men are stubborn and irreverent creatures, cultivators even more so,” I said, waving a hand at the bare chested Greek lounging on a throne of rowing benches. He scoffed when Scythas and most of the sailors nodded along to that point. Selene giggled. “At times, depending on the topic and the man being persuaded, no rhetoric will ever be good enough. Other times, the man doing the persuading is his own obstacle.”

I hadn’t ever put it together as a child under his tutelage, nor had I made the connection between my childhood mentor’s lectures and the Gadfly’s ability to walk through a crowded city without drawing a single eye. I hadn’t made the connection largely because what Socrates did was different from what Aristotle did. I had needed a refresher on the latter to connect it to the former, and the story of the Aetos brothers had been exactly that.

“Aristotle used to warn me that a man’s reputation was its own form of rhetoric,” I recalled. “A passive rhetoric that follows you and requires no words – persuasion through past deeds.”

“Why was that a warning?” Scythas asked, puzzled.

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“Because men are stubborn and irreverent creatures,” Griffon echoed my words, backed by understanding. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest that he understood it at once. It had taken me years of service at Gaius’ side to fully internalize it, but he had been Damon Aetos’ son his entire life.

“They are.” I nodded. “In Rome, Aristotle was known as the man who knew everything. That was his reputation, and it colored every interaction he had while among Romans. It made those who idolized that reputation more likely to be swayed by his word, no matter what the point of contention was, and it made those who resented that reputation far less likely to hear him in good faith.”

From time to time, and more often the older we get, our past undermines our present. Make no mistake, boy. A sycophant is as troublesome as a censor when you’re searching for the truth.

“Sometimes,” I quoted the man who had mentored me as an irreverent young patrician, “an argument will only work if you’re not the one making it. You can be someone else, or you can be no one at all. All that matters is that you are not yourself.”

“Anonymity,” Selene and Griffon murmured at the same time. One with reverence, the other with disdain.

“What Socrates did when he called us out at the bathhouse was a slightly different application than what Aristotle did,” I explained. “But each one was an application of anonymity.”

“How so?” Scythas asked, having been absent when we were confronted by the mentor of my mentor’s mentor.