In the early morning of a day three months following Akakios’ kidnapping, the four of us finally left to rescue him. Time and again they reassured me that the time in between was necessary, that there were things to be done before we could retrieve him. There was nothing I could do but wait.
“I want him back just as much as you do,” Marcellina said to me the day we left Elea for Tiberius’ Brundisian farm. “Maybe not as much—the point is, we have to wait. I need to either get permission to go from Tiberius to go or we need to arrange for some other way for me to get away, then there’s Lucretius getting permission to go with us again—” I had no response. We kept walking. With few interruptions, distractions, and derailments—though there was a generous amount of rain— we arrived in just under a week, seventeen days following Adrastus’ death. As we broke into the final stretch, Aglaia and Ausonius—who had no connection to this place, barely knowing Akakios and having never been there themselves—expressed relief the moment Lucretius shouted, “Can you see it? There it is, look! Look!” and pointed at the fields of pale golden grain. To me they looked the same as any other, but Lucretius broke into a skipping dance, tugging on the sleeve of weary Ausonius, and the meaning carried. Ausonius pointed out a curly-haired dark skinned man to Marcellina she hadn’t seen and she waved back. Aglaia asked who he was, and Marcellina responded in whispers. Even though there were four of us—and we had to return with Akakios’ things as well—we had little to carry. I’d my own armor and two spare tunics at the outset, now one, while Aglaia only brought a few personal belongings. Lucretius and Ausonius had the bulk of it, and neither of them were prepared to part with much. Lucretius is large and strong enough to handle his own, while Ausonius required assistance. Still, we did not argue with him. Adrastus’ funeral service happened the day following his death, and no one departed until it was over, not even the gardeners. His body was dressed in full military decoration of all his accomplishments and awards, the last of all his crown for success in Carthage and the skin of a mountain beast. Ausonius’ tearful eulogy was delivered by memory, written, I was told, years before and revised many times until the day his father died. The closest to Adrastus, he led the funeral procession. He and an old maid were the only ones that wept before we reached the cemetery. A cow was offered to Ceres, we ate, and what we owed to Ceres was burned at the altar. The embers from that fire were indistinguishable from those responsible for Adrastus’ cremation; both glowed orange, then red, and burned out into the dusky sky. The whole event was performed with bated breath in fear of one guest’s arrival. She did not show, though that would have made it so much easier. We didn’t wait for his other children to arrive, as that would take weeks, but Aglaia insisted on letters to them informing them of his demise and where Ausonius could be found in the following months. If they responded, though she said they wouldn’t, no one would be around to know. We were not the first to leave, nor the last, but even as we departed there was not a soul under that roof that wasn’t preparing. On the ninth day after Adrastus had died, we poured out libations, held a small feast of everything left in the kitchen’s stock thrown together in the house’s biggest room, and left the next minute. That day, none of us were going to tell Ausonius he couldn’t bring whatever he wanted with him to Brundisium. Maybe if it had been a month and not little more than a week, but not then. We didn’t have the heart to do it. The curly-haired man Marcellina waved to took off running towards the house the moment she looked away, and when we arrived at the front door something like half the staff lingered in close proximity, watching us. Tiberius and Sextus—both hastily dressed in togae—greeted us, but more importantly Lucretius. Sextus chattered away with his brother, uncharacteristically lively—though I never knew him that well to start with—while Tiberius examined our group. Marcellina was visibly stronger, more muscled, scratched up but in good health, and tanned. Lucretius had grown a negligible amount, and he, too was stronger, I suspect from the walking. Aglaia was a stranger, and while he didn’t know Ausonius on sight—Marcē had disguised him for another purpose—Tiberius still eyed him suspiciously. “Where’s Akakios?” He asked. The five of us fell dead silent. “His mother took him,” I said. “She insisted he was unsuccessful without her—her direct guidance, and so she took it upon herself to see that he was somewhere she could offer that.” I swallowed through the growing blockage in my throat and bit back the frustration and the pain that came hand-in-hand with the topic. Tiberius stroked his chin and nodded several times before stilling. “He did not go willingly.” He stated. He turned to Marcellina, though he kept his eyes on me. “I have no say in what you do, however,” Then he looked at her. “Knowing you, you’ll want to go with him to retrieve Akakios.” “I wasn’t planning on it,” she said. “You get bored too easily. Even if you weren’t friends, you’d go.” A thin smile warmed his face. Later Marcellina said to me, “He’s right; it’s boring as sin here. It’s a farm, what am I supposed to do, read? Take naps? Farm things? Mehercule.” She rolled her eyes through a smile. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you need—” I supplied him with my name. “—Otho. And friends. Your travels have been long, I understand, and eventful.” He shot Lucretius a look that said, “We’ll talk later.” We settled in after that, and they spent the evening and much of the night in good company. Lucretius, after a lengthy conversation with his father, spent the time after dinner with his brother and Ausonius. Marcellina introduced Aglaia to her friends here, at home. I ate then sat alone at the edge of the festivities, a place left open at my side. That night I dreamt I had spent the evening festivities with Akakios and Lovita both. They would have gotten on well, I think. I hope. No matter how pleasant the part I remembered was, I woke up in a sweat, fear tightening my chest, the thought 'what if they’re both in the underworld, now?' beat into my brain. I said nothing of it, and pretended it never happened. The following weeks we spent there. Aglaia and I settled into our borrowed rooms, while Ausonius and Lucretius relocated to another to maintain the fiction we’d created for our own convenience. All the way here, we rehearsed pieces of it with the boys. In case Tiberius wasn’t ready to offer Marcellina her freedom upon return—an unlikely event at best—he would, they said, offer her and a handful of other slaves as a wedding present. Lucretius had been studiously avoiding an engagement, let alone a marriage, apparently, and was more than happy that the plan “killed three birds with one stone”. The day we were to arrive, we dressed Ausonius as a girl and covered his hair with a palla, as no free woman would be caught dead in public with uncovered hair, and we needed to bide time while we came up with a suitable excuse for his short hair. The story went that, on our travels, we met Ausonius and Lucretius fell in love immediately. He came with us until we ran into a prophet of Apollo who declared them destined to be together until old age, and a local priest—not wanting to anger the gods or delay their fate together—married them the next morning. “With the rising sun turning the horizon pink with true love and mourning doves in attendance, cooing their well-wishes.” Lucretius told Tiberius. The lie was terrible, but Tiberius accepted it all the same. Lucretius told me some day that he was content with his son married, as he feared that it’d ever happen otherwise. Tiberius set to work finding them somewhere to live soon after, never posing more than a handful of questions, and those were about Ausonius’ family and dowry. We promised it was coming, and this was the truth; he’d kept his father’s wealth and the house’s treasures were given to a merchant to be sold. Inside two months of Adrastus’ passing, Ausonius and Lucretius were up to their noses in wealth. Aglaia and Marcellina, even when we left, had almost a year until they’d leave Rome for the women’s colony they agreed to join. The group was called Novae Feminae, “the New Women”, I learned. When they departed finally, they’d go through Brundisium on one of many ships carrying them to their island destination. Until then, they remained with us, Marcellina honing her skills as a warrior and Aglaia running errands for both the house and the Novae Feminae to keep herself busy, going between the farm and Brundisium. Marcellina and I together helped train Sextus. He left before we did, but we still had time before he left. When he did and it was just she and I, we sparred with each other. Until we left, we put on shows every three or four days, sometimes playing up what flashy showmanship we had between us and other times simply battling. We didn’t leave until Lucretius and Ausonius were settled into their new home and it was staffed, decorated, and furnished on Aglaia’s insistence. Lucretius wanted to go, though the final leg of our journey in retrieving Akakios would be without him, and Ausonius had no desire to part from him. The thing which Aglaia pointed out was that it’d look strange to Tiberius and to their neighbors if the woman of the house left her house unfinished. She had a point, and he wanted to go. We waited, and I grew impatient, though it was only a week when rushed. If Kallikrata and Akakios, by extension, were where she said she’d take him, they were in Matera, something like three or fours days away if we walked eight-hour days, two if we walked for twelve hours. But Tiberius gave us a carriage, so we arrived at a nearby inn the same day. We stayed the night along with the driver, who was to stay there until we returned with Aglaia and the boys. The morning we left to rescue Akakios, Marcellina and I both wielded our preferred weapons—my own sword and a long-since borrowed shield for myself, a spear and dagger combination for her, both gifts from Lucretius—and wore fresh armor. The sun shines in our eyes, and the early-autumn air is cool. As the inn disappears, trees line the distance, taller and darker than I remember, but just as alive and well, meaning Kallikrata is there. Our goodbyes from Aglaia and the boys were tearful ones; Aglaia embraced Marcellina and pressed a final gift into her hands as they parted, and it took two of us to pry off Lucretius’ arms. Soon enough, the path I’ve walked a thousand times gives way to grasses—once soft and now coarse, I suspect by Kallikrata’s command—that lead us to the forest. Uninvited, there is no mouth or tunnel through the trees to guide us to the goddess. We will have to find it ourselves. Just feet from the treeline, Marcellina says to me, “If we don’t get out, I asked Aglaia to make sure my mother’s taken care of.” “Are you reassuring me?” I asked. She nods, and I understand. We’d had this conversation before, in lighter times. It wasn’t that I cared for her mother in any particular way, though I knew she did, it was the promise that if we failed the practical consequences were limited to ourselves and Akakios. Aglaia, Lucretius, and all of Marcellina’s friends would mourn, but would live on without us. It’s a small comfort. In response, I offer, “If we fail, Akakios will have a chance to free himself. He’ll have the time, and we’ll have Kallikrata distracted, if just for a moment.” My certainty comforted Akakios. When I said the same things to Marcellina, she only grew more worried. “Are you ready?” She rolls her back, joints cracking. Her spear readied, her dagger at her hip for easy access, her skirts tied up to her knees. It is not a question “if”, even in these moments before we take the plunge. I am not Aelius, I do not know the future, nor have I ever on anything, not even this. But I can control my own actions, I can control when I will give in, and the decision about what those will be and when that is have long since been made. As we turn back to the sky a final time, our feet guiding us into the beginning of the end, I am certain of the future; Akakios will be saved.
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In the final hours before our confrontation, I lay on the bare grass of my brother’s garden, surrounded by sweet-smelling fruit and the trees that bore them. One foot crossed over the other, my hands propped up my head for support, and the distant sounds of the household filled my ears—it could almost be home.
Yesterday’s festival had come and gone without incident. Otho, Marcellina, and I attended accompanied by Aglaia and a gaggle of her friends. Otho made a point of wearing his armor, despite that day’s heat and its weight on his shoulders. He reassured me that he wouldn’t suffer for it, as he’d carried it without issue throughout not only this summer but plenty before it, too. The reason for his costume choice became clear when the first child ran excitedly up to him, buzzing with questions and requests, my love more than happy to oblige. Marcellina and Aglaia attended a play put on by a local production company. Neither of us knew the show, but Aglaia claimed they did it every year. Neither of them actually watched it, too consumed by conversation to pay it much mind; not that the rest of the crowd was much better. She recounted to Aglaia a number of stories from earlier in her own youth, including our “prank” on Crassus. Aglaia admitted to having done similar things after some of these stories, others dropped her jaw and left her howling in laughter. Ausonius and Lucretius stayed home, Lucretius to spend time more time with his studies—a thing he’d never voluntarily done, which meant he was really staying to spend time with Ausonius—while Ausonius skipped an excuse altogether. We invited Adrastus, but he remained at home with them, taken by a sudden desire to practice his swordplay. The sight of him whaling away at a burlap dummy was enough by itself to freeze me in place. What was worse was a comment he made complaining that he’d been up two hours and had hardly made it through five of those things, only to gesture to the other four in question, split open and tossed away. Although I would need the rest to avoid my fate as the sixth split-open dummy, we turned in late that night regardless. I wasted little time this morning on doing anything productive. Instead, I ate breakfast with Marcellina and Lucretius as Marcellina clarified some details of the Crassus story. Once she passed the part where I ran for the hills, she stopped and retrieved Otho, yelling to us that she has a plan. With Otho’s help, we refined it until satisfied—or rather, until lunch—and went over it once more following that. Now I turned my mind to something else, something I’d only glanced in passing; what might a happy ending look like? I spent the past hour on this problem, as it was as good a use of this time as anything. While Otho lent me his dagger, I hardly needed the kind of practice a third an afternoon could give for these things. I’ve come up with three things: the ideal happy ending to this adventure, the realistic one, and that one in between. The ideal involved the four of us and Floriana moving to a small island in Greece and founding our own olive farm. It would never get too crowded, no matter how many neighbors he had—plenty—and not too hot either. The realistic one was that Lucretius, Marcellina, and I would return to Tiberius’ villa near Brundisium and, when the summer ended in a few weeks, Lucretius would return to Rome with his father and his brother. Marcellina and I would remain on the farm, and Otho and I would be forced to part ways. Still, I would be alive, safe, and in one piece, if heartbroken, though the more thought I gave this the less happy this end became. The one in between? The four of us would go our separate ways, myself with Otho, Marcellina to the farm, Lucretius to the future his father had planned with Ausonius in tow. That said, I’d overheard Marcellina concocting a plan involving a faked wedding in which Ausonius posed as the bride, Lucretius married him and received Marcellina as part of his father’s wedding gift (which he had been promised), then Marcellina joined the women’s colony Aglaia had spoken of and Lucretius and Ausonius do whatever they want, not needing to get married to anyone else. It wasn’t a bad plan, only an interesting one. I wish I’d had more time for it—maybe later, if I’m lucky. “Akakios?” Lucretius stood over me, looking down and leaning over with his hands on his knees. “Yes, do you need something?” He gave me a meaningful look, smiling with his mouth but frowning with his eyes as he offered me a hand. I took it, more for emotional reasons than practical ones. Once I’d stood, he gave it a squeeze. “You don’t have to smile,” I said. “It’s fine that you’re upset.” “I’m not upset,” He said, as though I couldn’t feel the pain burrowing deep in his chest, as though he wasn’t well aware of that fact. Lucretius sighed and cracked a genuine smile. “Alright, you got me this time.” We stood in silence for a few seconds before he added, “Could I give you a hug? I’m so worried I won’t get a chance later, and my mother always said it’s important to tell the people we care about that we do, and I don’t do that enough, and you’ve always been like my second dad or my gay uncle or something, and you could—” I pulled him into the requested hug, squeezing him as hard as I could, as he finished his rambling request. “As long as I’m around just ask.” I pulled back, looked him in the eye—he was tearing up, though visibly doing his best not to cry—and shook him by the shoulders. “C’mon, let’s go in. Everybody’s waiting. Hey—how’re things going with Ausonius, by the way?” He told me every detail of the festival, dinner, their late-night conversation, and breakfast that he could fit into the walk from my place beneath the trees. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Otho’s dagger in hand, Lucretius at the room’s far side, and Adrastus fully armed though unarmored before me, we stood staring each other down. There were no rules to lay down—the limits were to his conscience or mine in theory, though in practice it would be something else altogether—and therefore nothing to referee. All the same, Aglaia insisted on performing a similar role, ensuring no foul play on Adrastus’ part. I heaved a full-chested breath, casting out all the leaded anxiety weighing down my heart. My grip on the handle of this dagger would be enough to strangle a person, I realize when I feel my nails pressing into my own skin. My palms sweat, and my body feels cold as death. If Adrastus had any such anticipatory reaction, I’d never know. He wasn’t stone-faced, but he was stern at worst. His posture was practiced; he’d done this exact thing a thousand times before, with fighters more prepared and more qualified than I. There was not a shred of haughty confidence alive in him then, just the absence of worry. If he’d feared something before, he did not in this moment. Either he was fearless or he’d made peace with it. I hoped for the latter. “Ready?” Not breaking eye contact, we nodded. “Begin!” I turned on my heel and fled the room at full-speed, no hesitation. He’d see it otherwise, he’d know. I could only hope he didn’t know what I was doing. At some point the dagger—a backup plan in the first place—fell from my hand as my feet carried me down the path of hallways outlined for me hours ago. First, a skidding right turn, ideally to break his speed; I could never outrun him on a straight distance. Then a left turn, as there was no right turn there, across the courtyard followed by another left turn. The whole way I heard Adrastus’ paced, steady footfall just behind, lurking. The final leg of my run was a length of straight hallway, in which time Adrastus advanced on my considerably. By the time I was halfway down, he’d entered it, but when I’d reached the end and locked the door he’d reached Marcellina. She’d been lying in wait in a nook that housed a decorative endtable until we’d asked a favor of the staff and had it moved for our convenience. I caught just a glimpse of it, but knew the plan well enough to know what happened then. Unseen before her attack, Marcellina drove her spear through Adrastus’ thigh—the part I saw—with a thrust of her arm, a twist of her body, and a grunt through ground teeth. The part I hadn’t witnessed but knew was to come was her sprint away the moment the wood shaft left her hand. On the other side of this door was an empty enough storage room and, more importantly, Otho, who was armored and armed, both. Knowing we’d have the time until we unlocked the door and threw it open for Adrastus to join us, he threw his arms around me and pressed a deep kiss to my lips, his hands fisted in my hair for that instant. He pulled back and I kept him close for those last few moments. “Are you ready?” I said, knowing the answer. “Of course. You know me better than that,” he said with a hint of a cocky smile. He sighed and slipped out of my embrace. With a final roll of his shoulders in preparation, he said, “Remember; no matter how badly this could go, it will end soon, and everything can be righted with time.” I nodded and moved to stand firmly behind him and his shield. Otho looked back at me, the promise of years of companionship and love to come in his eyes, and turned the key. Adrastus burst in and, in the same instant, Otho drove his sword through his chest, then withdrew it and, as Adrastus rose his own to strike, dove it through him a second time. A forced exhale accompanied by a distinct smack followed his impact. While Adrastus’ mouth and nose drew air again and again, it never got where it was going. His free hand fumbled for the weapon responsible, and Otho withdrew it and stabbed him again, this time in the belly. Adrastus dropped his sword and doubled over—forced to by the impact—and would have crumpled to the ground if it hadn’t been for the swift blow to the back and the old woman, already transforming before our eyes, holding him up by the throat. That fourth blow blew his eyes wide open, lids stretching almost past their whites. A shadow-wrapped body consumed the doorway behind him, blotting out the sunlight from without for the instant it took for a silver-nailed hand to take it by the throat and toss it to the ground with the nonchalance of a child and their plaything. The sound this dark-feathered birdwoman’s bones made on impact was akin to gravel under foot, with any accompanying scream or yelp torn from her by a blow to the back. Her threadbare, burlap cloak lay at my brother’s feet as the greater goddess of the two pushed past without a flicker of pity. He, too, hit the ground ribs-first and Otho, who had fallen backwards into me upon sight of the lare took the opportunity to send the bloodied iron through his neck. He could not wrench it loose, and abandoned it when Kallikrata turned to us, her feet soaked in the mixing blood of god and god-child. The elder of her sons crumpled to the floor, the spray from his wound painting a face paling from death red. “I will play these games no longer, son of Eutropios,” her eyes bore into me, shocking my body into a frozen chill, though with it for the first time was a cold anger rather than fear alone. “What should have taken two weeks took a revolution of the moon, and you still haven’t done it yourself. You killed yourself for the life of some child, the clay offspring of a vagabond potter—how much did that take from me?—and then you have the gall to ask for favors from a higher power for whom, I might add, you hadn’t completed your task for either.” She took a deep growl of a breath. “I sense a pattern in you, one I do not like, one I have witnessed in Adrastus,” Her head turned by just a degree to glance over her shoulder. “Sons who do not listen, who war in the names of other men, who distract themselves with fantasy and cower from their gifts—I am sick of them.” Otho squared his shoulders, one hand’s fingers woven through mine behind his back. They trembled, but they were alone in this. He stood steady, his voice even and unburdened by fear. “We will tell everyone it was he who killed Adrastus, and they will believe us. He’s known for heroic deeds as far as Tarentum already, perhaps further. His name will spread companioned by stories of violent, pious glory through this land and more.” “He will come with me. Back to southern Matera.” She said. Otho’s grip grew tighter. If he had a weapon now, this would not be the story of my brother’s death, nor of what came after. Devotion-fueled fear and determination filled him in every inch. His hands shook no more. “He will come with me, to Corsica.” It was not a request, and certainly no question; it was an unrealized truth. “You act so like sons of mine, Lucius, that if you were not born to a senator’s wife I’d swear you were mine. The resemblance of character is so great even fate could not tell the difference. Like them you are insubordinate, cowardly, prone to fits of foolishness unfit even for mortal men, and yet I kept my faith in you, always well-placed for a time but soured soon after. “He will come with me, or I will take him; it makes no difference. I will do what I should have done so long ago, that his father avoided for every year we were together, and burn the mortal weakness out of him. He will learn, and he will have the time to do so. Then he’ll take up sword and my divine name and claim one for himself like none of this lunacy ever happened to him. They will know his name, yes, but you shall not be the cause, and it will not be this one of his father’s choosing. “You may go as you please and I will respect the distance so long as you keep yours from my son; you interfere with his good sense too much, and too often. You will hear the stories of him, but never know him again. This is not a deal. You will comply. This is not our agreement of years past; death is no way out of this.” His knuckles grew white, his teeth squeaked as they ground into each other. I was afraid they would break or crack, but they held. “A deal without agreement is no deal at all. I decline, and we will leave. Now.” I didn’t dare look at her. While her heart—assuming she possessed one in human terms—had always been silent to me, her anger was plain and white-hot, even at its start. Now it burnt with the heat of a sun, unmatched to my senses by even Apollo’s fury in the face of Aelius’ betrayal. She, though, did not strike out. Her size did not grow any further to intimidate, nor shrink to garner sympathy or pity. She did not speak, and she moved only once before she turned on her heel and left the way she came. First one long stride, then the twist of her body and the closing of her fingers around her captive. She took me by one ankle and drug me by one heel. While my hands scrambled for anything—Otho’s feet, my brother’s body as I slid over and past it, the door, discarded ceramic chunks in the hallway, the hands of my panicked friends—they failed to grasp anything. I turned over this way and that, scraping my body over stone and pottery while doing so. Her grip did not yield. We were down the hallway before Otho could leave the room. He did not catch up with us before we’d left the building. We had left Elea before I ceased struggling. Groggy-eyed from an unplanned nap that wore away the better part of the afternoon, I ambled down the hallway a step or two behind Otho, though his legs were still recovering from being laid on for several hours.
He woke me up a few minutes after the last of the maids left. “Marcellina invited us to come back to hers,” he said. “So long as you wake up sometime soon.” I grumbled and turned on my side, one arm curled around his waist. “Can I ask a question?” He said. I hummed in response. “How do you sleep so much?” One eye popped open to glance up at him. It was sometime near sunset, painting everything with a tint of orange and gold. “Eternal exhaustion. I haven’t been well-rested since the day I was born.” A corner of his mouth tilted up, teasing a grin, then wiped it away with a quick twist of his lips. Still, it was a visible strain to keep from smiling. Sometime since then, candelabras and iron chandeliers had been lit, illuminating the halls of this gargantuan home with dim, warm light. Part of me wondered where they got so many candles—many of the sockets they now occupied had long since overflowed with melted wax, which had hardened into stalactites clinging onto its holders. These were scattered throughout the larger halls though I suppose we had seen none of the smaller ones. Bees, I guess? Bees make wax. I didn’t pay the candles much more mind than that. Some things aren’t worth talking about for paragraphs on end. After all, when one goes off on tangents of small detail, one loses one’s audi-- “Akakios, I need to speak with you.” Adrastus said from the end of the hall. I looked to Otho, who shrugged; neither of us had seen him before that moment. “I’ll be in Marcellina’s. If not,” I nodded and rubbed a spot on his back before he nodded and walked off. As he passed Adrastus, Otho turned and watched him walk from over his shoulder. He looked up at me and mouthed something, but I couldn’t tell what. He mouthed it again, more exaggerated, then waved it off half way through. An “I’ll tell you later”. “My brother,” he called when he was just a few steps away. He spoke slowly, visibly fatigued. I held a yawn in, myself. “You—uh—you needed me for something?” My heart skipped a beat and I realized—if he hadn’t been in a tattered, one-sleeved robe and soft-leather house slippers—he might have meant he wanted to fight now. When was our duel set for again? The best excuse for not remembering was general exhaustion, although I’d just napped-- Adrastus walked up to one window looking out on the yard below and leaned into it on his sleeved arm. “When I was a young man fighting off monsters in the treacherous Umbrian Apennines or villainous Carthage—” “You mean fighting monsters in the Apennines and soldiers in Carthage?” Without pause, he picked up where he left off. “I had the respect garnered only by the kind of power someone of my skill can cultivate. On and off the field, I was feared; not even our generals dared question me. I once slaughtered a rival camp with my own hands, and when I returned the next morning, covered in the blood of our enemies, you know what they did, Akakios? They didn’t make demands. They didn’t prophesize my downfall or criticize my “arrogance” or scold me for not asking permission first—they knew better. But do you know what happened when I got home?” He shook his head and bit his lower lip, his eyebrows raised. “Adrastus, my son, you must be more careful! If I were to lose you, my whole legacy would die with you! Adrastus, your pride precedes you; if it outgrows you it will swallow you whole! You know the gist, I’m sure.” In parts, but nothing like that. Since he started speaking I’d taken a step back every now and then, widening the distance. The nonchalance he spoke about death—about the painful, violent deaths of so many victims who might pitch a fight against another but against him were no more than tonight’s dinner—my skin crawled. “All I wanted was to spend time with my wife and my new son—Gaius had just been born then—but she demanded I go on this quest for her, find this brother of mine, slay that long-time enemy. She can’t see us oversea or in the mountains, as you know, so she had all these things when I came back. As if the warnings from that damned prophetess weren’t enough. They wouldn’t stop meddling, Akakios.” Adrastus wove one hand, indicating nothing in particular. “The gods this, the gods that, even when I left. I killed a lion three times my size and do you know what Diana came to tell me? That my “unfounded, boundless thirst for fame” would be my death.” “You met Diana? You spoke to Diana?” I blurted out. He waved it off. “But you know what, brother? Do you know what I’m sick of?” I could guess. “Answering to them, rather than yourself.” He snapped. “Exactly. Don’t you know the feeling, Akakios?” He clapped my shoulder. I blinked, processing my answer carefully. “I’m not sure if you’re aware—” I swallowed. “--brother, but I—” on my pause, I debated which item to bring up, because there were oh so many. “I didn’t know of our mother until a few months ago. I was raised without her by my father until he died, then under the guidance of Marcellina’s mother.” “Your father,” he said, his mind clearly on something else. “How did he die?” To be honest, I flinched. “He got sick when I was young. A small plague passed through the area.” “And you didn’t fall ill?” He said. “No.” “Probably that damned lare. They had a spat, centuries ago, our mother and some of them—” Before he stopped, he was visibly ready to move into what he wanted to talk about, but his mouth shut and his expression rampant frustration fell away. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it more, but I lost my father too, once. You know that my mother sent him away much of the time so he wouldn’t influence me?” I nodded. He mentioned it at some point, most likely. If he hadn’t, I could believe it anyway. “He died while I was away fighting. My wife told me before she did, and my wife didn’t find out for months after it happened.” A pause. “Oh.” “You understand, then?” He looked me in the eye. Adrastus was angry and frustrated, but there was a glimmer of bitterness there, too, that and guilt. I blinked. He shook his head, and turned away from me again, glancing up once more, then training his focus on the treetops below. “I was a man when my father died. My other children won’t mind—they never cared for me much anyway—but Ausonius is only a boy, at sixteen. He’s not old enough for this, and yet—” He cleared his throat, letting out a sigh. “There’s a festival tomorrow; we can’t fight then, and we can’t do it tonight. The day after the next?” My brain turned it all over a few times. While I had realized that Ausonius would lose his father, I wouldn’t’ve guessed that Adrastus cared, or that he’d even thought of it. “My primary job for years now has been watching over the Iuvenali boys; maybe after, assuming everything works out—” He nodded. “Tell someone on staff; they know how to do these things themselves, but yes, I think that some time with his uncle would be good for the boy.” “Love poetry,” he told us upon request. “Next time I want to woo a potential—er—”mate”, I’m going to be prepared. What happened last time is I was caught off guard.” said Lucretius, as if well-prepared poetry was a surefire way to catch the eye of fair young ladies and dashing young lads. Perhaps it was; I never heard of it working, and never tried it myself, after all.
“You’ll arrive in time for lunch, though?” Otho leaned into the doorway rather than stepping inside. Lucretius snorted. “Of course. You forget that I’ve been to a hundred of these; I know how to arrive ready and on-time.” Yet, when we were gathered around a table brimming with food in the room with the elephant skin rug, Lucretius was nowhere to be seen. Otho and I reclined on the couch with its back to the door, Adrastus opposite us, and his son—hastily introduced to us as Ausonius Pontius, his youngest child—on the couch facing the balcony. Adrastus was the only one comfortable, as I shifted the arm I laid on every few moments to keep it awake, Ausonius held a staring contest with a squirrel outside while he ignored his father’s choice in topic of conversation, and Otho presumably fought the urge to inform Adrastus that yes, he knew plenty about Kallikrata already. “When I was a child, you see, and my father wanted to retain a vestige of his freedom, she lashed out at him,” he said between bites of dormouse. “She has a habit of doing that.” Otho said. He ignored Otho’s comment altogether and went on soliloquizing. “To get back at him for leaving her, she threatened death if he didn’t return me to her for my first five years of life, then for every third month out of the year for the following thirteen,” he shook his head. “And even then, he wasn’t allowed to spend more time with me than his wife’s children.” “Always a struggle for mixed families.” His eyes rolled in his head when Adrastus wasn’t looking. While it had been hot when we sat down, the food had since cooled; we were entering the second hour of this dinner, with many more to follow. “She tried to burn me as a child, to burn the mortality out of me—did you know that?” He said for the fifth time. “No, that’s horrible.” Otho deadpanned, again, for the fifth time that night. “And he supported her. Can you believe—” He cut himself short. “She wanted to do the same thing to Akakios; she did the same thing to Fau—” “Sorry?” I interjected, sitting up a little on the spot. Otho shot me a look, and I layed back down. Adrastus waved it away with one hand. “She didn’t do it to you; you and your father disappeared before she had the chance. You were too young, he was too flightly, too—what’s the word? Conservative? Worried? Something like that.” “Brother, what did she almost do?” My stomach twisted. And how do you know? Knowing what year that was, Adrastus was in North Africa slaughtering Carthaginians and salting the earth—though he could have found out later, she might have mentioned it, off-hand. Did he talk to her often, back then? When did he stop? “The same way I know everything about her,” Adrastus rolled his eyes. “A never ending, stream-of-consciousness rant in the most convoluted terms possible.” I’d said the latter question out loud, hadn’t I? “Anyway, she told your father she wanted to do the same thing she did for me—get rid of some of that pesky mortal blood in exchange for power, ruthless precision, strength—things near-godhood have to offer.” If I’d’ve blinked then I would have missed it, but he smirked for an instant. Then he reached for his watered-wine and took a long sip. I looked to Ausonius and wondered, how much of that’s in him? “There’s always the price, those things our fathers worried about us losing, if we reached that level as children and not as adults, our greatnesses achieved by superiority rather than by inheritance.” He watched something in the far distance. Not out the window or on the horizon—something invisible we couldn’t see, but he reached for without lifting his arms, something that he hungered for more madly than he ever would for anything we could place before him. Cold fear tore down my spine. It was not a pretty look, nor even a relatable or understandable one—I’ve never felt something like that before. More than desire, less than need, closer to greed than to anything else. “She came to our house once, when my father didn’t send me for her to fetch at the gates,” he said. “He blamed my stepmother, who was so soft with me—she pampered me with sweets, toys, things children ordinarily wanted, and I preferred her over Kallikrata for it—without thinking about it, she demanded my father remarry and snapped her neck with the bat of an eye.” Do not imagine it. Do not imagine it. Do not imagine it. Do not-- I held a hand over my mouth, resisting the urge to vomit. “How did you meet your wife, Ausonius’ mother?” Otho asked. Adrastus’ expression softened, and his mood turned from the blood-curdling feeling to fondness bordered by sorrow. “We were neighbors as teenagers,” he sat up, holding his cup in both hands. “After we moved to Elea, we had to wait for our house to be finished, so we rented a bottom-floor apartment and shared a wall with her family. She wanted to be a singer, but she’d keep her parents up if she were to practice in the house at night, so she went outside to the garden the building shared. I listened to her for three weeks before I approached her. We were married the very next.” Otho blinked. “That’s—that’s very romantic.” He hadn’t expected a Pyramus and Thisbe story—though without the lovers' suicide after the loss of each other—and neither had I. “The final war against Carthage began just a few months later, however. I left home to join it and didn’t see her again until its conclusion. Our eldest was born the year after that.” He smiled, tears forming in his eyes. Adrastus wiped them away and set down his cup, looking up in time for Lucretius to enter the room and stop dead in his tracks. “You’re Tiberius’ son? Tiberius Iuvenalis?” He wore his toga while the rest of us wore only tunics. Clearly, he’d expected a much more formal lunch than we had—I regret not telling him. The folds were messy and uneven, the creases in the fabric over his right shoulder were jagged rather than smooth lines drawing the eye to the fabric bundled on his left side and held up by that hand. He’d done it himself; wealthy men and women alike never dressed themselves in togae alone for a reason. “You should have told me we were going to a formal meal, Lucretius,” Otho said, turned towards me. He winked at Lucretius. “I feel underdressed.” Lucretius and Ausonius’ eyes locked, and for the first time since we laid down my nephew opened his mouth to say something—but said nothing and closed it again. Instead, he slid closer to the couch’s arm and gestured for Lucretius to take his spot on it. “Have you an interest in poetry, Lucretius?” Adrastus asked between a sip of wine and a hunk of bread. “Yeah.” said Lucretius. He was fiddling with his toga, trying to cover as much of the purple stripe at the borders of the fabric as he could. Mens’ togae were plain, freeborn childrens’ had purple. I pointed it out to Otho with a tilt of the head and he snorted. “My son is quite the poet. Last week his instructor declared him unteachable—” Adrastus smiled, and pride swelling in his chest. “—he’s too good, already, at only seventeen. When I was seventeen, I could recite Cato and Ennius equally as well as I could wield a bow. In fact, I once killed seven men with only six arrows. The way to do it—” He went on. As before, Otho nodded and listened, threw in a worthless comment in the appropriate places, and nudged me awake here and there. Unlike before, Ausonius and Lucretius spoke through the rest of lunch, their hush-toned conversation broken only by sips of watered down wine and one occasion in which Lucretius’ mouth hung open in response to a comment of Ausonius’. “Don’t leave your mouth open like that,” he said. “One time I did that—it was out in the gardens—I got hit in the teeth by falling fruit and ended up with a bloody mouth and—” “Well, we’re inside, I don’t think—” “—it’d be a shame if something like it happened to you—” “—there’ll be any falling fruit—” “—you have such a pretty mouth.” Lucretius’ mouth hung open as he fell silent. Ausonius raised his eyebrows. “Did I say something?” Lucretius shoved a whole honey-roll in his mouth, waving off Ausonius, his cheeks a bright and fiery red. “Mmph this is good,” he mumbled through his mouthful. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- When lunch was over, Adrastus was gone. He mumbled something about rescheduling an event, chugged the remainder of his unwatered wine, and sauntered out the door without another moment’s hesitation. By that time, Lucretius and Ausonius had moved to the balcony, leaning over the edge of its railing engrossed in conversation. If the building collapsed around them, they’d be too busy swimming in each others’ eyes to notice. Every now and then, Ausonius would reach up and pluck an overripe piece of fruit from its branch, then he’d toy with it for sometime before offering it to Lucretius who, no matter how many he’d already eaten, accept it and nibble at it until it was gone. Otho patted my knee to get my attention, reminding me I’m hardly any better than those boys. My legs were thrown across his lap as I lay on my back on the couch. We were “helping” the house servants clean up after lunch, primarily by eating anything we were willing to and they didn’t want. I insisted they get first pick, and Otho hadn’t protested. “We may as well help,” he’d said. “There’s no harm in giving a helping hand. Right?” He’d winked at a maid, who only snorted and dumped the honey-covered rolls into a basket to be thrown out. Now they were soggy; later they’d be inedible. No matter the volume of dishes to choose from, though, I found my mind wandering to this and that. This crescent-shaped piece of a shield hung up on the wall, that drop in the boys’ conversation after Ausonius told Lucretius he could swallow a fig whole—then did it—those flecks of gold in Otho’s eyes, anything other than a task. I’d had my share of those, recently. At the other side of the room, Aglaia and Marcellina carried on a conversation while Aglaia set about righting askew decorations and refilling jugs of water, wine, and olive oil. I didn’t catch everything she said, but from what I heard it was something about a new women’s colony where an island kingdom had once been. They were leaving the same time next year from Brundisium, it was somewhere in Greece, every skilled woman was invited to join them, these sorts of things. “I’ve made my mind up on the matter of seeing my family,” Otho said. He idly toyed with the straps on my sandals, eyes on me and a warming smile on his face. I hummed in interest. “When’d you decide?” “Oh, somewhere nearing the third hour of your brother’s soliloquy.” His smile grew wider and his eyes softened. “Don’t you want to hear my decision?” He teased. “Of course.” I sat up and changed position, so my head rested in his lap and my feet could be propped up on the couch’s arm. “If you wouldn’t be opposed,” he began. “I would like to go with you once everything’s settled.” The blissful expression I wore fell to one of concern, and I almost said the thing on my mind, but he got there first. “It will be. Whether it takes days or years, it will.” He bent over and pressed a firm kiss to my forehead. I laughed and shook my head. I had my doubts—Adrastus holds twenty years of experience of every form over me, and his strength exceeding mine regardless—but still, I believed him. There were many times he’d been shaken, unsure, angry with the lack of control he had over a given situation. I knew what these things looked like on him, in the lines in his face and the set of his shoulders alike. When faced with Glaucia, a woman who’d taken someone he’d loved, unable to do anything, when faced with my mother and the demands carried with her presence, when Aelius’ “visitor” presented us with nothing short of confusion, when met with my death—but these things were not this. Now he was more than just sure, he was content. The days following this one didn’t mean nothing, it was that the question of whether we could withstand what stands before us had been long since answered. Things will stand in his way, as they had long before he met me, but they can’t forever. Out of the corner of my eye, something stirred. I sat up to get a better look at it, but whatever it was was gone before my head turned. All it left behind were a handful of thumb-sized black feathers, sweeping across the white marble by the draft. First thing the morning following our arrival in Elea, I joined my friends next door in Marcellina’s room.
Otho was seated next to the door on a few stray cushions opposite to Marcellina and Aglaia, who shared the ottoman at the end of the former’s bed. The three of them were engaged in some lively conversation about boats, sailing, sea sickness… The curtain-ends were knotted and shoved under stacks of books atop the bookshelves on that side of the room. While the door was closed, the windows had been thrown open, a breeze allowed to sweep through the room, and it was lit by the late morning sun shining through and casting bright shadows on the back wall. “Bad dream?” said Marcellina. Both of her legs were draped over one of the chair’s arms, and she wore a pale blue dress similar to Aglaia’s. I wasn’t the only one who suffered from weeks without more than a couple changes of clothes. I plopped down next to Otho without a second thought and wiped one hand down my face. “Something like that,” I turned to him as his hand raised to rub my back. “I saw that bird thing again. And a woman. Or a goddess—something like that.” Aglaia’s hair was let down, her bronze-pin instead attached to her dress over her shoulder. As we talked, she toyed with a partial sheet of parchment covered end-to-end in cramped handwriting. “Hey, you’ve travelled, haven’t you?” That’s one way to put it. The parchment in her hands stopped moving just long enough for her to lean forward and say, in a voice full of wonder, “What do you think a big long sailing trip would be like?” Truth be told, I’d never been on a boat before. The first time I’d seen a ship was earlier this morning, and even then it was from a distance. From what I’d heard of them, they were either vehicles to the prizes offered by a distant land or beasts summoned from the deepest pits hell, promising instead an unpleasant death. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t ever considered what that might be like—the air crushed from your lungs as invisible hands drag you deeper and deeper while the life promised by the surface’s light grows ever more distant and your attempts at saving yourself grow futile. The salt would burn your eyes, your throat, inflame every open wound, swallowing you up into endless-- “Bad, mostly. There’s pirates, and sea-sickness, not to mention the storms—just sounds like a bad time.” Is what I went with. Otho raised a hand. “I’ve been sailing before,” he said. “My family has a summer home in Corsica; we went every year.” he shrugged. “Did spent a lot of time hanging over a railing or curled up beneath deck—less as I got older, but I wouldn’t say it was bad.” He winked at me. “You had a summer home in Corsica? Why not Brundisium or something?” said Marcellina. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “By the time I was ten my father had retired, so we never needed to be within spitting distance of Rome. None of us liked Elea much, so we came back for the winter and left as soon as the ice melted over there. Would like to move back there someday, really.” That last bit was punctuated by a wink in my direction. Aglaia hummed in acknowledgement, exchanged a look with Marcellina, and said, “But the travel—?” “Tolerable. Worth it, from time to time.” She hummed again, bobbing her head and unravelling the parchment. “You have plans, I take it?” I said. The gears in my head turned. “What’s Adrastus doing after—” I cut myself off, and she picked up where I left off. “After you—” She cleared her throat. Her change of expression was for my sake, not hers. “After he’s gone, we’re all free to go.” Mine and Marcellina’s jaws dropped. “All of you? Just like that?” I managed. “What about his sons?” she said. Aglaia nodded. “All but one of his children are married and have their own households to maintain already; they need none of us. They’re all so rich they wouldn’t really care about any money from selling us anyway, so there’s no point in going through the trouble. He need not coordinate then and we get to do whatever we want. No patron, though.” “Owch. That’s gonna be hard.” said Marcellina. Aglaia shrugged in response. “How old’s his youngest?” I asked. “Around seventeen. Adrastus told our head of staff he’d be married by the time the goddess sends someone to take care of him—you, it turns out—” “Don’t remind me.” I groaned. “—but neither of them have asked any girls to marry him,” She shrugged and scratched a spot on her forehead. “He’ll probably end up at a brother’s house.” Something crossed my mind. Amidst a conversation about the future of my brother’s child, someone’s absence was conspicuous. “Where’s Lucretius?” “His room,” said Otho. “They gave him one down the hall because he wanted both windows and a desk. I’ll show you where.” The moment we were done with Adrastus, I’d gone straight to bed, no matter how light it was outside. I was tired, and not eager about what came after lunch, having to face it, or anyone else about it. I rose and bid them farewell. Aglaia and Marcellina jumped back into their conversation as if we’d never been there in the first place, while Otho fell into step with me. The door closed behind us with a click and the hall dimmed without the light from those windows. A moment after the door was shut behind us I said, “Something on your mind?” “Always,” he replied without thinking. “Corsica?” I said. We took the first steps towards Lucretius’ room, all slow but steady to lengthen the time between here and there. “Somewhat. Why, is someone thinking of moving there now that I’ve brought it up?” Otho quirked an eyebrow and one corner of his mouth. Then he shrugged and let the grin fall away. “No, the thing I’m thinking of—well, it’s more complicated than that.” “What’s wrong?” Waves of something akin to anxiety—fear, even—rolled off him. Otho turned away, his eyes on the walls’ decorations. A portrait we passed now, painted into the plastered wall, bore a resemblance to Adrastus, however slight. This man’s hair was darker, his nose longer and his lips thinner, but the shape of his eyes was the same, that and the set of his jaw. “Since I found out we were going to Elea I’ve been considering—on and off—going to see my family. I grew up here, and my father would sooner die than get rid of his father’s home—summer home in Corsica or no—” He cleared his throat and paused for a moment, unclenching fists I hadn’t noticed until they were gone. “They’ll be there, if I go. It’s a question of should I go.” Otho looked at me and every bit of information strewn across dozens of conversation came back all at once; he’d left on bad terms and would come back on worse. Their son had ran out on his wedding, which had taken weeks and no doubt a small fortune to prepare and plan, not to mention his fiancee’s father’s fury. In the meantime, he’d made nothing less than a criminal out of himself, considered marrying without telling them. The girl he’d wanted to marry was a fugitive and an escaped slave. These things they never had to know, but there was also his service under my mother. It was the best answer to the question, “What have you been doing for ten years?” And that involved explaining that he’d polluted a goddess’ sacred land with the bodies of people he’d murdered for pay and therefore needed to find her youngest son to gain her mercy. After a moment of deep consideration, “You don’t have to.” “No, I don’t,” He glanced at me and swallowed a lump in his throat. But I should. “I want to ask for the home in Corsica. We—” I nodded, and he continued. “—we’ll need somewhere to stay after Adrastus’s death, I have no home to speak of otherwise, nor do you, and my parents are old enough that I doubt they use it anymore.” By the time I had another response, we’d arrived at Lucretius’ room already. Face-to-face before his door to finish the conversation for now, I told him, “If it’ll do more good than harm, then go. The worst that can happen is they’ll throw you back out and you’ll be in the same place you were this afternoon.” “What would you do?” My brow creased. “If it were my parents, or yours?” If it were my father alone, it would be my first stop. The news that he’d been hiding in Elea for the past twenty years breathing and walking as opposed to being ashes scattered to the wind? A dream I had every night for three weeks after his death. My mother, with or without my father? We’d find out how fast I can really run. “In your situation, I would never go back. But you’re the braver of the two of us for a reason.” This room—described best as a lounge, as three couches with red-fabric cushions claim much of its floorspace—looms before us. An entire wall, criss-crossed with columns, opens onto a balcony outside, while its opposite is coated in artifacts, trophies, vases, framed letters, and more tapestries.
On the couch opposite to us and the door lays a man, a bottle of wine hanging from two fingers as he buries his face in a plush pillow stolen from another room. His head lifts an inch and he says, “Take off your shoes; the rug’s elephant. We don’t want it stained, do we? And you, take off that armor; this is Italy, it’s too hot for that.” Between the couches and under their feet lay the skin of a whole elephant, though given the size of the room more than enough of the marble floor is visible. “And please, close the door. They’re so loud with guests, anymore.” I couldn’t hear anything at all, but closed the door and unlaced my sandals, per his request, leaving them outside. Metal clattered as Otho shed plate after plate, sending the man into a groaning fit for the duration. Soon the padding came with it, and the scarf protecting his neck from the chestpiece, and the two of us claimed the couch with its back to the door. Otho and I exchanged looks, his I don’t like this, we shouldn’t be here with a sliver of protective fear at its edge. I’d be shocked if mine conveyed anything but nerves and exhaustion. The man sat up to greet us, letting the wine bottle’s bottom fall the few inches to hit the rug. He was dressed in a tunic with elbow-length bell sleeves and a tight belt, his hair left to grow out past his ears, both graying and thinning at the temples. Despite his home’s boast of battles both fought and won, not a single scar marked his skin. To my knowledge, this could mean two things; that he was something like a liar and had never fought a day in his life, but was rich enough to decorate his home with all these things nonetheless, or he was of such skill that he’d been left untouched by stone and spear alike. For my sake, I hoped for the former. The elephant skin, the ample use of red and purple dyes, and the sheer size of his mansion suggested otherwise. Otho nudged my side. “I apologize; he prefers to take everything in, you understand.” “I do,” he responded. “Though I expected it of you, rather than your—your companion. Do I have that right?” Otho nodded. “Wonderful. Tell me, brother, how was your trip? Not too hard on you, I hope. I know well how she can be.” Adrastus took the wine bottle in hand and rose, crossing to a short cabinet at the couch’s end. He brushed aside a discarded toga, and the half of it draped over the couch fell to the floor on our side, pooling in a mass of bright white wool. Otho looked to me, then in the direct of Adrastus, who poured a goblet full of wine and nothing else for each of us. We sat in silence, unsure of what to say or who should say it until Adrastus handed us each our goblet and seated himself. “Oh—I haven’t asked your name; pardon me. I suspect you know mine already.” He addressed Otho. “I am—” he paused. “I am Lucius Avitus Scaevola, though everyone else knows me as Otho, which I prefer by far.” “Son of the older Gaius Avitus Scaevola?” He said. Otho nodded. “A confidant of mine led me to believe you were Greek.” I bit back a nervous laugh. Otho did not, lighting a smile on his own face. “I am not, but I am also not your brother. I believe we’ve a case of mistaken identity. This is your brother, Akakios, son of Eutropius.” He corrected himself. “Eutropius.” And shot me an apologetic smile. “Should I know a Eutropius?” He asked, questioning more his memory than my father’s non-existent status. Otho gestured for me to take over. I set down my wine—I have no intention of drinking wine by itself, and while our host had downed half of it before the end of the conversation, Otho’s went untouched as well—and straightened my posture, mimicking years of watching Sextus and Lucretius do the same. “I’m afraid not, but I like the chance to honor my lost father better than restating my mother’s godhood. And,” I said, pausing to swallow a growing lump in my throat. “I am Greek, or my father was, to answer your question.” He smiled, more with his mouth than his eyes, which were half-shut at the start. He blinked them awake and drew a hand over his face. “All good to know.” He said. “For a while there, I thought I might not like you, Akakios of Eutropius.” I almost asked why. “And you, Otho, why do you join us here? I suspect your mother isn’t involved.” “No, but yours patronizes me.” He sighed. This elicited a low-pitched, brief laugh from Adrastus. There was something empty in it, something missing. “We had a deal; her mercy in exchange for my aid to her younger son, whoever he turned out to be.” “She didn’t know at the time? She kept such good track of me I’d think—” He shook his head. “I don’t know why, but she always suspected another god, a lare or someone of that level, kept her servants from watching him.” “She’s always been paranoid.” A shiver went down my spine. “She has. Besides that, she lost track of where his father took him after he fled. We spent something like three years searching before we found him. She spent the bulk of it speculating on the kind of hero he’d be. They all had the same few things in common—” Adrastus said as he took another sip, “And she was wrong on every count.” “Thank the gods.” He reclined and one arm draped around my shoulders. Adrastus took a long drink from his cup, eyes set on its surface when he finished as he held it between his knees. “She isn’t a prophetess for a reason, and she hasn’t any either. She drives us mad enough with others’ readings as it is. She still wants me killed, yes?” Otho tensed, I outright froze. His tone was empty of concern or fear, bordering on boredom and disappointment. “Yes.” Otho said. “My disdain for the gods might be infamous—” Adrastus scoffed. “And clearer than glass.” “Of course.” He paused for a few deep breaths, and his anxiety alleviated. This was not the question he’d meant to ask. “Your home is decorated, to say the least. I expect you are, too?” He’d come to the same conclusion as I had, and wanted the answer to the same question. “I fought in the third war in Carthage. Truth be told, it wasn’t much of a war—we sailed in and cleaned up the mess we let fester for the last century.” For whatever reason, I remembered the elephant under our feet that moment. “Most of this—” he waved a limp hand at the trophy-covered wall. “—is from my own journey, rather than Carthage. The helmets, the armor, those things are, but not the rest. And all the stories are embellished, but they do come across better painted than the truth. They always do.” Otho cleared his throat. “Which ones are true?” He shrugged. “The one where I sliced an elephant chin-to-stomach is exaggerated. I did kill it, but it was much messier, and the rider lived at least until he reached the ground. The one where I skewered five men on my spear was outright false, and the idea that I got through the whole thing without a scratch?” He shrugged. “Likely the only truth left whole.” I’m doomed. “Brother, may I ask you a question?” His gaze fell on me. My skin crawled, my heart emptied. “You have a gift as well, yes? A consequence of the goddess-blood?” I nodded, the hand hidden behind Otho’s back grasping at the fabric of his tunic in panic. “What is it?” My mouth hung open. I stared into his eyes and felt close to nothing. What was missing? What wasn’t there. I turned to Otho for no more than a second—I felt his nerves, his subdued excitement, concern for me, the grating feeling of being unarmed, otherwise foreign to me, all jumbled together—when my eyes returned to Adrastus his curiosity stood alone. “It’s a lot of nothing.” I said. “Mine is of the senses,” he explained. “Sight, hearing, and all else that extends beyond the reach of mortal man, and the power to process all of it at once. Leaving war and beast-hunts unscathed was no accident or lucky coincidence. I wondered if you might be able to do something similar.” The thought dominated my mind: what’s missing? What’s wrong with him? His curiosity turned to impatience before my eyes, alone with nothing else. “Tell me.” He said. Otho interrupted. “Just as yours is greater perception of things, his is a greater perception of people. What lies deep in the heart for anyone else is exposed at the surface to his eyes—not secrets, but emotions.” “I don’t know which is worse. It feels the same to me.” He sighed. He sunk back and his face fell, deepening the lines between his eyebrows and those around his mouth marking a long-worn scowl. “I feel that I’m being watched, examined, even. Every flaw laid bare. I don’t know how you live with it, and forgive me for saying this, but I could not, though you seem like such a decent man it might as well pose no threat.” He glanced out the windowed-wall. While it was far from sunset, the sun hung low in the sky, creeping steadily toward the horizon. “I hope to settle my death on my own terms.” He said suddenly. An “Oh?” escaped my lips, urging him to continue. “A duel,” he said. “I’ve heard only rumors, not your stories—though I’d like to hear them—I suspect they, too, are riddled with glory and violence and bloodshed. Enough to do me in at this stage, at least, if I hold back enough. It will be a fair fight, make no mistake.” Adrastus looked at me as if he expected me to accept on the spot, but my heart was busying performing acrobatic feats in my stomach and the force which served to open my mouth had left to watch. Otho, ever my rescuer, stood and pulled me up with him. “Tomorrow? Or the day after.” “Tomorrow. The anticipation will kill me first, in the case of the latter.” Adrastus said. He lifted his goblet and waved his free hand. “You may go. Aurelia’s down the hall—she’ll show you to your friends’ rooms, just ask.” The closer to the city center and the further from the hills we get, the thicker the city’s collection of buildings become. The first we see are distant farmhouses, separated by vineyards and farmland.
Soon, they turn to travellers’ accommodations—inns, stables, roadway temples honoring gods of tales smaller than the mention of a meal. Still, these places are well-kept by the people devout to them, with sweet-smelling grain rotting on their stone tables and hardened honey crusting on its sides. The inns stand, at most, one storey high, surrounded by utility sheds and outdoor restrooms. Vines scale their sides and obscure the finely fractured stone underneath, all laid a long time ago with steady hands. All their windows shuttered, though drunken song pours out, even in the day’s earlier hours. The first pockets of organized civilization in sometime—clumps of houses, busy marketplaces, family-owned stores, and places of jovial entertainment—greet us before its gate and array of heaven-reaching towers, their walls of limestone and their bricks of Greek make. “The Greeks settled this area first,” Lucretius said as we approached. “If you look close, you can still see the stamps on the brickwork.” But we were too far for that level of detailed observation. Inside the home of a family who lived almost atop the city’s walls, we righted our appearances. While Marcellina untied her wrinkled skirts, Otho removed and folded his cloak. Upon request the household’s husband—quite frightened at the sight of a soldier this far inside Roman borders— “lent” me an old tunic of his. While he was taller than I and it was threadbare from years of use, the quality was good and the fabric thick; his wife was a good weaver. Even if it had been inches too short or torn down the back, it was better than a tunic with a bloodstain dominating its waist. We thanked them for the tunic and the use of one of their rooms and strolled the rest of the distance between us and the city gate. One final time before our entrance, I turned to the hills behind us, but all I could see were the buildings that speckled the land and the stroke of gray which led us across that sea of green and gold. In passing the guard, Otho matches step with Lucretius and Marcellina with me, our gazes averted, though this man’s mind is elsewhere. We enter without issue and plunge into a place immediately more busy than the one we’ve just left. Its streets bustle with activity and spill citizens, its buildings claiming every unpaved inch. Between towering apartment buildings and stacked shops, every part has its use, all in excess of its intended purpose, sustaining an even buzz in every moment. Even still, the greatest attraction sits atop a promontory, backed by the sun when setting: the acropolis of Elea, the castle on the sea. “We should stop by a bathhouse while we’re here.” Otho said. The conversation had long since been drowned out by the city, which—while not loud, per se—occupied every part of my mind. Those residing tops of the apartment buildings, the people closest to the heavens and the gods, were the ones to most often die in cities’ frequent fires, but this was the only reason they could afford to live there at all. Despite the lack of worry on the faces of some of its people, I knew most of them are as free as Marcellina and I—which is to say, not at all—and yet we’ll take advantage of their services for our entire stay, and then some. There are people stuck maintaining the sewers and the coal-burning bathhouses, there are people sweating through days in farms just as they did at home, there are people, there are people, there are people-- “I need to sit down.” The declaration took the last of my breath from me. I’ve always wanted to see the city in all its majesty, the drawn arches of its marketplaces and the smooth-skinned statues. “I can’t stand the city.” Though I’ve wanted to love it for years. Otho rested a hand on my shoulder, a kind look in his eyes. “We’ll be at Adrastus’ within the hour. Can you make it until then?” He said. I nodded and rubbed my eyes. “Do you know where he lives?” He turned to Lucretius. Lucretius’ chest fell. “I—he isn’t a senator—no.” Otho waved it off. “He probably lives in his father’s house,” He picked up his pace to lead the pack of us once more. “I know the city, unless it’s changed too much in the last decade.” “Are you from here?” said Marcellina. We turned a corner from the wide, main street to a smaller but equally busy one. Here the crowd was more densely packed and slower moving. He nodded in return. “In all honesty, I hoped we’d taken long enough that Adrastus had moved on before we arrived. My family hasn’t moved once since Rome took over this land.” A shiver tore down his spine. It was a large city as far as I could tell, but occupying the same one bore the opportunity for a run-in, or rumors, at the very least. Once I had asked him what they’d do if reunited—his only response was I don’t know in a voice more defeated than I’d consciously heard escape his lips. “We could ask a local,” Lucretius offered. “We should ask a local.” he said. We continued in the direction Otho had initially led us in. As we moved down it, the street we were on narrowed past a point, its foot traffic fading away. Eventually we were forced to turn down one side road or another at a forking junction, of which Otho chose the left turn, in the direction bearing the acropolis, the sea, and its ports. A dozen turns and a full hour later, Otho stopped in his tracks and turned to us. “I’ve realized something,” he said. “I might not know where Adrastus lives now.” “Why not?” Lucretius said, sinking into his tired heels. “When I was young, at least, he was virtually never home—this and his disinterest in the subject meant that his wife had control of both the finances and their residence in his absence, so even he would lose track of where he lived after he returned to the city and need directions himself.” “Why was he gone so much?” I asked. A boyish smile crept onto his face, though he beat it back. “He was a hero—every boy I knew wanted to be like him when we were children. He’d fought at Carthage and scorched his lands, pillaged its treasures and returned home with them, then left for more, crossing Italy for two decades doing—something. Some of us thought he was collecting artifacts from a far-off age, others thought he might have slain monsters of the mountains and sea, and a minority of us theorized he fought in wars beyond the bounds of Mediterranean land.” “In Asia? Or Germania?” Lucretius’ eyes shone. In the days of his boyhood, every hero of this sort was leftover from the days when Otho, Marcellina, and I had been that young, heroes like Adrastus whose adventures carried beyond wars, or failing this the heroes even our grandfathers had been raised on—pious Aeneas, Perseus, Hector, and many more besides. Otho shook his head. “I always favored the idea of him as an artificer, with poetry on the side. It was the person I dreamed of being as an adult.” He clapped his hands together. “Regardless of all of that, we’re in dire need of directions. Where should we start?” A woman passed, and Marcellina reached out and tugged her sleeve. “Excuse me, do you know where—” she turned to Otho. “Adrastus Pontius.” “Where Adrastus Pontius lives?” She apologized, shook her head, and went on her way. “It was a start.” Marcellina said. We came across a murder and a woman. The birds—the dozen of them that there were—had cornered her and composed themselves into a quarter-circle around her, with the woman’s back to the wall. The sleeve of her cloak—only a handful of shades lighter than their feathers—was drawn over her face as she shrunk away from their inquisitive stares and frustrated caws. “Ma’am?” Lucretius addressed the woman. “They haven’t left me all day,” the woman exclaimed, her voice shaking as she spoke. “They need to go.” Marcellina, in one motion, drew her spear and sliced the air just over the flock’s heads. They startled and took flight in an instant. She strode towards the woman, whose face was now more visible to us. Despite her old age, she bore few lines on her face, besides the slight sagging of her cheeks. Her eyes were small and dark, while her eyebrows were thin and her lips thinner. Besides these things, it was unremarkable; we could forget it easily soon after we parted ways. “Thank you, lovely one.” Her lip twinged as she spoke. She took Marcellina’s hands, one folded over the other, in hers and patted them. “It’s no problem. Just birds.” She shrugged. She glanced over her shoulder, a none-too-humble smile on her face. She was more grateful for the gesture than the stranger. “Oh—” She drew one back hand to snap. “Do you live nearby?” “Yes, lovely one.” Her lips twisted into a smile. “Do you know where Adrastus Pontius lives?” The corners of her eyes rose and her lips parted further. “Yes. I was going there. His family knows me. I can take you.” Marcellina looked to us once more. “Of course. Do you need anything else before we go, ma’am? I may walk you home later, if you require it.” said Otho. Her smile fell and she wove him off. “We need to go this way.” She shuffled in the direction she indicated—one perpendicular to the one we’d taken—west, opposite the wall bearing the city’s gate, while we had directed ourselves northward. Our new order had Marcellina and the woman—who refused to come within several feet of Lucretius (“He’s a fool.” She’d said.) or Otho (“He’s a nuisance.” She’d declared.)—at the front, with Lucretius, Otho, and I following a few feet behind. We were all uncomfortable by now. Lucretius’ feet drug, Otho fidgeted with the padding beneath his armor every few minutes, my eyes were planted on the old woman, and Marcellina tripped over her skirts every few yards. Once she reached down to tie them up as she had in the rest of our travels, but the old woman swatted her arm with her left hand. Marcellina obeyed without a spoken thought, though her nerves were just as worn as ours. The sun had lowered in the sky to a great extent by the time we reached our destination; Adrastus’—my brother’s—home. The path which lead to its front door split off from the road yards before the front gate, paved in a lighter stone than the rest of the street. Much, though not all, of the sky above was obscured by fig trees, whose fruit remained unplucked and was allowed to cover the ground in their rotten form, a sweet perfume spread across the path. From between these trees, soft-featured, rounded faces watched us. Whether they were workers of a family or something else altogether I had no desire to know, and pressed ahead, gaze averted. As we passed more of the greenery, the previously curtained house became more visible to us. From what I could tell, it boasted a full four floors and battered red roof tiles of ceramic nature. While the ground was soft with water, the house itself was untouched and dry as a bone. While we approached its eastern face, those facing the sea sported exterior windows and balconies on upper floors. We could not see inside these doors in windows, left to wonder what was inside. We reached the entrance to the house—barred by another gate, this one iron as well—and the woman moved to the back of our group. Beside this gate hung a bell, gold in color but made of brass or something like it nonetheless. Otho gaze it a ring and we shuffled once more: he and I at the front, Lucretius just behind us in his most senatorial pose, and Marcellina with the old woman at the back. “What will he do?” Lucretius asked. He adjusted the placement of his bag’s strap. “Am I presentable?” Marcellina snorted and nodded in response. A sigh of relief came from each of us when we were greeted by a maid, Adrastus nowhere in sight. “What do you need?” She asked, rubbing the last of some stubborn dough from her hands with a rag she soon threw aside. She was just younger than Marcellina and I, a few years separating us at most, and wore her hair in a loose bun as Marcellina does, her skirts tied up around her knees as Marcellina did. “We’re here to see Adrastus Pontius.” Otho replied. “Government business or military business?” She asked. Her eyes widened. “They haven’t picked another war in Africa, have they?” “No,” I said, exchanging a nerve-filled look with Otho. “Family business.” Her brow furrowed. “Are you his—” She looked me over, her brows furrowing further. “—son? Gaius Adrastus Pontius?” How old was he, to have a son close to my age? “I’m his brother,” I gestured to myself, a bead of sweat rolling down my back that exact moment. She stared for a few moments longer, the same expression on her face. “Forgive me, I was moved here just a few months ago. I didn’t know his father had another child.” “I don’t know that he does either; I’m his mother’s son alone. My father was Greek.” “Oh. Of course. Come in, come in.” She stepped aside, hands clasped until Marcellina past. “And you must be his sister.” Marcellina laughed. “I love how often this happens. No, I’m Marcellina, his dear friend.” She extended a hand to shake, a broad smile on her face. “My apologies.” The maid groaned, a smile appearing on hers too. While our greeter—who introduced herself as “Aglaia”—was swept up in conversation with Marcellina, another slave of the household pulled us in the right direction. His home boasted wide halls, most separate from the courtyard at the house’s center. Despite the lavish nature of the estate, not an inch was covered in foliage or plants of any kind. While the ceiling was open to the light of day, the floor had been replaced with rough concrete. The yard still bore shrines to the gods—the largest for their lare, smaller ones for others—but offerings were made in coin, fabrics, honey, and wine, oats and grains absent along with the bones of animals and leftovers of meals. Strange. The interior walls were decorated with trophies, tapestries, and long stretches of unused fabric of great quality. The tapestries told tales of war and beastly strife, all sharing a reddened version of blood’s shade belonging to whichever beast or enemy was slain. In the first we saw, it was a troupe of soldiers, marked with purple dye as Carthaginians--how old is he?—the last a hoofed monster held onto a mountain cliff’s edge by the warrior’s blood-clothed spear alone. The trophies, as with the tapestry stories, ranged from the armor to men to the horns and snouts of beasts, all carved from their now incomplete and ravaged bodies. All these had some measure of dried blood on their surface or stained into it. Between these proofs of war-like strength were the stretches of fabric. Some were simple but covered in a design of golden thread, others were entire bolts of purple-dyed silks. The most expensive dye in the Mediterranean—perhaps the world—together with its rarest fabric left as decorations as nonchalauntly as most boasted ridged clay pots, of which he also possessed many. At the end of it all, we reached a set of double doors. Made of carved, dark wood, they loomed before us at nearly twice our heights. “You’re guests?” Our guide asked us. Lucretius shrugged, Otho looked to me, and I nodded. “Whoever doesn’t need to speak to the commander can settle in.” All our eyes fell on Lucretius. His shoulders caved. “Please, yes.” She waved goodbye to us and left with Lucretius. The moment they turned a corner, Otho took my hand and pressed a kiss to my knuckles, his hand shaking as much as mine, though his face betrayed none of the same fear and anxiety. Eyes on eachother, we stood in this position for several moments, each of us delaying the beginning of the end of our journey. Finally, he said, “Are you ready?” I took back my hand, unbanded my hair and combed it through a few times. A few wrinkles shaken from my borrowed tunic and a smudge wiped off by Otho later, I said, “I will never be more than I am now.” He laughed. “It will be alright. It can only be so bad, and even then, things can be done to make it better.” “You think so?” “If not, I will create them myself.” I felt a pang of affection in my heart as we exchanged a final kiss. “Shall we?” An unwelcome but familiar being stood at the foot of our bed. In spite of the room’s bad lighting and the six feet between us, I knew every detail of her face, plain as day. She moved, though the room and all its contents stood deathly still, even when she brushed past. Her height was great—taller than any man—but the effect wore out long ago. Besides; I knew her already to be weaker than any other god, and even they have limits.
She stared not at me, but at the body next to me. I extended a hand to warn him, to wake him, but she raised one of her own. A sign to stop. The first time I’d seen her—then from a distance, but in waking hours—I had mistaken her for a servant of Silvia, or the goddess herself. I looked closer, and found neither were true: in addition to the stick-thin, sickly form of an unbound dryad she lacked the power of Kallikrata and the volatile personality of stronger gods. Every meeting following this, initiated by her, her face portrayed the same emotions, though whether she felt any of them I never knew. Her words, her gestures, even the feigned twitches on the edge of her lip were the same, unchanged by time or circumstance. “He is the key,” She said each time. The only difference between now and then was that I know who “he” is now, though I suspected for some time. Now he sleeps next to me, unaware. “Though he knows—” She froze. “He knows of the gods,” I said. I mopped the last clinging bits of sleep from my face and shook his shoulder. Beside me, he grumbled, and my vision distorted. “He has seen the face of his mother, though it was but the surface of her rage. He has witnessed the wrath of Apollo, inflicted on another,” I paused and watched as her solemn expression evaporated, replaced by genuine desperation, of grasping at a cliff’s rocky face for a hold against fate pulling one irrevocably downward. “A day will come when the highest men of Rome will fall--” “Lady, he is no more a hero or soldier than a farmer. You have to have heard of his time in the fields—it was such a tragedy his master gave him two boys to watch instead. Though I love him, I must admit he couldn’t hold a weapon, let alone make use of one. He cannot kill, nor fight. His heart would not take it, even if his body could. Who do you think him to be, lady?” “Son of Kalli--son of Kalli—” She repeated the phrase without flaw. “Son of Kalli--son of Kalli--son of Kalli--son of Kalli—” The same intonation, identical movements—even the tiny sounds her teeth made when they struck together were replicated. Then she stopped, and my heart fell cold. “Son of Gaius Avitus Scaevola.” She spoke in a deeper voice than ever before. Shivers slid down my back, my muscles tightened without my call. “I am the lare compitalicii to the house servants belonging to the Tiberi.” My stomach twisted. She was the household goddess Marcellina prayed to daily, the one of whom she carried a statue—a statue now cracked and broken—the one she carried with her all this way across Italy. If I trusted the gods more than I do, I would swear to them now. Instead, I slid a hand down the sheets towards my weapons—I had no preference between them now. She stood on the opposite side of the bed, on Akakios’. She would not see until it was too late. I opened my mouth to speak, but she waved another hand before my face. “Your patron-mother, she who gave you another life and offers you service in return, owes me three lifetimes for the wrongs done against my honor. The second of the three will be the hero Adrastus’. The third, his.” I awoke. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Otho woke me up with shivers rolling down my back. “Are you okay? What—who is it?” My mouth was awake and moving before my mind had the chance to catch up. It was still dark out, and there wasn’t any noise within earshot. Either everyone downstairs—in the bar—had gone to sleep early, or it was the dead of night. He shook his head. I sat up to get a better look at him—uninjured, but sweating like a pig. “Are you okay?” I repeated. “I—it was nothing. Only a bad dream.” He placed one hand on my back, encouraging me to lay back down, to not think of it anymore. Rather than do just that, I stared him in the eye, and for the first time in a while, he avoided my gaze. This broke the moment he glanced back. His shoulders fell and his chest heaved a great sigh, as a measure of guilt dropped from both. “It isn’t anything worth worrying about,” He lied. “Another visit from another minor goddess—weaker than even your mother—threatening to claim one of Kallikrata’s debts.” “Who is she?” I said. “The lare of your and Marcellina’s house. Kallikrata drove her there some time ago, when the lands there were first settled. Before this, she was a nymph. Ever since she’s resented your mother and claimed ownership to this and that, but it’s never amounted to anything but minor plagues on her loved ones and a handful of deaths.” Only a few minutes after waking up, a headache was already forming, building up against the front of my skull. There was so much politics, so many obscure stories and rivalries I didn’t know—yet, I’m caught between them all. I collapsed into his chest. He stroked my hair and whispered. “It’ll all be over soon. I promise.” I groaned. “It will, you’re right.” “It will end well soon.” I looked up. His resolve shone in his eyes, brighter than the surrounding room. It said: It will end well soon because I will make it. I will make it go well, and we will be free of these things. I fell asleep believing in this promise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The rest of the day was blessedly uneventful. After weeks of one tragedy after the other, we welcomed it with open arms, caution flung to the winds. We passed the remaining mountains and streams, cut through a forest and crossed open fields. This was the most I could say of them. The sky was clear, aside from a few breaths of cloud, and no one stood in our way. There was no trouble with the roads here—they’re paved, untouched by rain and snow. Weeds poked through their cracks, but were trampled with ease. Lucretius, Otho, and I maintained conversation throughout, with Marcellina joining in where there was a dip. Coletta, dogs, strangers we’d met, breakfast—we talked about anything and everything but what was at the end of the road. This we avoided with as much constancy as travelling in the dead of night. “Did you ever ask that girl out?” She asked Lucretius at lunch. His face turned beet-red. “Yes.” he squeaked. Otho chuckled and clapped him on the back. “Hey—look—” Lucretius huffed. He crossed his arms and stared into his oatmeal for a moment. Then he looked up with renewed confidence. “At least I have the nerve to say something without Marcellina coaching me for two weeks.” I nudged his armored shoulder. “I concede.” He sighed, then lifted his sword and held it out to Lucretius by the hilt. “I suppose you’ll replace me as our courageous leader. To fight those things which go bump in the night and shriek in the light of day.” All color fell from his face. “No that’s—that’s alright.” “No no—we need you, Lucretius. Be our hero.” Marcellina cackled. “Do you remember that time a wolf got into the kitchens?” I cringed. Gods, what a mess. “Yes, but you didn’t have to bring it up.” She turned to Otho. “So about four years ago the boys were bored to death apparently—” I held a hand up as I interrupted. “Was that the night we borrowed your father’s copy of the Telemachy and I sat around watching while you and Sextus reenacted somewhere in the range of half of it?” “Marce, tell the story.” “You two spent an hour talking me into that! He could’ve had me whipped for that, you know.” I snapped, though if I’m honest it was all I could do not to smile. He really wouldn’t’ve—and the boys would have lied and said they did it, or told the truth and said they pressured me into it. Now that I thought of it, the bigger risk we took was Sextus taking one of his father’s spears from the war. They’re just catching dust. He said. I shook my head. Why hadn’t I thought of that then? He hissed her nickname again, and she dove into the story. “Yeah, so you begged us to let you help in the kitchen, and your father was having a whole troupe of senators and all that over for dinner, so we needed the hands anyway,” I joined them as well, and while I was terrible in the kitchen it was nothing compared to thirteen and twelve year-old Sextus and Lucretius. “I think we had some dormice, chickens, that kind of thing—but we also had this pig.” “Not Senator Avitus, I hope?” Lucretius said. Marcellina stared at him, waiting for an explanation. “So—the pig. For some reason, your father wanted it broken up and served in pieces, not all at once, so we did all of that—got rid of the fat, saved the bones and the feet for stew, everything—and when it came time to serve the pig we left the two of you behind in the kitchen, to watch everything. Which—” She gestured to me. “Agedum—” I shook my head. “—is that what you were supposed to be doing? Just watching the kitchen?” “I was twelve, I didn’t—” “We left the pig fat and all the little scraps we kept for ourselves on the counter, thinking you would be watching them, rather than reading poetry with Akakios. Being close to woods, wolves do happen sometimes--you know what I mean—and leaving meat unattended with the door open tends to attract animals like that. So, when that happened and you came back while the rest of us were waiting on the senators and their wives, just what did you yell, Lucretius?” She grinned ear-to-ear while he scowled. He sighed. “Help me Sextus—” They said it together. “Help me Sextus!” and broke into laughter together, her first, then him giving in and joining her. “You know what’s weird?” He said. Otho interjected. “The three of you haven’t any stories with me in them, despite my active role in your lives?’ He gave him a good-hearted smile, the warmth of a hearth in his eyes and the lines of fresh-folded linens around his mouth. “No, no, we do,” I said. “There’s—there’s the one where you ambushed Sextus, Lucretius, and I. Or, rather, tackled me.” “Well, you see, Akakios—” He stopped and bit his lip. “There’s a simple explanation for that.” We reached the top of a hill, and the city poked up onto the horizon. Its buildings and monuments were hardly soaring, even for such a large one, but it claimed every inch of land within its reach, and blocked from view the seas beyond and more. We’d watched as the land sloped down to it from the mountains, long since left behind, and now it was not a stream or river nor the lands themselves which drew our eyes, but that southern city we’d spent so long striving towards. Our approach halted, and all our smiles and merry laughter fell away. There it was. Homes, temples, bathhouses, places of business and of state, all the docks and houses storing the goods which were only theirs for fleeting moments—all laid out before us—this and everything which prowled within its walls, waiting only for us. Marcellina fell back to the melancholy of the past mornings, her eyes dark and her smiles frozen at the edges. Meanwhile, Lucretius paled a shade further, the words about to be uttered now caught in his mouth. In a last-ditch attempt to reassure us in spite of his steeled exterior and the newfound tension with which he seized his sword, Otho threw a final smile over his shoulder. “I tripped, is all. It wasn’t on purpose. It just--happens sometimes, you know?” With that, we took what would be some of our last steps toward the city. Toward Elea. Part 1
The following day, it rained. Every road was slick, and every time it let up and we set foot outside the door to move forward with our journey it poured a new bounty upon us. So, rather than spend our day inside, we left our things there and took advantage of one of the brief respites from the rain to dash to the restaurant we’d eaten lunch in the day before. A young woman with light hair and strong arms met us at the door with a broom in her hands. The owner’s daughter, probably. She showed us to a table—not so close to the edge of the restaurant’s overhang that we’d get wet leaning out one way or another, but not so close to the building that the smell of the food they prepared overwhelmed us—I ran into it immediately. The first part of this day we spent largely in silence. This was for a few reasons, the first being how early it was. No matter how long we got up before the crack of dawn, only Marcellina could drag herself out of bed with a fresh face within the first hour. The rest of us rubbed our eyes, dressed, and spent the rest of that time either groaning and yawning or stretching to keep ourselves awake—Lucretius and I primarily guilt of the former, Otho of the latter. The second was Marcellina’s mood. She hadn’t spoken a word all morning, not when Otho said, “How do you think muscles know how to do the things they do?”—this was a favorite topic of theirs—and not when Lucretius said, “Who do you think could throw this loaf the furthest?” referring to a rock-hard loaf of bread the young man we met left out on another table. Otho shrugged and took the loaf. He squared his shoulders and leaned back on one leg, gaze locked on a point in the near distance. Then he chucked it-- —and it shattered low on the wall of a building across the street. Still, Lucretius clapped him on the shoulder. “That was awesome. Can you show me how to do that?” “No.” He said with a stern face. He turned to me, cracking a smile. The four of us lapsed into silence again. Fifteen minutes or so into none of us talking and Lucretius sneaking glances—or rather, short stares—at the young woman serving us, he asked, “For no reason in particular, how do you talk to—you know, uh, people? Like—you know, just wondering.” The three of us exchanged looks. Marcellina smirked and gestured for Otho or I to go first. Not a minute into the conversation and already my heart beat so quickly it could be mistaken for a stampede. I turned to Otho—his eyes were widened as he watched me. Then he turned to Lucretius. “Be direct. What do you want from this girl?” Lucretius opened his mouth and Otho cut him off. “Tell her, and ask for it. If she says no, accept her answer, and nurse the resulting pain before moving forward.” Lucretius stared at him, eyes wide and lip quivering. “Or,” Marcellina leaned closer, one hand up with which to gesture. “You take the more direct approach.” The melancholy claiming control over her features just moments before had evaporated, and was replaced by the more familiar scheming, mischievous expression she previously wore so often. She shrugged and leaned back in her seat. “Just walk up and propose on the spot.” “I can’t do that.” She shrugged a second time. “It always works for me. The key, Lucretius is to look over your shoulder as you’re walking away and wink. She’ll say, ooh, who’s that fella? I bet he’s a real romantic.” Our poor boy was about to faint by now. “Akakios?” He said desperately, a frown in his eyes as he held a hand to his forehead. What a situation. Feigning thought, I tented my fingers and held my crossed hands over my mouth as I picked a spot on the table to watch. Truthfully? I had no better idea of what to do than he does. I haven’t spoken to Otho myself—what was I to tell him? “Here’s what you do,” I said. “Use the charm and wit we know you have, make eye contact, and wave. Then back off. If she’s interested—” I waved my hands to fill in a sentence I had no intention of ending. He nodded, and after a moment collecting himself, he waved to attract the boy’s attention and winked with both eyes. Then, under his breath, he said to us, “I’m dying alone.” Marcellina nodded solemnly and Otho patted Lucretius on the shoulder. “You could always read her your poetry.” She said. His face lit up. Oh dear gods in your lofty heavens, no. Lucretius turned from us and dug around in his bag of scrolls, quills, and inkwells and returned with one of each, the scroll empty, the inkwell close to full. Without hesitation, he furiously scribbled and scrawled until, at the end, he held up the finished product to present to us, though the display was for too short a time for me to read it, and Otho’s face was in his hands at the time. He jumped up and, with a bounce in his step, walked to the distant table where the young lady in question was wiping down the insides of glasses with rags. We couldn’t hear either of them well, and the snippets of conversation we caught included Lucretius introducing himself, the phrases “eyes of twin skies”, “my heart as an eagle, soars”, and something I was sure was a reference to the poetry of sappy Sappho. I too knew that section by heart, as it took daily lessons for two weeks one summer for Lucretius to grasp the passage’s subtext—this and he hadn’t been fully paying attention. “Did it work?” I whispered. Lucretius glanced over the girl’s shoulder, his expression pleading come help me! Otho leaned forward, gripping the table’s edge with one hand to steady himself. “I can’t see her face,” he said, then tilting to the right. “I don’t know.” The sheet of poetry was raised as Lucretius read its final lines, this time in a voice that—though the distance muddled his words—sounded more confident and sure. He finished, lowered it, and looked so her expectantly. The three of us leaned closer, as though we could overhear her response with that shorted distance. Her jaw moved as she spoke, her arms and hands as she gestured, though they ended on her hips. Lucretius turned bright red, and the girl bent over, laughing. Wiping away a tear, she straightened up and asked a question started by, “So how long are—” He hesitated, mouth hanging open, until he laughed and coughed out an answer and a shrug. Her shoulders sunk, but she kissed him on the cheek and patted him on the shoulder as she passed and reentered the building. “How’d it go?” Marcellina said as Lucretius sunk into our table’s vacant seat. He planted his face into the table and groaned. Only I laughed, though Marcellina smiled as she cooed and stroked Lucretius’ back. Otho studied his hands as he each of them in sequence on the table, index, middle, ring, pinky, index, middle, ring, pinky… Then he looked at me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part 2 We sunk back-first into the bed. It was hard, and uncomfortable, but it was better than standing for another moment. The heat that day, even with the rain, had been unbearable, though this seemed the case for only Otho and I; we mentioned it to Marcellina and she said the weather was fine, and Lucretius hadn’t mentioned it once. He’d been preoccupied, but this was beside the point. It might have been many minutes or even an hour before either of us said a word, despite our agreement to—uh—to chat. One hand behind him while the other trapped itself under his side, he turned and faced me. “Why did you tell him not to flirt with that guy?” It was just a lazy smile—his eyelids drooped though he couldn’t have been that tired, and his lips stayed closed when he fell silent—the rest isn’t important. “I didn’t know what to say.” I sat up and pushed hair away from my face. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. He sighed, and laughed. Crap. I could barely see him—we hadn’t lit any candles so the only light was what snuck through the curtains. Outside it was dark, overcast, and maybe still raining. In here it was dark, but everything was dry and had a curious blue tint to it. The sheets, the dark floorboards, the low ceiling, our skin. Everything. The air was fresh, the stiff and heavy stuff before had been changed out for the new. Easy to move through, easier to breathe. “That—that makes sense.” For a moment, I thought he’d stand. Maybe he’d light a candle or leave, but he just settled down in his spot and crossed his legs. His armor was in the corner in a neat stack, clean as a whistle, and yet I’d never seen him clean it or found out when he had. He’d fought a river god, trekked through a forest--two, even—broken into a filthy shed, killed a deer and hunted it down, trained and practiced in the mud, but not once. I’m avoiding the conversation, aren’t I? I cleared my throat. “You advised “the direct method”?” “Ugh,” He ran a hand down his face. “To be honest, I didn’t know what to tell him either. I basically just told him what I thought would be easiest. If you just say something, there’s no agonizing while you try and find the right thing to say, or the right moment to say it. There’s no planning, but you have an answer. It’s—a better option.” I groaned. “I feel like a teenager.” He snickered, then erupted into full laughter, his body shaking the bed as he nodded through it and tried to get the next sentence out. It was like snapping a tight string—it all came out at once. When he looked back up, the string was pulled taut again. He shuffled into a new position, then another, only to return to the first. “Funny, I thought it was only me.” he said after a long pause. His mouth hung open after that. Did he not know what to say? Then I remembered that pain in my stomach, from earlier. I remembered it because, when I stretched then, it came back in all its raging glory. Without the time for a second thought, I sucked in a sharp breath and drew one hand over it. It was the same spot I’d been stabbed—besides being something one doesn’t forget in less than two weeks, the stain had proved stubborn. The worst part wasn’t the pain, but the placement. He leaned forward, a hand outstretched. “May I?” I could have told him myself that it was just surface pain, that it had healed fine and I’d knocked into a table earlier and the placement was a coincidence. It was a bruise, at worst—the sun god may have left me out for several days, but he did not fail to deliver a full recovery. He didn’t need to check it, because nothing was wrong. “Of course.” I said. He scooted closer and I moved my hand aside as he placed tentative fingers over the “wound”, eyes trained on the spot and straining in the low light to see anything. “Scale of one to ten, how much?” “Ten being?” “Well—” he gestured to it. “Fatal wound.” I shrugged. “Two. I just rammed a table earlier. With—with the middle of my—” “—of your body.” He looked up, smiling. “Don’t look at me that way, I’m not laughing at you.” And dammit, I smiled too. He straightened his back and sat up, now much closer than before. “Maybe I am. But only a little. And it’s not bad if you laugh with me.” Much closer. His smile faded as he bit his lip and moved on to the next thought. “So,” “You know what I don’t like about the direct approach?” I blurted out. My face lit up at once, and not in the healthy, joyous glow type of light, no, it was the pomegranate-red, lit on fire type of light. I fell silent for a moment, half-hoping—who am I kidding--just hoping that he would intercede and answer my rhetorical question. The longer he didn’t, the more waves of heat rolled off my body. “It’s—it’s--intimidating. It’s staring down a lion naked, or standing at the top of a sheer cliff and praying to every god that comes to mind that something catches you and you aren’t torn to ribbons like gossamer on the rocks below, because you can see every one and despite how brightly they shine in the sun, especially when the waves crash over them and that frothing foam catches the light, they’ll destroy you in a breath.” I snapped my fingers at the end of it. He sat there, watching me, dumbfounded. Two, three, a dozen times words broke on his lips as he opened his mouth to release them. The hand pressed to that spot over my stomach—I’d forgotten it was there—became stiff, while his other hovered in the space between us. Though they darted down moment to moment, his eyes stayed focused on mine. If I moved them, if I looked anywhere else I could see his chest rise and fall slower and slower, I could watch him shift his limbs so he wouldn’t be in a bad position, I could catch the hair falling into his face when it happened. But I didn’t. Instead, I watched him watch me as we leaned closer, closer, closer— Marcellina and I stood and watched as the god struck our friend and fled not a moment later. We watched as he dropped to his knees, hands pressed to his wound, listened as he wailed pain and cried blood. No one joined us; the barbershop’s customers and employees alike had fled.
Much the same way we escorted him to the inn, we carried Aelius home. In the streets people parted for us and fell silent at the sight. A few women whispered to their neighbor, “Should I do something?” but none of them did. Men swore to the gods, children hid behind their mothers. The only sound everywhere we went was Aelius’ body-wracking sobs and ones produced in the distance by people who knew no differently than they had the moment before, or would the moments after. We stayed the night and left the next morning. Otho spoke with my mother about staying longer, to help Aelius. She outright declined and insisted we get moving at once, but could bring him if it didn’t slow us down. Otho requested that she ease his pain, or heal him altogether. A neighbor tended to him while he moaned as we left. The whole day and well into the evening Marcellina said hardly more than a word, and even then it was the bare necessities. Yes, she was hungry and wanted lunch. Yes, she wanted to stop walking later tonight than normal. No, she didn’t think going around the mountains rather than through them was a bad idea. Neither I nor Otho or Lucretius prodded her for more than that. She prayed silently and did exercises with Otho without comment. He told me later that they’d started doing that while I was recovering. A distraction for both of them, he said. We stopped close to midnight, at least four hours later than our usual. We walked off the road for a bit, then picked a place to settle down and build a small fire. While Otho was off in the near-distance picking out wood for it, Lucretius and I dug a small pit to make it in. The ground was dry, but the sky promised rain. We’ll need to get to a town or an inn by tomorrow night, or at best the day after’s evening. “Aelius helped me write some poetry while we were in Venusia,” he said. “I think I’m getting better. I mean, it’s just been the one week, but I think I’m doing real good.” “You’ll have to show me tomorrow at lunch.” I said. There wasn’t enough light left in the day to do it tonight, and my eyes yearned for the sweet relief of sleep. While quite the avid reader, Lucretius had never been much of a writer, but it was a hobby that made sense for him. “What’d he show you?” He shrugged as if he weren’t excited over just thinking about it, as if I didn’t know better. I smiled. He said, “Oh, some things about meter. You know, feet and all of those things.” I didn’t know, but nodded and went along. “And some nifty shortcuts. It’s funny—you’d think after reading and speaking Latin all my life I’d’ve caught on to those things, but no. It’s all very crafty.” He turned over onto his back, hands on his belly. “Guess that’s why those prophecies are so—” He gestured to nothing in particular. I nodded in agreement. “Oh—oh oh oh.” He sat up and said with bright eyes, “Aelius told us some prophecies. You know, about the whole—” He scrunched up his nose and grimaced comically. “—Adrastus business. And some other things, I think.” I motioned for him to spit it out, and he crossed his legs and got to it. “One of them was about that “favored son” business, and he phrased it in such a cool way so that “prefior file”—” Favored son. “—was on the opposite side of the line from “[doomed] dea”. You know, to show the emotional distance between the two. Don’t you just love Latin? I think he called it anaphora, or something like that. You can’t do that with Greek or—or whatever they speak up in Gaul.” He went on about grammar and word order until Otho came back. Otho set down the wood behind Lucretius and mouthed “Is this about the prophecies?” I nodded. Then he mouthed, “Come talk to me after he goes to bed.” “Lucretius,” I said. “Do you remember what the prophecies themselves were? Inexact terms will do.” He nodded. “The favored son of Silvia will return to the country’s—Italy, I think he meant—to the country’s heel to settle a debt—” That might mean anywhere from Venusia to Brundisium to Rudiae. Then he settled into an exaggerated version of Aelius’ voice for the next part. “—and on this day, his fate settled, his beloved will be rescued and returned to a novel home. Then something about blood and revenge and all that, you know, to make the rescue happen, but it ends with something about the estranged son and someone who’s just “the beloved” ending in opposite fates, one fallen at the hands of the Favored, the other at the hands of “death far-flung”.” He shrugged. “Prophecy’s weird.” Stretching his arms, he yawned. “And exhausting. How long do you think, until we get to Elea?” “If it doesn’t rain, two days. If it does, three.” Otho sat down on my other side, now finished preparing the growing fire. Although Lucretius had put his masterful weaving skills to use and made small pads of grass for us, the ground was still cold and hard. A fire might help with one and not the other, but it was better to deal with only one. “Do we know where we’re going to stay? If we don’t, I have friends—” Lucretius stopped when Otho ground his teeth and turned away. “No, no, listen: They aren’t anyone you know, and they don’t know my father, either, really. They’re poets.” “Poets?” "Yeah, poets. I sent a letter ahead while we were in Venusia. They’ve got a big house out there. I’m thinking of joining them after all this is over actually.” He puffed out his chest. Otho studied Lucretius for a moment, then ventured, “Why?” He beamed. Some preparation had gone into his answer—knowing Lucretius, he’d been waiting for someone to ask for sometime and rehearsed his answer for just the occasion. “Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m not cut out for the military. We knew that, but—well—right, and we’ve met some senators and stuff and they were kind of awful, which I also knew, but sort of ignored. Anyway, I don’t wanna be like that. So, I was thinking, “What can I do with my life that doesn’t involve terrible, sucky people or murder?” Or, you know, both. I won’t have to serve or get married or have kids—it’s perfect.” “And your father will approve?” He hesitated. “Well—no. I think he wants me to marry Marcia Fossila when she’s old enough. She’s a nice girl, but—” he pulled at his collar. Otho’s face darkened. “Don’t lie to me. Is your plan to run off straight from, Elea, Lucretius?” He didn’t say no. “Fine. We’ll talk about it in the morning, but you need to do it right if you’re doing something else. You could end up on the street, or worse.” He said. “Otho, don’t worry, I have it figured out. I won’t end up on the street. I mean, it’ll be hard, but I can do other things to make money while I’m building up my portfolio or what have you—it’ll be fine.” He stood. “Do you want to know my plan?” Lucretius nodded. “I didn’t want to be a senator—they were too stuffy—and I didn’t want to be a soldier and have to listen to somebody tell me what to do, and I didn’t want to get married yet, especially because I thought the girl my father engaged me to was insane, so I decided to become a poet. Do you know how that worked out?” Smiling, Lucretius sat there staring up at Otho as his mind turned it through. Slowly but surely, the smile slid off his face and replaced itself with a stone dragging down his heart. “Well, you’re here. Wait—I thought you were a soldier.” “I also lied. I serve a goddess; you know that. Why do you think I do it?” Then Lucretius put it together—or at least as much of it as I have—that Otho distrusted the gods at best, and aside from the recent exception wouldn’t do anything to serve them, not voluntarily. He knew the deal with Apollo, or thought he did. He’d done the whole thing before, or close, and mentioned his service to my mother before. It wasn’t pious devotion, it was repaying some kind of debt, like reparations for a crime. Or, I think he did. “Listen, I didn’t mean to scare you; I just want you to think it through before you do anything like that. If we all make it through the confrontation with Aelius, we’ll go back to Brundisium and speak with your father about that, and—” he glanced at me. “—a few other things. Which reminds me,” He patted me on the back, ushering me away from the camp. “I need to borrow Akakios. Goodnight, Lucretius.” As we walked away, he shouted, “Be safe; you don’t know where he’s been.” Otho snorted and held in a laugh. I did not. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Did you really run away?” He nodded. “Yep. I was eighteen and it was an awful decision.” He brushed aside a clump of grass in our way. Oh, so many questions to ask, so little time. “What made you decide to leave?” “Bad logic, I think,” He chuckled. “I was in the same boat as Lucretius: patrician family, impending marriage, and the “choice”—” in air quotes. “—between politics and the military. I didn’t even try to think of a way around it—I just declared everything else a lost cause and ditched at the first opportunity. You ever do something stupid like that?” Half the decisions in my life flashed before my eyes. I shrugged and turned away. “No, no. I’ve always been pretty responsible.” I turned back. He smiled. “Well—” I confessed. “—there was this time Marcellina talked me into stealing our dominus’ clothes. Crassus was his name.” “How’d that work out?” I bit my lip. “He was naked, angry, and known to be more than a little generous when it came time to punish us. I’ll have to tell you more about that; it was terrifying, but makes quite the story.” “You will.” His arms rose above his head in a stretch. “Lovita and I did something like that once,” He said. Though he smiled, a tinge of sadness presented itself. No, not sadness—nostalgia. “We were immediately arrested. It went quite well, I think. Don’t worry; that happened a lot.” My stomach twisted. “Why?” If I’m honest, it was closer to a demand than a casual question. He didn’t notice, and answered all the same. “We were professional redistributors of wealth and goods. In other words—we lied and stole and lied and stole some more. Not from the poor, when we could help it. Still: criminals.” His foot caught on something unseen and he stumbled a step or two. Dusting himself off as if he’d fallen, he his gaze down as he said, “Unrelated, but I’d been meaning—” “To talk to me, yes.” Anxiety settled in my gut. “I’ve thought about it. Plenty—maybe more than I need to,” I rubbed the back of my neck, then cleared my throat. He moved just a fraction closer, but still my heart sped up as I pushed the words out. “I don’t know what you’d call it, but I would like to be with you.” The brightness in his eyes died. He turned around. “My goddess, you need something? We should be in Elea in just three days.” I hadn’t noticed the grasses part or the winds still, and the bent light of the moon escaped me. Still, we stood before her, no approach required. Just at the other times I’d seen her, plants at her disposal bowed from her path and she loomed so large over us there was no relative towering or dwarfing; just difference. In the time that had elapsed since our last meeting, she had relaxed; her shoulders were drawn back, and her no longer held the same lines around her eyes or her hands as fists. As the seconds passed and she gained understanding of the situation greeting her these returned and her voice became deeper, rumbling with unpolished anger. “Lucius Avitus Scaevola, my son is not a young girl for your choosing. You disgrace both he and I by putting such girlish practices upon the son of a goddess. “I’ve known of these desires of yours for sometime, but paid them a blind eye under the mistaken belief that you knew better than to indulge in them. Think of the kindnesses I’ve privileged you with; I’ve tolerated this false name of yours, I spared your life when it was mine to take in righteous rage, you’ve been granted new life as the accessory to a hero’s story, when before you were little more than a scuff on the sandal of better men than you. “Do you not remember when I told you of your quest? Companionship was required, friendship permissible. You were to do no such thing to my son, to either of them, no matter how well-suited you find yourself to their personalities. “Still, this is not why I have come.” Her anger softed, and faded. Replacing it was shrunken fear, hidden away for however long it took to collect to much distance between it and herself. “I have learned more of your fate, my son.” I resisted the urge to glance at Otho for help and stepped forward. “What is it?” “A prophet friend of mine tells me that Adrastus will not live past the end of the month after June.” Quintilius, the seventh month. “This we knew well, since the days before you were born. Following this, it was merely a matter of year and the hands at which he will perish. I feared it at first, especially when I learned that my favored son—which I had, at the time, though to be him—was his killer. It was for this reason that I requested your father remain with me, in case something were to happen. Instead he fled to a home into which I could not follow, protected by a lare who hates me so, like the coward that he is. “I have since learned more of my own demise, and ask you to reach Elea sooner. This is why I have come now, rather than upon your arrival there; there is no say of your death, not to my knowledge, but it is said he who was once my favorite son will push me to my end in a love-carrying act of desperation to save his beloved." “For as long as you perceptibly carry her in your heart, I will protect this girl you love. I know not her name, and believe I have yet to meet her, but rather than jeopardize my own life I will make use of my divine power to keep her from harm’s poison-fingered reach. As long as you go forth to Elea and do as I have asked—as the fates have wished you to do—I will keep her." She sighs and says, “Tell me, my warm-hearted son, what is her name?” “Mother, you see, there is no woman in my heart. I cherish the friendship of my friend Marcellina, and am thankful for the kindness afforded to me by her mother, Floriana, there is no woman I love. Still, I will accept your offer,” I cleared my throat and silently prayed to every god but my mother that this would still work. “I trust you’re familiar with the story of Achilles and his beloved Patroclus? He refused to kill Hector for fear of losing his own life until it was from the revenge desired by his broken heart. “What has Hector done to me?” He might have said, at a time. Why else would he spare such a powerful son of his enemy for nine years?” Her chest sunk and her eyes narrowed. “Mother, do you see? Even if you protect him for no other reason, save him for this, at least until after Adrastus’ fall. On so many occasions I have refused to kill a man, even at the demands of a god more powerful than you, but on the one I might lose him?” She stood almost toe-to-toe with me. Behind tight lips she bore teeth made of white steel and under dark skin she held the power to crush my bones with a flick of her wrist. Mine, his—anyone she so wished, without want for reason. “I will permit it,” She said, turning to Otho. “But should you distract from his goals or detract from his pain, I will keep no promise to you. You were reborn my your vow to me; you are its child, and no one else’s. You have no mother to weep for you at your loss, and my son will have long since been robbed of his manhood by the time you perish at my hand. Be warned.” For the second time that day, a god disappeared before my eyes. For the first, Otho took my hand and pulled my back to camp, seething. |
Kaylee AldousA fiction lover and new writer for Ravine News's fiction section. Archives
May 2018
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