Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.76

The Son of Rome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not yet, was all he said in turn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Socrates can be seen and spoken to when he wraps himself in anonymity,” Griffon explained brusquely. “All he does is separate himself from-” he paused, eyes widening slightly.

“From his reputation,” I completed his thought. “You can still see the man and trade discourse with him, but you can’t recognize him for who he is. What Aristotle did was a level further removed from that. You can’t see the man at all - in a crowded agora, you’d hear the voice but never see the face.”

Often times, a voice in the crowd is all that’s needed.

As a young patrician, I had learned early on that I had to be able to recognize which thoughts were my own and which were actually my mentor’s anonymous whispers. As a legionary, I had learned that I needed to keep my eyes open on and off the battlefield - that I had to see. I still hadn’t quite figured out how Aristotle did what he did, but I could spot his work.

Selene had caught up to us just as the Eos was pulling into the dock city back at Olympia. I had seen her when she snuck aboard for our departure, and she had seen that I had seen her. Frozen like a rabbit before a wolf. But when I hadn’t said anything and no one else had reacted, the sunkissed Heroine had relaxed. She spent the days that followed amusing herself with the coastal views and Sorea, the eagle’s eyes having picked her out immediately as well.

Speaking had been out of the question, because a voice without a visible source was far less easy to ignore on a ship like the Eos than it was in a crowded agora. We had communicated periodically through writing, fake letters that were really just extended conversations mixed in with the actual messages I'd spent the trip thus far drafting.

“Who taught you how to do that?” Griffon demanded.

“And why are you here at all?” Scythas asked, dread darkening his expression as he belatedly realized exactly who it was that had snuck aboard our ship. “The Gadfly told you not to come.”

It was true. Down in the subterranean courtyard of the Raging Heaven’s late kyrios, the Gadfly had smacked Selene down almost before she finished agreeing to the quest on our behalf. Their furious arguing had followed Griffon, Jason, Scythas and I all the way up the tunneled steps. Yet here she was.

I inclined my head, ceding the explanation to the girl herself.

“In reverse order!” Selene exclaimed cheerfully, thirteen sets of eyes following her finger as it shot up. “Socrates is not my father or my mentor. I listen to him only when it suits me, and his disapproval means less to me than propriety does to the shirtless vagabond over there.”

Her finger swiveled to point at the vagabond in question. Griffon rolled his eyes, but I saw the way his lips twitched at the corners.

A second finger was raised. “I have no idea how these rags work, only that they do. After the great philosopher left me to sulk, he extracted a promise from each of the Oracles present to keep me in their sights, apparently assuming their personal integrity would outweigh their disdain for him.”

“Unwise,” Griffon mused.

“So then I stole these clothes from the kyrios’ quarters and snuck out anyway!”

“In defiance of all common sense,” I added wryly. The sunkissed Heroine beamed.

Scythas’ mouth opened and then after a long moment closed.

“Do you realize the immensity of the problems your absence will cause?” Griffon asked, and the Hero of the Scything Squall looked to him in surprise. Griffon leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared intently at the Heroine. “Do you have any idea at all what you are inviting with this petty defiance?”

Selene met him glare for glare. Scarlet to Scarlet. “I do.”

“And you don’t care?”

“Not enough to stay. Not when there’s hope for my mother again. Some things are worth risking.”

Griffon‘s eyes narrowed. Searching. Reaching.

Finding.

“So long as you know.” The former Young Aristocrat sat back in his throne and crossed his arms, satisfied.

“So long as she knows,” Scythas echoed in bleak disbelief. “If her father finds out who she snuck away with, you know what he will do.”

Griffon lifted one shoulder in a negligent shrug.

I put it into words.

“We know what he will try.”

The scarlet sail of the Eos billowed as if filled by gale winds, though the breeze on our skin did not for a moment shift. Mortal sailors exclaimed in mingled awe and fear at the sudden heat rising up from beneath their feet, along with the scent of burning ash wood and rosy light.

Beneath the planks of the deck, evoked by defiance of Burning Dusk, the legacy of four brothers shone in the image of an eagle.