Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.85

The Young Griffon

First, we mingled.

There was a certain etiquette that even a dead man could be expected to follow. In a theater, it was common sense that the stage belonged to those performing. A spectator could heckle if the act warranted it, but you never joined the actors on the stage unless you were first invited. In a symposium, although the lounges might be arranged around the room with equal prominence, a partygoer did not approach the organizer of the event while he was otherwise preoccupied.

The details were different but the sentiment remained the same. Engagement was acceptable. Interruption was not.

This was neither a symposia nor a theater, but something in between. Therefore it could be argued that both etiquettes applied. Of course, it could also be argued that neither did. However, the fact that the Augur sat alone on his ivy tomb down on center stage, unapproached and unspoken to, made me suspect the former over the latter.

Never let it be said that the young Griffon of the risen sun was entirely without manners. Sol and I stepped carefully through the horseshoe tiers of benches while chthonic men and women chattered and laughed and intermittently sang. All the while, the low strumming of the lyre served as an undercurrent to every conversation and song.

It was easy to leave him to his music when the sound of it was so pleasant.

“Newcomers, eh?” spoke a man out of time as Sol and I leaned against a thick wooden beam. A handful of the revelers surrounding him looked curiously our way as well. His companions, or at least his afterlife acquaintances.

“First time,” I confirmed, the sound distorted by the sheer midnight veil that covered my face.

“I thought as much. It’s been some time since we’ve seen rags like those.” He glanced up thoughtfully, at the same time nudging a woman sitting next to him close enough for their thighs to touch. “How long has it been since we’ve seen a raven, darling? Three hundred years? Four hundred?”

“At least two thousand,” the woman said, looking back at him like he was simple.

“Impossible.”

“You’re both wrong,” another man a few spots down piped up, leaning forward to look down the row at us. “It’s been four thousand bare minimum.” The first man to speak and the woman beside him both rolled their eyes.

“Right,” the first man drawled. “And I’m the king of Egypt.”

“In your dreams, perhaps!” came a voice from up above, a man on one of the torchlit balconies looking down on us with his crossed arms on the rail and an ivory cup dangling negligently from two fingers.

My eyes lingered on his features. Black curls of hair and pale skin, almond-shaped eyes a dull brown-black, and a strong jaw untouched by any beard. His nose gave him away most clearly of all. He was a Macedonian. Yet, his eyes were lined and shadowed the same twilight blue shade as his painted lips, and in place of any armor or cloak he wore only a belted skirt of pleated linen - and, of all things, a juvenile elephant’s scalp as a mantle.

Macedonian features. Egyptian fashion.

“No one’s speaking to you, Philadelphus,” a different woman shot back at him, throwing a handful of figs up at his face. The Macedonian in Egyptian clothes caught one of the projectile fruits in his teeth and bit down on it with pleasure, letting the juice fall freely back down onto the woman’s head.

“What brings the young blood to this humble theater?” the man named Philadelphus asked us curiously, while he chewed on his fig and the woman below him spat curses and threw more fruit at his balcony. “Business or pleasure?”

“Business,” Sol said, at the same time that I answered with ‘Pleasure’. Philadelphus raised a sculpted eyebrow.

“It seems your purposes conflict.”

“One raven speaks only the truth,” I said lightly, “the other raven lies.”

“I despise you,” Sol said with remarkable conviction.

I waved. “See?”

“Pleasure disguised as business,” Philadelphus said understandingly. He rolled his wrist, lazily saluting us with his ivory cup. “That’s my favorite sort of work.”

“We know,” one of the hecklers seated around us groused. He ignored them as easily as he breathed.

“Tell me, young blood - how goes the campaign? Is the wheel still turning, or has the king of kings come home?”

“Alexander is dead,” Sol answered. Philadelphus threw back his head and laughed. It reverberated through the rafters above, a rich and rolling sound.

“You are the liar, aren’t you? At least try and make it a challenge - that’s half the fun of the whole charade.”

“The Conqueror is dead? Truly?” the first man to speak to us on the benches spoke up, hope and a vicious, building joy bringing him halfway to his feet. If his Peloponnesian accent and burning heart flames had not already given away his heritage, his reaction to Sol’s statement certainly would have.

“You’ve seen his corpse yourself?” the woman who had been sitting with her thighs pressed to his piped up next, reaching out to grasp Sol’s forearm. “You’re certain?”

I dipped the tips of my fingers into the cool white liquid that my horn cup contained, and I flicked the droplets that clung to my skin at the pale woman. One drop, perhaps two, landed on her outstretched arm.

The chthonic Heroine shrieked as if burned and jerked away from us both, tumbling over the side of her bench and down into the lower tiers. Several long-dead souls from all walks of this life shouted and groaned as she knocked the food and drink from their hands. Her man shot us an ugly look, burning eyes darting down to the horn cups in our hands before he decided against a fight and turned down the stands to assist his woman.

The man up on the balcony watched them go with naked amusement. Drawn by the noise, a woman appeared next to him to peer out over the balcony. She had the same dark features as the man with the elephant scalp, the same nose and almond shaped eyes, as well as the same Egyptian garb - the key difference being the curling Ram’s horns behind her ears in place of an elephant scalp mantle. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, it was unmistakable that they were related.

Philadelphus wrapped an arm around his sister’s waist and pulled her flush against his side. She laid an idle hand against his stomach and let it drift languidly down.

My nose wrinkled.

“Egyptians,” Sol muttered like a curse.

“Young blood, after all this time,” Philadelphus’ sister remarked wonderingly, her eyes drifting over us each in turn. “You must be Oinops’ boys.”

Oinops. Wine-dark.

“That was my thought as well,” Philadelphus agreed. He rolled his wrist again, this time urging me on with the motion. “Go on then. I’ve heard the raven’s lie. I’m ready for the raven’s truth. Where is Alexander now?”

I shrugged. “India swallowed him up nearly three hundred years ago. The western world has not seen him since.”

“The wheel keeps on spinning,” Philadelphus mused, disappointed but unsurprised. “In that case I’ll leave you to it. Don’t have too much fun, eh?”

Sol was already walking away, towards the other side of the horseshoe tier rather than down. I was halfway to his side when the Macedonian in Egyptian garb tossed something at my head.

I caught the necklace, a simple string of leather contrasted by a fine tablet of gold dangling from it instead of a jewel or beads. I blinked, reading the words inscribed on the small slip of gold.

I am the son of earth and starry heaven, but of heaven is my birth…

Another necklace of similar design hurtled at me a moment later and was caught. I tilted my head back to the balcony, where Philadelphus and his sister were lounging against their rail. Philadelphus raised his ivory cup in another lazy salute. His sister winked conspiratorially.

“A gift for the young blood. You’ll need those sooner or later, where you’re going.”

I considered the totenpass skeptically. “I don’t intend to die.”

“Neither did I,” Philadelphus said easily. “Yet here I am regardless. If not as a necessity, then take it as a gift. A token for the new initiates of our humble Orphic faith.”

Well, that changed things.

The golden tablet clinked musically against the ruby of the necklace I’d stolen from the Aetos filial pools. Sol had already made it to the other side of the horseshoe tier now, and had somehow been roped into a conversation by what looked to be a gaggle of hetairai. If his stiff posture and white-knuckled grip on his horn cup was any indicator, he was in need of rescue.

As I waved and departed, Philadelphus called out one more time from his balcony.

“The next time you’re in Alexandria, deliver my warm regards to whichever dim descendent sits the pharaoh’s throne. Let them know they’re a disappointment to Ptolemy when you arrive, and remind them once more of it before you go.”

“How do you know they’ll be a disappointment?” I asked him over my shoulder.

“Isn’t it obvious? Because I’m the greatest of my line, and it was their misfortune to be born after me!”

I laughed.