Chương 42: 1.19

The Son of Rome Anastasia drew attention as a matter of course. It was a consequence of her status and appearance both - men couldn't help but steal what glances they could when she was nearby. But as she choked and coughed and hammered her chest, the other mystikos in the bath looked openly our way. She mastered herself quickly, setting her cup aside, but the damage had been done.

After a night of hunting Crows and a full day of drinking the following day, it had been my old mentor's name that finally broke her steady composure. It wasn't an encouraging thought.

"You-" she said, when the worst of it had passed, "You're serious?"

"Why would I lie?" Ironic, perhaps. But valid in this case.

"I can think of a few reasons." She shook her head, brushing damp hair out of her face. Her lips pursed as she mulled the knowledge over, green ember eyes flickering.

"How did you come to know him, if I may?" I frowned. Oddly enough, I didn't mind telling her. Maybe it was that poisonous nostalgia, or maybe she'd managed to charm me while I wasn't looking. The result was the same either way. I was not, however, comfortable with the rest of the bathing pavilion listening in. I reached out with my influence and smacked down every grasping hand that I could feel with my Sophic sense. Every single Philosopher in the pavilion flinched.

The degrees varied, some recovering in a split second and carrying on their vapid conversations, while others jerked and kicked up ripples in the water. One and all, they retracted. Even here, the baths were nothing but viper pits filled with gossips. From Rome to Greece, everything under the sun was the same.

"You get used to it," Anastasia assured me.

"It isn't as if they can do anything with the information. They're just children." To a cultivator of her standing, perhaps. But I wasn't so far above these people, or above them at all. Many of them were older than me, their cultivation further advanced. That wasn't even the crux of the issue, though. I'd thought my year in chains had ground down the last of my pride, yet here it was, rearing its head again.

I'd grown used to the respect afforded to me in the legions, come to expect it, even if I'd never truly deserved it.

"A child doesn't fear a flame until it burns them," I said, smoothing out a scowl.

"That was one of the first lessons he ever taught me. Said it was his duty to burn me himself, before I threw myself fully into the fire."

"You were young," she said, half a question. I leaned back against the marble rim of the basin, the cool stone a pleasant contrast to the scalding water.

"I was an arrogant child. My mother was convinced that the world revolved around me on a satin thread, and my father's duties kept him too busy to notice until the damage had been done. I'd never been burned. Was convinced I never would be."

"That sounds familiar," Anastasia said, mirth briefly overtaking her tension.

"I was wondering what you saw in Griffon to take him on as a student. It was you after all." In a way, she wasn't wrong.

"Griffon is better than I was," I disagreed anyway. It was worth saying, though I'd never say it to his face.

"I'm the fruit of all my mentors' labors. Griffon is what he is in spite of his."

"For better and for worse," she said wryly. I smirked faintly.

"For better and for worse."

"How did he convince you to take him on?" Anastasia asked. That one was easy enough.

"His cousin challenged me to a fist fight." Anastasia blinked.

"Where did he stand?"

"The seventh rank of the Civic Realm." She winced.

"I assume Griffon didn't take his passing well." I glanced sidelong at her, frowning.

"I didn't kill him."

"Truly?" Anastasia looked at me, as if in a new light.

"I didn't take you for a merciful man." As if sparing a child that didn't know any better was mercy. Every time I forgot, the world reminded me what vile creatures cultivators could be.

"He wasn't a threat." I shrugged.

"I could have beaten him in chains."

"The fearsome Legate in chains," Anastasia mused, reclaiming some of her smoke and teasing.

"That's a sight I wouldn't mind seeing." I rolled my eyes and took up her cup, drinking deeply from it. The water was cool and refreshing. The rim of the cup tasted inexplicably of figs. Sweet.

"Griffon stepped in before I could do much to the boy, regardless," I continued.

"He demanded that I stop. Told me that I'd had enough fun."

"You took him to task for that, surely?" I smiled faintly.

"I did." That struggle in his family's filial pool had been the first time in months that I'd felt truly alive. It had been the same for him, too, I knew.

"But he impressed you, and here you are," Anastasia deduced. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Here we are." The conversation stalled, the Heroine hesitating suddenly. I offered her cup back to her, raising an eyebrow. We'd come this far. Might as well see it through. Anastasia took the cup, running her thumb along its edge.

"And what about you?" she finally asked.

"How did you convince your master to take you on?"

"I didn't." At her blank look, I elaborated.

"I was in the forum with a group of my peers-" Not friends. Not really.

"-and we'd just caught a pair of thieves our age attempting to pick us. We decided we'd take the hands they'd slipped into our purses as punishment, after we'd properly shamed them." The memory was the oddest sort of bittersweet. Shameful to look back on through the lens of my younger self, but warm for what it had ultimately led to.

"Looking back, I think they were brothers. The older of the two begged us to take both of his hands instead of one from each of them. We refused, of course, and so he tried something different and goaded us instead. Insisted up and down that we'd do no better than him if put in his position and made to survive." I sighed.

"The young patrician couldn't stomach such an insult, especially in front of my peers. So I offered him a wager." Anastasia had turned to face me fully at this point, resting her crossed arms on the lip of the basin and laying her cheek on them. There was a knowing glint in her eyes, and steady interest.

"Any rat can snatch a purse when no one is bothering to look at them, was my reasoning at the time. But for a young patrician to do so? That was a true test of skill. I bet him that I could pick five purses without getting caught a single time, and if I did I'd take his thieving left hand and all five fingers of his right. One hand for justice, and a finger for every time I proved him wrong."

"You didn't consider what would happen to you if you were caught, yourself? That you'd share his fate?" Anastasia asked, terribly amused. I raised a hand, fingers spread wide.

"Young and arrogant. Failure wasn't even a possibility in my mind."

"But if he was correct, and you did fail. What then?"

"Then he lived to pick another pocket, and his brother got to keep his hands." I shook my head minutely, lost in the memories.

"I stole four purses without drawing a single glance. But on the fifth, an old man caught me by the arm as I was rummaging through his robes."

"Fool boy. You should have stopped at four."

"You stole from-?" Anastasia stopped herself, eyes wide.

"You and Griffon are a better fit than I thought."

"I tried to steal from him," I corrected her with dry amusement.

"He'd seen me from the beginning, though. All the way back to the wager I'd made with the plebs. And so he offered me a wager of his own." Calloused hands and a stern demeanor. A ludicrous beard that I couldn't imagine him without, and finely kept robes of scarlet and white. I'd never forget the look of him in that moment. The terror I'd felt." Justice is quick, so you'll have to be quicker," I recited, words that I'd never forget." Unmake these crimes before they're found out, or I'll take that greedy hand."

"Unsteal four purses," Anastasia repeated with incredulous mirth.

"In the middle of the forum at its busiest hour, without any of them noticing," I confirmed.

"To this day I'm not sure how I did it."

"And after you did? What happened then?"

"I turned tail and ran home as fast as I could. He was already there." Discussing the terms of tuition with my father. As it turned out, the Raging Heaven took all aspects of hygiene quite seriously. By the time we left the baths and returned to the benches on the outer edge of the bathing pavilion, my Rosy Dawn attire was gone. In its place was a fresh set of indigo robes.

They were a more vibrant purple than what the Philosophers of the cult were wearing, and upon closer inspection I saw golden threads woven into the sleeves. Branching strands of lightning. A consequence of the company I was keeping, it seemed. The slaves had seen a Heroine accompanied by a man they didn't know and decided to err on the side of caution, favoring me with the same privileged treatment that she enjoyed.

Anastasia assured me that a slave would return my clothes to me once they'd been thoroughly cleansed, and promised that she'd find out whatever she could about my mentor's whereabouts. Then she left, to do whatever it was that cultivators in the Raging Heaven did. I found myself following a stream of mystikos up the stone-carved steps to an open plateau. This far up the mountain, there were as many Civic cultivators as Sophic, and a cursory glance didn't reveal a single hero on the grand plateau.

It was furnished in the same style as the Rosy Dawn's various symposia rooms, lounging couches around its edges and tables in the middle, covered in drink and food and games of all types. Unlike the Rosy Dawn, the plateau was utterly open to the elements, awarding a spectacular view of the sanctuary city below, and an awe-inspiring vantage of the Storm That Never Ceased up above.

I'd chosen a couch furthest from the commotion of young men and women jostling for recognition and losing themselves to the delirious rush of alcohol and good company. There were games of all kinds being played throughout the plateau, some that even tempted me, but I contented myself with picking from a small platter of olives and waiting for my clothes to be returned to me.

I watched the mystikos that I'd followed here compete in mock games with one another, chat languidly with friends, and drink themselves senseless. And as time passed, I watched as those same mystikos grew tired of drinking and fooling around and decided to soothe their fatigue with another bout at the baths below. How slow did time move in a place like this? Did these people truly live like this, day in and day out?

"It's unfortunate, isn't it?" There was a woman standing next to me. I bit down on a curse, smothering my immediate reaction and forcing my fists to unclench. The young woman politely pretended not to notice.

"The indulgence," she continued, her voice sad.

"The stagnation." She sighed and sat down on the dining couch next to mine.

"Is this seat taken?"

"It is now," I said, surveying her in my periphery. She looked young, from what could be seen of her. Around my age, if not less by a couple years. It was difficult to tell with the veil covering the upper half of her face, a golden sun weave that obscured her eyes and most of her blonde braids. She was slender compared to Elissa and Anastasia, who'd both been toned and chiseled by combat, but she didn't carry herself like the rest of the mystikos on the plateau. She didn't dress like them either.

In place of indigo robes or any other cult attire that I'd seen before, she wore a pure white tunic with golden sunray filigree woven into its fabric. She had a golden sash cinched around her waist, and another that hung loosely off her hips. Her skin was utterly free of blemishes and her nails were painted. I reached out a hand of my influence, and she took it in her own without hesitation. There was a powerful warmth to her presence. Like basking in the sun.

"I don't believe I've seen you before," she said.

"What is your name, cultivator?"

"Solus."

"A pleasure to meet you, Solus," she said, quietly genuine. A beat of silence passed.

"And yours?" I prompted her. She tilted her head.

"You don't know?" Somehow, the audacity of asking such a question was lost in her delivery of it. Rather than being irritated, I found myself smiling faintly. I held out a real hand filled with olives, offering her one.

"Enlighten me." The girl in the golden veil took from me an olive and popped it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, savoring the taste, and smiled.

"It's Selene."