Chapter 1.130 [An Unkindness]

Chapter 1.130 [An Unkindness]

“One was more than enough.”

An Unkindness

The Scarlet City falls fully into chaos by the time the Rosy Dawn’s pillars emerge from their closed doors cultivation.

The people of the valley are crude souls by and large. Citizens enjoy places of prominence in the city’s bureaucracy, such is their supremacy, and whenever a philosopher’s sets foot in the city’s humble agora it is nearly a certainty that they will be a scholar of the city’s greater mystery cults. In Alikos, as is the case in most every city state aside from the Coast, the people are defined by their greater mystery cults. No matter an Alikon’s standing, the Rosy Dawn and the Burning Dusk are their pride.

Beyond that, it is the case that many fathers and mothers living in the valley have sons and daughters living up above in one of the two cults. So when initiates of the Rosy Dawn come spilling down the mountain in a horrible frenzy, the panic that erupts is parental as much as it is patriotic.

Only a few minutes after the Young Miss dives into the Ionian Sea, mystikos from the Rosy Dawn descend from the eastern mountain range and run screaming through the streets of Alikos. There is no order to it, only a wild purpose. Lydia Aetos didn’t spring from her bed straight into the sea - her peers had watched her crest the mountain on her way back from the city, and so they retrace her steps as best as they can. They scour the Scarlet City for a reason, a threat, anything to explain the Young Miss’ sudden mania.

Even the most frantic of them are not bold enough to trespass in the Sand Reckoner’s paltry estate, and because of that not one of them finds the answer to their question. All they manage to do is pass along their panic to those below.

In the end, it is the Burning Dusk that seeks to control the situation. Scholars of Burning Dusk stream down the western mountain range just like their peers across the valley, but there is no confusion in their ranks. Citizens and Philosophers alike move through the city with clear purpose, soothing the people of the valley and stopping short their peers from the Rosy Dawn.

It is Gianni Scala’s unseen authority that guides them at first, but when the altercations between rival cultivators turn violent in the streets, it is Gianni Scala himself that takes the situation in hand.

It has been nearly twenty years since the kyrios of the Burning Dusk walked through the valley without a destination in his mind, but there is only so long that he can stare an opportunity in the eye before he blinks. In nearly twenty years the kyrios of the Rosy Dawn, Damon Aetos, has never once allowed his control of the city to slip. The Tyrant of the Burning Dusk knows it may well be another twenty years before he is afforded another chance like this - a chance to undermine the kyrios’ stranglehold over the island.

Unfortunately, the Tyrant’s timing is the worst it could have possibly been. Had he acted just a few minutes earlier, he could have swept aside every conflict and planted his image in the minds of every citizen, metic, and freedman as the steady order to contrast Damon Aetos’ chaotic frenzy.

And had he waited just a few minutes longer, he would have seen the pillars of the Rosy Dawn emerge from behind closed doors before it was too late to turn back.

All of Gianni’s work is undone three times in quick succession - once when the horrible rage of Fotios and Raisa Aetos flares like spread wings across the city, blinding the people of the valley and its lesser cultivators like they’d spent all afternoon staring into the sun. The screaming panic that follows has only just reached its peak when his work is undone again, this time by the wrath of Stavros and Chryse Aetos.

Turning back now, fleeing at the mere suggestion of cultivators that should only exist beneath him, would be to unmake all that he is - unmake what little of him remains. Gianni Scala has no choice but to stay his course. Even then, he is damned.

Shortly thereafter, the Tyrant of the Burning Dusk watches four Heroic Captains descend like falling stars into the valley city, and wonders why he even bothered at all.

Atop the eastern mountain range, Damon Aetos snuffs out the frenzy overtaking his cult like a candle pinched between his fingers. The humbled wise men carry his word through the estates and pavilions, and as abruptly as it came, the mania is gone. The kyrios is here, the wise men assure their juniors. Everything is under control.

It is a long while after that when Heron Aetos finally finds his uncle. The kyrios is in a somber hall forbidden from even the most talented members of the cult. It’s a place that only the scions of the Aetos family are allowed to enter.

Heron approaches hesitantly. He waits until his uncle acknowledges his presence, and only then does he kneel by his side.

The solemn statue of Anargyros Aetos stares dauntlessly ahead. Like many of the statues in this hall, there is a gap where his eyes should be. That isn’t what gives Heron pause. He’s been here before, seen his late uncle’s unsettling stone face and looked upon his empty eyes. That isn’t new.

Heron hesitates because the statue’s eye sockets aren’t empty anymore. His uncle has placed a candle in each of them, one of which is burning steadily away.

“I told you to go with your cousin,” Damon says.

“I did. He told me to track down Rena while he handled Castor, but...” Heron struggles to find the words. “She was inconsolable. I was still trying to snap her out of it when Niko came down the mountain with all of his friends and Castor... and the Sand Reckoner.”

Heron’s uncle doesn’t say a word. The silence is worse than the outrage he’d imagined.

“They left, uncle. All of them. The Sand Reckoner had a ship tucked away in his rags, and Niko - he took Rena and Castor and-“

Heron freezes as warmth like a mid-summer breeze sweeps over him, passing like a wave through the hallowed halls of the Aetos memorial and carrying with it a rosy light that chases away every mournful shadow. He watches cautiously, wondering what his uncle is doing and why, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. The kyrios reaches for the second candle in his brother’s empty marble socket, the one yet to burn, and lights it.

“Why are you here, nephew?” Damon Aetos asks quietly. Heron grips the vestments of his status as a young pillar, unable to look his uncle in the eyes but unwilling to look away entirely.

“The Rosy Dawn needs an heir.” Here and now, the words don’t sound half as noble as they had in his head. His uncle’s silence is a damning confirmation of that.

Heron stands, feeling like a stranger in his own home, and his voice cracks as he passes on the last of his news. “The Sand Reckoner, he told me to ask you-”

“I know.”

What else is there to say? The last of the young pillars flees his uncle’s judgment.

“Ask him if he’s checked his math.”

The Young Miss-tocrat

Terror for her youngest cousin is what drives Lydia Aetos to dive into the sea and swim after a ship that is already near the horizon. Terror, in turn, is what gives her limbs strength they’ve never had before, allowing her to cut through the waves faster than any of her Civic peers. It’s this terror that clouds her senses, and it’s the terror that doesn’t abate. She knows that it won’t until she sees Myron safe.

Even so, the longer she fights against the current of the Ionian, the more her frantic mind adapts to the terror. It hunts her like a hound, but after some time the Young Miss of the Rosy Dawn is able to separate herself from it and consider her situation.

There are no ships in the Scarlet City’s docks, but it was folly all the same to dive in alone without even an explanation for her fellow initiates. Lydia understands that. There’s no telling when the pillars of the Rosy Dawn will emerge from their closed doors cultivation, but their absence doesn’t make Lydia the fastest swimmer in the city by default. There are dozens of cultivators in the Scarlet City that stand entire realms above her.

It isn’t quite that simple. Convincing any member of the Burning Dusk to act on Myron’s behalf was a risk, one Lydia had immediately deemed unworthy of the time it would take to try. Yet that still left the members of her own cult, the wise men and the proud senior mystikos of the Rosy Dawn. Lydia could have enlisted their help, she knows.

And therein she finds the problem. Even now, she can’t shake his influence.

Lydia remembers the words her fiancé spoke to her so many years ago, then as now with unshakable confidence.

They’re all worthless, every wretched one. Now that Niko is gone, there isn’t a single Sophist in this cult that’s worth your wasted breath. Ignore them. Their help is worth nothing - their judgment even less.

Lydia disregards the senior initiates of the cult out of instinct planted in her mind by Griffon. It’s only after the coast of Alikos has shrunk to a thin sliver on the horizon behind her that she’s finally able to admit it to herself. Was it the right impulse? Has she doomed herself and her littlest cousin both?

It hardly matters now. Lydia gasps through every stroke, pushing her body to the limits of its strength. No matter how far she goes, though, the ship is never any closer. It only grows more distant.

When the distant speck of the ship vanishes entirely beyond the horizon line, Lydia is left alone in the Ionian. She screams in frustration and terror, wasting precious pneuma, and wrings her body out like a wet cloth. Faster. She has to be faster.

Without the visible marker of the ship to guide her, Lydia searches desperately through her accumulated knowledge for a way to keep her path straight. She can swim twice as fast as Myron’s ship, and it will be worthless if she loses her sense of direction and strays the wrong way. She seizes upon nautical tricks every Aetos learns from a young age and discards them just as quickly.

In the end, she finds the answer in her first mistake. The terror - specifically, the frantic, gasping panic it had thrown her into.

Lydia stops swimming and allows herself to float, forcing her breathing under control even as her little cousin gets further away. She falls back on her breathing technique passed down to her by the Sand Reckoner. She allows it to whirl throughout her body in a forever tightening spiral. A perfect, golden thing. Endlessly converging.

Endlessly predictable.

Once, when she was still new to his tutelage and more frustrated than she was reverent, Lydia had thrown a fit in Archimedes’ estate and demanded to know why she could never land a hit on him no matter how she tried. The old philosopher had slapped her upside her head for making a mess of his mess, and revealed a secret that cultivators ten times her age would have killed for without any particular fanfare.

Fool girl. Your every action leaves behind a golden thread: so long as I know where you’ve been, you’ll never hide from me the way you’re going.

It isn’t an application of the spiral breathing technique that she’s even considered before this moment, but the theory is sound and her refinement shines true. Lydia’s awareness of her own pneuma spirals outward behind her, tracing her path all the way back to the shores of the Scarlet City. Ahead of her, it spirals out in reverse, tightening and narrowing into a single point over the horizon.

Lydia cuts through the waves with renewed purpose and clear direction, maintaining steady breaths all the while.

Unfortunately, direction is only one of two parts required.

“The same sort of incompetent that falls asleep at his oars, I’d say. What do you think, Pyr?”

“I think you should stop handing our names out to anyone that will listen to you,” the owner of the knife says, exasperated. Myron can tell by his voice and the angle at which he holds the blade that his hidden assailant is a boy just the same as them.

“You worry too much.” The deceiver rolls his mismatched eyes and heaves himself fully up onto the rail, slicking his damp hair back and flicking the droplets of seawater at Myron’s face. “And you’re avoiding the question. Was I right or was I right?”

“He looks the part,” the boy named Pyr admits. “But I can’t say he acts it.”

Myron stares coldly at the deceiver. The irreverent boy leans in, and as he does his pneuma makes itself known. Civic Realm, seventh rank.

“We made a wager, my brother and I,” he confides. “Pyr thinks your sail and your attire are a simple coincidence. But a king’s eye is more discerning. And I think you’re one of them.” They deceiver hooked two fingers in Myron’s scarlet and white silks. Dampened by sweat and sea spray, they are still visibly the uniform of one that contemplates the dawn.

“I’m not convinced,” Pyr says. “Strong enough and skilled enough to sail across the Ionian alone in this ragged skiff, but too dim to see through your terrible acting? I can’t believe it.”

“And I can’t believe you still doubt my plans when they’ve never, ever failed.”

“Never-?”

“What say you?” The deceiver’s grin sharpens. “Are you a scarlet son, or are you a faker?”

Myron speaks slowly, enunciating every word. “I am in disbelief.”

“That makes three of us,” the deceiver says lightly. “Tell us, stranger. Which part of this can’t you believe?”

“The audacity,” Myron snaps, and releases the full force of a ninth rank Civic Cultivator’s pneuma. The deceiver’s mismatched eyes widen, and that is all the response Myron allows him.

A single palm strike to the chest with a full pneumatic chamber’s force behind it flings the deceiver off the ship and sends him skipping like a stone across the water. The pneuma of an eighth rank Citizen flares to life behind him and the boy named Pyr buries a fist in his side.

Myron inhales sharply, taking the pain and feeding his second pneumatic chamber to its limits. He throws an elbow back into the other boy’s gut, and when he doubles over Myron wraps his arms around the boy’s neck and heaves him over his shoulder. The boy chokes as his back slams against the unforgiving rowing bench, knocking the wind out of him and rendering him helpless when Myron grabs two fistfuls of his plain tunic and swings around him three times like a discus thrower before letting him fly out to his brother.

The Little Kyrios spits in their direction and reclaims his oars, both his side and his pride stinging. He wheels the ship around, determined to forget about this embarrassment by the time he makes it to shore.

Unfortunately, the Fates have other plans.

“Hold on!” The deceiver hollers, cutting through the waves now like a shark. Myron ignores him. He’s nearly at the breakwater now. Would have been there already if not for the event that he’s already forgotten.

Four hands hammering insistently against the hull of his skip destroy his short-lived hope. Myron rounds on the two wretched brothers scrabbling at his ship like starving dogs and brings his oar to bear.

“Wait!” Pyr shouts. Myron beats them both savagely over the head with his oar instead.

“Ungrateful, worthless, conniving, deceivers!” Myron rages, each word punctuated by the crack of his oar. “I’ll drown you both myself!”

In between curses and pained yelps, the nameless deceiver shoots a victorious look at his brother.

“I told you.”

“Peace!” Pyr cries, ignoring him. His eyes are mismatched, the same as his brother’s, but they’re far more earnest. Or maybe he’s just a better actor. Myron twists at the hips and swings with all his might. Both brothers lurch back in abrupt alarm, recognizing the swing for what it is - a killing blow. They’re too slow. Pyr recognizes it and flings himself sideways, putting himself between his brother and the oar.

Myron drains his second pneumatic chamber, exhaling it in a rush and stopping the swing in the middle of its motion. It makes his body creak in concerning ways, but it’s worth it to see the look on the smug deceiver’s face.

“Peace,” Myron echoes, throwing the word mockingly back in their faces. “In which barbarian land does peace come at the edge of a blade?”

“The knife was for show,” the deceiver protests. “He didn’t even try to use it!”

“In which barbarian land does peace come in the form of a clenched fist?”

“You struck my brother first,” Pyr says, meeting his eyes steadily. Myron sneers.

“Then if neither of you intended to attack me, why didn’t you just ask me where I was from?”

Pyr glances back at his brother, whose face promptly flushes.

“It seemed like something he would do,” the deceiver mutters. Myron’s brow furrows.

“What?”

“Forget it! We’ll start fresh,” he declares, heaving himself up out of the water and offering Myron his hand. “Be glad, boy - in fifty years you’ll have a story to tell your grandchildren. The story of the day you met the king.” His grin is roguish, and Myron can tell he means every word. “My name is Leo, and this is Pyr.”

Myron stares at them both, pointedly ignoring the offered hand. The “king” lets it hang, unbothered by his silence. His brother, Pyr, looks almost apologetic as he clambers over the rail.

“How old are you?”

“Ten,” says the king.

“Eleven,” says his brother.

Myron glares at the deceiver. He refuses to even think of his cousin’s name in relation to this wretch, let alone acknowledge it.

“We’re the same age.”

“So?”

“So don’t call me ‘boy’ like you’re any different!”

“I am different, though.” Mismatched eyes glitter. “I’m a king.”

They squabble like this while Myron’s skiff bobs idly just outside the breakwater, heedless of the setting sun and the distant shadow of encroaching storm clouds. The trio of young Civic cultivators continue on, blissfully ignorant of the approaching storm.

Until they hear the thunder.

“AETOS!”

Myron wheels around mid-sentence, his breath hitching in reflexive terror. He’s a split second faster than the two brothers, and because of that he is the only one that sees what happens next.

In the furthest distance that a Civic cultivator’s eyes can see, countless threads of vibrant light coil and arch up into the sky.

Beautiful, Myron marvels in spite of his terror.

Then the tallest of those heavenly threads cracks like a whip and crosses the distance between horizons in the time it takes his heart to beat once. The whiplash strikes a burning line from the distant city of Olympia all the way down to the breakwater.

The dock city explodes.