Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.74 [The Caged Dove]

Athis

The Caged Dove

Life in the Rosy Dawn Cult was miserable.

Athis knew it was an ungrateful sorrow. From the very beginning, her prospects had been hopelessly bleak. That she had survived a year and then half a year again without any scars to show for it was miraculous enough already. When an initiate of a greater mystery cult considered even the natural born citizens of their city to be a lesser existence, it went without saying that their slaves were worth about as much to them as a loyal dog. Sometimes less. The relative safety she had enjoyed from the whimsical cruelties of cultivators within the cult thus far was nothing short of a divine blessing.

Yet every day seemed dimmer than the last. It felt to Athis like the sun rose later each morning, and every evening earlier it fell. Pervicas had assured her that that was impossible the one time she had spoken of it, promised her that winter was behind them rather than up ahead. Somehow, Athis didn’t believe her.

Her duties came easier to her now. The Rosy Dawn Cult was an institution built upon natural mystery, but it was still an institution - and thus cyclical in its ways. Athis had experienced the various holidays and traditions that the cult observed in her first year as a slave, and the work was much the same as she entered her second year. It was something they whispered like a prayer on the truly bad nights, when one of the new additions was sobbing too loudly for the rest of them to sleep in their shared quarters.

It will pass. Some chores were universal - laundering clothes, preparing meals, gathering water.

It will get easier. Others sprang up around holy days - the planting of lettuce and fennel seeds for the Adonia, the brewing of tonics for young men participating in the Heraclaea, the decoration of doors with laurel and olive branches bound by wool for the Pyanopsia, and on and on. All of them pleasant enough but for the Thargelia.

Athis despised the Thargelia.

The first time is the worst, their seniors within the female slave class would promise, grave as any priestesses. The first year, the first punishment, the first night in a mystiko’s bed. Nothing hurts quite as bad the second time.

All things will pass. Even this.

They all offered that prayer up to heaven every morning when they woke and every night before they slept. Athis was beginning to wonder if anyone would ever listen.

“Pivot! Brace! Thrust!”

“HAA!”

Athis crept silently around the perimeter of the training in progress, collecting discarded piles of scarlet and white silks as she went. Pervicas was stuck in the kitchens for the afternoon, but Athis was still far from alone in her work. Working women followed behind her, laying down clean cult attire to replace what had been discarded. Others collected empty jugs and replaced them with full containers of clear water or diluted spirit wine.

“Pivot! Brace! Thrust!”

“HAA!”

In the center of an enclosed courtyard accessible only to the women and girls of the Rosy Dawn Cult, the Young Miss Lydia Aetos was conducting martial practice with her junior sisters.

“Pivot! Brace! Thrust!”

“HAA!”

The young women of the Rosy Dawn stood in orderly ranks, eight to a row and eight columns deep. Each of them carried a spear, each one unique to the initiate holding it. Some were plain by a cultivator’s standards, competently made but otherwise unadorned. Others were more art than armament - beautifully carved poles decorated with paint, some tied with ribbons and others topped by exotics spearheads. And others still were notched and weathered, distinguished by their visible use.

In the pre-training chatter and over the course of all of her shifts in this courtyard, Athis had overheard the stories behind most of those spears. The ones that had seen use were heirlooms, treasured relics passed down from the mothers and grandmothers that came before them. The flashier spears were nearly all tokens of favor, either from suitors within the cult or wealthy citizens down in the valley city. The unadorned weapons were the product of first generation initiates, a final gift from their proud families or one of their first purchases as cultivators of virtue.

As with everything else, the equipment an initiate brought with them was as much a declaration of their value as what they did with it. The order in which they formed their ranks reflected this. First generation to the rear, martial heirs and favored daughters to the front.

“Pivot! Brace! Thrust!”

“HAA!”

Lydia Aetos stood apart from the eight-by-eight formation, facing them and calling out the pace. Pivot, and each girl spun to face her right side. Brace, and she set her feet, calves and thighs tensing. Thrust, and every young woman in attendance jabbed her spear forward, shouting in perfect unison. The next pivot brought them back to center, and the one after that took them left. Then back to center again.

It was one of many martial drills, and every bit as taxing as the rest despite its simplicity. The mystikos in attendance were all dripping sweat by this point, their pale skin shimmering like they’d oiled it. In the privacy of the courtyard they trained as their male counterparts did, entirely nude. Those carrying greater burdens followed the Young Miss’ example and bound their chests with strips of linen, but nothing more than that was worn.

Athis had needed a few sessions to acclimate herself to the view. She didn’t know much about cultivating virtue, but the term refinement was all too apt as a description of the process. In her experience, even the least attractive cultivator in a courtyard full of them was a sight worth admiring.

Pervicas had teased her relentlessly that first afternoon, pinched her flushed cheeks and asked if she should be worried that the bonded girls all shared a bath. But she had understood. They all had. None of them had been untouched by awe the first time they laid eyes on an initiate of greater mystery, exposed in all their glory. Well, none of them but-

“Quickly now,” an older girl whispered in her ear. Athis sighed shakily and moved on to the next discarded pile.

None of them but Solus.

Athis and her fellow slaves moved on to the adjoining baths once clothing and refreshment had been properly laid out in the courtyard. Pots of olive oil were placed around the rims of the steaming pools, and bonded women paced around the edges tossing fragrances into the pools from reed baskets. Petals of iris, cistus, and rose, along with cinnamon and mint leaves, all floated atop the water in dizzying quantities. Small, personal containers of perfume were set aside as well, property of those among the initiates that could afford to have them distilled.

When the baths were ready there was nothing to do but wait for them to come. They took up their scraping tools and made idle conversation, enjoying a short break in a fragrant setting.

Athis sat with her knees tucked to her chest and gripped her strigil with both hands, silently staring at her reflection in the pool. She did not offer her own input to the conversations going on around her, and without Pervicas there to force the issue, the other slaves left her to herself. It wasn’t cruelty or lack of care. They could simply tell she didn’t want to talk.

A few of the more reckless women among them dared to run their hands through the hot and fragrant waters, dabbing it on their faces and necks. A slave’s perfume, they called it. Of course, that was all they dared to do. None of them were mad enough to dip their feet in-

Ah. Even in this place, she couldn’t escape thoughts of him.

The young marble beauties of the Rosy Dawn finished up their martial training soon enough, quenching their immediate thirst with the jugs left out in the courtyard before making their way to the baths. Exhausted but in high spirits, their laughter and playful arguments soon filled the bathhouse.

Athis waited with her head down for an initiate to present themselves for cleansing. When one finally did, marble smooth calves and deceptively delicate feet entering her vision, she looked up and her breath caught.

Lydia Aetos stared piercingly down at her.

“Well?”

The strigil was a curved blade without any sharp edges, a tool for scraping away oil and grime from the body. Athis dragged it up and down the Young Miss’ body, cleansing her of sweat with every pass. Despite having just finished a martial session that had lasted the entire afternoon, her breath was steady and her eyes were clear. Neither of them spoke until the Young Miss turned and presented her back for scraping.

“Your name is Athis.”

The strigil faltered in its path. If it had possessed an edge, she would have drawn the Young Miss’ blood. Inexcusable.

“It is, honored miss.” They were the first words she had spoken all day.

“You’ve been here for over a year now,” Lydia Aetos observed, lifting both arms and clasping her hands above her head so that Athis could reach her underarms and sides. “Recently, you’ve spent all of your time in the portions of the estates reserved for women.”

Had she asked around for that information, or had she taken note of Athis herself? She wasn’t sure which possibility unsettled her more.

“Yes,” she whispered.

The duties of a slave were ubiquitous regardless of gender. There were some things only a bonded woman would be expected to do, as was the case for a bonded man, but the majority of chores simply had to be done. It was common sense that every female slave would sequester themselves in feminine spaces if she could. Although there were predators among the marble beauties of the Rosy Dawn, they existed in far fewer numbers than the predators among the cult’s men. But there just wasn’t enough work of that kind to go around.

That Athis had not seen a man except from a distance in over a month was no coincidence. No one had that kind of luck. She was being shielded in the only way that her senior sisters could shield her. By giving her the small slivers of sanctuary that they all so dearly cherished.

It was a consideration that she did not deserve, and a guilt that festered every day she selfishly accepted their kindness anyway.

“What has your experience been here?” the Young Miss asked, shifting her stance so Athis could scrape the sweat from her inner thighs.

“I cannot complain, miss.” More than anything, those words were true.

“No. I suppose you can’t.” Lydia Aetos stepped lightly to the edge of the heated pool, smiling briefly when a few of her junior sisters splashed water her way and dared her to jump in. She sat instead. Her feet kicked gently in the fragrant bathwater while she unwound her blonde hair from its braids.

Athis quietly wished her an enjoyable bath and hurried away, to safety from piercing blue eyes and pointed conversation-

“Stop.”

What else could she do?

“Sit with me,” the Young Miss commanded, and the caged dove obeyed. Athis tucked her legs underneath her and gripped her strigil as hard as she could so her hands wouldn’t shake.

“You’re afraid of me. Why?” Before Athis could even begin to think of a proper answer, she continued, “Have I ever been cruel to the women of this cult? Any of them, even the slaves?”

“No, Miss.” Not that she had heard of, at any rate. If anything, the aristocratic children of the Rosy Dawn Cult - the young pillars as the mystikos called them - were uncommonly kind for their status. Casual cruelty was an expectation as much as a fear the higher up the ladder you went, yet the Aetos children were rarely more than indifferent to the servants of their eastern mountain range.

The greatest of them, the Hero Nikolas Aetos, was kind by any standard - the older servants among them said he had always been that way. Though with wandering eyes and flushed faces, several had confessed that the Hero had changed in other ways since he first left the Rosy Dawn. The youngest, Myron Aetos, was as considerate as a child his age could be and prone to endearing imitations of the people he admired. Castor Aetos was easily distracted and at times a ruinous flirt, but never vindictive. Rena Aetos was sweeter than honey and generally subdued, though a few of the senior serving girls were wary of her for reasons they wouldn’t disclose. Even Heron Aetos, for all his proclivities and his harsh tongue, had only ever tried to strike a slave once as far as anyone knew.

It hadn’t ended well for him.

Lydia Aetos was no different from her siblings and cousins in that regard. She was distant, even at times to her own junior sisters, but Athis had never heard of her doing anything untoward to a slave - especially not a woman. None among the young pillars were prone to excessive cruelty, not even the Young Aristocrat-

Athis clenched her eyes shut.

The former Young Aristocrat.

“Tell me then, if I’ve never done so before, why do you look like you’re about to be struck down?” The Young Miss asked her. She slid slowly into the pool until the steaming waters were up to her neck, rinsing her face and hair. “I have no reason to hate you.”

“Not me, no.” The words came, and from the corners of her eyes Athis saw eavesdropping servants seize up in alarm. They urged her to shut her mouth with silent looks.

“The Roman,” Lydia said flatly.

She supposed it was too late now.

“Sol-”

“Don’t,” she snapped, and the only mystikos that didn’t look their way were the ones that had already been pretending not to listen. Athis knew, deep in her bones, that she would be tempting the Fates if she voiced the word on her lips.

“Solus.” She met Lydia Aetos’ wrathful stare. “His name is Solus.”

It was the smallest possible defiance she could have offered. It was all a caged dove could do.

For a long, terrifying moment, Athis awaited death. She had no cultivator sense like what Solus and some of the other slaves in iron chains had described. She had no way of knowing if or when the Young Miss would strike her. All she knew was that if it happened, she would have no chance of stopping it. Lydia Aetos glared at her for her cheek, and all she could do was stare right back.

“You love him,” Lydia finally said, her voice deathly soft. “As I love him.”

Athis knew that the first and second ‘him’ were not the same person. Even the lowest servants in the Rosy Dawn Cult knew the story of what had taken place the night of Nikolas Aetos’ wedding.

“I don’t,” she said anyway. Shook her head and pressed the dull edge of her scraping tool against her thighs.

“Liar,” Lydia Aetos condemned her. In all her life, Athis had only suffered scorn of such intensity a few times. And of those few painful memories, this one hurt the worst by far. Because it was earned.

“I don’t,” Athis insisted again, even so. To her quiet horror, she heard the promise of tears in her voice. “E-even if I did, it wouldn’t matter. He’s gone now.”

“No.” The Young Miss shook her head once. “He was never here in the first place.” A different ‘he’ again. Whatever it was the other girls felt in her pneuma or heard in her voice, even the most brazen of her junior sisters turned their heads away. Offering what privacy they could.

“What do you mean?” Athis asked, though she knew she didn’t want to know.

Lydia Aetos reached up and pressed a single finger to Athis’ chest, directly over her heart.

“His heart was somewhere else from the very start,” she said. “There’s no capturing what wasn’t present to begin with. You never had a chance, and you never will for as long as you live here. Because you had the misfortune of falling in love with a great man, and great men follow their hearts unto death.”

Athis blinked rapidly, the bathhouse steam obscuring her vision.

“Tell me that I’m wrong.”

“No,” she choked out. “You’re not.”

“You never had a chance, because the you that exists here in this moment could not possibly survive the life he intends to live. There is no place for you in his heart. Not as you are. Tell me, slave - are you content with that?” Lio Aetos’ disgraced fiancé asked her quietly. For the first time in over a month, maybe in all her life, Athis admitted to herself the truth.

“No.”

She wasn’t.

A chorus of gasps and exclamations flooded the bathhouse, along with a sensation that was like dozens of breezes of differing intensity brushing across the surface of her skin and deeper at the same time. Athis inhaled a shuddering breath while tears crept down her cheeks, and it filled her lungs to the point she thought they’d burst.

Lydia Aetos stood from the bath and started walking, beckoning her to follow.

“Good. Neither am I.”