The Kept-Husband Applicant

I dropped my eyes. The pebbles along the bank were round, smooth, without a single sharp edge on them. One, two, three, four. Counting pebbles is always a peaceful business.

"Aigoo..."

The wail stabbed at my ear. I decided to believe it was the wind. Just the river, whistling the way a river does.

"Young ones these days see an elder and look straight through her. Getting old is the crime. That's the crime..."

This is Greece-World. Public morals here are not the morals of that eastern peninsula, where people still split hairs over courtesy and shame. The local standard runs like this: castrate your father with a sickle and steal his throne, then let your own son blast you off it with a thunderbolt. In a setting where filial impiety is a state-sanctioned sport, who expects respect for their elders?

"Excuse me, ma'am! I've got something urgent just now! Have a nice day!"

I initiated a retreat at a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠brisk walk.

Metis. That ford from earlier. Four hundred meters upstream.

I reached the upstream stretch with my breath ragged. The water ran shallow there, and rock broke the surface.

And yet.

"Come, have you?"

The crone was sitting with her backside planted on the rock, looking up at me. My mouth fell open.

"H-how?"

"How, what how. Things with legs walk. That's the way of it."

"No—you were right down there a moment ago! I came at a dead sprint, so why are you here ahead of me?"

"A young man's steps are sluggish, so an old woman gets in front of him. Sees an elder and all he does is run. Tsk, tsk. You took your upbringing in a stable, I see!"

"..."

How did she know? She had struck the sore spot dead center.

"If you can fold the earth like that, then just cross by yourself!"

"What kind of talk is that! Are you telling this poor old woman to fall into that muddy water and die?"

Wrinkles gathered at the corners of her eyes, and fat tears began to drop.

"Aigoo, what good is it if I live any longer! Handled like a bundle of luggage! What's an old woman doing, shamelessly clinging to her life!"

She flung herself bodily into the river. The splash was heavy. The current climbed to her waist; she swayed, lost her balance, and started to be swept downstream.

"Hey—Grandma, are you out of your mind!?"

My head screamed at me to run, to not get tangled up in this. My body jumped into the muddy water first. It was the same small-citizen reflex that used to shoot a hand out, on the commute home, when a drunk pitched toward the subway tracks.

I snatched the scruff of the collapsing crone's rags and hauled her up out of the water.

"Got you! Get on my back! Hurry!"

"All right."

The voice that had been dying a moment ago rang out perfectly bright. I hoisted her roughly onto my back. Something in my spine popped.

"Ghk! Grandma, why are you this heavy!? Did you swallow a brick of lead!?"

To the eye she was nothing but jutting bones, but the weight settling across my back was like shouldering a boulder.

"A young man, and such moaning. Come, carry me properly."

Her bony arms wound around my neck.

"Lad, you are a fine strapping one. Good bones on you. In time you'll lead a great host across the sea and keep a whole trove of beautiful women as your spoils. A hero's face, that is."

"I'm about to stop breathing, so spare me the nonsense. Since when is a person a thing? Spoils, what spoils..."

The weight at my back increased, just slightly.

"Then how do you mean to take a woman?"

"Take her? You ask! If you don't get consent these days, you're finished!"

"Consent?"

Her voice dropped a tone.

"You mean you come to an agreement? Not break her by strength? A man's glory is to win his war and seize her, or carry off a maiden and sow his seed."

"Glory, my ass! Do that and you get sued! Fired on the spot, your name dragged through the dirt, your life over! Doesn't matter if they clear you later! Huff... huff..."

A sharp stone bit into the sole of my foot. I braced and held the crone up hard with both arms, fighting for balance.

"Then I'll ask one thing more. If a husband covets some other woman, hides her in the rear garden of the palace, and has her bear a child, how ought the true wife to deal with that hidden woman? Would it not be right to tear her to death?"

"Why are you asking me??"

"Answer."

Irritation shot clean to the top of my head. The current was brutal, my back was killing me, and some old woman passing by was demanding a session of couples counseling.

"The husband who did the cheating is one hundred percent trash! Don't take it out on the other woman—take a sickle to his dick! Why are you grabbing someone who didn't do anything!"

"What did you say?"

"Unless she knew he was a married man and went after him anyway, it isn't her fault, is it?"

This was the part that blew my temper every time I watched a trash melodrama in my previous life. The cheating husband slips neatly out of frame, and the women are left tearing at each other's hair.

The space at my back went quiet, and all at once the weight was gone.

"I will ask one last thing. If a wife is far greater than her husband, and she climbs up to sit upon the crown of his head and means to wield all things herself, what is the man to do? What will you do with the wanton wench who tramples a man's pride?"

"If your wife's the outstanding one, you live attending her. Kept husband—if you'll only give me the post, I'll give it everything I have!"

"...Heh heh."

The arms around my neck wrenched tight, hard enough to grind.

"Yes. Yes! There—that's it! That is how it must be!"

Whatever had pleased her so much, the crone shook my neck back and forth.

"Ghhk... you senile... old hag... the strength...! Gack! My neck—you're choking me...!"

My windpipe closed. Light burst in front of my eyes. I drove my legs with everything I had, because I meant to live. I was not about to drown while being strangled in the hands of this lunatic old woman.

I thrashed, and I kept walking. Mid-river. The deepest stretch of it.

My foot sank deep into the mud. When I tried to pull it free, the leather thong cinched around my ankle snapped. One of the sandals Lady Chariclo had bound so neatly was sucked whole into the silt of the riverbed.

"Ah! My shoe!!"

I groped after it with my foot, but the fierce current closed the mud over. Try to fish it out and I would flip and drown where I stood.

"Agh, and it was new...!"

Swallowing tears of blood, I set my bare foot on the gravel and hauled myself up the opposite bank.

I dropped to my knees in the dirt and set the crone down.

"Cough—hack... I'm alive... Grandma, still, we got across safe, so that's a reli—...ef...?"

No one was there. There wasn't even a wet print of mud on the grass.

"What. Where'd she go?"

I sat there blankly, soaked through.

"...Not a single thank-you, and she just leaves? This is why society goes cold. Show a little goodwill and they take it for a right. Pay me back for my sandal!!"

The pink text, dead silent until that moment, came pouring out.

"...Who? What did I just carry across a river!?"

Pages from a children's educational comic flashed through my head.

"Am I going to be turned into a cow!?"

Whew. Thank god.

"That's terrifying too!"

"Hey!!"

I ran a hand over my neck. Heat flared, and a warmth caught under my fingertips. I leaned over a pool at the river's edge and looked at my reflection.

A hundred eyes, spread in splendor. The pattern of a peacock's feather. Where that old hag had hung off me and choked, a bluish mark was stamped in, sharp and clear.

"What is this? A brand for livestock due at the slaughterhouse?"

"Champion or not, tell her to pay me back for my sandal!!"

I jabbed a finger at the sky and bellowed.

"A god, so anything goes!? You choke a man and bolt without a hello! You don't have the bare minimum of manners! Which is why your husband is out having aff—"

"—airs. Not that I would dare even think such a thing. Anyway, if Her Great Majesty the Queen is as large of spirit as all that, it did occur to me that one new shoe might not have been beyond her to give..."

"Anyway, I'm filing a complaint at the Temple of Delphi! I'm reporting this!!"

Lose one shoe, and what I got in exchange was a gang tattoo. So much for ever showing my face at a public bath. Grumbling, I swept my wet hair back.

A tough leather sandal on the left foot. The right foot bare, caked in mud. A leopard skin on my shoulders, soaked through and hanging limp. And on the nape of my neck, a glaring peacock-feather tattoo. I looked, without a doubt, like a vagrant.

"Negotiation can wait. First I'll have to beg."

I walked the dirt road, still muttering. Beyond the hill, white walls came into view.

Iolcus.

Inside the gate, the square was packed. Citizens in white chitons, sacrificial bulls slicked with oil, thick smoke rising from the censers. A wind came off the water, carrying the smell of the sea.

"What's today? Market day?"

Oh, yeah? Then Uncle will be out in the square too. Perfect. No need to book an appointment and wait around. I can walk straight into the audience.

I limped into the crowd. People looked at me. At first the eyes only asked what beggar-trash this was. But the moment their gaze settled on my feet, a stir spread.

"Look at that man..."

"A leopard skin about him, and his hair wet with the dew of Mount Pelion."

"The feet. Look at the feet!"

"...Huh? What's wrong with my feet?"

I scratched at my neck, awkward.

Metis. Do I look that hideous? Why is everyone edging away?

Oracle? What oracle?

People began to fall back to either side, opening a path. At the end of that path, on a high platform inside the gate, a man was standing. An aged king, a golden crown on his head and a purple mantle over his shoulders.

Pelias.

On the platform.

Pelias, King of Iolcus, carried two old nightmares.

The first was an oracle.

A prophecy he had received the year he took the throne. And so the king watched the feet of every man who passed the city gate. Beggars whose shoes had worn through. Drunks who had lost one. Only after he had them all dragged in each day, and had checked their feet, could he sleep.

The second was a sin.

Sidero, the stepmother who had tormented his mother, Tyro. She had fled into Hera's temple begging mercy, and Pelias had cut her down upon the altar. The blood-soaked statue of the goddess, looking down at him. Not for a single night had the king forgotten that gaze. So he offered sacrifice to every god, and to Hera's altar alone he never gave so much as a drop of oil. He could not. He knew he would not be forgiven anyway.

And yet.

"Your Majesty... over there..."

Through the parted crowd, a man was walking out. A youth in a leopard skin, sweeping back wet golden hair, strolling in at his ease. Pelias's gaze stabbed down to the man's feet.

A leather sandal on the left. The right foot bare.

A single sandal...!

The king gripped his golden cup hard enough to crush it. The red wine inside spilled over the rim. The oracle that had locked him inside a nightmare had appeared, wearing flesh. Pelias's hand went to the sword hilt at his waist.

He has to die. Cut that bastard's head off this instant and hang it on the wall...

In that instant the man raised a hand and brushed the nape of his neck. Deliberately. As if he meant it to be seen. Sunlight fell beneath those fingers. From the nape down toward the shoulder, a blue pattern was set into the skin: a peacock feather with a hundred eyes. The sign of the goddess Hera.

Hera... so she went and did it! And today, of all days!

What day was this? The great festival in honor of Poseidon, god of the sea. The day when every noble and commoner of Iolcus, and the priests with them, were gathered in one place. Cut down the goddess's envoy in the middle of the great festival, with all the city watching? A revolt of the people would be the least of it. The thunderbolt of Olympus would turn Iolcus to ash on the spot.

He chose, to the exact hour, a time and a place where he cannot be killed...!

Meticulous. A deployment so precise it raised the hair on his arms.

Aeson's blood... Diomedes, wasn't that the name?

The cunning of Zeus. A performance, truly, that lived up to the name. Rumor had called him a soft, frail youth. And he had been this vicious a schemer all along?

Pelias took his hand off the hilt and forced the corners of his mouth upward.

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠king's overblown voice rolled out across the whole square. Pelias strode over and stopped in front of the man. Up close, the man's eyes were calm to a grotesque degree. That detachment wound all the tighter around Pelias's heart.

What do you mean to demand? Will you shout for me to hand over the throne? Do you intend to proclaim my crimes before all the world and drag me down!?

At last the man opened his mouth.

"Excuse me?"

"I came to settle an inheritance."