The Argive Ch. 101-105

"He still could have come back," argued Praxis. "It wouldn't have been pleasant but he could have still made the effort. Why did I have to be the one to search for him?"

Phaedra shrugged. "That's something you'll have to take up with him. Listen, I'm not trying to say you don't have a right to be angry. You definitely do but I want you to know the same man that I know. You need to sit down with him and work through this."

"You're right," said Praxis, which surprised Phaedra judging by the look on her face. "We don't have much time. I didn't come all this way just to turn around once I got what I wanted. I got the answers to the questions that I always wanted to ask but in turn, it only spawned new questions. And we don't have much time to get all the answers."

"Will you talk to him then?" she asked. "It doesn't have to be right now but it ought to be sooner rather than later. We don't need this turmoil right now, not when the wolves are almost at our door."

"I'll talk to him," answered Praxis. "Maybe later this evening, after training. Let me have a few more hours to think and I'm sure that will work wonders."

Phaedra smiled at him, and to his surprise, she hugged him.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice muffled by his chiton.

"Sorry for what?"

"I've always wanted a brother," she said as she turned to look up at him. "No matter how much I begged as a child, I never got one. You can say I've wanted to do that for a long time."

Praxis started to chuckle. "I hope I live up to your expectations. Or you might be wishing that I never showed up here."

"I can assure you I'm not," she said. "Your presence in the city has been a gift so far, for our father and for me. And I hope you two can work out your differences. For the sake of all of us."

"Me too," whispered Praxis. "Me too."

Chapter 103: Father and Son

After his visit with Phaedra, Praxis headed straight for the training grounds where he soon caught up with Agemon. The Corinthian warrior had already fallen in with Asterion and his group, liking their cutting-edge tactics and volunteering to be part of the force. Though Praxis spent most of his morning with that group, it didn't prevent him from seeing Nicomedes throughout the day.

Nor did it mean they didn't interact.

"The phalanx seems to be showing some progress," remarked Nicomedes on one such pass-by visit. "Asterion is really making some strides with them."

Praxis understood that statement to be a peace offering. Mostly, he knew that because Nicomedes didn't actually believe his own words. Even just yesterday, he was still talking about how the phalanx was a waste of time. There was no way he'd had a change of heart so quickly.

"He believes in the formation," replied Praxis. "The best results can come when you believe your argument is right and that you have momentum on your side."

Nicomedes grunted, which was about as close to an agreement as he was going to get. Finally, the king turned toward him.

"Phaedra told me that she talked to you this morning. She said that you got a lot of things out."

"In a manner of speaking," replied Praxis. "She also mentioned that we should get some things settled between us as well."

"What did you think about it?"

Praxis turned to look at him. "I think it's a good idea."

Relief was evident on Nicomedes' face. He let out a small smile. "Tonight then? Let's talk some more."

"Tonight," replied Praxis.

That was all that needed to be said. Nicomedes put his hand on Praxis' shoulder and moved on, leaving both men to stew in their thoughts.

As could be expected, the afternoon dragged on. No matter how many times Praxis tried to rehearse what he wanted to say, it never seemed to have the right meaning. What did you say to a long-lost father who'd abandoned you as a baby and now wanted to make every right? Nothing in his life had prepared him for this.

And yet, here he was in the early evening, standing outside of Nicomedes' door and requesting entry. The king answered quickly, and beckoned him inside his study where they both soon took seats.

It was then that the same stalemate that Praxis had this morning with Phaedra reappeared. No one seemed to want to start the conversation until Praxis asked the first question on his mind.

"I'm not sure what to call you," he said, broaching the subject. "You're not really Evander anymore but you'll never really be Nicomedes to me either. What should I call you?"

"I'm not going to ask you to call me father," replied Nicomedes. "I haven't earned that right but I would ask that you call me Nicomedes still, if you prefer. Evander is a name that doesn't mean anything here. Evander is a person that left long ago and never came back."

"Not the first time he did it," said Praxis before he realized how callous that sounded. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to come out like that."

Nicomedes looked wounded. "You have every right to say or think what you want. I consider it a small triumph that you're still here. Part of me expected you to leave this morning and leave us to our fate."

"I wouldn't do that," said Praxis. "I might not have grown up with much of a father but I learned a lot from my mother. She taught me about duty, honor, and courage. I pledged myself to aid in your defense and it's not something that I take lightly."

Nicomedes smiled. "Doris would be very proud of you. It's a shame about her passing. Of the two of us, she always had the most heart."

"She was a lion," said Praxis. "Let me ask you something. A few days ago, when I caught you mourning your wife. It wasn't about Phaedra's mother, was it? You were mourning my mother?"

Nicomedes nodded. "Yes, I was. Does that surprise you?"

"No, it doesn't. It just makes sense now especially when I talked to Phaedra directly after. She told me you hadn't mourned her mother in some time."

"Not much escapes Phaedra," replied Nicomedes. "I suppose she gets her strength from her mother too."

"And then there's us," said Praxis. "I'll be honest with you--I don't know what to do about you. Part of me wants to hate you. The other part wants to celebrate that I've finally found you. Your actions made a happy reunion impossible but I need to decide whether I'm going to look past that."

"Have you not decided already?" asked Nicomedes. "Are you still unsure?"

Praxis shrugged. "That depends. I still have a few questions. Why did you never try to go back? You called it the great shame of your life. If it was that shameful, how come you never tried to fix it and go back?"

"I've asked myself that question every day since I left," admitted Nicomedes. "And I always hated the answer. In the first couple years, I told myself that Doris had probably moved on. That she wouldn't want me back even if I showed up. I had a feeling that she knew I wasn't good enough for her, and that she would eventually get on with her life."

"That's not true," said Praxis, shaking his head. "She would have taken you back at any time. You were the missing piece of her life that she could never replace, even if she didn't have the proper words to convey it."

"I suspect my heart knew that," replied Nicomedes. "But I didn't have the courage to admit it. After enough time had passed, there became another matter to contend with."

"What was that?"

"Phaedra," answered the king. "I never intended to be with her mother long-term. It was just something that kind of happened. And although she was a lovely woman, she wasn't Doris. At that point, I had a new reason for staying. I couldn't repeat the same shame twice."

Praxis started to nod, understanding his predicament. "You still stayed this long with Phaedra and her mother, at least until she died. What made them different? You thought they were worthy of you?"

"No, by that point I finally grew up," admitted Nicomedes. "I realized that lives aren't so easy to throw away, as difficult as that might sound to hear. In my youth, I thought I was invincible, that the world should mold around me instead of the other way around. When something didn't go my way, I ran. You and your mother were the first time I ran where I looked back."

"You know, when I found out that we created Phaedra, I had the same instinct to run," continued the king. "I thought about leaving and trying again in another city. Do you know what stopped me?"

Praxis shook his head.

"I wondered how many more people I was going to abandon. Would I end up doing this in every city on the Peloponnese until I had a bastard child with every girl? At what point was it enough?"

At that point, Nicomedes started to break down. Tears appeared in the corners of his eyes and they quickly cascaded down his weathered cheeks.

"I realized that it wasn't going to stop until I made it stop," said the king with a surprising amount of firmness. "I already screwed up once and I wasn't going to do that to Phaedra. So I stayed. And every single day that I held her in my arms, I thought about you. I hate that it sounds like I picked them over you. It's just that it took me that long to finally grow up and realize what I did."

Nicomedes wiped the tears from his eyes before looking at Praxis again. "I'm grateful that you're still here with me. That you will help defend my city. If you wanted to leave, I wouldn't blame you. If you didn't want any kind of interaction with me while doing your training, I would respect that too. Again, I'm not going to expect that we will just form a father-son relationship I haven't earned. You set the boundaries of what you want and I'll conform to them, whatever the price."

Now that he'd said his piece, Nicomedes fell silent. The king seemed to stare at the floor, almost as if he dreaded what Praxis was going to say next. In a way, Praxis couldn't blame him. It must have been terrifying to account for an absence that spanned nearly two decades.

And as much as he suffered on his own, Nicomedes was suffering in a different way. He suffered the same agony of the soul, and Praxis couldn't help but feel sorry for him, despite the circumstances.

Nicomedes was weak when he should have been strong. And he'd paid dearly for it.

Praxis was moving before he knew why. He stood up from his chair and made his way closer to Nicomedes, not stopping until he stood just in front of the king. Nicomedes looked up at him, clearly not knowing what to expect and he soon stood on his feet.

Without a word of warning, Praxis embraced him.

Nicomedes only broke down further, crying against his shoulder as the two men embraced.

"I'm sorry, Praxis," he sobbed. "I'm sorry I wasn't a better man."

Praxis pulled back to look at him. "It's okay, Father. Everything will be okay now."

Nicomedes looked confused for the moment. "Are you sure? You have a right to be angry."

"I have a right to a lot of things," said Praxis. "But this is something I'm very sure about. It's time for us to move on. We've both suffered for nearly twenty years over it. It's not what Mother would want, is it?"

"I'll make it up to you the best I can," promised Nicomedes. "I'll do whatever I can to make things right."

Praxis swallowed the lump in his throat. "You already have. Let's put the past behind us."

Nicomedes nodded and hugged him again. Praxis could only pat the older man's back in return. This man was his father and nothing could take that away right now.

"Father?"

Both Praxis and Nicomedes turned to see Phaedra by the door. She was looking at them curiously, and Praxis had to wonder just how much of the conversation she'd heard.

"Come here, Phaedra," beckoned Nicomedes. "It's time that our family was truly together."

Phaedra smiled at that and closed the distance. She slipped into the hug too and Praxis gave her a grin.

It just felt right. Ever since his mother died, he'd been searching for that sense of belonging, that familiarity that only came from shared blood.

And he finally found it with these two. This was his chance to have a family once again. Not just with the family that he created with Lysandra and Zenais but with the one that was tied to him by blood. This was finally his chance to start over.

And he wasn't going to let anyone or anything take it away from him.

Chapter 104: Transitions

If Cypselus could pick one word to describe his life, that word would have been transient. He only decided on that on his walk back to the small house he shared with his family, after a long day of work in Athens.

Though he was making the most of his new life, he still missed the old one. Especially now with rumors of war coming once more, this time with Messenia as the target. Cypselus could only shake his head. It never had to come to this if only Nicomedes of Messenia had accepted his offer of alliance. His rejection meant that the Greek city states had to stand alone against the Spartans, and they fell one by one as a result.

Despite the past being seemingly buried, he couldn't help but reopen it on these long walks back to the house. And Cypselus found himself daydreaming more often about a return to Corinth that would help recapture his former glory.

He knew one person in particular would be excited about a return. That was made very obvious as his wife, Lyra, looked at his meager earnings for a day's work.

"That's it?" she asked after he spilled a few small coins on the table. "That's all we have to work with?"

"Sales were light today," replied Cypselus. "It should get better in a couple weeks. Another festival is coming, the Atheniad. People will be more apt to buy."

Lyra crossed her arms in front of her. "I don't know if I can wait a few more weeks, Cypselus. You've been bringing home less money each day it seems. We might be starving before we even get to the Atheniad."

Cypselus sat down in his chair and let out a sigh of exasperation. "What would you have me do? Do you want me to turn into some kind of bandit? Would that make you happy? You want me to rob from the poor in order to put food on our table?"

Lyra shook her head and moved behind him. She put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "That's not what I was suggesting. What I was getting at is that we still have a very large supply of money that could go a long way. You haven't even cracked it open yet."

Cypselus looked back at her, shocked. "You're talking about the Corinthian treasury! That doesn't belong to us."

"It's not like we're going back to Corinth anytime soon," replied Lyra. "And there's more than enough for us to live comfortably for many years going forward."

"It would be tantamount to stealing," said Cypselus. "It was entrusted to us when we were the monarchs of the city."

"Which we are no longer," corrected Lyra. "I understand why it makes you uncomfortable and if I thought we would ever get our chance to return to Corinth, I never would have suggested it. But we must face facts, Cypselus. We most likely won't go back in our lifetime."

That was a hard pill for Cypselus to swallow. Despite his daydreams, he knew Lyra was probably correct. Corinth was a reality that was increasingly slipping away. Why shouldn't they dip into the treasury if no one was going to use it?

It was his pride that stopped him, alongside his sense of duty. He really would become a bandit in the purest sense of the word. The truth was that he'd been entrusted as the steward of the treasury and even if the day of his return to Corinth wasn't going to happen, he still wasn't about to betray the last thread that linked him to the city.

Even if that meant going hungry.

"The treasury will remain untouched," said Cypselus firmly. "I might regret this decision later on but my sense of duty to my city won't allow me to steal their money. Not even after we've been kicked out."

Lyra didn't say anything. She moved her hand from his shoulder and sighed before moving into the next room. Cypselus knew she would be upset with him for a few hours but ultimately she would agree that it was the right course.

Cypselus let out a sigh of his own. Nothing was a sure thing in this world, but he would give just about anything to know that he wasn't sitting on this money in vain. Would he ever get a chance to spend it on Corinth's behalf?

Or would he die an old man forever guarding the last donation of his people?

*****

"Astara? Can you tell me another story?"

Astara took a deep breath as she looked over at her younger sister, Delia. The six-year-old girl was leaning her head against Astara's shoulder, both of them sitting in the front of the wagon while they traversed through southwestern Arcadia on the journey to Messenia. Astara's mother was in the back of the wagon, being tended to by Nico. The journey had been hard on her in particular, and when coupled with losing her husband and her oldest son, it wasn't hard to see why she was struggling so much.

The truth was that Astara was just about out of stories. There had been little else to do on this trip but tell stories, and Delia had already heard the best of them. The one nice thing about it was that Delia's eyelids were slowly getting heavier, and Astara suspected she needed to tell one more tale before the girl was asleep.

"Let me tell you about the deer and the wolf," said Astara, remembering one particular fable from her youth. "Our father always loved to tell this one."

That seemed comforting enough for Delia, and Astara had barely made it ten minutes into the story before she was breathing softly.

"Nico," whispered Astara, getting the young boy's attention. "Will you help me put Delia in the back? She's exhausted."

Nico did as was requested, and it was remarkable to see how much he'd changed in the last couple weeks. Ever since becoming the man of the family, a lot of responsibility had shifted onto his very young shoulders. Nico seemed to take it in stride. After Delia was put in the back, he slipped into the front with Astara.

"She's practically dead to the world right now," said Nico. "As is Mother."

"It's getting late," said Astara. "It will be dark soon. We should find another caravan to stay with for the night. It's better off to have safety in numbers."

Nico nodded. "The last caravan we passed said that we're getting close to the border. Messenia is only another day away at most. We're almost here."

"Thank the gods," whispered Astara. "I'll be happy once we're off the road."

Nico turned to look at her. "Do you really think you're going to find him in Messenia?"

Astara stiffened a little. "Find who?"

"You know, Praxis," said the young boy. "That's what this is all about, right? It's the reason we're going there. You think you'll find him in the city?"

The boy was more perceptive than she gave him credit for. There was no sense in lying, not to Nico.

"I think he's there," she admitted. "I hope he's there. Though the Spartan king is a reprehensible man, I have no reason to doubt that he would lie about something like that."

"I'm looking forward to seeing him again," said Nico before his tone turned firm. "And I hope he'll help me kill Xanthos."

Astara gave her brother a shocked look. "You won't be killing anyone, least of all Xanthos. We're going somewhere where Xanthos will never be able to touch us. That's the whole point of this."

"I don't care," said Nico. "I still want him dead. And Praxis will help me, I know it. He hates him probably as much as I do."

"This is too much talk for one so young," said Astara, putting her hand through his hair like old times. "When you're a man, you can talk about such things. Until then, you're just my little brother."

Nico growled but didn't protest it. Astara suspected he was just putting on a brave face to hide the fear. She suspected it because it was what they'd all been doing since leaving Argos. At least she felt safer the farther she got from the city.