The Trials of Hercules Read Online Free PDF Page B

He isn’t from Portaceae. A polis up north perhaps.
    “I’m sorry, he meant no offense.” Talking to someone helps ease my panic, although I can still feel it trying to pierce the gauze-thin layer of calm I’ve draped over myself. “May I?” I point to the wooden bench on the wall opposite the bunks.
    “Be my guest. Name’s Stavros Paulos.” It’s odd hearing someone introduce himself without including his father’s name. After spending a lifetime without having one to attach to mine, I can’t say I don’t mind the omission. “And I’m not offended. Hera is a bitch, from all I hear. Ya hear that?” He shouts at the window, “A bitch.”
    “Quiet. You’ll draw her wrath.”
    “Meh, she’s too busy to notice.”
    “Busy?”
    “It’s the only sense I can make for the state of this polis. I used to come to Portaceae as a kid. My family took vacations here. I know little ‘uns embellish things in their memories, but I’ve got a postcard back home that proves Portaceae used to be one of the grandest poli there ever was. You had the most beautiful, most enviable, wealthiest city in all Osteria. Buildings gleamed, roads were so smooth they seemed like they were paved with marble and the people – oh, the people. I swear it on the gods’ robes, you were the some of the most attractive people my eyes have been blessed to land on, second only to the Vancusians. Now you lot are a disheveled mess, your polis is in a downward financial spiral, and you can’t blink without a building falling on you.”
    It’s nothing I haven’t heard before, but hearing it from an outsider bristles my already frayed nerves.
    “Why are you here then?” I ask curtly.
    “Here jail or here Portaceae?”
    I shrug. “Both.”
    “I’m here in jail because I stole a loaf of bread.”
    “Stealing’s not a crime where you come from?”
    “It’s a crime across Osteria, but what’s a man to do? That python of a Solon you have has squeezed this polis tighter than Hera’s twat. I’m not sure if Hera herself could wring out a single drachar after his management of this polis, not that she’d try. She’s neglected you all. You know that, don’t you? You do, but you won’t admit it. The city’s in disrepair. I know, I know.” He holds up his hands to stop my defense. “It’s the earthquakes. But every polis is seeing an increase in them. Still, when one happens where I come from, if a building falls, we build it again, better and stronger than before. You Portaceans just seem to leave them weakened until they collapse on your heads. And that’s why I stole. My daughter and grandchildren live here. Their building fell a few weeks ago. Her husband was killed and they’ve been left with nothing. Since Portaceae doesn’t give out free bread like most other poli, they were near starving. I stole some bread to fill their empty bellies. Hera forgive me.”
    He pauses for a moment. Whether to catch his breath or let his words sink in, I’m not sure. It’s true, my cousin has done little for the polis, but has he been taking wealth from it? Is Hera blind to his faults and crimes or does she allow them? I don’t have time to form answers to these questions as Stavros continues talking.
    “To add dung to the pile, I’m a scapegoat. That’s why I’m here in Portaceae, not home in Athenos where you’d think being an engineer would count for something.”
    I recall the term scapegoat from school. Portaceae doesn’t follow the ritual, perhaps because if we kicked someone out for a year, they wouldn’t come back. The idea was that each year one person would symbolically take on all the state’s sins and leave the polis for one year. Over the year, the sins would fall away from the scapegoat who, at the end of the year, could return to his polis as another scapegoat took his place. It had always seemed an odd idea to me, but the prospect of traveling to other poli drew my interest. And now, the idea of ridding myself of sin