Patroclus was a greedy person.
He was like Achilles's shadow, inseparable from the demigod.
But every shadow has a day when it longs to become the real thing.
Night's description of the future, combined with a subtle touch of the music's influence pulling his drifting mind, made him feel as though he actually saw the moment Hector's spear pierced his chest, that cold and despairing gaze staring down at him.
A dull ache in his chest.
Even with that gleaming armor around him, Patroclus felt no safety in it whatsoever.
Faced with the threat of death, and considering that giving back the armor wasn't without compensation, he started to waver.
Finally, he agreed to return it, but only after the reward from King Agamemnon was secured.
To show just how generously his gesture was worth, Patroclus also announced, with what he considered enormous magnanimity, that he would put in a word recommending Night as the one to wear Achilles's armor.
He was genuinely treating it like something that already belonged to him.
Hearing his words, Night felt a flicker of contempt somewhere inside.
This man was genuinely stupid.
Nestor barely nudged him before he came running to grab divine equipment that was nowhere near his league.
And now he was using the return of borrowed property as leverage.
For Agamemnon, as long as someone wore Achilles's armor and walked away with it, it was all good.
As for who it was, he couldn't care less.
After all, what he wanted to see was Achilles humiliated and impotently furious.
And because of Night and the others demanding a switch in candidates, which meant spending money he hadn't planned to spend, Agamemnon was already furious enough as it was.
Paying out for someone he didn't even care about was a senseless disaster in his eyes.
And now this idiot was arrogant enough to think he got to select the next person to wear the armor.
Something bought at a cost, and he didn't even get to decide what to do with it on his own terms.
The feeling was like a friend demanding you buy them a birthday gift and then specifying the most expensive option on the list: deeply unpleasant.
People without any sense of appropriate limits were the most irritating kind.
But Night had no interest in whether this oversized child was going to offend Agamemnon.
In fact it would be ideal if Patroclus provoked Agamemnon into finishing him off.
At that point an enraged Achilles would never return to the Greek side.
Then Night would have Achilles on the left and Hector on the right, with no one in the alliance able to stand against either of them.
Find an opportunity to drag the war god in early, before the other gods could react, and destroy the Greek army in one decisive move.
It's all well within reach. Absolutely Perfect.
Night said, "That's fine. But the person you recommend won't be me, and it won't be Ajax."
Hearing his words, Patroclus paused for a moment.
Not either of them?
Through his own self-interested lens, he initially assumed that these two were only trying to stop him because they wanted the armor themselves.
But neither of them wanted it?
Something vaguely unpleasant stirred in Patroclus' heart.
It was like watching other people treat something you treasured as worthless garbage.
Didn't that just make his own earlier desperation look petty and ridiculous?
"Then who are we recommending?"
Night spoke a name. "Palamedes."
When that unexpected name came out of his mouth,
Even Ajax, who had already accepted he wouldn't be wearing the armor, froze.
Why him?
Although Griffith thought that man was the perfect candidate.
But
The hero Palamedes.
Almost every hero present knew him, and his position was extraordinarily unusual.
He wasn't as famous as Odysseus or Diomedes, but almost every hero gathered here had been recruited through him.
In the myths, he was said to be the most knowledgeable among the Greek alliance.
He was the son of King Nauplius and Clymene.
Diligent, intelligent, upright, and steady.
Handsome as well, and gifted in music and singing.
He invented the lighthouse, the scale, measuring instruments, and dice.
He added four letters to the Phoenician alphabet that had been introduced to Greece.
He was credited as the inventor of numbers, coins, and the calendar.
He did enormous things for the Greeks and received almost none of the recognition he deserved.
All of this stemmed from the fact that he had recruited too many heroes who didn't want to come in the first place.
He saw through Odysseus's act of feigned madness, which earned him a lifelong enemy.
In the end Odysseus had him framed and destroyed.
When the false accusation came, not a single hero stood up for him.
In the end, he cried out as the stones fell: "Truth, rejoice! You have finally died before me!"
And then Odysseus had him stoned to death.
This was what set off the curse the gods placed on Odysseus afterward.
Even the goddess of justice moved to punish him for it.
Even with Zeus, who had always favored Odysseus, quietly protecting him from the shadows, he still spent ten years adrift in the Aegean Sea before he could return home.
A figure this singular.
With no real fighting strength.
But could you call him ordinary?
Not even close.
"I heard from Odysseus that Palamedes is the most knowledgeable among us. If he's the one impersonating Achilles, there's no chance of it slipping."
Night quietly dug a small pit for Odysseus in saying this.
He had casually asked Odysseus once at the banquet what he thought of the hero Palamedes.
Odysseus, who buried all his resentment out of sight, praised Palamedes on the surface without restraint.
Even if Odysseus were standing there right now, he would hear nothing wrong with the statement.
But in the future, this could become a devastating blow that landed directly on Odysseus.
The way Night put it now would leave people with the impression that it was Odysseus who held this view and that Night was only recommending Palamedes because of his influence.
As if it had been deliberately engineered.
Ajax opened his mouth and stopped himself.
Since it came from the wise Odysseus himself, Palamedes should be a sound choice.
But Palamedes's fighting strength was not particularly impressive.
Compared to Griffith, who kept calling himself a musician and yet nearly beat a Greek hero to death with his bare hands.
Palamedes was a genuine musician, and though he was technically a hero, like Odysseus, he was far more skilled at rhetoric and invention than at actual combat.
Wouldn't Palamedes face the same danger then?
That said, there was one thing no one could ignore.
That, when Palamedes was framed in the myths, not a single hero stood up to defend him.
That alone said a great deal about how poorly he was regarded.
He was righteous and kind, but in the way he dealt with people he was far too blunt.
If it were Patroclus who died, Ajax would have to worry about Achilles throwing his life away to avenge him.
But Palamedes?
Who would even care?
All that mattered was whether that terrible future could be changed.
And when it came to who actually wore the armor, it really didn't make a difference.
Ajax said nothing.
Achilles, who had already been turned and knew the plan, gave Night his unconditional support.
As for Patroclus, he didn't care either way.
Rather than overthink it, he stopped thinking.
Compared to any of that, all he wanted was to get Agamemnon's reward as quickly as possible.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)
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