Homer's Guide
an excerpt

“I think he’s waking up,” a male voice said. It was metallic sounding, or perhaps like a snake’s voice.
“I’ll get him some water,” someone else said, a woman. He heard the sound of a pitcher pouring water.
“It doesn’t matter,” the snake voice said. “He’s a prisoner. Lena—”
Cool water poured into his mouth. Someone removed the blindfold from his eyes.
He was sitting in a marble hall. At the end of the hall, a young man, maybe twenty-five years old was sitting in a throne-like chair. His clothes were absolutely starched, and jewelry adorned his neck and wrists, as well as his brown curls. He looked like a king. “Bring him here,” the man said with a snake voice.
The woman who spoke, Lena, grabbed his arm and yanked him up with more force than he expected from a woman of her size. She dragged him up to the front and dropped him right in front of the well-dressed snake man.
“What is your name?” the man asked in a bored tone of voice.
“Andreas son of Dion,” he answered, somewhat shakily. “Why? Who are you?”
“Be quiet,” the man told him sharply, with a look of disgust. “I don’t care about you at all.”
Then why did you kidnap me? Andreas wanted to ask. But he was terrified to his insides and out so he remained silent and waited for the man to continue.
“My name is Cleon.” The man stood up and walked down his podium. Even on the same surface as Andreas, he was still rather tall. “I have a very high standing in society, and you will obey anything I tell you,” he said, as if establishing the fact which would have stood as obvious anyways, especially with Andreas as the person doing the obeying.
“I don’t care, as I said, a single bit for you,” he continued, circling Andreas, who was still sitting on the floor. “What I want to know about is the old man you travel with.”
“Yeah, he calls himself Homer. Hostage. Why do you care about him?”
Cleon’s eyes flashed. “Do you really not know who he is?” He looked almost angry.
“He’s just a bard, quite a good one. I don’t know what you mean.”
Cleon leaned down and grabbed Andreas’s chin, forcing him to look up helplessly. “That ‘hostage’ is the very author of the magnificent Iliad itself.”