Untitled Part 17
MY LIFE DIDN'T FLASH BEFORE MY EYES, but I did find myself reviewing the past for anything I might have done to offend Nico di Angelo.
I imagined him saying Yes, these are the sacrifices! , then taking Will's hand and skipping away into the darkness while Rachel, Meg and I were devoured by an army of costumed, muddy miniature frogmen.
'These are not the sacrifices,' Nico said, allowing me to breathe again. 'But I have brought you a better offering! I see you, O great Screech -Bling!'
Nico did not say screech , mind you. He screeched in a way that told me he'd been practising Troglodytish. He had a lovely, ear-piercing accent.
The trogs leaned in, sniffing and waiting, while Nico held out his hand to Will, like gimme.
Will reached into his bag. He pulled out the desiccated lizard and handed it to Nico, who unwrapped it like a holy relic and held it aloft.
The crowd let out a collective gasp. 'Oooh!'
Screech-Bling's nostrils quivered. I thought his tricorn hat might pop off his head from excitement. 'Is that a – GRR – five-lined skink – CLICK ?'
'It is – GRR ,' Nico said. 'This was difficult to find, O Screech -Bling, Wearer of the Finest Hats.'
Screech-Bling licked his lips. He was drooling all over his cravat. 'A rare gift indeed. We often find Italian wall lizards in our domain. Turtles. Wood frogs. Rat snakes. Occasionally, if we are very lucky, a pit viper.'
'Tasty!' shrieked a trog in the back. 'Tasty pit vipers!'
Several other trogs screeched and growled in agreement.
'But a five-lined skink,' Screech-Bling said, 'is a delicacy we seldom see.'
'My gift to you,' Nico said. 'A peace offering in hope of friendship.'
Screech-Bling took the skink in his long-fingered, pointyclawed hands. I assumed he would shove the reptile in his mouth and be done with it. That's what any king or god would do, presented with his favourite delicacy.
Instead, he turned to his people and made a short speech in their own language. The trogs cheered and waved their chapeaus. A trog in a mud-splattered chef's hat pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He knelt before ScreechBling and accepted the skink.
The chieftain turned to us with a grin. 'We will share this bounty! I, Screech -Bling, chief executive – CLICK – officer of the troglodytes, have decreed that a great soup shall be made, so that all shareholders may taste of the wondrous skink!'
More cheering from the troglodytes. Of course, I realized. If Screech-Bling modelled himself after George Washington, he would not be a king – he would be a chief executive.
'For this great gift,' he continued, 'we will not kill and eat you, Nico di Angelo, even though you are Italian, and we wonder if you might taste as good as an Italian wall lizard!'
Nico bowed his head. 'That is very kind.'
'We will also generously refrain from eating your companions –' a few of Screech-Bling's shareholders muttered, 'Aww, what?' – 'though it is true that, like you, they do not wear hats, and no hatless species can be considered civilized.'
Rachel and Meg looked alarmed, probably because Screech-Bling was still drooling profusely as he talked about not eating us. Or perhaps they were thinking about all the great hats they could have worn if they'd only known.
Glow-in-the-dark Will gave us a reassuring nod and mouthed, It's cool. Apparently, the giving of a gift, followed by the promise of not killing and eating your guests, was standard troglodyte diplomatic protocol.
'We see your generosity, O Screech -Bling!' Nico said. 'I would propose a pact between us – an agreement that would produce many hats for us all, as well as reptiles, fine clothing and rocks.'
An excited murmur rippled through the crowd. It seemed Nico had hit upon all four things on the troglodytes' Christmas wish list.
Screech-Bling summoned forward a few senior trogs, who I guessed were his board of directors. One was the chef. The others wore the hats of a police officer, a firefighter and a cowboy. After a short consultation, Screech-Bling faced us with another pointy-toothed grin.
'Very well!' he said. 'We will take you to our corporate headquarters, where we will feast upon skink soup and – CLICK, GRR – talk more about these matters!'
We were surrounded by a throng of cheering, growling shareholders. With a total lack of regard for personal space, as one might expect from a tunnel-dwelling species, they picked us up and ran with us on their shoulders, sweeping us out of the cavern and into a maze of tunnels at a speed that would've put the tauri silvestres to shame.
'These guys are awesome,' Meg decided. 'They eat snakes.'
I knew several snakes, including Hermes's companions, George and Martha, who would have been uncomfortable with Meg's definition of awesomeness. Since we were now in the midst of the trogs' encampment, I decided not to bring that up.
At first glance, the troglodytes' corporate headquarters resembled an abandoned subway station. The wide platform was lined with columns holding up a barrelled ceiling of black tiles that drank in the dim light from pots of bioluminescent mushrooms scattered around the cavern. Along the left side of the platform, instead of a rail bed, was the sunken, packed-earth roadway that the trogs had used to bring us here. And at the speeds they ran, who needed a train?
Along the right side of the platform flowed a swift subterranean river. The trogs filled their gourds and cauldrons from this source, and also emptied their chamber pots into it – though being a civilized, hat-wearing people, they dumped the chamber pots downstream from where they drew their drinking water.
Unlike in a subway station, there were no obvious stairways leading up, no clearly marked exits. Just the river and the road we'd arrived on.
The platform buzzed with activity. Dozens of trogs rushed here and there, miraculously managing their daily chores without losing the stacks of hats on their heads. Some tended cooking pots on tripods over fire pits. Others – possibly merchants? – haggled over bins of rocks. Trog children, no bigger than human babies, frolicked around, playing catch with spheres of solid crystal.
Their dwellings were tents. Most had been appropriated from the human world, which gave me unpleasant flashbacks of the camping display at Macro's Military Madness in Palm Springs. Others appeared to be of trog design, carefully stitched from the shaggy red hides of the tauri silvestres. I had no idea how the trogs had managed to skin and stitch the impervious hides, but clearly, as the ancestral enemies of the forest bulls, they had found a way.
I wondered about that rivalry, too. How had a subterranean frog people in love with hats and lizards become mortal enemies to a breed of bright-red devil bulls? Perhaps at the beginning of time, the elder gods had told the first trogs, You may now pick your nemesis! And the first trogs had pointed across the newly made fields of creation and yelled, We hate those cows!
Whatever the case, I was comforted to know that even if the trogs were not yet our friends, at least we had a mutual enemy.
Screech-Bling had given us a guest tent and a cold fire pit and told us to make ourselves at home while he saw to dinner preparations. Or, rather, he'd told Nico to make himself at home. The CEO kept eyeing Rachel, Meg and me like we were sides of beef hanging in a shop window. As for Will, the troglodytes seemed to ignore him. My best guess: because Will glowed, they considered him simply a movable light source, as if Nico had brought along his own pot of luminous mushrooms. Judging from Will's scowl, he did not appreciate this.
It would've been easier to relax if Rachel hadn't kept checking her watch – reminding us that it was now four in the afternoon, then four thirty, and that Meg and I were supposed to surrender by sundown. I could only hope the troglodytes were like senior citizens and ate supper early.
Meg busied herself collecting spores from the nearby mushroom pots, which she seemed to consider the coolest thing since snake-eating. Will and Nico sat on the other side of the fire pit having a tense discussion. I couldn't hear the words, but from their facial expressions and hand gestures, I got the gist:
Will: Worry, worry, worry.
Nico: Calm down, probably won't die.
Will: Worry. Trogs. Dangerous. Yikes.
Nico: Trogs good. Nice hats.
Or something along those lines.
After a while, the trog with the chef's hat materialized at our campsite. In his hand was a steaming ladle. 'Screech - Bling will talk to you now,' he said in heavily Troglodytishlaced English.
We all began to rise, but the chef stopped us with a sweep of his ladle. 'Only Nico, the Italian wall lizard – um, SQUEAK – I mean the Italian son of Hades. The rest of you will wait here until dinner.'
His gleaming eyes seemed to add, When you may or may not be on the menu!
Nico squeezed Will's hand. 'It'll be fine. Back soon.'
Then he and the chef were gone. In exasperation, Will threw himself down on his fireside mat and put his backpack over his face, reducing our Will-glow illumination by about fifty percent.
Rachel scanned the encampment, her eyes glittering in the gloom.
I wondered what she saw with her ultra-clear vision. Perhaps the troglodytes looked even scarier than I realized. Perhaps their hats were even more magnificent. Whatever the case, her shoulders curved as tense as a drawn bow. Her fingers traced the soot-stained floor as if she were itching for her paintbrushes.
'When you surrender to Nero,' she told me, 'the first thing you'll need to do is buy us time.'
Her tone disturbed me almost as much as her words: when I surrendered, not if . Rachel had accepted that it was the only way. The reality of my predicament curled up and nestled in my throat like a five-lined skink.
I nodded. 'B-buy time. Yes.'
'Nero will want to burn down New York as soon as he has you,' she said. 'Why would he wait? Unless you give him a reason ...'
I had a feeling I would not like Rachel's next suggestion. I didn't have a clear understanding of what Nero intended to do to me once I surrendered – other than the obvious torture and death. Luguselwa seemed to believe the emperor would keep Meg and me alive at least for a while, though she had been vague about what she knew of Nero's plans.
Commodus had wanted to make a public spectacle out of my death. Caligula had wanted to extract what remained of my godhood and add it to his own power with the help of Medea's sorcery. Nero might have similar ideas. Or – and I feared this was most likely – once he finished torturing me, he might surrender me to Python to seal their alliance. No doubt my old reptilian enemy would enjoy swallowing me whole, letting me die in his belly over the course of many excruciating days of digestion. So, there was that to look forward to.
'Wh-what reason would make Nero wait?' I asked.
Apparently, I was picking up Troglodytish, because my voice was punctuated by clicks and squeaks.
Rachel traced curlicues in the soot – waves, perhaps, or a line of people's heads. 'You said Camp Half-Blood was standing by to help?'
'Yes ... Kayla and Austin told me they would remain on alert. Chiron should be back at camp soon as well. But an attack on Nero's tower would be doomed. The whole point of our surrender –'
'Is to distract the emperor from what Nico, Will and I will be doing, hopefully, with the trogs' help: disabling the Greek-fire vats. But you'll need to give Nero another incentive to keep him from pushing that button the minute you surrender. Otherwise we'll never have time to sabotage his doomsday weapon, no matter how fast the trogs can run or dig.'
I understood what she was suggesting. The five-lined skink of reality began its slow, painful slide down my oesophagus.
'You want to alert Camp Half-Blood,' I said. 'Have them initiate an attack anyway. Despite the risks.'
'I don't want any of this,' she said. 'But it's the only way. It'll have to be carefully timed. You and Meg surrender. We get to work with the troglodytes. Camp Half-Blood musters for an attack. But if Nero thinks the entire camp is coming to him –'
'That would be worth waiting for. To take out the entire population of Camp Half-Blood while he destroys the city, all in one terrible firestorm.' I swallowed. 'I could just bluff. I could claim reinforcements are coming.'
'No,' Rachel said. 'It has to be real. Nero has Python on his side. Python would know .'
I didn't bother asking her how. The monster might not have been able to see through Rachel's eyes yet, but I remembered all too well how his voice had sounded speaking through her mouth. They were connected. And that connection was getting stronger.
I was reluctant to consider the details of such an insane plan, but I found myself asking, 'How would you alert the camp?'
Rachel gave me a thin smile. 'I can use cell phones. I don't normally carry one, but I'm not a demigod. Assuming I make it back to the surface, where cell phones actually, you know, work , I can buy a cheap one. Chiron has a crappy old computer in the Big House. He hardly ever uses it, but he knows to look for messages or emails in emergency situations. I'm pretty sure I can get his attention. Assuming he's there.'
She sounded so calm, which just made me feel more agitated.
'Rachel, I'm scared,' I admitted. 'It was one thing thinking about putting myself in danger. But the entire camp? Everyone?'
Strangely, this comment seemed to please her.
She took my hand. 'I know, Apollo. And the fact that you're worried about other people? That's beautiful. But you'll have to trust me. That secret path to the throne ... the thing I am supposed to show you? I'm pretty sure this is it. This is how we make things right.'
Make things right.
What would such an ending even look like?
Six months ago, when I first plummeted to Manhattan, the answer had seemed obvious. I would return to Mount Olympus, my immortality restored, and everything would be great. After being Lester for a few more months, I might have added that destroying the Triumvirate and freeing the ancient Oracles would also be good ... but mostly because that was the path back to my godhood. Now, after all the sacrifices I had seen, the pain suffered by so many ... what could possibly make things right?
No amount of success would bring back Jason, or Dakota, or Don, or Crest, or Money Maker, or Heloise, or the many other heroes who had fallen. We could not undo those tragedies.
Mortals and gods had one thing in common: we were notoriously nostalgic for 'the good old days'. We were always looking back to some magical golden time before everything went bad. I remembered sitting with Socrates, back around 425 BCE , and us griping to each other about how the younger generations were ruining civilization.
As an immortal, of course, I should have known that there never were any 'good old days'. The problems humans face never really change, because mortals bring their own baggage with them. The same is true of gods.
I wanted to go back to a time before all the sacrifices had been made. Before I had experienced so much pain. But making things right could not mean rewinding the clock. Even Kronos hadn't had that much power over time.
I suspected that wasn't what Jason Grace would want, either.
When he'd told me to remember being human, he'd meant building on pain and tragedy, overcoming it, learning from it. That was something gods never did. We just complained.
To be human is to move forward, to adapt, to believe in your ability to make things better. That is the only way to make the pain and sacrifice mean something.
I met Rachel's gaze. 'I trust you. I'll make things right. Or I will die trying.'
The strange thing was, I meant it. A world in which the future was controlled by a giant reptile, where hope was suffocated, where heroes sacrificed their lives for nothing, and pain and hardship could not yield a better life ... that seemed much worse than a world without Apollo.
Rachel kissed my cheek – a sisterly gesture, except it was hard to imagine my actual sister Artemis doing that.
'I'm proud of you,' Rachel said. 'Whatever happens. Remember that.'
I was tongue-tied.
Meg turned towards us, her hands full of lichen and mushrooms. 'Rachel, did you just kiss him? Ew. Why?'
Before Rachel could answer, the chef reappeared at our campsite, his apron and hat splattered with steaming broth. He still had that hungry glint in his eyes. 'VISITORS – SQUEAK – come with me! We are ready for the feast!'
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