by Rick Riordan
Rather than raging in response to Piper being struck, Jason now floated deathly still, his eyes closed, his face like stone. Meg, on the other hand, clawed at her ventus cage, screaming words I couldn’t hear. Her clothes were in tatters. Her face was crosshatched with a dozen bleeding cuts, but she didn’t seem to care. She kicked and punched and threw packets of seeds into the maelstrom, causing festive bursts of pansies and daffodils among the shrapnel.
By the imperial dais, Medea had turned pale and sweaty. Countering Piper’s charmspeak must have taxed her, but that gave me no comfort.
Reverb and his guards would soon be back, bearing the hearts of the emperor’s enemies.
A cold thought flooded through me. The hearts of his enemies.
I felt as if I had been backhanded. The emperor needed me alive, at least for the moment. Which meant my only leverage…
My expression must have been priceless. Caligula burst out laughing.
“Apollo, you look like someone stepped on your favorite lyre!” He tutted. “You think you’ve had it bad? I grew up as a hostage in my Uncle Tiberius’s palace. Do you have any idea how evil that man was? I woke up every day expecting to be assassinated, just like the rest of my family. I became a consummate actor. Whatever Tiberius needed me to be, I was. And I survived. But you? Your life has been golden from start to finish. You don’t have the stamina to be mortal.”
He turned to Medea. “Very well, sorceress! You may turn your little blenders up to puree and kill the two prisoners. Then we will deal with Apollo.”
Medea smiled. “Gladly.”
“Wait!” I screamed, pulling an arrow from my quiver.
The emperor’s remaining guards leveled their spears, but the emperor shouted, “HOLD!”
I didn’t try to draw my bow. I didn’t attack Caligula. Instead, I turned the arrow inward and pressed the point against my chest.
Caligula’s smile evaporated. He examined me with thinly veiled contempt. “Lester…what are you doing?”
“Let my friends go,” I said. “All of them. Then you can have me.”
The emperor’s eyes gleamed like a strix’s. “And if I don’t?”
I summoned my courage, and issued a threat I never could have imagined in my previous four thousand years of life. “I’ll kill myself.”
OH, No, Thou Shalt Not, buzzed a voice in my head.
My noble gesture was ruined when I realized I had, once again, drawn the Arrow of Dodona by mistake. It shook violently in my hand, no doubt making me look even more terrified than I was. Nevertheless, I held it fast.
Caligula narrowed his eyes. “You would never. You don’t have a self-sacrificing instinct in your body!”
“Let them go.” I pressed the arrow against my skin, hard enough to draw blood. “Or you’ll never be the sun god.”
The arrow hummed angrily, KILLETH THYSELF WITH SOME OTHER PROJECTILE, KNAVE. OF COMMON MURDER WEAPONS, I AM NONE!
“Oh, Medea,” Caligula called over his shoulder, “if he kills himself in this fashion, can you still do your magic?”
“You know I can’t,” she complained. “It’s a complicated ritual! We can’t have him murdering himself in some sloppy way before I’m prepared.”
“Well, that’s mildly annoying.” Caligula sighed. “Look, Apollo, you can’t expect this will have a happy ending. I am not Commodus. I’m not playing a game. Be a nice boy and let Medea kill you in the correct way. Then I’ll give these others a painless death. That’s my best offer.”
I decided Caligula would make a terrible car salesman.
Next to me, Piper shivered on the floor, her neural pathways probably overloaded by trauma. Crest had wrapped himself in his own ears. Jason continued to meditate in his cone of swirling shrapnel, though I couldn’t imagine he would achieve nirvana under those circumstances.
Meg yelled and gesticulated at me, perhaps telling me not to be a fool and put down the arrow. I took no pleasure in the fact that, for once, I couldn’t hear her orders.
The emperor’s guards stayed where they were, gripping their spears. Incitatus munched his oats like he was at the movies.
“Last chance,” Caligula said.
Somewhere behind me, at the top of the ramp, a voice called, “My lord!”
Caligula looked over. “What is it, Flange? I’m a little busy here.”
“N-news, my lord.”
“Later.”
“Sire, it’s about the northern attack.”
I felt a surge of hope. The assault on New Rome was happening tonight. I didn’t have the good hearing of a pandos, but the hysterical urgency in Flange’s tone was unmistakable. He was not bringing the emperor good news.
Caligula’s expression soured. “Come here, then. And don’t touch the idiot with the arrow.”
The pandos Flange shuffled past me and whispered something in the emperor’s ear. Caligula may have considered himself a consummate actor, but he didn’t do a good job of hiding his disgust.
“How disappointing.” He tossed Meg’s golden rings aside like they were worthless pebbles. “Your sword, please, Flange.”
“I—” Flange fumbled for his khanda. “Y-yes, lord.”
Caligula examined the blunt serrated blade, then returned it to its owner with vicious force, plunging it into the poor pandos’s gut. Flange howled as he crumbled to dust.
Caligula faced me. “Now, where were we?”
“Your northern attack,” I said. “Didn’t go so well?”
It was foolish of me to goad him, but I couldn’t help it. At that moment, I wasn’t any more rational than Meg McCaffrey—I just wanted to hurt Caligula, to smash everything he owned to dust.
He waved aside my question. “Some jobs I have to do myself. That’s fine. You’d think a Roman demigod camp would obey orders from a Roman emperor, but alas.”
“The Twelfth Legion has a long history of supporting good emperors,” I said. “And of deposing bad ones.”
Caligula’s left eye twitched. “Oh, Boost, where are you?”
On the port side, one of the horse-groomer pandai dropped his brush in alarm. “Yes, lord?”
“Take your men,” Caligula said. “Spread the word. We break formation immediately and sail north. We have unfinished business in the Bay Area.”
“But, sire…” Boost looked at me, as if deciding whether I was enough of a threat to warrant leaving the emperor without his remaining guards. “Yes, sire.”
The rest of the pandai shuffled off, leaving Incitatus without anyone to hold his golden oat bucket.
“Hey, C,” said the stallion. “Aren’t you putting the cart before the horse? Before we head off to war, you’ve got to finish your business with Lester.”
“Oh, I will,” Caligula promised. “Now, Lester, we both know you’re not going to—”
He lunged with blinding speed, making a grab for the arrow. I’d been anticipating that. Before he could stop me, I cleverly plunged the arrow into my chest. Ha! That would teach Caligula to underestimate me!
Dear reader, it takes a great deal of willpower to intentionally harm yourself. And not the good kind of willpower—the stupid, reckless kind you should never try to summon, even in an effort to save your friends.
As I stabbed myself, I was shocked by the sheer amount of pain I experienced. Why did killing yourself have to hurt so much?
My bone marrow turned to lava. My lungs filled with hot wet sand. Blood soaked my shirt and I fell to my knees, gasping and dizzy. The world spun around me as if the entire throne room had become a giant ventus prison.
VILLAINY! The Arrow of Dodona’s voice buzzed in my mind (and now also in my chest). THOU DIDST NOT JUST IMPALE ME HEREIN! O, VILE, MONSTROUS FLESH!
A distant part of my brain thought it was unfair for him to complain, since I was the one dying, but I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d wanted to.
Caligula rushed forward. He grabbed the shaft of the arrow, but Medea yelled, “Stop!”
She ran across the thron
e room and knelt at my side.
“Pulling out the arrow could make matters worse!” she hissed.
“He stabbed himself in the chest,” Caligula said. “How can it be worse?”
“Fool,” she muttered. I wasn’t sure whether the comment was directed at me or Caligula. “I don’t want him to bleed out.” She removed a black silk bag from her belt, pulled out a stoppered glass vial, and shoved the bag at Caligula. “Hold this.”
She uncorked the vial and poured its contents over the entry wound.
COLD! complained the Arrow of Dodona. COLD! COLD!
Personally, I didn’t feel a thing. The searing pain had become a dull, throbbing ache throughout my whole body. I was pretty sure that was a bad sign.
Incitatus trotted over. “Whoa, he really did it. That’s a horse of a different color.”
Medea examined the wound. She cursed in ancient Colchian, calling into question my mother’s past romantic relationships.
“This idiot can’t even kill himself right,” grumbled the sorceress. “It appears that, somehow, he missed his heart.”
’TWAS ME, WITCH! the arrow intoned from within my rib cage. DOST THOU THINK I WOULD FAIN ALLOW MYSELF TO BE EMBEDDED IN THE DISGUSTING HEART OF LESTER? I DODGED AND WEAVED!
I made a mental note to either thank or break the Arrow of Dodona later, whichever made the most sense at the time.
Medea snapped her fingers at the emperor. “Hand me the red vial.”
Caligula scowled, clearly not used to playing surgical nurse. “I never rummage through a woman’s purse. Especially a sorceress’s.”
I thought this was the surest sign yet that he was perfectly sane.
“If you want to be the sun god,” Medea snarled, “do it!”
Caligula found the red vial.
Medea coated her right hand with the gooey contents. With her left, she grabbed the Arrow of Dodona and yanked it from my chest.
I screamed. My vision went dark. My left pectorals felt like they were being excavated with a drill bit. When I regained my sight, I found the arrow wound plugged with a thick red substance like the wax of a letter seal. The pain was horrible, unbearable, but I could breathe again.
If I hadn’t been so miserable, I might have smiled in triumph. I had been counting on Medea’s healing powers. She was almost as skilled as my son Asclepius, though her bedside manner was not as good, and her cures tended to involve dark magic, vile ingredients, and the tears of small children.
I had not, of course, expected Caligula to let my friends go. But I had hoped, with Medea distracted, she might lose control of her venti. And so she did.
That moment is fixed in my mind: Incitatus peering down at me, his muzzle flecked with oats; the sorceress Medea examining my wound, her hands sticky with blood and magic paste; Caligula standing over me, his splendid white slacks and shoes freckled with my blood; and Piper and Crest on the floor nearby, their presence momentarily forgotten by our captors. Even Meg seemed frozen within her churning prison, horrified by what I had done.
That was the last moment before everything went wrong, before our great tragedy unspooled—when Jason Grace thrust out his arms, and the cages of wind exploded.
ONE tornado can ruin your whole day.
I’d seen the sort of devastation Zeus could wreak when he got angry at Kansas. So I was not surprised when the two shrapnel-filled wind spirits ripped through the Julia Drusilla XII like chain saws.
We all should have died in the blast. Of that I’m certain. But Jason channeled the explosion up, down, and sideways in a two-dimensional wave—blasting through the port and starboard walls; bursting through the black ceiling that showered us with golden candelabras and swords; jackhammering through the mosaic floor into the bowels of the ship. The yacht groaned and shook—metal, wood, and fiberglass snapping like bones in the mouth of a monster.
Incitatus and Caligula stumbled in one direction, Medea in the other. None of them suffered so much as a scratch. Meg McCaffrey, unfortunately, was on Jason’s left. When the venti exploded, she flew sideways through a newly made rent in the wall and disappeared into the dark.
I tried to scream. I think it came out as more of a death rattle, though. With the explosion ringing in my ears, I couldn’t be sure.
I could barely move. There was no chance I could go after my young friend. I cast around desperately and fixed my gaze on Crest.
The young pandos’s eyes were so wide they almost matched his ears. A golden sword had fallen from the ceiling and impaled itself in the tile floor between his legs.
“Rescue Meg,” I croaked, “and I will teach you how to play any instrument you wish.”
I didn’t know how even a pandos could hear me, but Crest seemed to. His expression changed from shock to reckless determination. He scrambled across the tilting floor, spread his ears, and leaped into the rift.
The break in the floor began to widen, cutting us off from Jason. Ten-foot-tall waterfalls poured in from the damaged hull to port and starboard—washing the mosaic floors in dark water and flotsam, spilling into the widening chasm in the center of the room. Below, broken machinery steamed. Flames guttered as seawater filled the hold. Above, lining the edges of the shattered ceiling, pandai appeared, screaming and drawing weapons—until the sky lit up and tendrils of lightning blasted the guards into dust.
Jason stepped out of the smoke on the opposite side of the throne room, his gladius in his hand.
Caligula snarled. “You’re one of those Camp Jupiter brats, aren’t you?”
“I’m Jason Grace,” he said. “Former praetor of the Twelfth Legion. Son of Jupiter. Child of Rome. But I belong to both camps.”
“Good enough,” Caligula said. “I’ll hold you responsible for Camp Jupiter’s treason tonight. Incitatus!”
The emperor snatched up a golden spear that was rolling across the floor. He vaulted onto his stallion’s back, charged the chasm, and leaped it in a single bound. Jason threw himself aside to avoid getting trampled.
From somewhere to my left came a howl of anger. Piper McLean had risen. Her lower face was a nightmare—her swollen upper lip split across her teeth, her jaw askew, a trickle of blood coming from the edge of her mouth.
She charged Medea, who turned just in time to catch Piper’s fist in her nose. The sorceress stumbled, pinwheeling her arms as Piper pushed her over the edge of the chasm. The sorceress disappeared into the churning soup of burning fuel and seawater.
Piper shouted at Jason. She might have been saying COME ON! But all that came out was a guttural cry.
Jason was a little busy. He dodged Incitatus’s charge, parrying Caligula’s spear with his sword, but he was moving slowly. I could only guess how much energy he’d expended controlling the winds and the lightning.
“Get out of here!” he called to us. “Go!”
An arrow sprouted from his left thigh. Jason grunted and stumbled. Above us, more pandai had gathered, despite the threat of severe thunderstorms.
Piper yelled in warning as Caligula charged again. Jason just managed to roll aside. He made a grabbing gesture at the air, and a gust of wind yanked him aloft. Suddenly he sat astride a miniature storm cloud with four funnel clouds for legs and a mane that crackled with lightning—Tempest, his ventus steed.
He rode against Caligula, jousting sword versus spear. Another arrow took Jason in the upper arm.
“I told you this isn’t a game!” yelled Caligula. “You don’t walk away from me alive!”
Below, an explosion rocked the ship. The room split farther apart. Piper staggered, which probably saved her life; three arrows hit the spot where she’d been standing.
Somehow, she pulled me to my feet. I was clutching the Arrow of Dodona, though I had no memory of picking it up. I saw no sign of Crest, or Meg, or even Medea. An arrow sprouted from the toe of my shoe. I was in so much pain already I couldn’t tell if it had pierced my foot or not.
Piper tugged at my arm. She pointed to Jason, her words urgent but
unintelligible. I wanted to help him, but what could I do? I’d just stabbed myself in the chest. I was pretty sure that if I sneezed too hard, I would displace the red plug in my wound and bleed to death. I couldn’t draw a bow or even strum a ukulele. Meanwhile, on the broken roof line above us, more and more pandai appeared, eager to help me commit arrowcide.
Piper was no better off. The fact that she was on her feet at all was a miracle—the sort of miracle that comes back to kill you later when the adrenaline wears off.
Nevertheless, how could we leave?
I watched in horror as Jason and Caligula fought, Jason bleeding from arrows in each limb now, yet somehow still able to raise his sword. The space was too small for two men on horses, yet they circled one another, trading blows. Incitatus kicked at Tempest with his golden-shod front hooves. The ventus responded with bursts of electricity that scorched the stallion’s white flanks.
As the former praetor and the emperor charged past each other, Jason met my eyes across the ruined throne room. His expression told me his plan with perfect clarity. Like me, he had decided that Piper McLean would not die tonight. For some reason, he had decided that I must live too.
He yelled again, “GO! Remember!”
I was slow, dumbstruck. Jason held my gaze a fraction of a second too long, perhaps to make sure that last word sank in: remember—the promise he had extracted from me a million years ago this morning, in his Pasadena dorm room.
While Jason’s back was turned, Caligula wheeled about. He threw his spear, driving its point between Jason’s shoulder blades. Piper screamed. Jason stiffened, his blue eyes wide in shock.
He slumped forward, wrapping his arms around Tempest’s neck. His lips moved, as if he was whispering something to his steed.
Carry him away! I prayed, knowing that no god would listen. Please, just let Tempest get him to safety!
Jason toppled from his steed. He hit the deck facedown, the spear still in his back, his gladius clattering from his hand.
Incitatus trotted up to the fallen demigod. Arrows continued to rain around us.
Caligula stared at me across the chasm—giving me the same displeased scowl my father used to before inflicting one of his punishments: Now look what you’ve made me do.