by Rick Riordan
A smile flickered across his mouth. ‘Gaius Vitellius Reticulus, although we did call him Ridiculous sometimes. He was one of the Lares of the Fifth Cohort. Kind of a goofball, but he was the son of Aesculapius, the healing god. If anybody knew about this physician’s cure … he might.’
‘A healing god would be nice,’ Piper mused. ‘Better than having a screaming, tied-up victory goddess on board.’
‘Hey, you’re lucky. My cabin is closest to the stables. I can hear her yelling all night: FIRST PLACE OR DEATH! AN A-MINUS IS A FAILING GRADE! Leo really needs to design a gag that’s better than my old sock.’
Piper shuddered. She still didn’t understand why it had been a good idea to take the goddess captive. The sooner they got rid of Nike, the better. ‘So your cousins … did they have any advice about what comes next? This chained god we’re supposed to find in Sparta?’
Frank’s expression darkened. ‘Yeah. I’m afraid they had some thoughts on that. Let’s get back to the ship and I’ll tell you about it.’
Piper’s feet were killing her. She wondered if she could convince Frank to turn into a giant eagle and carry her, but, before she could ask, she heard footsteps in the sand behind them.
‘Hello, nice tourists!’ A scraggly fisherman with a white captain’s hat and a mouth full of gold teeth beamed at them. ‘Boat ride? Very cheap!’
He gestured to the shore, where a skiff with an outboard motor waited.
Piper returned his smile. She loved it when she could communicate with the locals.
‘Yes, please,’ she said in her best charmspeak. ‘And we’d like you to take us somewhere special.’
The boat captain dropped them at the Argo II, anchored a quarter of a mile out to sea. Piper pressed a wad of euros into the captain’s hands.
She wasn’t above using charmspeak on mortals, but she’d decided to be as fair and careful as possible. Her days of stealing BMWs from car dealerships were over.
‘Thank you,’ she told him. ‘If anyone asks, you took us around the island and showed us the sights. You dropped us at the docks in Pylos. You never saw any giant warship.’
‘No warship,’ the captain agreed. ‘Thank you, nice American tourists!’
They climbed aboard the Argo II and Frank smiled at her awkwardly. ‘Well … nice killing giant warthogs with you.’
Piper laughed. ‘You too, Mr Zhang.’
She gave him a hug, which seemed to fluster him, but Piper couldn’t help liking Frank. Not only was he a kind and considerate boyfriend to Hazel, but whenever Piper saw him wearing Jason’s old praetor’s badge she felt grateful to him for stepping up and accepting that job. He had taken a huge responsibility off Jason’s shoulders and left him free (Piper hoped) to pursue a new path at Camp Half-Blood … assuming, of course, that they all lived through the next eight days.
The crew gathered for a hurried meeting on the foredeck – mostly because Percy was keeping an eye on a giant red sea serpent swimming off the port side.
‘That thing is really red,’ Percy muttered. ‘I wonder if it’s cherry-flavoured.’
‘Why don’t you swim over and find out?’ Annabeth asked.
‘How about no.’
‘Anyway,’ Frank said, ‘according to my Pylos cousins, the chained god we’re looking for in Sparta is my dad … uh, I mean Ares, not Mars. Apparently the Spartans kept a statue of him chained up in their city so the spirit of war would never leave them.’
‘Oo-kay,’ Leo said. ‘The Spartans were freaks. Of course, we’ve got Victory tied up downstairs, so I guess we can’t talk.’
Jason leaned against the forward ballista. ‘On to Sparta, then. But how does a chained god’s heartbeat help us find a cure for dying?’
From the tightness in his face, Piper could tell he was still in pain. She remembered what Aphrodite had told her: It’s not just his sword wound, my dear. It’s the ugly truth he saw in Ithaca. If the poor boy doesn’t stay strong, that truth will eat right through him.
‘Piper?’ Hazel asked.
She stirred. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘I was asking you about the visions,’ Hazel prompted. ‘You told me you’d seen some stuff in your dagger blade?’
‘Uh … right.’ Piper reluctantly unsheathed Katoptris. Ever since she’d used it to stab the snow goddess Khione, the visions in the blade had become colder and harsher, like images etched in ice. She’d seen eagles swirling over Camp Half-Blood, a wave of earth destroying New York. She’d seen scenes from the past: her father beaten and bound at the top of Mount Diablo, Jason and Percy fighting giants in the Roman Colosseum, the river god Achelous reaching out to her, pleading for the cornucopia she’d cut from his head.
‘I, um …’ She tried to clear her thoughts. ‘I don’t see anything right now. But one vision kept popping up. Annabeth and I are exploring some ruins –’
‘Ruins!’ Leo rubbed his hands. ‘Now we’re talking. How many ruins can there be in Greece?’
‘Quiet, Leo,’ Annabeth scolded. ‘Piper, do you think it was Sparta?’
‘Maybe,’ Piper said. ‘Anyway … suddenly we’re in this dark place like a cave. We’re staring at this bronze warrior statue. In the vision I touch the statue’s face and flames start swirling around us. That’s all I saw.’
‘Flames.’ Frank scowled. ‘I don’t like that vision.’
‘Me neither.’ Percy kept one eye on the red sea serpent, which was still slithering through the waves about a hundred yards to port. ‘If the statue engulfs people in fire, we should send Leo.’
‘I love you too, man.’
‘You know what I mean. You’re immune. Or, heck, give me some of those nice water grenades and I’ll go. Ares and I have tangled before.’
Annabeth stared at the coastline of Pylos, now retreating in the distance. ‘If Piper saw the two of us going after the statue, then that’s who should go. We’ll be all right. There’s always a way to survive.’
‘Not always,’ Hazel warned.
Since she was the only one in the group who had actually died and come back to life, her observation sort of killed the mood.
Frank held out the vial of Pylosian mint. ‘What about this stuff? After the House of Hades, I kind of hoped we were done drinking poison.’
‘Store it securely in the hold,’ Annabeth said. ‘For now, that’s all we can do. Once we figure out this chained god situation, we’ll head to the island of Delos.’
‘The curse of Delos,’ Hazel remembered. ‘That sounds fun.’
‘Hopefully Apollo will be there,’ Annabeth said. ‘Delos was his home island. He’s the god of medicine. He should be able to advise us.’
Aphrodite’s words came back to Piper: You must bridge the gap between Roman and Greek, my child. Neither storm nor fire can succeed without you.
Aphrodite had warned her of what was to come, told her what Piper would have to do to stop Gaia. Whether or not she would have the courage … Piper didn’t know.
Off the port bow, the cherry-flavoured sea serpent spewed steam.
‘Yeah, it’s definitely checking us out,’ Percy decided. ‘Maybe we should take to the air for a while.’
‘Airborne it is!’ Leo said. ‘Festus, do the honours!’
The bronze dragon figurehead creaked and clacked. The ship’s engine hummed. The oars lifted, expanding into aerial blades with a sound like ninety umbrellas opening at once, and the Argo II rose into the sky.
‘We should reach Sparta by morning,’ Leo announced. ‘And remember to come by the mess hall tonight, folks, ’cause Chef Leo is making his famous three-alarm tofu tacos!’
XVIII
Piper
Piper didn’t want to get yelled at by a three-legged table.
When Jason visited her cabin that evening, she made sure to keep the door open, because Buford the Wonder Table took his duties as acting chaperone very seriously. If he had the slightest suspicion a girl and a boy were in the same cabin without supervision, he would steam and clatter
down the hall, his holographic projection of Coach Hedge yelling, ‘CUT THAT OUT! GIVE ME TWENTY PUSH-UPS! PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!’
Jason sat at the foot of her bunk. ‘I was about to go on duty. Just wanted to check on you first.’
Piper nudged his leg with her foot. ‘The guy who got run through with a sword wants to check on me? How are you feeling?’
He gave her a lopsided smile. His face was so tanned from their time on the coast of Africa that the scar on his lip looked like a chalk mark. His blue eyes were even more startling. His hair had grown out corn-silk white, though he still had a groove along his scalp where he’d been grazed by a bullet from the bandit Sciron’s flintlock. If such a minor scrape from Celestial bronze took so long to heal, Piper wondered how he’d ever get over the Imperial gold wound in his gut.
‘I’ve been worse,’ Jason assured her. ‘Once, in Oregon, this dracaena cut off my arms.’
Piper blinked. Then she slapped his arm gently. ‘Shut up.’
‘I had you for a second.’
They held hands in comfortable silence. For a moment, Piper could almost imagine they were normal teenagers, enjoying each other’s company and learning to be together as a couple. Sure, Jason and she had had a few months at Camp Half-Blood, but the war with Gaia had always been looming. Piper wondered what it would be like if they didn’t have to worry about dying a dozen times every day.
‘I never thanked you.’ Jason’s expression turned serious. ‘Back on Ithaca, after I saw my mom’s … remnant, her mania … When I was wounded, you kept me from slipping away, Pipes. Part of me …’ His voice faltered. ‘Part of me wanted to close my eyes and stop fighting.’
Piper’s heart did a slow twist. She felt her own pulse in her fingers. ‘Jason … you’re a fighter. You’d never give up. When you faced your mother’s spirit – that was you being strong. Not me.’
‘Maybe.’ His voice was dry. ‘I didn’t mean to lay something so heavy on you, Pipes. It’s just … I have my mom’s DNA. The human part of me is all her. What if I make the wrong choices? What if I make a mistake I can’t take back when we’re fighting Gaia? I don’t want to end up like my mom – reduced to a mania, chewing on my regrets forever.’
Piper cupped her hands around his. She felt like she was back on the deck of the Argo II, holding the Boreads’ ice grenade just before it detonated.
‘You’ll make the right choices,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what will happen to any of us, but you could never end up like your mom.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
Piper studied the tattoo on his forearm – SPQR, the eagle of Jupiter, twelve lines for his years in the legion. ‘My dad used to tell me this story about making choices …’ She shook her head. ‘No, never mind. I’ll sound like Grandpa Tom.’
‘Go on,’ Jason said. ‘What’s the story?’
‘Well … these two Cherokee hunters were out in the woods, right? Each of them was under a taboo.’
‘A taboo – something they weren’t allowed to do.’
‘Yeah.’ Piper began to relax. She wondered if this was why her dad and granddad always liked telling stories. You could make even the most terrifying topic easier to talk about by framing it as something that happened to a couple of Cherokee hunters hundreds of years ago. Take a problem; turn it into entertainment. Perhaps that’s why her dad had become an actor.
‘So one of the hunters,’ she continued, ‘he wasn’t supposed to eat deer meat. The other guy wasn’t supposed to eat squirrel meat.’
‘Why?’
‘Hey, I don’t know. Some Cherokee taboos were permanent no-nos, like killing eagles.’ She tapped the symbol on Jason’s arm. ‘That was bad luck for almost everybody. But sometimes, individual Cherokee took on temporary taboos – maybe to cleanse their spirit, or because they knew, from listening to the spirit world or whatever, that the taboo was important. They went with their instincts.’
‘Okay.’ Jason sounded unsure. ‘So back to these two hunters.’
‘They were out hunting in the woods all day. The only things they caught were squirrels. At night they made camp, and the guy who could eat squirrel meat started cooking it over the fire.’
‘Yum.’
‘Another reason I’m a vegetarian. Anyway, the second hunter, who wasn’t allowed squirrel meat – he was starving. He just sat there clutching his stomach while his friend ate. Finally the first hunter started feeling guilty. “Ah, go ahead,” he said. “Eat some.” But the second hunter resisted. “It’s taboo for me. I’ll get in serious trouble. I’ll probably turn into a snake or something.” The first hunter laughed. “Where did you get that crazy idea? Nothing will happen to you. You can go back to avoiding squirrel meat tomorrow.” The second hunter knew he shouldn’t, but he ate.’
Jason traced his finger across her knuckles, which made it hard to concentrate. ‘What happened?’
‘In the middle of the night, the second hunter woke up screaming in pain. The first hunter ran over to see what was wrong. He threw off his friend’s covers and saw that his friend’s legs had fused together in a leathery tail. As he watched, snakeskin crept up his friend’s body. The poor hunter wept and apologized to the spirits and cried in fear, but there was nothing to be done. The first hunter stayed by his side and tried to comfort him until the unfortunate guy fully transformed into a giant snake and slithered away. The end.’
‘I love these Cherokee stories,’ Jason said. ‘They’re so cheerful.’
‘Yeah, well.’
‘So the guy turned into a snake. The moral is: Frank has been eating squirrels?’
She laughed, which felt good. ‘No, stupid. The point is, trust your instincts. Squirrel meat might be just fine for one person, but taboo for another. The second hunter knew he had a serpent spirit inside him, waiting to take over. He knew he shouldn’t feed that bad spirit by eating squirrel meat, but he did it anyway.’
‘So … I shouldn’t eat squirrels.’
Piper was relieved to see the gleam in his eyes. She thought about something Hazel had confided to her a few nights ago: I think Jason is the linchpin to Hera’s whole scheme. He was her first play; he’s going to be her last.
‘My point,’ Piper said, poking his chest, ‘is that you, Jason Grace, are very familiar with your own bad spirits, and you try your best not to feed them. You have solid instincts, and you know how to follow them. Whatever annoying qualities you have, you are a genuinely good person who always tries to make the right choice. So no more talk about giving up.’
Jason frowned. ‘Wait. I have annoying qualities?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Come here.’
She was about to kiss him when there was a knock on the door.
Leo leaned inside. ‘A party? Am I invited?’
Jason cleared his throat. ‘Hey, Leo. What’s going on?’
‘Oh, not much.’ He pointed upstairs. ‘The usual obnoxious venti trying to destroy the ship. You ready for guard duty?’
‘Yeah.’ Jason leaned forward and kissed Piper. ‘Thanks. And don’t worry. I’m good.’
‘That,’ she told him, ‘was kind of my point.’
After the boys left, Piper lay on her pegasus-down pillows and watched the constellations her lamp projected on the ceiling. She didn’t think she could sleep, but a full day of fighting monsters in the summer heat had taken its toll. At last she closed her eyes and drifted into a nightmare.
The Acropolis.
Piper had never been there, but she recognized it from pictures – an ancient stronghold perched on a hill almost as impressive as Gibraltar. Rising four hundred feet over the night-time sprawl of modern Athens, the sheer cliffs were topped with a crown of limestone walls. On the clifftop, a collection of ruined temples and modern cranes gleamed silver in the moonlight.
In her dream, Piper flew above the Parthenon – the ancient temple of Athena, the left side of its hollow shell encased in metal scaffolding.
The Acropolis seemed devoid of mortals
, perhaps because of the financial problems in Greece. Or perhaps Gaia’s forces had arranged some pretext to keep the tourists and construction workers away.
Piper’s view zoomed to the centre of the temple. So many giants had gathered there it looked like a cocktail party for redwood trees. A few Piper recognized: those horrible twins from Rome, Otis and Ephialtes, dressed in matching construction worker outfits; Polybotes, looking just as Percy had described him, with poison dripping from his dreadlocks and a breastplate sculpted to resemble hungry mouths; worst of all, Enceladus, the giant who had kidnapped Piper’s dad. His armour was etched with flame designs, his hair braided with bones. His flagpole-sized spear burned with purple fire.
Piper had heard that each giant was born to oppose a particular god, but there were way more than twelve giants gathered in the Parthenon. She counted at least twenty and, if that wasn’t intimidating enough, around the giants’ feet milled a horde of smaller monsters – Cyclopes, ogres, six-armed Earthborn and serpent-legged dracaenae.
In the centre of the crowd stood an empty, makeshift throne of twisted scaffolding and stone blocks apparently yanked at random from the ruins.
As Piper watched, a new giant lumbered up the steps at the far end of the Acropolis. He wore a massive velour tracksuit with gold chains around his neck and greased-back hair, so he looked like a thirty-foot-tall mobster – if mobsters had dragon feet and burnt-orange skin. The mafia giant ran towards the Parthenon and stumbled inside, flattening several Earthborn under his feet. He stopped, gasping for breath at the foot of the throne.
‘Where is Porphyrion?’ he demanded. ‘I have news!’
Piper’s old enemy Enceladus stepped forward. ‘Tardy as usual, Hippolytos. I hope your news is worth the wait. King Porphyrion should be …’
The ground between them split. An even larger giant leaped from the earth like a breaching whale.
‘King Porphyrion is here,’ announced the king.
He looked just as Piper remembered from the Wolf House in Sonoma. Forty feet tall, he towered over his brethren. In fact, Piper realized queasily, he was the same size as the Athena Parthenos that had once dominated the temple. In his seaweed-coloured braids, captured demigod weapons glittered. His face was cruel and pale green, his eyes as white as the Mist. His body radiated its own sort of gravity, causing the other monsters to lean towards him. Soil and pebbles skittered across the ground, pulled towards his massive dragon feet.