The Mark of Athena

“Enjoy Tartarus, my little pawn,” Gaea purred.



A metallic CLANG-CLANG-CLANG jolted Percy out of his dream. His eyes shot open. He realized he’d just heard the landing gear being lowered.



There was a knock on his door, and Jason poked his head in. The bruises on his face had faded. His blue eyes glittered with excitement.



“Hey, man,” he said. “We’re descending over Rome. You really should see this.”



The sky was brilliant blue, as if the stormy weather had never happened. The sun rose over the distant hills, so everything below them shone and sparkled like the entire city of Rome had just come out of the car wash.



Percy had seen big cities before. He was from New York, after all. But the sheer vastness of Rome grabbed him by the throat and made it hard to breathe. The city seemed to have no regard for the limits of geography. It spread through hills and valleys, jumped over the Tiber with dozens of bridges, and just kept sprawling to the horizon. Streets and alleys zigzagged with no rhyme or reason through quilts of neighborhoods. Glass office buildings stood next to excavation sites. A cathedral stood next to a line of Roman columns, which stood next to a modern soccer stadium. In some neighborhoods, old stucco villas with red-tiled roofs crowded the cobblestone streets, so that if Percy concentrated just on those areas, he could imagine he was back in ancient times. Everywhere he looked, there were wide piazzas and traffic-clogged streets. Parks cut across the city with a crazy collection of palm trees, pines, junipers, and olive trees, as if Rome couldn’t decide what part of the world it belonged to—or maybe it just believed all the world still belonged to Rome.



It was as if the city knew about Percy’s dream of Gaea. It knew that the earth goddess intended on razing all human civilization, and this city, which had stood for thousands of years, was saying back to her: You wanna dissolve this city, Dirt Face? Give it a shot.



In other words, it was the Coach Hedge of mortal cities—only taller.



“We’re setting down in that park,” Leo announced, pointing to a wide green space dotted with palm trees. “Let’s hope the Mist makes us look like a large pigeon or something.”



Percy wished Jason’s sister Thalia were here. She’d always had a way of bending the Mist to make people see what she wanted. Percy had never been very good at that. He just kept thinking: Don’t look at me, and hoped the Romans below would fail to notice the giant bronze trireme descending on their city in the middle of morning rush hour.



It seemed to work. Percy didn’t notice any cars veering off the road or Romans pointing to the sky and screaming, “Aliens!” The Argo II set down in the grassy field and the oars retracted.



The noise of traffic was all around them, but the park itself was peaceful and deserted. To their left, a green lawn sloped toward a line of woods. An old villa nestled in the shade of some weird-looking pine trees with thin curvy trunks that shot up thirty or forty feet, then sprouted into puffy canopies. They reminded Percy of trees in those Dr. Seuss books his mom used to read him when he was little.



To their right, snaking along the top of a hill, was a long brick wall with notches at the top for archers—maybe a medieval defensive line, maybe Ancient Roman. Percy wasn’t sure.



To the north, about a mile away through the folds of the city, the top of the Colosseum rose above the rooftops, looking just like it did in travel photos. That’s when Percy’s legs started shaking. He was actually here. He’d thought his trip to Alaska had been pretty exotic, but now he was in the heart of the old Roman Empire, enemy territory for a Greek demigod. In a way, this place had shaped his life as much as New York.



Jason pointed to the base of the archers’ wall, where steps led down into some kind of tunnel.



“I think I know where we are,” he said. “That’s the Tomb of the Scipios.”



Percy frowned. “Scipio…Reyna’s pegasus?”



“No,” Annabeth put in. “They were a noble Roman family, and…wow, this place is amazing.”



Jason nodded. “I’ve studied maps of Rome before. I’ve always wanted to come here, but…”



Nobody bothered finishing that sentence. Looking at his friends’ faces, Percy could tell they were just as much in awe as he was. They’d made it. They’d landed in Rome—the Rome.



“Plans?” Hazel asked. “Nico has until sunset—at best. And this entire city is supposedly getting destroyed today.”



Percy shook himself out of his daze. “You’re right. Annabeth…did you zero in on that spot from your bronze map?”



Her gray eyes turned extra thunderstorm dark, which Percy could interpret just fine: Remember what I said, buddy. Keep that dream to yourself.



“Yes,” she said carefully. “It’s on the Tiber River. I think I can find it, but I should—”



“Take me along,” Percy finished. “Yeah, you’re right.”



Annabeth glared daggers at him. “That’s not—”



“Safe,” he supplied. “One demigod walking through Rome alone. I’ll go with you as far as the Tiber. We can use that letter of introduction, hopefully meet the river god Tiberinus. Maybe he can give you some help or advice. Then you can go on alone from there.”



They had a silent staring contest, but Percy didn’t back down. When he and Annabeth started dating, his mother had drummed it into his head: It’s good manners to walk your date to the door. If that was true, it had to be good manners to walk her to the start of her epic solo death quest.



“Fine,” Annabeth muttered. “Hazel, now that we’re in Rome, do you think you can pinpoint Nico’s location?”



Hazel blinked, as if coming out of a trance from watching the Percy/Annabeth Show. “Um…hopefully, if I get close enough. I’ll have to walk around the city. Frank, would you come with me?”



Frank beamed. “Absolutely.”



“And, uh…Leo,” Hazel added. “It might be a good idea if you came along too. The fish-centaurs said we’d need your help with something mechanical.”



“Yeah,” Leo said, “no problem.”



Frank’s smile turned into something more like Chrysaor’s mask.



Percy was no genius when it came to relationships, but even he could feel the tension among those three. Ever since they’d gotten knocked into the Atlantic, they hadn’t acted quite the same. It wasn’t just the two guys competing for Hazel. It was like the three of them were locked together, acting out some kind of murder mystery, but they hadn’t yet discovered which of them was the victim.



Piper drew her knife and set it on the rail. “Jason and I can watch the ship for now. I’ll see what Katoptris can show me. But, Hazel, if you guys get a fix on Nico’s location, don’t go in there by yourselves. Come back and get us. It’ll take all of us to fight the giants.”



She didn’t say the obvious: even all of them together wouldn’t be enough, unless they had a god on their side. Percy decided not to bring that up.



“Good idea,” Percy said. “How about we plan to meet back here at…what?”



“Three this afternoon?” Jason suggested. “That’s probably the latest we could rendezvous and still hope to fight the giants and save Nico. If something happens to change the plan, try to send an Iris-message.”



The others nodded in agreement, but Percy noticed several of them glancing at Annabeth. Another thing no one wanted to say: Annabeth would be on a different schedule. She might be back at three, or much later, or never. But she would be on her own, searching for the Athena Parthenos.



Coach Hedge grunted. “That’ll give me time to eat the coconuts—I mean dig the coconuts out of our hull. Percy, Annabeth…I don’t like you two going off on your own. Just remember: behave. If I hear about any funny business, I will ground you until the Styx freezes over.”



The idea of getting grounded when they were about to risk their lives was so ridiculous, Percy couldn’t help smiling.



“We’ll be back soon,” he promised. He looked around at his friends, trying not to feel like this was the last time they’d ever be together. “Good luck, everyone.”



Leo lowered the gangplank, and Percy and Annabeth were first off the ship.



Chapter 32



Under different circumstances, wandering through Rome with Annabeth would have been pretty awesome. They held hands as they navigated the winding streets, dodging cars and crazy Vespa drivers, squeezing through mobs of tourists, and wading through oceans of pigeons. The day warmed up quickly. Once they got away from the car exhaust on the main roads, the air smelled of baking bread and freshly cut flowers.



They aimed for the Colosseum because that was an easy landmark, but getting there proved harder than Percy anticipated. As big and confusing as the city had looked from above, it was even more so on the ground. Several times they got lost on dead-end streets. They found beautiful fountains and huge monuments by accident.



Annabeth commented on the architecture, but Percy kept his eyes open for other things. Once he spotted a glowing purple ghost—a Lar—glaring at them from the window of an apartment building. Another time he saw a white-robed woman—maybe a nymph or a goddess—holding a wicked-looking knife, slipping between ruined columns in a public park. Nothing attacked them, but Percy felt like they were being watched, and the watchers were not friendly.



Finally they reached the Colosseum, where a dozen guys in cheap gladiator costumes were scuffling with the police—plastic swords versus batons. Percy wasn’t sure what that was about, but he and Annabeth decided to keep walking. Sometimes mortals were even stranger than monsters.



They made their way west, stopping every once in a while to ask directions to the river. Percy hadn’t considered that—duh—people in Italy spoke Italian, while he did not. As it turned out, though, that wasn’t much of a problem. The few times someone approached them on the street and asked a question, Percy just looked at them in confusion, and they switched to English.



Next discovery: the Italians used euros, and Percy didn’t have any. He regretted this as soon as he found a tourist shop that sold sodas. By then it was almost noon, getting really hot, and Percy was starting to wish he had a trireme filled with Diet Coke.



Annabeth solved the problem. She dug around in her backpack, brought out Daedalus’s laptop, and typed in a few commands. A plastic card ejected from a slot in the side.



Annabeth waved it triumphantly. “International credit card. For emergencies.”



Percy stared at her in amazement. “How did you—? No. Never mind. I don’t want to know. Just keep being awesome.”



The sodas helped, but they were still hot and tired by the time they arrived at the Tiber River. The shore was edged with a stone embankment. A chaotic assortment of warehouses, apartments, stores, and cafés crowded the riverfront.



The Tiber itself was wide, lazy, and caramel-colored. A few tall cypress trees hung over the banks. The nearest bridge looked fairly new, made from iron girders, but right next to it stood a crumbling line of stone arches that stopped halfway across the river—ruins that might’ve been left over from the days of the Caesars.