The Tower of Nero

Meg sobbed.

I couldn’t blame her. Devilish or not, the cows’ deaths were horrible to watch.

“What just happened?” Rachel’s voice trembled.

“They choked on their own anger,” I said. “I—I didn’t think it was possible, but apparently Aelian got it right. Silvestres hate being stuck in pits so much they just…gag and die. It’s the only way to kill them.”

Meg shuddered. “That’s awful.”

The herd stared at us in apparent agreement. Their blue eyes were like laser beams burning into my face. I got the feeling they’d been after us before just because it was in their nature to kill. Now, it was personal.

“So what do we do about the rest of them?” Will asked. “Dad, you sure you can’t…” He gestured at our bovine audience. “I mean, you’ve got a god-level bow and two quivers of arrows at basically point-blank range.”

“Will!” Meg protested. Watching the bulls choke in the pit seemed to have sapped all her willingness to fight.

“I’m sorry, Meg,” Will said. “But we’re kind of stuck here.”

“It won’t do any good,” I promised. “Watch.”

I drew my bow. I nocked an arrow and aimed at the nearest cow. The cow simply stared back at me like, Really, dude?

I let the arrow fly—a perfect shot, right between the eyes with enough force to penetrate stone. The shaft splintered against the cow’s forehead.

“Wow,” Nico said. “Hard head.”

“It’s the entire hide,” I told him. “Look.”

I shot a second arrow at the cow’s neck. The creature’s shaggy red hair rippled, deflecting the arrowhead and turning the shaft downward so it skittered between the cow’s legs.

“I could shoot at them all day,” I said. “It won’t help.”

“We can just wait them out,” Meg suggested. “They’ll get tired eventually and leave, right?”

Rachel shook her head. “You forgot they waited outside my house in hot cattle cars for two days with no food or water until you showed up. I’m pretty sure these things can outlast us.”

I shivered. “And we have a deadline. If we don’t surrender to Nero by tonight…” I made the explode-y hands gesture.

Will frowned. “You might not get the chance to surrender. If Nero sent these cows, he might already know you’re here. His men could be on the way.”

My mouth tasted like cow breath. I remembered what Luguselwa had told us about Nero having eyes everywhere. For all I knew, this construction site was one of the Triumvirate’s projects. Surveillance drones might be hovering overhead right now.…

“We have to get out of here,” I decided.

“We could climb down the crane,” Will said. “The cows couldn’t follow us.”

“But then what?” Rachel asked. “We’d be trapped in the pit.”

“Maybe not.” Nico stared into the chasm like he was calculating how many bodies could be buried in it. “I see some good shadows down there. If we can reach the bottom safely…How do you all feel about shadow-travel?”

I LOVED THE IDEA. I WAS IN FAVOR OF ANY kind of travel that would get us away from the tauri. I would have even summoned the Gray Sisters again, except I doubted their taxi would appear on a crane jib, and if it did, I suspected the sisters would instantly fall in love with Nico and Will because they were so cute together. I wouldn’t wish that kind of attention on anyone.

Single file, we crawled toward the center of the crane like a line of bedraggled ants. I tried not to look at the carcasses of the dead bulls below, but I could feel the malevolent gaze of the other silvestres as they tracked our progress. I had a sneaking suspicion they were placing bets on which of us would fall first.

Halfway to the main tower, Rachel spoke up behind me. “Hey, are you going to tell me what happened back there?”

I glanced over my shoulder. The wind whipped Rachel’s red hair around her face, making it swirl like the bulls’ fur.

I tried to process her question. Had she missed the killer cows destroying her house? Had she been sleepwalking when she jumped onto the crane?

Then I realized she meant her prophetic trance. We’d been so busy running for our lives, I hadn’t had time to think about it. Judging from my past experience with Delphic Oracles, I imagined Rachel had no recollection of what she’d said.

“You completed our prophecy,” I said. “The last stanza of terza rima, plus a closing couplet. Except…”

“Except?”

“I’m afraid you were channeling Python.”

I crawled ahead, my eyes fixed on the tread of Meg’s shoes, as I explained to Rachel what had happened: the yellow smoke boiling from her mouth, the glow of her eyes, the horribly deep voice of the serpent. I repeated the lines that she’d spoken.

She was silent for a count of five. “That sounds bad.”

“My expert interpretation as well.”

My fingers felt numb against the girders. The prophecy’s line about me dissolving, leaving no mark—those words seemed to work their way into my circulatory system, erasing my veins and arteries.

“We’ll figure it out,” Rachel promised. “Maybe Python was twisting my words. Maybe those lines aren’t part of the real prophecy.”

I didn’t look back, but I could hear the determination in her voice. Rachel had been dealing with Python’s slithery presence in her head, possibly for months. She’d been struggling with it alone, trying to keep her sanity by working through her visions in her artwork. Today, she had been possessed by Python’s voice and encircled by his poisonous fumes. Still, her first instinct was to reassure me that everything would be okay.

“I wish you were right,” I said. “But the longer Python controls Delphi, the more he can poison the future. Whether he twisted your words or not, they are now part of the prophecy. What you predicted will happen.”

Apollo’s flesh and blood shall soon be mine. The serpent’s voice seemed to coil inside my head. Alone he must descend into the dark.

Shut up, I told the voice. But I was not Meg, and Python was not my Lester.

“Well, then,” Rachel said behind me, “we’ll just have to make sure the prophecy happens in a way that doesn’t get you dissolved.”

She made it sound so doable…so possible.

“I don’t deserve a priestess like you,” I said.

“No, you don’t,” Rachel agreed. “You can repay me by killing Python and getting the snake fumes out of my head.”

“Deal,” I said, trying to believe I could hold up my side of the bargain.

At last we reached the crane’s central mast. Nico led us down the rungs of the ladder. My limbs shook with exhaustion. I was tempted to ask Meg if she could create another latticework of plants to carry us to the bottom like she’d done at Sutro Tower. I decided against it, because 1) I didn’t want her to pass out from the effort, and 2) I really hated being tossed around by plants.

By the time we reached the ground, I felt wobbly and nauseated.

Nico didn’t look much better. How he planned to summon enough energy to shadow-zap us to safety, I couldn’t imagine. Above us, around the rim of the pit, the tauri watched in silence, their blue eyes gleaming like a string of angry Hanukkah lights.