The Tower of Nero
But when addressing Luguselwa, Meg’s voice played in an entirely different key. She sounded as if her best friend had just dismembered her favorite doll for no reason and without warning. She sounded hurt, confused, incredulous—as if, in a life full of indignities, this was one indignity she never could have anticipated.
Lu’s jaw muscles tightened. Veins bulged on her temples. I couldn’t tell if she was angry, feeling guilty, or showing us her warm-and-fuzzy side.
“Do you remember what I taught you about duty, Sapling?”
Meg gulped back a sob.
“Do you?” Lu said, her voice sharper.
“Yes,” Meg whispered.
“Then get your things and come along.” Lu pushed Gunther’s sword away from Meg’s neck.
The big man grumbled “Hmph,” which I assumed was Germanic for I never get to have any fun.
Looking bewildered, Meg rose and opened the overhead compartment. I couldn’t understand why she was going along so passively with Luguselwa’s orders. We’d fought against worse odds. Who was this Gaul?
“That’s it?” I whispered as Meg passed me my backpack. “We’re giving up?”
“Lester,” Meg muttered, “just do what I say.”
I shouldered my pack, my bow and quiver. Meg fastened her gardening belt around her waist. Lu and Gunther did not look concerned that I was now armed with arrows and Meg with an ample supply of heirloom-vegetable seeds. As we got our gear in order, the mortal passengers gave us annoyed looks, but no one shushed us, probably because they did not want to anger the two large conductors escorting us out.
“This way.” Lu pointed with her crossbow to the exit behind her. “The others are waiting.”
The others?
I did not want to meet any more Gauls or Gunthers, but Meg followed Lu meekly through the Plexiglas double doors. I went next, Gunther breathing down my neck behind me, probably contemplating how easy it would be to separate my head from my body.
A gangway connected our car to the next: a loud, lurching hallway with automatic double doors on either end, a closet-size restroom in one corner, and exterior doors to port and starboard. I considered throwing myself out one of these exits and hoping for the best, but I feared “the best” would mean dying on impact with the ground. It was pitch-black outside. Judging from the rumble of the corrugated steel panels beneath my feet, I guessed the train was going well over a hundred miles an hour.
Through the far set of Plexiglas doors, I spied the café car: a grim concession counter, a row of booths, and a half dozen large men milling around—more Germani. Nothing good was going to happen in there. If Meg and I were going to make a break for it, this was our chance.
Before I could make any sort of desperate move, Luguselwa stopped abruptly just before the café-car doors. She turned to face us.
“Gunther,” she snapped, “check the bathroom for infiltrators.”
This seemed to confuse Gunther as much as it did me, either because he didn’t see the point, or he had no idea what an infiltrator was.
I wondered why Luguselwa was acting so paranoid. Did she worry we had a legion of demigods stashed in the restroom, waiting to spring out and rescue us? Or perhaps like me she’d once surprised a Cyclops on the porcelain throne and no longer trusted public toilets.
After a brief stare-down, Gunther muttered “Hmph” and did as he was told.
As soon as he poked his head in the loo, Lu (the other Lu, not loo) fixed us with an intent stare. “When we go through the tunnel to New York,” she said, “you will both ask to use the toilet.”
I’d taken a lot of silly commands before, mostly from Meg, but this was a new low.
“Actually, I need to go now,” I said.
“Hold it,” she said.
I glanced at Meg to see if this made any sense to her, but she was staring morosely at the floor.
Gunther emerged from potty patrol. “Nobody.”
Poor guy. If you had to check a train’s toilet for infiltrators, the least you could hope for was a few infiltrators to kill.
“Right, then,” said Lu. “Come on.”
She herded us into the café car. Six Germani turned and stared at us, their meaty fists full of Danishes and cups of coffee. Barbarians! Who else would eat breakfast pastries at night? The warriors were dressed like Gunther in hides and gold armor, cleverly disguised behind Amtrak name tags. One of the men, AEDELBEORT (the number one most popular Germanic baby boy’s name in 162 BCE), barked a question at Lu in a language I didn’t recognize. Lu responded in the same tongue. Her answer seemed to satisfy the warriors, who went back to their coffee and Danishes. Gunther joined them, grumbling about how hard it was to find good enemies to decapitate.
“Sit there,” Lu told us, pointing to a window booth.
Meg slid in glumly. I settled in across from her, propping my longbow, quiver, and backpack next to me. Lu stood within earshot, just in case we tried to discuss an escape plan. She needn’t have worried. Meg still wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I wondered again who Luguselwa was, and what she meant to Meg. Not once in our months of travel had Meg mentioned her. This fact disturbed me. Rather than indicating that Lu was unimportant, it made me suspect she was very important indeed.
And why a Gaul? Gauls had been unusual in Nero’s Rome. By the time he became emperor, most of them had been conquered and forcibly “civilized.” Those who still wore tattoos and torques and lived according to the old ways had been pushed to the fringes of Brittany or forced over to the British Isles. The name Luguselwa…My Gaulish had never been very good, but I thought it meant beloved of the god Lugus. I shuddered. Those Celtic deities were a strange, fierce bunch.
My thoughts were too unhinged to solve the puzzle of Lu. I kept thinking back to the poor amphisbaena she’d killed—a harmless monster commuter who would never make it home to his wife, all because a prophecy had made him its pawn.
His message had left me shaken—a verse in terza rima, like the one we’d received at Camp Jupiter:
O son of Zeus the final challenge face.
The tow’r of Nero two alone ascend.
Dislodge the beast that hast usurped thy place.
Yes, I had memorized the cursed thing.
Now we had our second set of instructions, clearly linked to the previous set, because the first and third lines rhymed with ascend. Stupid Dante and his stupid idea for a never-ending poem structure:
The son of Hades, cavern-runners’ friend,
Must show the secret way unto the throne.
On Nero’s own your lives do now depend.
I knew a son of Hades: Nico di Angelo. He was probably still at Camp Half-Blood on Long Island. If he had some secret way to Nero’s throne, he’d never get the chance to show us unless we escaped this train. How Nico might be a “cavern-runners’ friend,” I had no idea.
The last line of the new verse was just cruel. We were presently surrounded by “Nero’s own,” so of course our lives depended on them. I wanted to believe there was more to that line, something positive…maybe tied to the fact that Lu had ordered us to go to the bathroom when we entered the tunnel to New York. But given Lu’s hostile expression, and the presence of her seven heavily caffeinated and sugar-fueled Germanus friends, I didn’t feel optimistic.