The Tyrant’s Tomb

I’d like to sing a

Classic for you now. Thank you.

Please stop stabbing me.

IN RETROSPECT, I SHOULD have given ravens sponges for beaks—nice, soft, squishy sponges that weren’t capable of stabbing. While I was at it, I should’ve thrown in some Nerf claws.

But nooo. I let them have beaks like serrated knives and claws like meat hooks. What had I been thinking?

Meg yelled as one of the birds dove by her, raking her arm.

Another flew at Reyna’s legs. The praetor leveled a kick at it, but her heel missed the bird and connected with my nose.

“OWEEEEE!” I yelled, my whole face throbbing.

“My bad!” Reyna tried to climb, but the birds swirled around us, stabbing and clawing and tearing away bits of our clothes. The frenzy reminded me of my farewell concert in Thessalonika back in 235 BCE. (I liked to do a farewell tour every ten years or so, just to keep the fans guessing.) Dionysus had shown up with his entire horde of souvenir-hunting maenads. Not a good memory.

“Lester, who is Koronis?” Reyna shouted, drawing her sword. “Why were you apologizing to the birds?”

“I created them!” My busted nose made me sound like I was gargling syrup.

The ravens cawed in outrage. One swooped, its claws narrowly missing my left eye. Reyna swung her sword wildly, trying to keep the flock at bay.

“Well, can you un-create them?” Meg asked.

The ravens didn’t like that idea. One dove at Meg. She tossed it a seed—which, being a raven, it instinctively snapped out of the air. A pumpkin exploded to full growth in its beak. The raven, suddenly top-heavy with a mouth full of Halloween, plummeted toward the ground.

“Okay, I didn’t exactly create them,” I confessed. “I just changed them into what they are now. And, no, I can’t undo it.”

More angry cries from the birds, though for the moment they stayed away, wary of the girl with the sword and the other one with the tasty exploding seeds.

Tarquin had chosen the perfect guards to keep me from his silent god. Ravens hated me. They probably worked for free, without even a health plan, just hoping to have the chance to bring me down.

I suspected the only reason we were still alive was that the birds were trying to decide who got the honor of the kill.

Each angry croak was a claim to my tasty bits: I get his liver!

No, I get his liver!

Well, I get his kidneys, then!

Ravens are as greedy as they are contrary. Alas, we couldn’t count on them arguing with one another for long. We’d be dead as soon as they figured out their proper pecking order. (Oh, maybe that’s why they call it a pecking order!)

Reyna took a swipe at one that was getting too close. She glanced at the catwalk on the crossbeam above us, perhaps calculating whether she’d have time to reach it if she sheathed her sword. Judging from her frustrated expression, her conclusion was no.

“Lester, I need intel,” she said. “Tell me how we defeat these things.”

“I don’t know!” I wailed. “Look, back in the old days, ravens used to be gentle and white, like doves, okay? But they were terrible gossips. One time I was dating this girl, Koronis. The ravens found out she was cheating on me, and they told me about it. I was so angry, I got Artemis to kill Koronis for me. Then I punished the ravens for being tattletales by turning them black.”

Reyna stared at me like she was contemplating another kick to my nose. “That story is messed up on so many levels.”

“Just wrong,” Meg agreed. “You had your sister kill a girl who was cheating on you?”

“Well, I—”

“Then you punished the birds that told you about it,” Reyna added, “by turning them black, as if black was bad and white was good?”

“When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound right,” I protested. “It’s just what happened when my curse scorched them. It also made them nasty-tempered flesh-eaters.”

“Oh, that’s much better,” Reyna snarled.

“If we let the birds eat you,” Meg asked, “will they leave Reyna and me alone?”

“I—What?” I worried that Meg might not be kidding. Her facial expression did not say kidding. It said serious about the birds eating you. “Listen, I was angry! Yes, I took it out on the birds, but after a few centuries I cooled down. I apologized. By then, they kind of liked being nasty-tempered flesh-eaters. As for Koronis—I mean, at least I saved the child she was pregnant with when Artemis killed her. He became Asclepius, god of medicine!”

“Your girlfriend was pregnant when you had her killed?” Reyna launched another kick at my face. I managed to dodge it, since I’d had a lot of practice cowering, but it hurt to know that this time she hadn’t been aiming at an incoming raven. Oh, no. She wanted to knock my teeth in.

“You suck,” Meg agreed.

“Can we talk about this later?” I pleaded. “Or perhaps never? I was a god then! I didn’t know what I was doing!”

A few months ago, a statement like that would have made no sense to me. Now, it seemed true. I felt as if Meg had given me her thick-lensed rhinestone-studded glasses, and to my horror, they corrected my eyesight. I didn’t like how small and tawdry and petty everything looked, rendered in perfect ugly clarity through the magic of Meg-o-Vision. Most of all, I didn’t like the way I looked—not just present-day Lester, but the god formerly known as Apollo.

Reyna exchanged glances with Meg. They seemed to reach a silent agreement that the most practical course of action would be to survive the ravens now so they could kill me themselves later.

“We’re dead if we stay here.” Reyna swung her sword at another enthusiastic flesh-eater. “We can’t fend them off and climb at the same time. Ideas?”

The ravens had one. It was called all-out attack.

They swarmed—pecking, scratching, croaking with rage.

“I’m sorry!” I screamed, futilely swatting at the birds. “I’m sorry!”

The ravens did not accept my apology. Claws ripped my pant legs. A beak clamped on to my quiver and almost pulled me off the ladder, leaving my feet dangling for a terrifying moment.

Reyna continued to slash away. Meg cursed and threw seeds like party favors from the worst parade float ever. A giant raven spiraled out of control, covered in daffodils. Another fell like a stone, its stomach bulging in the shape of a butternut squash.

My grip weakened on the rungs. Blood dripped from my nose, but I couldn’t spare a moment to wipe it away.

Reyna was right. If we didn’t move, we were dead. And we couldn’t move.

I scanned the crossbeam above us. If we could just reach it, we’d be able to stand and use our arms. We’d have a fighting chance to…well, fight.

At the far end of the catwalk, abutting the next support pylon, stood a large rectangular box like a shipping container. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it sooner, but compared to the scale of the tower, the container seemed small and insignificant, just another wedge of red metal. I had no idea what such a box was doing up here (A maintenance depot? A storage shed?) but if we could find a way inside, it might offer us shelter.

“Over there!” I yelled.

Reyna followed my gaze. “If we can reach it…We need to buy time. Apollo, what repels ravens? Isn’t there something they hate?”