The Tyrant’s Tomb

“No! You…you can’t run away.”

Lavinia snorted. “Who said anything about running away? Remember, Reyna, this was your backup plan. Plan L for Lavinia! When we all get back to camp, you’re going to thank me. You’ll tell everybody this was your idea.”

“What? I would never…I didn’t give you any such…This is mutiny!”

I glanced at the greyhounds, waiting for them to rise to their master’s defense and tear Lavinia apart. Strangely, they just kept circling Reyna, occasionally licking her face or sniffing her broken leg. They seemed concerned about her condition, but not at all about Lavinia’s rebellious lies.

“Lavinia,” Reyna pleaded, “I’ll have to bring you up on desertion charges. Don’t do this. Don’t make me—”

“Now, Felipe,” Lavinia ordered.

The faun raised his panpipes and played a lullaby, soft and low, right next to Reyna’s head.

“Can’t!” Reyna struggled to keep her eyes open. “Won’t. Ahhggghh.”

She went limp and began to snore.

“That’s better.” Lavinia turned to me. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave her someplace safe with a couple of fauns, and of course Aurum and Argentum. She’ll be taken care of while she heals. You and Meg, do what you need to do.”

Her confident stance and her take-charge tone made her almost unrecognizable as the gawky, nervous legionnaire we’d met at Lake Temescal. She reminded me more of Reyna now, and of Meg. Mostly, though, she seemed like a stronger version of herself—a Lavinia who had decided what she needed to do and would not rest until she did it.

“Where are you going?” I asked, still utterly confused. “Why won’t you come back to camp with us?”

Meg stumbled over, ambrosia crumbles stuck around her mouth. “Don’t pester her,” she told me. Then to Lavinia: “Is Peaches…?”

Lavinia shook her head. “He and Don are with the advance group, making contact with the Nereids.”

Meg pouted. “Yeah. Okay. The emperors’ ground forces?”

Lavinia’s expression turned somber. “They already passed by. We hid and watched. Yeah…It’s not good. I’m sure they’ll be in combat with the legion by the time you get there. You remember the path I told you about?”

“Yeah,” Meg agreed. “Okay, good luck.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I tried to make a time-out sign, though my uncoordinated hands made it look more like a tent. “What are you talking about? What path? Why would you come out here just to hide as the enemy army passes by? Why are Peaches and Don talking to…Wait. Nereids?”

Nereids are spirits of the sea. The nearest ones would be…Oh.

I couldn’t see much from our trash-filled gulley. I definitely couldn’t see the San Francisco Bay, or the string of yachts taking up position to fire on the camp. But I knew we were close.

I looked at Lavinia with newfound respect. Or disrespect. Which is it when you realize that someone you knew was crazy is actually even crazier than you suspected?

“Lavinia, you are not planning—”

“Stop right there,” she warned, “or I’ll have Felipe put you down for a nap, too.”

“But Michael Kahale—”

“Yeah, we know. He failed. The emperors’ troops were bragging about it as they marched past. It’s one more thing they have to pay for.”

Brave words, but her eyes betrayed a flicker of worry, telling me she was more terrified than she let on. She was having trouble keeping up her own courage and preventing her makeshift troops from losing their nerve. She did not need me reminding her how insane her plan was.

“We’ve all got a lot to do,” she said. “Good luck.” She ruffled Meg’s hair, which did not need any more ruffling. “Dryads and fauns, let’s move!”

Harold and Felipe picked up Reyna’s makeshift stretcher and jogged off down the gully, Aurum and Argentum bounding around them like, Oh, boy, another hike! Lavinia and the others followed. Soon they were lost in the underbrush, vanishing into the terrain as only nature spirits and girls with bright pink hair can do.

Meg studied my face. “You whole?”

I almost wanted to laugh. Where had she picked up that expression? I had zombie poison coursing through my body and up into my face. The dryads thought I would turn into a shambling undead minion of Tarquin as soon as it got fully dark. I was shaking from exhaustion and fear. We apparently had an enemy army between us and camp, and Lavinia was leading a suicide attack on the imperial fleet with inexperienced nature spirits, when an actual elite commando force had already failed.

When had I last felt “whole”? I wanted to believe it was back when I was a god, but that wasn’t true. I hadn’t been completely myself for centuries. Maybe millennia.

At the moment, I felt more like a hole—a void in the cosmos through which Harpocrates, the Sibyl, and a lot of people I cared about had vanished.

“I’ll manage,” I said.

“Good, because look.” Meg pointed toward the Oakland Hills. I thought I was seeing fog, but fog didn’t rise vertically from hillsides. Close to the perimeter of Camp Jupiter, fires were burning.

“We need wheels,” said Meg.

Welcome to the war

We hope you enjoy your death

Please come again soon!

OKAY, BUT WHY DID it have to be bicycles?

I understood that cars were a deal-breaker. We had crashed enough vehicles for one week. I understood that jogging to camp was out of the question, given the fact that we could barely stand.

But why didn’t demigods have some sort of ride-share app for summoning giant eagles? I decided I would create one as soon as I became a god again. Right after I figured out a way to let demigods use smartphones safely.

Across the street from Target stood a rack of canary-yellow Go-Glo bikes. Meg inserted a credit card into the kiosk (where she got the card, I had no idea), freed two cycles from the rack, and offered one to me.

Joy and happiness. Now we could pedal into battle like the neon-yellow warriors of old.

We took the side streets and sidewalks, using the columns of smoke in the hills to guide our way. With Highway 24 closed, traffic was snarled everywhere, angry drivers honking and yelling and threatening violence. I was tempted to tell them that if they really wanted a fight, they could just follow us. We could use a few thousand angry commuters on our side.

As we passed the Rockridge BART station, we spotted the first enemy troops. Pandai patrolled the elevated platform, with furry black ears folded around themselves like firefighter turnout coats, and flat-head axes in their hands. Fire trucks were parked along College Avenue, their lights strobing in the underpass. More faux-firefighter pandai guarded the station doors, turning away mortals. I hoped the real firefighters were okay, because firefighters are important and also because they are hot, and no, that wasn’t relevant right then.

“This way!” Meg veered up the steepest hill she could find, just to annoy me. I was forced to stand as I pedaled, pushing with all my weight to make progress against the incline.

At the summit, more bad news.

In front of us, arrayed across the higher hills, troops marched doggedly toward Camp Jupiter. There were squads of blemmyae, pandai, and even some six-armed Earthborn who had served Gaea in the Recent Unpleasantness, all fighting their way through flaming trenches, staked barricades, and Roman skirmishers trying to put my archery lessons to good use. In the early evening gloom, I could only see bits and pieces of the battle. Judging from the mass of glittering armor and the forest of battle pennants, the main part of the emperors’ army was concentrated on Highway 24, forcing its way toward the Caldecott Tunnel. Enemy catapults hurled projectiles toward the legion’s positions, but most disappeared in bursts of purple light as soon as they got close. I assumed that was the work of Terminus, doing his part to defend the camp’s borders.