The Tower of Nero Read online

  “Where was I?” Nero mused, coming back from his pleasant thoughts of massacre.

  “The villain monologue,” I said.

  “Ah, now I remember! Good and bad acts. You, Apollo, are here to surrender, sacrificing yourself to save the city. Seems like a good act! That’s exactly why I suspect it’s bad. Luguselwa!”

  The Gaul didn’t strike me as someone who flinched easily, but when Nero yelled her name, her leg braces squeaked. “My lord?”

  “What was the plan?” Nero asked.

  Frost formed in my lungs.

  Lu did her best to look confused. “My lord?”

  “The plan,” he snapped. “You let these two go on purpose. They turn themselves in just before my ultimatum deadline. What were you hoping to gain when you betrayed me?”

  “My lord, no. I—”

  “Seize them!”

  The throne-room choreography suddenly became clear. Everyone played their parts beautifully. The servants backed away. The demigods of the Imperial Household stepped forward and drew swords. I didn’t notice the Germani sneaking up behind us until two burly giants gripped my arms. Two more took hold of Meg. Gunther and a friend grabbed hold of Luguselwa with such gusto her crutches clattered to the floor. Fully healed, Luguselwa doubtless would have given them a good fight, but in her current condition there was no contest. They pushed her down, prostrate, in front of the emperor, ignoring her screams and the creaking of her leg braces.

  “Stop it!” Meg thrashed, but her captors outweighed her by several hundred pounds. I kicked my Germani in the shins to no avail. I might as well have been kicking a forest bull.

  Nero’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “You see, children,” he told his adopted eleven, “if you ever decide to depose me, you’ll have to do much better than this. Honestly, I’m disappointed.”

  He twirled some whiskers in his chin beard, probably because he didn’t have a proper villain’s moustache. “Let’s see if I have this right, Apollo. You surrender yourself to get inside my tower, hoping this convinces me not to burn the city, while also making me lower my guard. Meanwhile, your little army of demigods musters at Camp Half-Blood.…” He smiled cruelly. “Yes, I have it on good authority they are preparing to march. So exciting! Then, when they attack, Luguselwa frees you from your cell, and together, in all the confusion, you somehow manage to kill me. Is that about it?”

  My heart clawed at my chest like a troglodyte at a rock wall. If Camp Half-Blood was truly on the march, that meant Rachel might have gotten to the surface and contacted them. Which meant Will and Nico might also still be alive, and still with the troglodytes. Or Nero could be lying. Or he could know more than he was letting on. In any case, Luguselwa was exposed, which meant she couldn’t free us or help us destroy the emperor’s fasces. Whether or not Nico and the trogs managed their sabotage, our friends from camp would be charging to their own slaughter. Oh, and also, I would die.

  Nero laughed with delight. “There it is!” He pointed to my face. “The expression someone makes when they realize their life is over. You can’t fake that. So beautifully honest! And you’re right, of course.”

  “Nero, don’t!” Meg yelled. “F-Father!”

  The word seemed to hurt her, like she was coughing up a chunk of glass.

  Nero pouted and spread his arms, as if he would welcome Meg into his loving embrace if it weren’t for the two large goons holding her in place. “Oh, my dear sweet daughter. I am so sorry you decided to be part of this. I wish I could spare you from the pain that is to come. But you know very well…you should never anger the Beast.”

  Meg wailed and tried to bite one of her guards. I wished I had her ferocity. Absolute terror had turned my limbs to putty.

  “Cassius,” Nero called, “come forward, Son.”

  The youngest demigod hurried to the dais. He couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

  Nero patted his cheek. “There’s a good boy. Go and collect your sister’s gold rings, will you? I hope you will put them to better use than she did.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, as if translating these instructions from Neroese, Cassius jogged over to Meg. He carefully avoided her eyes as he worked the rings from her middle fingers.

  “Cass.” Meg was weeping now. “Don’t. Don’t listen to him.”

  The little boy blushed, but he kept working silently at the rings. He had pink stains around his lips from something he’d been drinking—juice, soda. His fluffy blond hair reminded me…No. No, I refused to think it. Argh. Too late! Curse my imagination! He reminded me of a young Jason Grace.

  When he had tugged both rings free, Cassius hurried back to his stepfather.

  “Good, good,” Nero said, with a hint of impatience. “Put them on. You’ve trained with scimitars, have you not?”

  Cassius nodded, fumbling to comply.

  Nero smiled at me, rather like the emcee of a show. Thank you for your patience. We’re experiencing technical difficulties.

  “You know, Apollo,” he said, “there is one saying I like from the Christians. How does it go? If your hands offend you, cut them off.…Something like that.” He looked down at Lu. “Oh, Lu, I’m afraid your hands have offended me. Cassius, do the honors.”

  Luguselwa struggled and screamed as the guards stretched her arms in front of her, but she was weak and already in pain. Cassius swallowed, his face a mixture of horror and hunger.

  Nero’s hard eyes, the eyes of the Beast, bored into him. “Now, boy,” he said with chilling calm.

  Cassius summoned the golden blades. As he brought them down on Lu’s wrists, the whole room seemed to tilt and blur. I could no longer tell who was screaming—Lu, or Meg, or me.

  Through a fog of pain and nausea, I heard Nero snap, “Bind her wounds! She won’t get to die so easily!” Then he turned the eyes of the Beast on me. “Now, Apollo, let me tell you the new plan. You will be thrown into a cell with this traitor, Luguselwa. And Meg, dear Meg, we will begin your rehabilitation. Welcome home.”

  NERO’S CELL WAS THE NICEST PLACE I’D ever been imprisoned in. I would have rated it five stars. Absolute luxury! Would die here again!

  From the high ceiling hung a chandelier…a chandelier, much too far out of reach for a prisoner to grab. Crystal pendants danced in the LED lights, casting diamond-shaped reflections across the eggshell-white walls. In the back of the room sat a sink with gold fixtures and an automated toilet with a bidet, all shielded behind a privacy screen—what pampering! One of Nero’s Persian carpets covered the floor. Two plush Roman-style sofas were arranged in a V on either side of a coffee table overflowing with cheese, crackers, and fruit, plus a silver pitcher of water and two goblets, in case we prisoners wanted to toast our good luck. Only the front wall had a jailhouse look, since it was nothing but a row of thick metal bars, but even these were coated with—or perhaps made from—Imperial gold.

  I spent the first twenty or thirty minutes alone in the cell. It was hard to measure time. I paced, I screamed, I demanded to see Meg. I banged a silver platter against the bars and howled into the empty corridor outside. Finally, as my fear and queasiness got the best of me, I discovered the joys of vomiting into a high-end toilet with a heated seat and multiple self-cleaning options.

  I was beginning to think Luguselwa must have died. Why else was she not in the cell with me, as Nero had promised? How could she have survived the shock of double amputation when she was already so badly injured?

  Just as I was convincing myself I would die alone in this cell, with no one to help me eat the cheese and crackers, a door banged open somewhere down the hall, followed by heavy footsteps and lots of grunting. Gunther and another Germanus came into view, dragging Luguselwa between them. The middle three bars of the cell entrance fell away, retracting into the floor as fast as sheathed blades. The guards pushed Lu inside, and the bars snapped closed again.

  I rushed to Lu’s side. She curled on the Persian carpet, her body shivering and splattered with blood. Her leg b
races had been removed. Her face was paler than the walls. Her wrists had been bandaged, but the wrappings were already soaked through. Her brow burned with fever.

  “She needs a doctor!” I yelled.

  Gunther leered at me. “Ain’t you a healing god?”

  His friend snorted, then the two of them lumbered back down the hall.

  “Erggh,” Lu muttered.

  “Hold on,” I said. Then I winced, realizing that probably wasn’t a sensitive thing to say given her condition. I scrambled back to my comfy sofa and rummaged through my pack. The guards had taken my bow and quivers, including the Arrow of Dodona, but they’d left me everything that wasn’t obviously a weapon—my waterlogged ukulele and my backpack, including some med supplies Will had given me: bandages, ointments, pills, nectar, ambrosia. Could Gauls take ambrosia? Could they take aspirin? I had no time to worry about that.

  I soaked some linen napkins in the ice-water pitcher and wrapped them across Lu’s head and neck to lower her temperature. I crushed some painkillers together with ambrosia and nectar and fed her some of the mush, though she could barely swallow. Her eyes were unfocused. Her shivering was getting worse.

  She croaked, “Meg—?”

  “Hush,” I said, trying not to cry. “We’ll save her, I swear. But first you have to heal.”

  She whimpered, then made a high-pitched noise like a scream with no energy behind it. She had to be in unbelievable pain. She should have been dead already, but the Gaul was tough.

  “You need to be asleep for what comes next,” I warned. “I—I’m sorry. But I have to check your wrists. I have to clean the wounds and re-bandage them or you’ll die from sepsis.”

  I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this without her dying from blood loss or shock, but I had to try. The guards had tied off her wrists sloppily. I doubted they’d bothered with sterilization. They had slowed the bleeding, but Lu would still die unless I intervened.

  I grabbed another napkin and a vial of chloroform—one of Will’s more dangerous med-kit components. Using it was a huge risk, but the desperate circumstances left me little choice, unless I wanted to knock Lu over the head with a cheese platter.

  I moved the soaked napkin over her face.

  “No,” she said feebly. “Can’t…”

  “It’s either this or pass out from the pain as soon as I touch those wrists.”

  She grimaced, then nodded.

  I pressed the cloth against her nose and mouth. Two breaths, and her body went limp. For her own sake, I prayed she would stay unconscious.

  I worked as fast as I could. My hands were surprisingly steady. The medical knowledge came back out of instinct. I didn’t think about the grave injuries I was looking at, nor the amount of blood…I just did the work. Tourniquet. Sterilize. I would’ve tried to reattach her hands, despite the hopeless odds, but they hadn’t bothered to bring them. Sure, give me a chandelier and a selection of fruit, but no hands.

  “Cauterize,” I mumbled to myself. “I need—”

  My right hand burst into flame.

  At the time, I didn’t find this strange. A little spark of my old sun-god power? Sure, why not? I sealed the stumps of Lu’s poor wrists, slathered them with healing ointment, then re-bandaged them properly, leaving her with two stubby Q-tips instead of hands.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  Guilt weighed me down like a suit of armor. I had been so suspicious of Lu, when all the time she’d been risking her life trying to help. Her only crime was underestimating Nero, just as we all had. And the price she’d paid…

  You have to understand, to a musician like me, no punishment could be as bad as losing one’s hands—to no longer be able to play the keyboard or the fretboard, to never again summon music with one’s fingers. Making music was its own sort of divinity. I imagined Lu felt the same way about her fighting skills. She would never again hold a weapon.

  Nero’s cruelty was beyond measure. I wanted to cauterize the smirk off his smug face.

  Attend to your patient, I chided myself.

  I grabbed pillows from the sofa and positioned them around Lu, trying to make her as comfortable on the carpet as I could. Even if I’d wanted to risk moving her to the sofa, I doubted I would have had the strength. I dabbed her forehead with more cold cloths. I dribbled water and nectar into her mouth. Then I put my hand against her carotid artery and concentrated with all my might. Heal, heal, heal.

  Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought some of my old power stirred. My fingers warmed against her skin. Her pulse began to stabilize. Her breathing came easier. Her fever lessened.

  I had done what I could. I crawled across the floor and climbed onto my sofa, my head swimming with exhaustion.

  How much time had passed? I didn’t know if Nero had decided to destroy New York or wait until the forces of Camp Half-Blood came within range. The city could be burning around me right now and I’d see no sign of it in this windowless cell within Nero’s self-contained tower. The AC would keep blowing. The chandelier would keep glittering. The toilet would keep flushing.

  And Meg…Oh, gods, what would Nero be doing to “rehabilitate” her?

  I couldn’t bear it. I had to get up. I had to save my friend. But my exhausted body had other ideas.

  My vision turned watery. I keeled over sideways, and my thoughts sank into a pool of shadow.

  “Hey, man.”

  The familiar voice seemed to come from half a world away over a weak satellite connection.

  As the scene resolved, I found myself sitting at a picnic table on the beach in Santa Monica. Nearby stood the fish-taco shack where Jason, Piper, Meg, and I had eaten our last meal before infiltrating Caligula’s fleet of mega-yachts. Across the table sat Jason Grace, glowing and insubstantial, like a video projected against a cloud.

  “Jason.” My voice was a ruined sob. “You’re here.”

  His smile flickered. His eyes were nothing but smudges of turquoise dye. Still, I could feel the quiet strength of his presence, and I heard the kindness in his voice. “Not really, Apollo. I’m dead. You’re dreaming. But it’s good to see you.”

  I looked down, not trusting myself to speak. Before me sat a plate of fish tacos that had been turned into gold, like the work of King Midas. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t like it.

  “I’m so sorry,” I managed at last.

  “No, no,” Jason said. “I made my choice. You’re not to blame. You don’t owe me anything except to remember what I said. Remember what’s important.”

  “You’re important,” I said. “Your life!”

  Jason tilted his head. “I mean…sure. But if a hero isn’t ready to lose everything for a greater cause, is that person really a hero?”

  He weighted the word person subtly, as if to stress it could mean a human, a faun, a dryad, a griffin, a pandos…even a god.

  “But…” I struggled to find a counterargument. I wanted so badly to reach across the table, grip Jason’s wrists, and pull him back into the world of the living. But even if I could, I realized I wouldn’t have been doing it for Jason. He was at peace with his choices. I would have been bringing him back for my own selfish reasons, because I didn’t want to deal with the sorrow and grief of having lost him.

  “All right,” I relented. A fist of pain that had been clenching in my chest for weeks began to loosen. “All right, Jason. We miss you, though.”

  His face rippled into colored smoke. “I miss you, too. All of you. Apollo, do me a favor. Beware Mithras’s servant—the lion, snake-entwined. You know what it is, and what it can do.”

  “I—what? No, I don’t! Tell me, please!”

  Jason managed one last faint smile. “I’m just a dream in your head, man. You’ve already got the info. I’m just saying…there’s a price for bargaining with the guardian of the stars. Sometimes you have to pay that price. Sometimes, you have to let someone else do it.”

  This cleared up absolutely nothing, but the dream allowed m
e no more time for questions.

  Jason dissolved. My golden fish tacos turned to dust. The Santa Barbara coastline melted, and I woke with a start on my comfy sofa.

  “You alive?” asked a hoarse voice.

  Lu lay on the opposite couch. How she’d gotten herself there from the floor, I couldn’t imagine. Her cheeks and eyes were sunken. Her bandaged stumps were speckled with brown polka dots where new blood had seeped through. But she looked a bit less pale, and her eyes were remarkably clear. I could only conclude that my godly healing powers—wherever they had come from—must have done some good.

  I was so surprised, I needed a moment to find my voice. “I—I should be asking you that question. How is the pain?”

  She lifted her stumps gingerly. “What, these? I’ve had worse.”

  “My gods,” I marveled. “A sense of humor? You really are indestructible.”

  Her facial muscles tensed—maybe an attempt to smile, or just a reaction to her constant searing agony. “Meg. What happened to her? How do we find her?”

  I couldn’t help but admire her singlemindedness. Despite her pain and her unfair punishment, Lu was still focused on helping our young friend.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “We’ll find her, but first you have to get your strength back. When we break out of here, you’ll have to be able to move under your own power. I don’t think I can carry you.”

  “No?” Lu asked. “I was looking forward to a piggyback ride.”

  Wow, I guess Gauls get punchy when they suffer life-threatening injuries.

  Of course, the whole idea of us busting out of our cell was absurd. Even if we managed it, we were in no shape to rescue Meg or fight the emperor’s forces. But I couldn’t lose hope, especially when my no-handed companion was still able to crack jokes.

  Also, my dream of Jason had reminded me that the emperor’s fasces was hidden somewhere on this floor of the tower, guarded by the snake-entwined lion. The guardian of the stars, Mithras’s servant, whatever that meant—it had to be close. And if it required a price for letting us stomp-kick Nero’s rod of immortality into splinters, I was willing to pay it.