The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(9)

In the shadow of a column, a slender young man stood facing the sea. His expression was obscured, but his posture spoke of impatience. He tugged on his white robes, crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his sandalled foot against the floor.

A second man appeared, marching onto the terrace with the clink of armour and the laboured breathing of a heavy-set fighter. A praetorian guard’s helmet hid his face.

He knelt before the younger man. ‘It is done, Princeps.’

Princeps. Latin for first in line or first citizen – that lovely euphemism the Roman emperors used to downplay just how absolute their power was.

‘Are you sure this time?’ asked a young, reedy voice. ‘I don’t want any more surprises.’

The praetor grunted. ‘Very sure, Princeps.’

The guard held out his massive hairy forearms. Bloody scratches glistened in the moonlight, as if desperate fingernails had raked his flesh.

‘What did you use?’ The younger man sounded fascinated.

‘His own pillow,’ the big man said. ‘Seemed easiest.’

The younger man laughed. ‘The old pig deserved it. I wait years for him to die, finally we announce he’s kicked the situla, and he has the nerve to wake up again? I don’t think so. Tomorrow will be a new, better day for Rome.’

He stepped into the moonlight, revealing his face – a face I had hoped never to see again.

He was handsome in a thin, angular way, though his ears stuck out a bit too much. His smile was twisted. His eyes had all the warmth of a barracuda’s.

Even if you do not recognize his features, dear reader, I am sure you have met him. He is the school bully too charming to get caught; the one who thinks up the cruellest pranks, has others carry out his dirty work and still maintains a perfect reputation with the teachers. He is the boy who pulls the legs off insects and tortures stray animals, yet laughs with such pure delight he can almost convince you it is harmless fun. He’s the boy who steals money from the temple collection plates, behind the backs of old ladies who praise him for being such a nice young man.

He is that person, that type of evil.

And tonight he had a new name, which would not foretell a better day for Rome.

The praetorian guard lowered his head. ‘Hail, Caesar!’

I awoke from my dream shivering.

‘Good timing,’ Grover said.

I sat up. My head throbbed. My mouth tasted like strix dust.

I was lying under a makeshift lean-to – a blue plastic tarp set on a hillside overlooking the desert. The sun was going down. Next to me, Meg was curled up asleep, her hand resting on my wrist. I suppose that was sweet, except I knew where her fingers had been. (Hint: in her nostrils.)

On a nearby slab of rock, Grover sat sipping water from his flask. Judging from his weary expression, I guessed he had been keeping watch over us while we slept.

‘I passed out?’ I gathered.

He tossed me the flask. ‘I thought I slept hard. You’ve been out for hours.’

I took a drink, then rubbed the gunk from my eyes, wishing I could wipe the dreams from my head as easily: a woman chained in a fiery room, a trap for Apollo, a new Caesar with the pleasant smile of a fine young sociopath.

Don’t think about it, I told myself. Dreams aren’t necessarily true.

No, I answered myself. Only the bad ones. Like those.

I focused on Meg, snoring in the shade of our tarp. Her leg was freshly bandaged. She wore a clean T-shirt over her tattered dress. I tried to extricate my wrist from her grip, but she held on tighter.

‘She’s all right,’ Grover assured me. ‘At least physically. Fell asleep after we got you situated.’ He frowned. ‘She didn’t seem happy about being here, though. Said she couldn’t handle this place. Wanted to leave. I was afraid she’d jump back into the Labyrinth, but I convinced her she needed to rest first. I played some music to relax her.’

I scanned our surroundings, wondering what had upset Meg so badly.

Below us stretched a landscape only slightly more hospitable than Mars. (I mean the planet, not the god, though I suppose neither is much of a host.) Sun-blasted ochre mountains ringed a valley patchworked with unnaturally green golf courses, dusty barren flats and sprawling neighbourhoods of white stucco walls, red-tiled roofs and blue swimming pools. Lining the streets, rows of listless palm trees stuck up like raggedy seams. Asphalt parking lots shimmered in the heat. A brown haze hung in the air, filling the valley like watery gravy.

‘Palm Springs,’ I said.

I’d known the city well in the 1950s. I was pretty sure I’d hosted a party with Frank Sinatra just down the road there, by that golf course – but it felt like another life. Probably because it had been.

Now the area seemed much less welcoming – the temperature too scorching for an early spring evening, the air too heavy and acrid. Something was wrong, something I couldn’t quite place.

I scanned our immediate surroundings. We were camped at the crest of a hill, the San Jacinto wilderness at our backs to the west, the sprawl of Palm Springs at our feet to the east. A gravel road skirted the base of the hill, winding towards the nearest neighbourhood about half a mile below, but I could tell that our hilltop had once boasted a large structure.

Sunk in the rocky slope were half a dozen hollow brickwork cylinders, each perhaps thirty feet in diameter, like the shells of ruined sugar mills. The structures were of varying heights, in varying stages of disintegration, but their tops were all level with one another, so I guessed they must have been massive support columns for a stilt house. Judging from the detritus that littered the hillside – shards of glass, charred planks, blackened clumps of brick – I guessed that the house must have burned down many years before.