The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(44)

Nico bowed his head. “That is very kind.”

“We will also generously refrain from eating your companions”—a few of Screech-Bling’s shareholders muttered, “Aww, what?”—“though it is true that, like you, they do not wear hats, and no hatless species can be considered civilized.”

Rachel and Meg looked alarmed, probably because Screech-Bling was still drooling profusely as he talked about not eating us. Or perhaps they were thinking about all the great hats they could have worn if they’d only known.

Glow-in-the-dark Will gave us a reassuring nod and mouthed, It’s cool. Apparently, the giving of a gift, followed by the promise of not killing and eating your guests, was standard troglodyte diplomatic protocol.

“We see your generosity, O Screech-Bling!” Nico said. “I would propose a pact between us—an agreement that would produce many hats for us all, as well as reptiles, fine clothing, and rocks.”

An excited murmur rippled through the crowd. It seemed Nico had hit upon all four things on the troglodytes’ Christmas wish list.

Screech-Bling summoned forward a few senior trogs, who I guessed were his board of directors. One was the chef. The others wore the hats of a police officer, a firefighter, and a cowboy. After a short consultation, Screech-Bling faced us with another pointy-toothed grin.

“Very well!” he said. “We will take you to our corporate headquarters, where we will feast upon skink soup and—CLICK, GRR—talk more about these matters!”

We were surrounded by a throng of cheering, growling shareholders. With a total lack of regard for personal space, as one might expect from a tunnel-dwelling species, they picked us up and ran with us on their shoulders, sweeping us out of the cavern and into a maze of tunnels at a speed that would’ve put the tauri silvestres to shame.

“These guys are awesome,” Meg decided. “They eat snakes.”

I knew several snakes, including Hermes’s companions, George and Martha, who would have been uncomfortable with Meg’s definition of awesomeness. Since we were now in the midst of the trogs’ encampment, I decided not to bring that up.

At first glance, the troglodytes’ corporate headquarters resembled an abandoned subway station. The wide platform was lined with columns holding up a barreled ceiling of black tiles that drank in the dim light from pots of bioluminescent mushrooms scattered around the cavern. Along the left side of the platform, instead of a rail bed, was the sunken, packed-earth roadway that the trogs had used to bring us here. And at the speeds they ran, who needed a train?

Along the right side of the platform flowed a swift subterranean river. The trogs filled their gourds and cauldrons from this source, and also emptied their chamber pots into it—though being a civilized, hat-wearing people, they dumped the chamber pots downstream from where they drew their drinking water.

Unlike in a subway station, there were no obvious stairways leading up, no clearly marked exits. Just the river and the road we’d arrived on.

The platform buzzed with activity. Dozens of trogs rushed here and there, miraculously managing their daily chores without losing the stacks of hats on their heads. Some tended cooking pots on tripods over fire pits. Others—possibly merchants?—haggled over bins of rocks. Trog children, no bigger than human babies, frolicked around, playing catch with spheres of solid crystal.

Their dwellings were tents. Most had been appropriated from the human world, which gave me unpleasant flashbacks of the camping display at Macro’s Military Madness in Palm Springs. Others appeared to be of trog design, carefully stitched from the shaggy red hides of the tauri silvestres. I had no idea how the trogs had managed to skin and stitch the impervious hides, but clearly, as the ancestral enemies of the forest bulls, they had found a way.

I wondered about that rivalry, too. How had a subterranean frog people in love with hats and lizards become mortal enemies to a breed of bright-red devil bulls? Perhaps at the beginning of time, the elder gods had told the first trogs, You may now pick your nemesis! And the first trogs had pointed across the newly made fields of creation and yelled, We hate those cows!

Whatever the case, I was comforted to know that even if the trogs were not yet our friends, at least we had a mutual enemy.

Screech-Bling had given us a guest tent and a cold fire pit and told us to make ourselves at home while he saw to dinner preparations. Or rather, he’d told Nico to make himself at home. The CEO kept eyeing Rachel, Meg, and me like we were sides of beef hanging in a shop window. As for Will, the troglodytes seemed to ignore him. My best guess: because Will glowed, they considered him simply a moveable light source, as if Nico had brought along his own pot of luminous mushrooms. Judging from Will’s scowl, he did not appreciate this.

It would’ve been easier to relax if Rachel hadn’t kept checking her watch—reminding us that it was now four in the afternoon, then four thirty, and that Meg and I were supposed to surrender by sundown. I could only hope the troglodytes were like senior citizens and ate supper early.

Meg busied herself collecting spores from the nearby mushroom pots, which she seemed to consider the coolest thing since snake-eating. Will and Nico sat on the other side of the fire pit having a tense discussion. I couldn’t hear the words, but from their facial expressions and hand gestures, I got the gist:

Will: Worry, worry, worry.

Nico: Calm down, probably won’t die.