The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(47)

“Nothing.”

My stomach convulsed with a combination of nausea and hunger. I wondered if we would be honored with a second course. Perhaps some breadsticks. Or really anything that wasn’t garnished with skink feet.

Screech-Bling raised his hands and click-click-clicked for attention. “Friends! Shareholders! I see you all!”

The troglodytes tapped their spoons against their stone cups, making a sound like a thousand clattering bones.

“Out of courtesy for our uncivilized guests,” Screech-Bling continued, “I shall speak in the barbaric language of the crust-dwellers.”

Nico tipped his fine top hat. “I see the honor you give us. Thank you, CEO Screech-Bling, for not eating us, and also speaking in our tongue.”

Screech-Bling nodded with a smug expression that said, No problem, kid. We’re just awesome that way. “The Italian wall lizard has told us many things!”

A board member standing behind him, the one with the cowboy hat, whispered in his ear.

“I mean the Italian son of Hades!” Screech-Bling corrected. “He has explained the evil plans of Emperor Nero!”

The trogs muttered and hissed. Apparently, Nero’s infamy had spread even to the deepest-dwelling corporations of hat-wearers. Screech-Bling pronounced the name Nee-ACK-row, with a sound in the middle like a cat being strangled, which seemed appropriate.

“The son of Hades wishes our help!” said Screech-Bling. “The emperor has vats of fire-liquid. Many of you know the ones I speak of. Loud and clumsy was the digging when they installed those vats. Shoddy the workmanship!”

“Shoddy!” agreed many of the trogs.

“Soon,” said the CEO, “Nee-ACK-row will unleash burning death across the Crusty Crust. The son of Hades has asked our help to dig to these vats and eat them!”

“You mean disable them?” Nico suggested.

“Yes, that!” Screech-Bling agreed. “Your language is crude and difficult!”

On the opposite side of the circle, the board member with the police hat made a small notice-me sort of growl. “O Screech-Bling, these fires will not reach us. We are too deep! Should we not let the Crusty Crust burn?”

“Hey!” Will spoke for the first time, looking about as serious as someone can while wearing a lampshade. “We’re talking about millions of innocent lives.”

Police Hat snarled. “We trogs are only hundreds. We do not breed and breed and choke the world with our waste. Our lives are rare and precious. You crust-dwellers? No. Besides, you are blind to our existence. You would not help us.”

“Grr-Fred speaks the truth,” said Cowboy Hat. “No offense to our guests.”

The child with the propeller beanie chose this moment to appear at my side, grinning and offering me a wicker basket covered by a napkin. “Breadsticks?”

I was so upset I declined.

“—assure our guests,” Screech-Bling was saying. “We have welcomed you to our table. We see you as intelligent beings. You must not think we are against your kind. We bear you no ill will! We simply do not care whether you live or die.”

There was a general muttering of agreement. Click-Wrong gave me a kindly glance that implied, You can’t argue with that logic!

The scary thing was, back when I was a god, I might have agreed with the trogs. I’d destroyed a few cities myself in the old days. Humans always popped up again like weeds. Why fret about one little fiery apocalypse in New York?

Now, though, one of those “not-so-rare” lives was Estelle Blofis’s, giggler and future ruler of the Crusty Crust. And her parents, Sally and Paul…In fact, there wasn’t a single mortal I considered expendable. Not one deserved to be snuffed out by Nero’s cruelty. The revelation stunned me. I had become a human-life hoarder!

“It’s not just crust-dwellers,” Nico was saying, his tone remarkably calm. “Lizards, skinks, frogs, snakes…Your food supply will burn.”

This caused some uneasy mumbling, but I sensed that the trogs were still not swayed. They might have to range as far as New Jersey or Long Island to gather their reptiles. They might have to live on breadsticks for a while. But so what? The threat wasn’t critical to their lives or their stock prices.

“What about hats?” Will asked. “How many haberdasheries will burn if we don’t stop Nero? Dead haberdashers cannot make trog haberdashery.”

More grumbling, but clearly this argument wasn’t enough, either.

With a growing sense of helplessness, I realized that we wouldn’t be able to convince the troglodytes by appealing to their self-interest. If only a few hundred of them existed, why should they gamble their own lives by tunneling into Nero’s doomsday reservoir? No god or corporation would accept that level of risk.

Before I realized what I was doing, I had risen to my feet. “Stop! Hear me, troglodytes!”

The crowd grew dangerously still. Hundreds of large brown eyes fixed on me.

One trog whispered, “Who is that?”

His companion whispered back, “Don’t know, but he can’t be important. He’s wearing a Mets hat.”

Nico gave me an urgent sit-down-before-you-get-us-killed look.

“Friends,” I said, “this is not about reptiles and hats.”

The trogs gasped. I had just implied that two of their favorite things were no more important than crust-dweller lives.