The Tyrant's Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4)(52)

Then I realized, judging from the angle of the sun coming in the room, it must have been about noon. Once again, I’d slept through the night and half a day. I still felt exhausted.

I pressed gently on my bandaged gut. I was horrified to find the wound tender again. The purple lines of infection had darkened. This could only mean one thing: it was time for a long-sleeved shirt. No matter what happened over the next twenty-four hours, I would not add to Meg’s worries. I would tough it out until the moment I keeled over.

Wow. Who even was I?

By the time I changed clothes and hobbled out of Bombilo’s coffee shop, most of the legion had gathered at the mess hall for lunch. As usual, the dining room bustled with activity. Demigods, grouped by cohort, reclined on couches around low tables while aurae whisked overhead with platters of food and pitchers of drink. Hanging from the cedar rafters, war-game pennants and cohort standards rippled in the constant breeze. When they’d finished eating, diners rose cautiously and walked away hunched over, lest they get decapitated by a flying plate of cold cuts. Except for the Lares, of course. They didn’t care what sort of delicacies flew through their ectoplasmic noggins.

I spotted Frank at the officers’ table, deep in conversation with Hazel and the rest of the centurions. Reyna was nowhere in sight—perhaps she was catching a nap or preparing for the afternoon’s war drills. Given what we were facing tomorrow, Frank looked remarkably relaxed. As he chatted with his officers, he even cracked a smile, which seemed to put the others at ease.

How simple it would be to destroy their fragile confidence, I thought, just by describing the flotilla of artillery yachts I’d seen in my dream. Not yet, I decided. No sense spoiling their meal.

“Hey, Lester!” Lavinia yelled from across the room, waving me over as if I were her waiter.

I joined her and Meg at the Fifth Cohort table. An aura deposited a goblet of water in my hand, then left a whole pitcher on the table. Apparently, my dehydration was that obvious.

Lavinia leaned forward, her eyebrows arched like pink-and-chestnut rainbows. “So, is it true?”

I frowned at Meg, wondering which of the many embarrassing stories about me she might have shared. She was too busy plowing through a row of hot dogs to pay me any mind.

“Is what true?” I asked.

“The shoes.”

“Shoes?”

Lavinia threw her hands in the air. “The dancing shoes of Terpsichore! Meg was telling us what happened on Caligula’s yachts. She said you and that Piper girl saw a pair of Terpsichore’s shoes!”

“Oh.” I had completely forgotten about those, or the fact that I’d told Meg about them. Strange, but the other events aboard Caligula’s ships—getting captured, seeing Jason killed before our eyes, barely escaping with our lives—had eclipsed my memories of the emperor’s footwear collection.

“Meg,” I said, “of all the things you could have chosen to tell them, you told them about that?”

“Wasn’t my idea.” Meg somehow managed to enunciate with half a hot dog in her mouth. “Lavinia likes shoes.”

“Well, what did you think I was going to ask about?” Lavinia demanded. “You tell me the emperor has an entire boatload of shoes, of course I’m going to wonder if you saw any dancing ones! So it’s true, then, Lester?”

“I mean…yes. We saw a pair of—”

“Wow.” Lavinia sat back, crossed her arms, and glared at me. “Just wow. You wait until now to tell me this? Do you know how rare those shoes are? How important…” She seemed to choke on her own indignation. “Wow.”

Around the table, Lavinia’s comrades showed a mixture of reactions. Some rolled their eyes, some smirked, some kept eating as if nothing Lavinia did could surprise them anymore.

An older boy with shaggy brown hair dared to stick up for me. “Lavinia, Apollo has had a few other things going on.”

“Oh, my gods, Thomas!” Lavinia shot back. “Naturally, you wouldn’t understand! You never take off those boots!”

Thomas frowned at his standard-issue combat stompers. “What? They’ve got good arch support.”

“Yeesh.” Lavinia turned to Meg. “We have to figure out a way to get aboard that ship and rescue those shoes.”

“Nah.” Meg sucked a glob of relish off her thumb. “Way too dangerous.”

“But—”

“Lavinia,” I interrupted, “you can’t.”

She must have heard the fear and urgency in my voice. Over the past few days, I had developed a strange fondness for Lavinia. I didn’t want to see her charge into a slaughter, especially after my dream about those mortars primed with Greek fire.

She ran her Star of David pendant back and forth on its chain. “You’ve got new information? Dish.”

Before I could reply, a plate of food flew into my hands. The aurae had decided I needed chicken fingers and fries. Lots of them. Either that or they’d heard the word dish and taken it as an order.

A moment later, Hazel and the other Fifth Cohort centurion joined us—a dark-haired young man with strange red stains around his mouth. Ah, yes. Dakota, child of Bacchus.

“What’s going on?” Dakota asked.

“Lester has news.” Lavinia stared at me expectantly, as if I might be withholding the location of Terpsichore’s magical tutu (which, for the record, I hadn’t seen in centuries).