Aquila was dozing up in her treetop nest when I slipped inside the eagle enclosure. I tried throwing pebbles at her to wake her up, but as my pitiful plumbata toss demonstrated during weapons practice, my arm and my aim aren’t very good. So I started to climb. I got about halfway up when I heard a voice that chilled me to the bone.
“Not. So. Fast.”
It was Reyna. I learned later that she’d been following me ever since dinner. Watching and waiting to catch me doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Like ditching sentry duty and shinnying up a tree to steal a giant eagle for a joy ride.
I slowly climbed down, fully expecting praetorian guards to clap me in irons when I reached the ground. But Reyna was alone. Alone and very angry.
“Explain yourself, probatio. And know that if I don’t like what I hear, I will drag you before the Senate in chains.”
I don’t know what possessed me, I really don’t. But instead of telling her the full story then and there, I said, “Not here. In the principia. Just you, me, and Praetor Frank.” I swallowed hard. “And your dogs.”
She blinked in surprise. Aurum and Argentum have a special talent: they can sense when someone is lying. (Their other special talent is eating jelly beans.) If their lie detectors go off, they attack the liar. So basically, I’d be a dead probatio if I told even one little fib.
Reyna agreed and ordered me confined to my bunk while she went to look for Frank. When she finds him, she’ll summon me. And then I talk. May the gods bless me with a silver and truthful tongue.
If not…Great-Granddad, if you’re listening, get this message to my dad, okay? “I love you. And I tried.”
I’m still alive! Well, obviously.
It wasn’t easy telling the praetors about the ancile, Elon, Mimi, and the messages, not with those dogs staring at me hungrily, Reyna’s lips getting tighter and tighter, and Frank looking embarrassed and murmuring, “I never even noticed those shields in Dad’s temple. Never heard of the ancile legend, either.” I got through it, though. Thought I was home free. Then Frank leaned over the desk and asked one question: “Does anyone else know about this?”
My throat closed up with fear. No way was I going to pull Janice and Blaise into this. Or Mamurius, for that matter. I already felt terrible for throwing Elon under the chariot. I mean, sure, the faun has an annoying habit of referring to himself in the third person, and his weakness for trash has brought us to the brink of destruction. Put those things aside, though, and he’s just a scared little kid with a soda-tab necklace.
When I hesitated, Frank repeated his question. I had to choose then: rope my friends into this mess with me, or lie and die.
Reyna saved me. Even as I write those words, I still can’t believe it. But she did. She held up her hand to signal me to stay quiet, then called out, “Bring them in!”
Praetorian guards led Janice and Blaise inside. Mamurius drifted in after them. Frank explained that the three had come to him when they heard I had been confined to my bunk. (Word gets around fast about that sort of stuff, apparently.) They’d told him all they knew before I got there. They’d also outlined the plan I had proposed for dealing with Mimi and getting the ancile back.
While Frank was talking, Reyna studied me. And continued to study me after he finished. Then, to my astonishment, she smiled. “Your loyalty to your friends is admirable, Claudia. Your forthright truthfulness, too, though it’s a little late in coming.”
She sat back and steepled her fingers. “Now then. About your plan to deal with Mimi…I have one change to make to it.” She nodded toward Frank. “Instead of endangering Aquila, Frank will fly you and your supplies to the landfill. Agreed?”
The idea of boarding Air Praetor wasn’t hugely appealing—it still isn’t—but I was in no position to argue, and she was in no mood to debate. “Agreed.”
So now I’m back in my bunk yet again. My fellow legionnaires are whispering about me, because they think I’m still in trouble. But I’m just waiting for nightfall and praying that the first part of my plan is going off without a hitch.
Because we have just one shot to get this right. If we fail, the ancile is history…and so are Camp Jupiter, New Rome, and all ancient Roman creatures great and small. If we succeed, though, we’ll get in, get out, and be back in time for breakfast.
For the sake of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata, I hope it’s not oatmeal.
Right. Here’s how it was supposed to go yesterday:
Frank the giant eagle was to transport a poop-free compostable garbage bag filled with deathballs, the Janus can, the retiarius net, and the laquearius lasso to the landfill.
What actually happened:
Frank the giant eagle crash-landed while transporting what he thought was a poop-free compostable garbage bag filled with the aforementioned items, but which upon impact was discovered to contain nothing but poop. And a single deathball, which Hannibal’s handler suspects Hannibal ingested by mistake. Ick.
While Frank visited the infirmary to get his broken wing, um, arm repaired, Blaise, Janice, and I scrapped our original concept and improvised. Under cover of darkness and armed with spritz bottles of Bombilo’s Café Scent, we lugged the deathballs, the Janus can, and the other weapons through secret tunnels, over the hills, and through the woods to the landfill. (No one thought to tell us that Reyna had access to a truck. Not that any of us can drive…but still.) I’d dreaded the hike, because I knew the others would look to me, the descendant of the god of travelers, to steer them in the right direction, and frankly, after my aqueduct wanderings, I wasn’t sure I was up to the task.
Fortunately, we got an unexpected guide for our journey: Elon.
Mamurius had tracked down the faun soon after leaving the principia. He promised/threatened to make whatever remained of Elon’s life a living Underworld if he didn’t help us. Elon was more than happy to lend a hoof since it meant stopping Mimi. He knew the way, too, since he’d been traveling to and from the landfill to feast on trash for days. As an added bonus, as we hiked, we convinced him to stop referring to himself in the third person. Win-win!
When we reached the edge of the landfill, we changed into our disguises—hard hats and bright yellow safety vests. If anyone questioned us, we’d say we were workers on the night shift. No clue if the landfill has a night shift, but it was the best we could come up with on short notice. We sent Elon back to camp with a message for the praetors and a spare bottle of Bombilo’s—which he was happily drinking when I looked back—then crept over mountains of wet, slimy garbage toward Mimi’s trailer.
Worst. Hike. Ever.
We reached the trailer without incident. As quickly and quietly as we could, we went to work setting the booby traps. We hung the weighted net over the doorway and planted a sea of deathballs on the steps. We dug a trench in the trash just beyond the stairs and built an arch made of recyclables above it. When Janice had attached the lasso to the keystone, we took up our positions: Janice and Blaise tucked inside the protection of the Janus can with the rope and me on the trailer roof above the net.
I gave Blaise the go-ahead nod. He threw a rock at the trailer door and quickly crouched back down inside the can.