The Mark of Athena - IX Piper

PIPER DIDN’T WANT TO USE THE KNIFE.
But sitting in Jason’s cabin, waiting for him to wake up, she felt alone and helpless.
Jason’s face was so pale, he might’ve been dead. She remembered the awful sound of that brick hitting his forehead—an injury that had happened only because he’d tried to shield her from the Romans.
Even with the nectar and ambrosia they’d managed to force-feed him, Piper couldn’t be sure he would be okay when he woke up. What if he’d lost his memories again—but this time, his memories of her?
That would be the cruelest trick the gods had played on her yet, and they’d played some pretty cruel tricks.
She heard Gleeson Hedge in his room next door, humming a military song—“Stars and Stripes Forever,” maybe? Since the satellite TV was out, the satyr was probably sitting on his bunk reading back issues of Guns & Ammo magazine. He wasn’t a bad chaperone, but he was definitely the most warlike old goat Piper had ever met.
Of course she was grateful to the satyr. He had helped her dad, movie actor Tristan McLean, get back on his feet after being kidnapped by giants the past winter. A few weeks ago, Hedge had asked his girlfriend, Mellie, to take charge of the McLean household so he could come along to help with this quest.
Coach Hedge had tried to make it sound like returning to Camp Half-Blood had been all his idea, but Piper suspected there was more to it. The last few weeks, whenever Piper called home, her dad and Mellie had asked her what was wrong. Maybe something in her voice had tipped them off.
Piper couldn’t share the visions she’d seen. They were too disturbing. Besides, her dad had taken a potion that had erased all of Piper’s demigod secrets from his memory. But he could still tell when she was upset, and she was pretty sure her dad had encouraged Coach to look out for her.
She shouldn’t draw her blade. It would only make her feel worse.
Finally the temptation was too great. She unsheathed Katoptris. It didn’t look very special, just a triangular blade with an unadorned hilt, but it had once been owned by Helen of Troy. The dagger’s name meant “looking glass.”
Piper gazed at the bronze blade. At first, she saw only her reflection. Then light rippled across the metal. She saw a crowd of Roman demigods gathered in the forum. The blond scarecrow-looking kid, Octavian, was speaking to the mob, shaking his fist. Piper couldn’t hear him, but the gist was obvious: We need to kill those Greeks!
Reyna, the praetor, stood to one side, her face tight with suppressed emotion. Bitterness? Anger? Piper wasn’t sure.
She’d been prepared to hate Reyna, but she couldn’t. During the feast in the forum, Piper had admired the way Reyna kept her feelings in check.
Reyna had sized up Piper and Jason’s relationship right away. As a daughter of Aphrodite, Piper could tell stuff like that. Yet Reyna had stayed polite and in control. She’d put her camp’s needs ahead of her emotions. She’d given the Greeks a fair chance…right up until the Argo II had started destroying her city.
She’d almost made Piper feel guilty about being Jason’s girlfriend, though that was silly. Jason hadn’t ever been Reyna’s boyfriend, not really.
Maybe Reyna wasn’t so bad, but it didn’t matter now. They’d messed up the chance for peace. Piper’s power of persuasion had, for once, done absolutely no good.
Her secret fear? Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough. Piper had never wanted to make friends with the Romans. She was too worried about losing Jason to his old life. Maybe unconsciously she hadn’t put her best effort into the charmspeak.
Now Jason was hurt. The ship had been almost destroyed. And according to her dagger, that crazy teddy-bear-strangling kid, Octavian, was whipping the Romans into a war frenzy.
The scene in her blade shifted. There was a rapid series of images she’d seen before, but she still didn’t understand them: Jason riding into battle on horseback, his eyes gold instead of blue; a woman in an old-fashioned Southern belle dress, standing in an oceanside park with palm trees; a bull with the face of a bearded man, rising out of a river; and two giants in matching yellow togas, hoisting a rope on a pulley system, lifting a large bronze vase out of a pit.
Then came the worst vision: she saw herself with Jason and Percy, standing waist-deep in water at the bottom of a dark circular chamber, like a giant well. Ghostly shapes moved through the water as it rose rapidly. Piper clawed at the walls, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to go. The water reached their chests. Jason was pulled under. Percy stumbled and disappeared.
How could a child of the sea god drown? Piper didn’t know, but she watched herself in the vision, alone and thrashing in the dark, until the water rose over her head.
Piper shut her eyes. Don’t show me that again, she pleaded. Show me something helpful.
She forced herself to look at the blade again.
This time, she saw an empty highway cutting between fields of wheat and sunflowers. A mileage marker read: TOPEKA 32. On the shoulder of the road stood a man in khaki shorts and a purple camp shirt. His face was lost in the shadow of a broad hat, the brim wreathed in leafy vines. He held up a silver goblet and beckoned to Piper. Somehow she knew he was offering her some sort of gift—a cure, or an antidote.
“Hey,” Jason croaked.
Piper was so startled she dropped the knife. “You’re awake!”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” Jason touched his bandaged head and frowned. “What…what happened? I remember the explosions, and—”
“You remember who I am?”
Jason tried to laugh, but it turned into a painful wince. “Last I checked, you were my awesome girlfriend Piper. Unless something has changed since I was out?”
Piper was so relieved she almost sobbed. She helped him sit up and gave him some nectar to sip while she brought him up to speed. She was just explaining Leo’s plan to fix the ship when she heard horse hooves clomping across the deck over their heads.
Moments later, Leo and Hazel stumbled to a stop in the doorway, carrying a large sheet of hammered bronze between them.
“Gods of Olympus.” Piper stared at Leo. “What happened to you?”
His hair was greased back. He had welding goggles on his forehead, a lipstick mark on his cheek, tattoos all over his arms, and a T-shirt that read HOT STUFF, BAD BOY, and TEAM LEO.
“Long story,” he said. “Others back?”
“Not yet,” Piper said.
Leo cursed. Then he noticed Jason sitting up, and his face brightened. “Hey, man! Glad you’re better. I’ll be in the engine room.”
He ran off with the sheet of bronze, leaving Hazel in the doorway.
Piper raised an eyebrow at her. “Team Leo?”
“We met Narcissus,” Hazel said, which didn’t really explain much. “Also Nemesis, the revenge goddess.”
Jason sighed. “I miss all the fun.”
On the deck above, something went THUMP, as if a heavy creature had landed. Annabeth and Percy came running down the hall. Percy was toting a steaming five-gallon plastic bucket that smelled horrible. Annabeth had a patch of black sticky stuff in her hair. Percy’s shirt was covered in it.
“Roofing tar?” Piper guessed.
Frank stumbled up behind them, which made the hallway pretty jam-packed with demigods. Frank had a big smear of the black sludge down his face.
“Ran into some tar monsters,” Annabeth said. “Hey, Jason, glad you’re awake. Hazel, where’s Leo?”
She pointed down. “Engine room.”
Suddenly the entire ship listed to port. The demigods stumbled. Percy almost spilled his bucket of tar.
“Uh, what was that?” he demanded.
“Oh…” Hazel looked embarrassed. “We may have angered the nymphs who live in this lake. Like…all of them.”
“Great.” Percy handed the bucket of tar to Frank and Annabeth. “You guys help Leo. I’ll hold off the water spirits as long as I can.”
“On it!” Frank promised.
The three of them ran off, leaving Hazel at the cabin door. The ship listed again, and Hazel hugged her stomach like she was going to be sick.
“I’ll just…” She swallowed, pointed weakly down the passageway, and ran off.
Jason and Piper stayed below as the ship rocked back and forth. For a hero, Piper felt pretty useless. Waves crashed against the hull as angry voices came from above deck—Percy shouting, Coach Hedge yelling at the lake. Festus the figurehead breathed fire several times. Down the hall, Hazel moaned miserably in her cabin. In the engine room below, it sounded like Leo and the others were doing an Irish line dance with anvils tied to their feet. After what seemed like hours, the engine began to hum. The oars creaked and groaned, and Piper felt the ship lift into the air.
The rocking and shaking stopped. The ship became quiet except for the drone of machinery. Finally Leo emerged from the engine room. He was caked in sweat, lime dust, and tar. His T-shirt looked like it had been caught in an escalator and chewed to shreds. The TEAM LEO on his chest now read: AM LEO. But he grinned like a madman and announced that they were safely under way.
“Meeting in the mess hall, one hour,” he said. “Crazy day, huh?”
After everyone had cleaned up, Coach Hedge took the helm and the demigods gathered below for dinner. It was the first time they’d all sat down together—just the seven of them. Maybe their presence should’ve reassured Piper, but seeing all of them in one place only reminded her that the Prophecy of Seven was unfolding at last. No more waiting for Leo to finish the ship. No more easy days at Camp Half-Blood, pretending the future was still a long way off. They were under way, with a bunch of angry Romans behind them and the ancient lands ahead. The giants would be waiting. Gaea was rising. And unless they succeeded in this quest, the world would be destroyed.
The others must’ve felt it too. The tension in the mess hall was like an electrical storm brewing, which was totally possible, considering Percy’s and Jason’s powers. In an awkward moment, the two boys tried to sit in the same chair at the head of the table. Sparks literally flew from Jason’s hands. After a brief silent standoff, like they were both thinking, Seriously, dude?, they ceded the chair to Annabeth and sat at opposite sides of the table.
The crew compared notes on what had happened in Salt Lake City, but even Leo’s ridiculous story about how he tricked Narcissus wasn’t enough to cheer up the group.
“So where to now?” Leo asked with a mouthful of pizza. “I did a quick repair job to get us out of the lake, but there’s still a lot of damage. We should really put down again and fix things right before we head across the Atlantic.”
Percy was eating a piece of pie, which for some reason was completely blue—filling, crust, even the whipped cream. “We need to put some distance between us and Camp Jupiter,” he said. “Frank spotted some eagles over Salt Lake City. We figure the Romans aren’t far behind us.”
That didn’t improve the mood around the table. Piper didn’t want to say anything, but she felt obliged…and a little guilty. “I don’t suppose we should go back and try to reason with the Romans? Maybe—maybe I didn’t try hard enough with the charmspeak.”
Jason took her hand. “It wasn’t your fault, Pipes. Or Leo’s,” he added quickly. “Whatever happened, it was Gaea’s doing, to drive the two camps apart.”
Piper was grateful for his support, but she still felt uneasy. “Maybe if we could explain that, though—”
“With no proof?” Annabeth asked. “And no idea what really happened? I appreciate what you’re saying, Piper. I don’t want the Romans on our bad side, but until we understand what Gaea’s up to, going back is suicide.”
“She’s right,” Hazel said. She still looked a little queasy from seasickness, but she was trying to eat a few saltine crackers. The rim of her plate was embedded with rubies, and Piper was pretty sure they
hadn’t been there at the beginning of the meal. “Reyna might listen, but Octavian won’t. The Romans have honor to think about. They’ve been attacked. They’ll shoot first and ask questions post hac.”
Piper stared at her own dinner. The magical plates could conjure up a great selection of vegetarian stuff. She especially liked the avocado and grilled pepper quesadilla, but tonight she didn’t have much of an appetite.
She thought about the visions she’d seen in her knife: Jason with golden eyes; the bull with the human head; the two giants in yellow togas hoisting a bronze jar from a pit. Worst of all, she remembered herself drowning in black water.
Piper had always liked the water. She had good memories of surfing with her dad. But since she’d started seeing that vision in Katoptris, she’d been thinking more and more of an old Cherokee story her granddad used to tell to keep her away from the river near his cabin. He told her the Cherokees believed in good water spirits, like the naiads of the Greeks; but they also believed in evil water spirits, the water cannibals, who hunted mortals with invisible arrows and were especially fond of drowning small children.
“You’re right,” she decided. “We have to keep going. Not just because of the Romans. We have to hurry.”
Hazel nodded. “Nemesis said we have only six days until Nico dies and Rome is destroyed.”
Jason frowned. “You mean Rome Rome, not New Rome?”
“I think,” Hazel said. “But if so, that’s not much time.”
“Why six days?” Percy wondered. “And how are they going to destroy Rome?”
No one answered. Piper didn’t want to add further bad news, but she felt she had to.
“There’s more,” she said. “I’ve been seeing some things in my knife.”
The big kid, Frank, froze with a forkful of spaghetti halfway to his mouth. “Things such as… ?”
“They don’t really make sense,” Piper said, “just garbled images, but I saw two giants, dressed alike. Maybe twins.”
Annabeth stared at the magical video feed from Camp Half-Blood on the wall. Right now it showed the living room in the Big House: a cozy fire on the hearth and Seymour, the stuffed leopard head, snoring contentedly above the mantel.
“Twins, like in Ella’s prophecy,” Annabeth said. “If we could figure out those lines, it might help.”
“Wisdom’s daughter walks alone,” Percy said. “The Mark of Athena burns through Rome. Annabeth, that’s got to mean you. Juno told me…well, she said you had a hard task ahead of you in Rome. She said she doubted you could do it. But I know she’s wrong.”
Annabeth took a long breath. “Reyna was about to tell me something right before the ship fired on us. She said there was an old legend among the Roman praetors—something that had to do with Athena. She said it might be the reason Greeks and Romans could never get along.”
Leo and Hazel exchanged nervous looks.
“Nemesis mentioned something similar,” Leo said. “She talked about an old score that had to be settled—”
“The one thing that might bring the gods’ two natures into harmony,” Hazel recalled. “‘An old wrong finally avenged.’”
Percy drew a frowny face in his blue whipped cream. “I was only a praetor for about two hours. Jason, you ever hear a legend like that?”
Jason was still holding Piper’s hand. His fingers had turned clammy.
“I…uh, I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ll give it some thought.”
Percy narrowed his eyes. “You’re not sure?”
Jason didn’t respond. Piper wanted to ask him what was wrong. She could tell he didn’t want to discuss this old legend. She caught his eye, and he pleaded silently, Later.
Hazel broke the silence. “What about the other lines?” She turned her ruby-encrusted plate. “Twins snuff out the angel’s breath, Who holds the key to endless death.”
“Giants’ bane stands gold and pale,” Frank added, “Won through pain from a woven jail.”
“Giants’ bane,” Leo said. “Anything that’s a giants’ bane is good for us, right? That’s probably what we need to find. If it can help the gods get their schizophrenic act together, that’s good.”
Percy nodded. “We can’t kill the giants without the help of the gods.”
Jason turned to Frank and Hazel. “I thought you guys killed that one giant in Alaska without a god’s help, just the two of you.”
“Alcyoneus was a special case,” Frank said. “He was only immortal in the territory where he was reborn—Alaska. But not in Canada. I wish I could kill all the giants by dragging them across the border from Alaska into Canada, but…” He shrugged. “Percy’s right, we’ll need the gods.”
Piper gazed at the walls. She really wished Leo hadn’t enchanted them with images of Camp Half-Blood. It was like a doorway to home that she could never go through. She watched the hearth of Hestia burning in the middle of the green as the cabins turned off their lights for curfew.
She wondered how the Roman demigods, Frank and Hazel, felt about those images. They’d never even been to Camp Half-Blood. Did it seem alien to them, or unfair that Camp Jupiter wasn’t represented? Did it make them miss their own home?
The other lines of the prophecy turned in Piper’s mind. What was a woven jail? How could twins snuff out an angel’s breath? The key to endless death didn’t sound very cheerful, either.
“So…” Leo pushed his chair away from the table. “First things first, I guess. We’ll have to put down in the morning to finish repairs.”
“Someplace close to a city,” Annabeth suggested, “in case we need supplies. But somewhere out of the way, so the Romans will have trouble finding us. Any ideas?”
No one spoke. Piper remembered her vision in the knife: the strange man in purple, holding out a goblet and beckoning to her. He’d been standing in front of a sign that read TOPEKA 32.
“Well,” she ventured, “how do you guys feel about Kansas?”

Categories: The Mark of Athena