by Rick Riordan
My sentry partner just smirked when I told him about the mysterious female voice. Said Elon was probably meeting up with a water naiad who flushed herself away when I knocked. I wondered aloud where she ended up. And then I stopped wondering because I remembered the smell and …gross.
Thing is, I’m not sure my partner was right. Because the voice didn’t sound girlish or flirty. It sounded raspy and triumphant. And Elon looked relieved, though not the way I did after I’d used the facilities. So now I’m wondering…what was that all about?
Breakthrough! I found out who MV is. Or was. Or is it is? What’s the proper way to refer to a ghost, anyway?
The source of my info was none other than Blaise, my rat-sacking aqueduct-clean-out partner. He was on duty at the forges when I brought my scutum in for ding repair. Stepping into that workspace was like crawling inside an asthmatic dragon, all hot and humid with weird wheezing sounds. The only light source was the orange glow of the furnace until Blaise flicked a switch and a bank of harsh fluorescent overheads came on. Kind of fizzled the volcanic atmosphere, if I’m honest.
I didn’t think Blaise knew who I was—I mean, we’re not in the same cohort and we’d literally spent thirty seconds together on chore duty last week—so I was shocked when he greeted me by name. Of course, he could have just read it off my probatio tag, but still…A for effort. He laid my shield on the worktable and ran his fingers over it, his brow furrowed. When I asked if he could fix it, he made a face. “Uh, duh. It’s what I do.” Then he picked up a little hammer and started banging away at the dents.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stick around until he finished, but I did because Blaise was such stimulating company. Ha! Wrong. I stuck around because I’d spotted the net of a retiarius gladiator in need of a few replacement weights. Since it was already broken, I didn’t see any harm in taking it for a spin.
The problem with whirling a poorly weighted net inside a crowded space is that things get knocked over. And tangled up. And ever-so-slightly damaged. Whoops.
One of the things I knocked over was an old leather-bound book filled with beautiful sketches of weapons and shields and armor. Blaise yelped when he saw me paging through it. Turns out the book is one of a kind and contains the life’s work of an ancient master craftsman and demigod son of Vulcan, Mamurius Veturius.
MV.
I wasn’t sure the craftsman was my MV until Blaise mentioned that Mamurius is a ghost who usually hangs around the forges. That’s when I realized the squiggly oval around the initials on my note looked a lot like the outline of a ghost. So if I’m right—and I sure hope I am, because this is the only lead I’ve got—then I finally have MV’s identity.
What I don’t have is his actual incorporeal presence. Blaise hasn’t seen Mamurius at the forges for over a week. Which he says is weird, because the ghost is always lurking around there.
So, MV is not only a dead guy, but a dead end unless I can track him down. And how the heck am I supposed to do that? The guy can appear and disappear at will. He could be anywhere!
Blaise might be able to tell me about him, I suppose. He and Mamurius are both Vulcan’s sons, after all, which makes them half brothers. (Yikes. My head hurts just thinking about that.) But after the mess my net-twirling caused in the forges, I’m not sure I’m his favorite probatio right now. In fact, I think he was adding dents to my scutum when I left.
So for now, I’ll forge on alone. (Ha!)
When I heard the ear-piercing scream tonight, I figured someone in the Fourth was having a nightmare of the impending-danger variety. Then I realized the shrieks weren’t coming from the barracks but from inside the bathhouse.
For our safety, nobody is supposed to be in the baths after eleven, because there are no lifeguards on duty. Janice says the real reason the doors are locked is to thwart romantically inclined legionnaires from getting up to shenanigans in there. That thwarting can be thwarted, though, if you know about the secret entrance to the main pool. Which everybody does, although not many people use it, because you have to swim underwater through a narrow concrete pipe, then squeeze through a small mesh gate that leads into the pool. You’d better hope you’re an underwater-breathing descendent of Neptune if you get stuck in there.
Apparently, a girl and a boy from the First Cohort thought the risk was worth it, because they sneaked in via the not-so-secret entrance tonight. I’m thinking their lovey-dovey mood evaporated when they surfaced, though.
Because dead rats.
Hundreds of them. Floating in the pool. Blocking the hot-springs water supply. Clogging the drains. Even hanging from the basket for used towels. I can’t imagine anything more totally, completely, scream-inducingly disgusting.
And mysterious, too, because no one can explain how so many rats got in there so quickly. The filtration system is shut off when the baths close, so they weren’t pumped in with the water. And the lifeguard swears the place was clean when he locked up at eleven. The couple sneaked in around eleven fifteen. Could someone have broken in and distributed all those rats in just fifteen minutes? Didn’t seem likely.
We were all scratching our heads when it came out that the lifeguard, a member of the Third, had a crush on the girl. The couple accused him of planting the rats to disrupt their date. The lifeguard denied it. The First rallied behind the young lovers and started blaming the lifeguard. The Third jumped in and flung those accusations right back at the couple, and then at the whole First Cohort. The First retaliated with venom. (The verbal kind, not actual venom. At least…I don’t think so.)
Things were escalating out of control when Frank and Reyna showed up. They listened to both sides, deliberated for a few minutes, and then ordered the First and the Third to clean up the mess together.
I like thinking about legionnaires from the First picking up dead rats, because so many of them are…hmm, what’s the best way to describe members of that cohort? Oh yes. Obnoxious jerks who think they’re all that and a bag of chips.
I feel bad for the lifeguard, though. The only thing he’s guilty of is liking someone who didn’t like him back. Hope that never happens to me.
It was a beautiful sunshine-filled morning, right up until it started raining poop. Not on me, thank gods, because ick.
I feel for the Second, though. They were on shovel-and-bag duty at the stables. But the compostable sacks must have been defective. Every time the giant eagles went airborne with their loads, the plastic ripped open and…well, it wasn’t a good time for those caught underneath, that’s for sure. Or for anybody caught next to them afterward. Not even a spritz of Bombilo’s Café Scent could have cut through that stink.
On a more positive note, the praetors have canceled this afternoon’s marching practice while they look into the faulty-bag issue. Which frees up my schedule to invenient MV!
Later…
No luck locating MV yet. But thanks to a visit to New Rome University’s library during my free time this afternoon, I know a ton more about Mamurius Veturius.
The library rivals some of the temples for architectural fabulousness. Sunlight streams into the main reading room through the oculus, the round skylight in the center of the gilded dome ceiling. Colorful tile mosaics of deities, famous Romans, and mythical creatures decorate the walls. One candlelit hallway is paved with stones engraved with the names of lost heroes. Some of those stones look worn and ancient, but others are brand-new. Heroes who died in last summer’s conflicts, I think.
Here’s hoping no new stones are added for a long, long time.
The library’s shelves are chock-full of scrolls and books. I’d probably still be searching the biography section except the exact volume I needed, Who Made What When and For Whom and Why: Ancient Roman Craftsmen, literally fell into my hands. I swear I saw a dark-haired woman peeking at me through the empty space where the slim book had been. But when I blinked and looked again, she was gone.
I took the book to a cozy window seat and flipped through the pages, look
ing for an entry for Mamurius Veturius. It was so brief, I almost missed it. Here’s what I found out:
Mamurius Veturius was master craftsman to King Numa, the ruler who took over the throne after Romulus, Rome’s founder, died. Numa was one of the good guys, famous for building temples (including one honoring Janus, Janice’s dad), writing books of laws, and keeping peace in the kingdom for forty-three years. (Not too shabby!) The gods apparently approved of Numa, because at some point during his reign, they sent him an ornate cello-shaped shield called an ancile, along with this promise: So long as this ancile is safe, Rome will endure.
Meaning, I guess, that if the ancile goes missing, Rome will go kaboom.
That’s where Mamurius Veturius came in. King Numa instructed his craftsman to make eleven identical copies of the ancile. That way, if someone tried to steal the ancile in order to destroy Rome, he’d have no clue which was the real one. The duplicates were so good that only Mamurius himself knew which one the original was. But just to be extra safe, King Numa stashed the twelve ancilia in a temple only a crazy person would dare to defile: the Temple of Mars Ultor.
I’ve been in Mars’s temple—or the modern-day replica, anyway. I saw a bunch of one-of-a-kind weapons in there…and an M made of eleven identical cello-shaped shields.
Eleven. Not twelve. Not…XII.
I’m thinking those eleven are Mamurius’s duplicates and that the original is hidden somewhere else in camp. Because it must be here. Otherwise Camp Jupiter, the living, breathing testament to Rome’s endurance, wouldn’t exist. Right?
I searched other books for info about Mamurius, Numa, and the ancile. I mean, the more you know, right? But I came up empty, which makes me think that the legend is really obscure—well, compared to the world-famous myths about the Olympians and celebrity heroes, anyway. That doesn’t make it any less real, though. Just a lot less known.
So the question is, if the original ancile exists, why isn’t it in Mars’s temple with the others? Or maybe it is. Maybe it just wasn’t part of the M, and it’s hanging on a different wall or locked away in a secret compartment or something. Only one way to find out—pay another visit to my favorite god-crypt!
But not until tomorrow. Because tonight I’m going to my first gladiator exhibition! Janice scored us seats in the Colosseum’s Blood Splash Zone. Scored me a cushion, too, because apparently those seats are hard as, well, the concrete they’re made of.
The star of the show is the murmillo champion, a swarthy bit of beefcake named Ricardo. If the posters plastered around camp are accurate, he sword-fights wearing a teeny-tiny loincloth…and not much else. I’m praying murmillo is Latin for he who wears undergarments beneath his loincloth. Because if he falls down…
I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s how gladiator games are supposed to go.
Last night’s competition started out normally. The Colosseum was decked out with purple-and-gold banners and filled with cheering fans. The gladiators circled the arena, waving to the crowd before stopping at the praetors’ box to salute Reyna and Frank. The praetors looked beat—dealing with oatmeal fiascos and faulty poop bags can tire even the strongest among us, apparently—but they smiled and waved back in acknowledgment.
Then the fights began. Swords clashed against shields. Daggers stabbed into exposed flesh. The laquearii pinned arms with their lassoes, the retiarii wrapped heads with their weighted nets, and Ricardo the murmillo champ revealed that yes, he wears undergarments.
It was a fabulous performance that rivaled the best World Wrestling Entertainment matches. I know what I’m talking about, because Dad watches the WWE all the time. Made me a wee bit homesick thinking about him in his chair with the remote.
Thank goodness that gob of blood spattered me in the face when it did, or else I might have gotten all weepy. The Blood Splash Zone was out of wet wipes by then, so I excused myself to go down to the latrines to wash up.
Which is how I almost got caught in the flood.
Romans aren’t known for their navy. A leaky rowboat and a couple tired-looking triremes are all Camp Jupiter has for “ships.” The naiads don’t like it when we boat on the lake, so instead we flood the Colosseum and practice seafaring maneuvers (aka aimless drifting while trying to light cannons with wet matches) in ten feet of water in the arena.
Naval demonstrations weren’t on last night’s program, though. So why someone opened the Colosseum’s floodgates is anybody’s guess. Water gushed in, racing across the arena like a mini tidal wave and sweeping unsuspecting gladiators off their feet. Quick-thinking Colosseum workers saved the day by cranking open the drains. They saved the gladiators, too—at least the ones in heavy armor. If the water had gotten much deeper, there’s no way could those guys have kept their heads above the surface.
It was mayhem in the Colosseum until a shout cut through the noise. It was Praetor Reyna. I thought she was awe-inspiring (in a terrifying way) before. But seeing her standing above the receding water, Imperial gold dagger in hand, purple cape flapping in the wind, her warrior-fierce glare turning her dark eyes even darker…I mean, wow. I’m glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of her fury.
Not that anybody was, not last night, anyway. Her demands to know who had opened the floodgates were met with dead silence. Finally, she had no choice but to send us back to the barracks. She, Frank, and the centurions spent today hunting for the culprit, but with no luck.
Which sucks, because with all the weird stuff that’s been going on, nerves are fraying in the ranks and people are eyeing one another with suspicion.
All right, just what the what is going on?!
First the assembly horn wakes us up before dawn. We all stagger outside like well-trained zombies and form ranks. And then we get shot at! Not from enemies storming the earthen walls surrounding camp, but from our own watchtower crossbows! The weapons usually point outward. But as we lurched into position, they suddenly spun one-eighty degrees and—chzzz! chzzz! chzzz!—fired their arrows directly into camp.
Is that any way to start the day? No!
We would have fought back, but a) no one was manning the crossbows, so there was no one to fight back against, and b) only the most seasoned legionnaires had thought to grab their weapons when the horn blared. As if things weren’t confusing enough, startled Lares kept materializing to see what all the commotion was about—and then dematerializing when they saw what all the commotion was about. So brave, those ancient purple spirits.
The sentries finally got the crossbows under control, but only after the supply of arrows had run out. Thank the gods, no one was seriously hurt, just some scrapes and bruises and one twisted ankle (mine again—all hail the return of Claudia the Clumsy). I hobbled to the infirmary with the other casualties, only to learn the medics’ stores of ambrosia and nectar were missing. So now the medical staff is working overtime making more of both, and other essential supplies too. Pretty sure the unicorns’ horns will be as thin as toothpicks by the time they’re done being cheese-gratered.
Frank and Reyna have canceled our usual activities so they can launch a full-scale investigation into all the troubles going on at camp. And I’m going to do a little investigating myself…in the Temple of Mars Ultor.
Later…
CLOSED BY ORDER OF PRAETOR FRANK. That’s the sign I found hanging on the massive iron door of Mars’s temple. I’ve never heard of a temple being off-limits, but maybe Frank doesn’t want whoever fired on us this morning to have access to Mars’s weapon supply. When I couldn’t go inside, I trooped all around the outside, looking for a window to peek in. Which is how I discovered Elon.
He was curled up in a nest of trash behind the temple, clutching what looked like a lava lamp filled with blobby green goop. On closer inspection—not that close, though, because I didn’t want to wake him and because he still stank to high Olympus—the lava lamp was just an old glass soda bottle. The green stuff looked like swamp scum. Mmm, tasty.
I don’t know if fauns are allowe
d on Temple Hill. But he looked so cute all snuggled up in that trash that I left him alone with his bottle.
Now I’m back in my bunk. I should be exhausted after playing Dodge the Arrow at the crack of dawn. But every time I close my eyes, I keep picturing that M shape made out of eleven shields. And I can’t help wondering…where is number XII?
I’m an idiot! There’s only one place the original ancile can be—the principia! It’s the most secure building in camp. The elite praetorian guards protect the entrance to the headquarters. Get past them, and you have to deal with Reyna’s vicious metal dogs, not to mention Reyna herself, who is even more ferocious. Frank seems pretty reasonable, but then again, he can turn into a lion and other intimidating creatures with claws and fangs. Plus there’s the golden eagle standard mounted behind the praetors’ desk, which Janice told me zaps laser beams from its eyes.
So basically, the ancile is out of my reach. Which is totally fine! There’s no reason I need to see it! Except…yeah, I really want to see it. I want to know for sure that it’s safe and sound in the principia. Too bad there’s no way to sneak inside. Not even to take a quick peek.
Unless you happen to know about a secret ladder that leads from the aqueduct into the principia, that is. And if you’re descended from the god of thieves…well, that should give you a big advantage in the sneaking-in department, right?
Later…
Oh, my gods. They think it’s me. Frank and Reyna, they think I’m behind the troubles in camp!
I overheard them talking from my hiding place on the ladder below the iron grate. The oatmeal, the dead rats, the faulty poop sacks, the malfunctioning crossbows, even the Colosseum flood—as they pieced together the incidents like tiles in a mosaic, they thought they could see a picture forming.
