“It’s been my observation,” I said, “that you humans are more than the sum of your history. You can choose how much of your ancestry to embrace. You can overcome the expectations of your family and your society. What you cannot do, and should never do, is try to be someone other than yourself—Piper McLean.”

She gave me a wry smile. “That’s nice. I like that. You’re sure you’re not the god of wisdom?”

“I applied for the job,” I said, “but they gave it to someone else. Something about inventing olives.” I rolled my eyes.

Piper burst out laughing, which made me feel as if a good strong wind had finally blown all the wildfire smoke out of California. I grinned in response. When was the last time I’d had such a positive exchange with an equal, a friend, a kindred soul? I could not recall.

“All right, O Wise One.” Piper struggled to her feet. “We’d better go. We’ve got a lot more boats to trespass on.”

 

Boat forty-one: Lingerie department. I will spare you the frilly details.

Boat forty-two: a regular super-yacht, with a few crew members who ignored us, two mercenaries whom Piper charmed into jumping overboard, and a two-headed man whom I shot in the groin (by pure luck) and made disintegrate.

“Why would you put a regular boat between your clothes boats and your shoe boat?” Piper wondered. “That’s just bad organization.”

She sounded remarkably calm. My own nerves were starting to fray. I felt like I was splitting into pieces, the way I used to when several dozen Greek cities all prayed for me to manifest my glorious self at the same time in different places. It’s so annoying when cities don’t coordinate their holy days.

We crossed the port side, and I caught a glimpse of movement in the sky above us—a pale gliding shape much too big to be a seagull. When I looked again, it was gone.

“I think we’re being followed,” I said. “Our friend Crest.”

Piper scanned the night sky. “What do we do about it?”

“I’d recommend nothing,” I said. “If he wanted to attack us or raise the alarm, he could’ve already done it.”

Piper did not look happy about our big-eared stalker, but we kept moving.

At last we reached Julia Drusilla XLIII, the fabled ship of shoes.

This time, thanks to the tip-off from Amax and his men, we expected pandai guards, led by the fearsome Wah-Wah. We were better prepared to deal with them.

As soon as we stepped onto the foredeck, I readied my ukulele. Piper said very quietly, “Wow, I hope nobody overhears our secrets!”

Instantly, four pandai came running—two from the port side and two from starboard, all stumbling over each other to get to us first.

As soon as I could see the whites of their tragi, I strummed a C minor 6 tritone chord at top volume, which to creatures with such exquisite hearing must have felt like getting Q-tipped with live electric wires.

The pandai screeched and fell to their knees, giving Piper time to disarm them and zip-tie them thoroughly. Once they were properly hog-tied, I stopped my torturous ukulele assault.

“Which of you is Wah-Wah?” I demanded.

The pandos on the far left snarled, “Who wants to know?”

“Hello, Wah-Wah,” I said. “We’re looking for the emperor’s magical shoes—you know, the ones that let him navigate the Burning Maze. You could save us a lot of time by telling us where they are on board.”

He thrashed and cursed. “Never!”

“Or,” I said, “I’ll let my friend Piper do the searching, while I stay here and serenade you with my out-of-tune ukulele. Are you familiar with ‘Tiptoe through the Tulips’ by Tiny Tim?”

Wah-Wah spasmed with terror. “Deck two, port side, third door!” he spluttered. “Please, no Tiny Tim! No Tiny Tim!”

“Enjoy your evening,” I said.

We left them in peace and went to find some footwear.

A floating mansion full of shoes. Hermes would have been in paradise.

Not that he was the official god of shoes, mind you, but as patron deity of travelers, he was the closest thing we Olympians had. Hermes’s collection of Air Jordans was unrivaled. He had closets full of winged sandals, rows of patent leather, racks of blue suede, and don’t get me started on his roller skates. I still have nightmares about him skating through Olympus with his big hair and gym shorts and high striped socks, listening to Donna Summer on his Walkman.

As Piper and I made our way to deck two, port side, we passed illuminated podiums displaying designer pumps, a hallway lined floor-to-ceiling with shelves of red leather boots, and one room with nothing but soccer cleats, for reasons I couldn’t fathom.

The room Wah-Wah had directed us to seemed to be more about quality than quantity.

It was the size of a goodly apartment, with windows that overlooked the sea so the emperor’s prize shoes could have a nice view. In the middle of the room, a comfortable pair of couches faced a coffee table with a collection of exotic bottled waters, just in case you got thirsty and needed to rehydrate between putting on the left shoe and the right.

As for the shoes themselves, along the fore and aft walls were rows of…

“Whoa,” Piper said.

I thought that summed it up rather well: rows of whoa.

On one pedestal sat a pair of Hephaestus’s battle boots—huge contraptions with spiked heels and toes, built-in chain-mail socks, and laces that were tiny bronze automaton serpents to prevent unauthorized wearers.

On another pedestal, in a clear acrylic box, a pair of winged sandals fluttered around, trying to escape.

“Could those be the ones we need?” Piper asked. “We could fly right through the maze.”

The idea was appealing, but I shook my head. “Winged shoes are tricky. If we put them on and they’re enchanted to take us to the wrong place—”

“Oh, right,” Piper said. “Percy told me about a pair that almost…uh, never mind.”

We examined the other pedestals. Some held shoes that were merely one-of-a-kind: platform boots studded with diamonds, dress shoes made from the skin of the now extinct Dodo (rude!), or a pair of Adidas signed by all the players of the 1987 LA Lakers.

Other shoes were magical, and labeled as such: a pair of slippers woven by Hypnos to give pleasant dreams and deep sleep; a pair of dancing shoes fashioned by my old friend Terpsichore, the Muse of dance. I’d only seen a few of those over the years. Astaire and Rogers both had a pair. So did Baryshnikov. Then there was a pair of Poseidon’s old loafers, which would ensure perfect beach weather, good fishing, gnarly waves, and excellent tanning. Those loafers sounded pretty good to me.

“There.” Piper pointed to an old pair of leather sandals casually tossed in the corner of the room. “Can we assume the least likely shoes are actually the most likely?”

I didn’t like that assumption. I preferred it when the most likely to be popular or wonderful or talented turned out to be the one who was the most popular, wonderful, or talented, because that was normally me. Still, in this case, I thought Piper might be right.

I knelt next to the sandals. “These are caligae. Legionnaire’s shoes.”

I hooked one finger and lifted the shoes by the straps. There wasn’t much to them—just leather soles and laces, worn soft and darkened with age. They looked like they’d seen many marches, but they’d been kept well-oiled and lovingly maintained through the centuries.