For a long time after she left, I lay in my cot staring at the ceiling.

Music floated up from the café: the soothing sounds of Horace Silver’s piano, punctuated by the hiss of the espresso machine, accompanying Bombilo singing in two-headed harmony. After spending a few days with these noises, I found them soothing, even homey. I drifted off to sleep, hoping to have warm, fuzzy dreams about Meg and me skipping through sunlit fields with our elephant, unicorn, and metal greyhound friends.

Instead, I found myself back with the emperors.

On my list of places I least wanted to be, Caligula’s yacht ranked right up there with Tarquin’s tomb, the eternal abyss of Chaos, and the Limburger cheese factory in Liège, Belgium, where stinking gym socks went to feel better about themselves.

Commodus lounged in a deck chair, an aluminum tanning bib around his neck reflecting the afternoon sun directly onto his face. Sunglasses covered his scarred eyes. He wore only pink swim trunks and pink Crocs. I took absolutely no notice of the way the tanning oil glistened on his muscular bronzed body.

Caligula stood nearby in his captain’s uniform: white coat, dark slacks, and striped shirt, all crisply pressed. His cruel face looked almost angelic as he marveled at the contraption that now took up the entire aft deck. The artillery mortar was the size of an aboveground swimming pool, with a two-foot-thick rim of dark iron and a diameter wide enough to drive a car through. Nestled in the barrel, a massive green sphere glowed like a giant radioactive hamster ball.

Pandai rushed around the deck, blanket ears flopping, their furry hands moving at preternatural speeds as they plugged in cables and oiled gears at the base of the weapon. Some of the pandai were young enough to have pure white fur, which made my heart hurt, reminding me of my brief friendship with Crest, the youthful aspiring musician who’d lost his life in the Burning Maze.

“It’s wonderful!” Caligula beamed, circling the mortar. “Is it ready for test-firing?”

“Yes, lord!” said the pandos Boost. “Of course, every sphere of Greek fire is very, very expensive, so—”

“DO IT!” Caligula yelled.

Boost yelped and scrambled to the control panel.

Greek fire. I hated the stuff, and I was a sun god who rode a fiery chariot. Viscous, green, and impossible to extinguish, Greek fire was just plain nasty. A cupful could burn down an entire building, and that single glowing sphere held more than I’d ever seen in one place.

“Oh, Commodus?” Caligula called. “You might want to pay attention to this.”

“I am fully attentive,” Commodus said, turning his face to better catch the sun.

Caligula sighed. “Boost, you may proceed.”

Boost called out instructions in his own language. His fellow pandai turned cranks and spun dials, slowly swiveling the mortar until it pointed out to sea. Boost double-checked his readings on the control panel, then shouted, “U¯nus, duo, tre¯s!”

With a mighty boom, the mortar fired. The entire boat shuddered from the recoil. The giant hamster ball rocketed upward until it was a green marble in the sky, then plummeted toward the western horizon. The sky blazed emerald. A moment later, hot winds buffeted the ship with the smell of burning salt and cooked fish. In the distance, a geyser of green fire churned on the boiling sea.

“Ooh, pretty.” Caligula grinned at Boost. “And you have one missile for each ship?”

“Yes, lord. As instructed.”

“The range?”

“Once we clear Treasure Island, we’ll be able to bring all weapons to bear on Camp Jupiter, my lord. No magical defenses can stop such a massive volley. Total annihilation!”

“Good,” Caligula said. “That’s my favorite kind.”

“But remember,” Commodus called from his deck chair, having not even turned to watch the explosion, “first we try a ground assault. Maybe they’ll be wise and surrender! We want New Rome intact and the harpy and Cyclops taken alive, if possible.”

“Yes, yes,” Caligula said. “If possible.”

He seemed to savor those words like a beautiful lie. His eyes glittered in the green artificial sunset. “Either way, this will be fun.”

I woke up alone, the sun baking my face. For a second I thought I might be in a deck chair next to Commodus, a tanning bib around my neck. But no. The days when Commodus and I hung out together were long gone.

I sat up, groggy, disoriented, and dehydrated. Why was it still light outside?

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.