The Tyrant's Tomb

My mouth went dry. “Part of the Labyrinth?”
“No. I don’t think so. It feels self-contained. The structure is ancient, but
—but it also hasn’t been here very long. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“It does,” I said, “if the tomb relocated.”
“Or regrew,” Meg offered. “Like a tree clipping. Or a fungal spore.”
“Gross,” said Lavinia.
Hazel hugged her elbows. “The place is full of death. I mean, I’m a child
of Pluto. I’ve been to the Underworld. But this is worse somehow.”
“I don’t love that,” Lavinia muttered.
I looked down at my ukulele, wishing I’d brought a bigger instrument to
hide behind. A stand-up bass, perhaps. “How do we get in?”
I hoped the answer would be Gosh darn it, we can’t.
“There.” Hazel pointed to a section of concrete that looked no different
from the rest.
We followed her over. She ran her fingers across the dark surface,
leaving glowing silver grooves that outlined a rectangular slab the size of a
coffin. Oh, why did I have to make that particular analogy?
Her hand hovered over the middle of the rectangle. “I think I’m supposed
to write something here. A combination, maybe?”
“To open his door,” Lavinia recalled, “two-fifty-four.”
“Wait!” I fought down a wave of panic. “There are lots of ways to write
‘two-fifty-four.’”
Hazel nodded. “Roman numerals, then?”
“Yes. But two-five-four would be written differently in Roman numerals
than two hundred and fifty-four, which is different from two and fifty-four.”
“Which is it, then?” Meg asked.
I tried to think. “Tarquin would have a reason to choose that number.
He’d make it about himself.”
Lavinia popped a small, stealthy pink bubble. “Like using your birthday
for your password?”
“Exactly,” I said. “But he wouldn’t use his birthday. Not for his tomb.
Perhaps his date of death? Except that can’t be right. No one’s sure when he
died, since he was in exile and buried in secret, but it had to have been
around 495 BCE, not 254.”
“Wrong date system,” Meg said.
We all stared at her.