The Tyrant's Tomb

“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.
“Meg,” I said, “of all the things you could have chosen to tell them, you
told them about that?”
“Wasn’t my idea.” Meg somehow managed to enunciate with half a hot
dog in her mouth. “Lavinia likes shoes.”
“Well, what did you think I was going to ask about?” Lavinia demanded.
“You tell me the emperor has an entire boatload of shoes, of course I’m
going to wonder if you saw any dancing ones! So it’s true, then, Lester?”
“I mean…yes. We saw a pair of—”
“Wow.” Lavinia sat back, crossed her arms, and glared at me. “Just wow.
You wait until now to tell me this? Do you know how rare those shoes are?
How important…” She seemed to choke on her own indignation. “Wow.”
Around the table, Lavinia’s comrades showed a mixture of reactions.
Some rolled their eyes, some smirked, some kept eating as if nothing Lavinia
did could surprise them anymore.
An older boy with shaggy brown hair dared to stick up for me. “Lavinia,
Apollo has had a few other things going on.”