The Tyrant's Tomb

residential streets of East Oakland. From there we took Highway 24 until it
merged with Interstate 580. Then the real fun began.
The morning commuters had apparently not gotten word that we were on
a vital mission to save the greater metropolitan area. They stubbornly
refused to get out of our way. Perhaps we should have taken public
transportation, but I doubted they let killer dog automatons ride the BART
trains.
Reyna tapped her fingers on the wheel, mumbling along to Tego
Calderón lyrics on the truck’s ancient CD player. I enjoyed reggaeton as
much as the next Greek god, but it was perhaps not the music I would’ve
chosen to soothe my nerves on the morning of a quest. I found it a bit too
peppy for my pre-combat jitters.
Sitting between us, Meg rummaged through the seeds in her gardener’s
belt. During our battle in the tomb, she’d told us, lots of packages had
opened and gotten mixed up. Now she was trying to figure out which seeds
were which. This meant she would occasionally hold up a seed and stare at it
until it burst into its mature form—dandelion, tomato, eggplant, sunflower.
Soon the cab smelled like the gardening section at Home Depot.
I had not told Meg about seeing Peaches. I wasn’t even sure how to start
the conversation. Hey, did you know your karpos is holding clandestine
meetings with the fauns and crabgrasses in People’s Park?
The longer I waited to say something, the harder it became. I told myself
it wasn’t a good idea to distract Meg during an important quest. I wanted to
honor Lavinia’s wishes that I not blab. True, I hadn’t seen Lavinia that
morning before we left, but maybe her plans weren’t as nefarious as I
thought. Maybe she wasn’t actually halfway to Oregon by now.
In reality, I didn’t speak because I was a coward. I was afraid to enrage
the two dangerous young women I rode with, one of whom could have me
ripped apart by a pair of metal greyhounds, while the other could cause
cabbages to grow out of my nose.
We inched our way across the bridge, Reyna finger-tapping to the beat of
“El Que Sabe, Sabe.” He who knows, knows. I was 75 percent sure there was
no hidden message in Reyna’s choice of songs.
“When we get there,” she said, “we’ll have to park at the base of the hill
and hike up. The area around Sutro Tower is restricted.”
“You’ve decided the tower itself is our target,” I said, “not Mount Sutro
behind it?”