The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,50
the back. “Tasty pit vipers!”
Several other trogs screeched and growled in agreement.
“But a five-lined skink,” Screech-Bling said, “is a delicacy we seldom see.”
“My gift to you,” Nico said. “A peace offering in hope of friendship.”
Screech-Bling took the skink in his long-fingered, pointy-clawed hands. I assumed he would shove the reptile in his mouth and be done with it. That’s what any king or god would do, presented with his favorite delicacy.
Instead, he turned to his people and made a short speech in their own language. The trogs cheered and waved their chapeaus. A trog in a mud-splattered chef’s hat pushed his way to the front of the crowd. He knelt before Screech-Bling and accepted the skink.
The chieftain turned to us with a grin. “We will share this bounty! I, Screech-Bling, chief executive—CLICK—officer of the troglodytes, have decreed that a great soup shall be made, so that all shareholders may taste of the wondrous skink!”
More cheering from the troglodytes. Of course, I realized. If Screech-Bling modeled himself after George Washington, he would not be a king—he would be a chief executive.
“For this great gift,” he continued, “we will not kill and eat you, Nico di Angelo, even though you are Italian, and we wonder if you might taste as good as an Italian wall lizard!”
Nico bowed his head. “That is very kind.”
“We will also generously refrain from eating your companions”—a few of Screech-Bling’s shareholders muttered, “Aww, what?”—“though it is true that, like you, they do not wear hats, and no hatless species can be considered civilized.”
Rachel and Meg looked alarmed, probably because Screech-Bling was still drooling profusely as he talked about not eating us. Or perhaps they were thinking about all the great hats they could have worn if they’d only known.
Glow-in-the-dark Will gave us a reassuring nod and mouthed, It’s cool. Apparently, the giving of a gift, followed by the promise of not killing and eating your guests, was standard troglodyte diplomatic protocol.
“We see your generosity, O Screech-Bling!” Nico said. “I would propose a pact between us—an agreement that would produce many hats for us all, as well as reptiles, fine clothing, and rocks.”
An excited murmur rippled through the crowd. It seemed Nico had hit upon all four things on the troglodytes’ Christmas wish list.
Screech-Bling summoned forward a few senior trogs, who I guessed were his board of directors. One was the chef. The others wore the hats of a police officer, a firefighter, and a cowboy. After a short consultation, Screech-Bling faced us with another pointy-toothed grin.
“Very well!” he said. “We will take you to our corporate headquarters, where we will feast upon skink soup and—CLICK, GRR—talk more about these matters!”
We were surrounded by a throng of cheering, growling shareholders. With a total lack of regard for personal space, as one might expect from a tunnel-dwelling species, they picked us up and ran with us on their shoulders, sweeping us out of the cavern and into a maze of tunnels at a speed that would’ve put the tauri silvestres to shame.
“These guys are awesome,” Meg decided. “They eat snakes.”
I knew several snakes, including Hermes’s companions, George and Martha, who would have been uncomfortable with Meg’s definition of awesomeness. Since we were now in the midst of the trogs’ encampment, I decided not to bring that up.
At first glance, the troglodytes’ corporate headquarters resembled an abandoned subway station. The wide platform was lined with columns holding up a barreled ceiling of black tiles that drank in the dim light from pots of bioluminescent mushrooms scattered around the cavern. Along the left side of the platform, instead of a rail bed, was the sunken, packed-earth roadway that the trogs had used to bring us here. And at the speeds they ran, who needed a train?
Along the right side of the platform flowed a swift subterranean river. The trogs filled their gourds and cauldrons from this source, and also emptied their chamber pots into it—though being a civilized, hat-wearing people, they dumped the chamber pots downstream from where they drew their drinking water.
Unlike in a subway station, there were no obvious stairways leading up, no clearly marked exits. Just the river and the road we’d arrived on.
The platform buzzed with activity. Dozens of trogs rushed here and there, miraculously managing their daily chores without losing the stacks of hats on their heads. Some tended cooking pots on tripods over fire pits. Others—possibly merchants?—haggled over bins of rocks. Trog children, no bigger than human babies, frolicked around, playing catch with spheres of solid