Frank wondered what Vitellius had been about to say and what had made him so scared, but he got the feeling that for once Vitellius was going to keep his mouth shut.
He looked down at the two vials. He hadn’t even thought of Percy’s needing them. He felt guilty that he’d been intending to use the blood for himself. “Yeah. Of course. He should have it.”
“Ah, but if you want my advice…” Vitellius looked up nervously again. “You should both wait on that gorgon blood. If my sources are right, you’re going to need it on your quest.”
“Quest?”
The doors of the armory flew open.
Reyna stormed in with her metal greyhounds. Vitellius vanished. He might have liked chickens, but he did not like the praetor’s dogs.
“Frank.” Reyna looked troubled. “That’s enough with the armor. Go find Hazel. Get Percy Jackson down here. He’s been up there too long. I don’t want Octavian…” She hesitated. “Just get Percy down here.”
So Frank had run all the way to Temple Hill.
Walking back, Percy had asked tons of questions about Hazel’s brother, Nico, but Frank didn’t know that much.
“He’s okay,” Frank said. “He’s not like Hazel—”
“How do you mean?” Percy asked.
“Oh, um…” Frank coughed. He’d meant that Hazel was better looking and nicer, but he decided not to say that. “Nico is kind of mysterious. He makes everybody else nervous, being the son of Pluto, and all.”
“But not you?”
Frank shrugged. “Pluto’s cool. It’s not his fault he runs the Underworld. He just got bad luck when the gods were dividing up the world, you know? Jupiter got the sky, Neptune got the sea, and Pluto got the shaft.”
“Death doesn’t scare you?”
Frank almost wanted to laugh. Not at all! Got a match?
Instead he said, “Back in the old times, like the Greek times, when Pluto was called Hades, he was more of a death god. When he became Roman, he got more…I don’t know, respectable. He became the god of wealth, too. Everything under the earth belongs to him. So I don’t think of him as being real scary.”
Percy scratched his head. “How does a god become Roman? If he’s Greek, wouldn’t he stay Greek?”
Frank walked a few steps, thinking about that. Vitellius would’ve given Percy an hour-long lecture on the subject, probably with a PowerPoint presentation, but Frank took his best shot. “The way Romans saw it, they adopted the Greek stuff and perfected it.”
Percy made a sour face. “Perfected it? Like there was something wrong with it?”
Frank remembered what Vitellius had said: You’ve got ancient roots. Greek as well as Roman. His grandmother had said something similar.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Rome was more successful than Greece. They made this huge empire. The gods became a bigger deal in Roman times—more powerful and widely known. That’s why they’re still around today. So many civilizations base themselves on Rome. The gods changed to Roman because that’s where the center of power was. Jupiter was…well, more responsible as a Roman god than he had been when he was Zeus. Mars became a lot more important and disciplined.”
“And Juno became a hippie bag lady,” Percy noted. “So you’re saying the old Greek gods—they just changed permanently to Roman? There’s nothing left of the Greek?”
“Uh…” Frank looked around to make sure there were no campers or Lares nearby, but the main gates were still a hundred yards away. “That’s a sensitive topic. Some people say Greek influence is still around, like it’s still a part of the gods’ personalities. I’ve heard stories of demigods occasionally leaving Camp Jupiter. They reject Roman training and try to follow the older Greek style—like being solo heroes instead of working as a team the way the legion does. And back in the ancient days, when Rome fell, the eastern half of the empire survived—the Greek half.”
Percy stared at him. “I didn’t know that.”
“It was called Byzantium.” Frank liked saying that word. It sounded cool. “The eastern empire lasted another thousand years, but it was always more Greek than Roman. For those of us who follow the Roman way, it’s kind of a sore subject. That’s why, whatever country we settle in, Camp Jupiter is always in the west—the Roman part of the territory. The east is considered bad luck.”
“Huh.” Percy frowned.
Frank couldn’t blame him for feeling confused. The Greek/Roman stuff gave him a headache, too.
They reached the gates.
“I’ll take you to the baths to get you cleaned up,” Frank said. “But first…about those vials I found at the river.”
“Gorgon’s blood,” Percy said. “One vial heals. One is deadly poison.”
Frank’s eyes widened. “You know about that? Listen, I wasn’t going to keep them. I just—”
“I know why you did it, Frank.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.” Percy smiled. “If I’d come into camp carrying a vial of poison, that would’ve looked bad. You were trying to protect me.”