Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
May first noticed the angel at the ice cream cart.
The Argo II had anchored in the bay along with six or seven cruise ships. As usual, the mortals didn't pay the trireme any attention, but, just to be safe, Jason, May, and Nico hopped on a skiff from one of the tourist boats so they would look like part of the crowd when they came ashore.
At first glance, Split seemed like a cool place. Curving around the harbor was a long esplanade lined with palm trees. Way beyond the main boulevard, the city was a hodgepodge of mediaeval castle towers, Roman walls, limestone town houses with red-tiled roofs and modern office buildings all crammed together. In the distance, grey-green hills marched towards a mountain ridge, which made May a little nervous. She kept glancing at that rocky escarpment, expecting the face of Gaea to appear in its shadows.
The three of them were wandering along the esplanade when May spotted a guy with wings buying an ice-cream bar from a street cart. The vendor lady looked bored as she counted the guy's change. Tourists navigated around the angel's huge wings without a second glance.
Jason nudged May's shoulder. "Are you seeing this?"
"Yeah," Nico agreed, over May's response. "Maybe we should buy some ice cream."
As they made their way towards the street cart, May worried that this winged dude might be a son of Boreas the North Wind. At his side, the angel carried the same kind of jagged bronze sword the Boreads had, and May's last encounter with them hadn't gone so well. She'd never been as cold as she was that day.
But this guy seemed more chill than chilly. He wore a red tank top, Bermuda shorts and huarache sandals. His wings were a combination of russet colours, like a bantam rooster or a lazy sunset. He had a deep tan and black hair almost as curly as Leo's.
"He's not a returned spirit," Nico murmured. "Or a creature of the Underworld."
"No," May agreed. "I doubt they would eat chocolate-covered ice-cream bars."
"So what is he?" Jason wondered.
They got within thirty feet, and the winged dude looked directly at them. He smiled, gestured over his shoulder with his ice-cream bar and dissolved into the air.
Jason said he couldn't exactly see him, but he'd had enough experience controlling the wind that he could track the angel's path—a warm wisp of red and gold zipping across the street, spiralling down the sidewalk and blowing postcards from the carousels in front of the tourist shops. The wind headed towards the end of the promenade, where a big fortress-like structure loomed.
"I'm betting that's the palace," May said, suddenly regretting joining Jason on this quest. "Come on."
Even after two millennia, Diocletian's Palace was still impressive. The outer wall was only a pink granite shell, with crumbling columns and arched windows open to the sky, but it was mostly intact, a quarter mile long and seventy or eighty feet tall, dwarfing the modern shops and houses that huddled beneath it. May had to imagine what the palace must have looked like when it was newly built, with Imperial guards walking the ramparts and the golden eagles of Rome glinting on the parapets.
