for really did exist. This would bear further inquiry. When she could think more clearly.
So much for Kalkuk, she mused, trying the tea again, with no better results. But I still don't have his payment, either. And her own time was quickly running out.
A timid knock at her chamber door brought Riolla's head up too suddenly, the sound seeming to be pitched at the most irritating tone possible.
'Yes! Yes! Stop that. What is it?' she snapped, her own voice raking over her ears like claws.
'Schreefa, Prince Maceo sends greeting. He says to inform you that he has reconsidered your proposal.'
'I still say there is no way anyone could have moved that block, and no way anyone could have used that tunnel, Javin,' Cheyne repeated, slamming the water jug down on the camp table where he had spread his drawings of the room. A few stray droplets colored the bata-paper for a few seconds, then faded, drying quickly. 'Go down there and see for yourself, if you like. It's just an old looter's hole, covered up by the sandstorms long ago.'
Javin drummed his fingers over the drawings and shook his head. 'I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't like the alternative. The method looked too familiar. And by the way, you should stay close until this is over. They might know we are here after all.'
'You mean the Broken Circle, the Ninnites?'
'Keep your voice down.' Javin frowned.
'Javin, why is it every time we come up with something you can't explain, it has to be the result of some old grudge between a long dead bunch of sorcerers?' Cheyne met Javin's eyes and locked him in a long stare. 'This time, I want to know.'
'It is better you do not know yet. Besides, I couldn't tell you more if I wanted to. It's just not safe.'
'Javin,' Cheyne said, sighing, 'if I were still ten years old, that would be the right answer. But I'm a grown man now. It's time for me to be on my own. Find a wife, find my own work. Find my name. I have to know what all this sorcery and lore you are always poring over and thinking about has to do with me. Who am I? What happened to the first ten years of my life? Why can't I see myself in a mirror like everyone else? Whatever you know about these things, Javin, I deserve to know, too. At last we are in Sumifa-and there is something about this place, this particular place, that feels so familiar to me. I have to be free to explore this place. Maybe here I will find someone who knows what this means-' he added softly, pulling an amulet from under his shirt, its odd marking, very like a tiny fingerprint, deeply and precisely etched into the end of the smooth, cylindrical stone.
Unwilling to answer, Javin started to rise and leave, his way of effectively ending every discussion about Cheyne's past. Then he sat back heavily on his low bamboo stool and looked at Cheyne for a long moment.
'We've been over this countless times before. Not yet. You have to trust me. Someday it will all be clear. But not yet. If my suspicions about this murder are correct, you are far safer not knowing. And as I said, don't go back to the city. Tilings are likely to be strained with the Sumifans until this murder is solved. I'll see you at the vault. We're going to go ahead and empty it. I know the Collector is close. He just has to be.'
The ache in his voice went through Cheyne's heart like a dagger. lavin gathered the drawings and the water jug and headed out to the ruin again.
Cheyne gritted his teeth, using his frustration to rub all the harder at the totem he had found in the hand of the dead man when the workers had set about to carry the hapless Sumifan back into the city. Like all of the other family markers they had unearthed at the site, this one had a row of glyphs on it, and when Cheyne applied vigorous pressure, their outlines became clear and readable. If one read Old High Sumifan.
He dug his nail into the incised lines, clearing the deeper dirt away. The glyphs were really pictures, and Cheyne could make out a wavy line, which Muni had once said meant water, a stylized scorpion, probably a likeness of the ones he had seen in the vault, and a basket of some kind. Two others were too faint to decipher. He rubbed the ganzite block as clean as he could, fascinated by the way the colored light danced in its edges. He uncovered a basket and a boat. But there was still a stubborn smear near the bottom. He rubbed again, adding a little spit, and when the smudge still did not come up, he took a rough cloth to it. The mark seemed to be as permanent as the carved glyphs. Intrigued, Cheyne searched his bag of tools for a magnifier, found the fat lens, and held it over the totem.
Cheyne could hardly credit what he saw. Beneath a tough layer of dark soot there appeared to be a tiny fingerprint carved into the ganzite, its lines fluid and clear, an unmistakable match to the glyph upon his own mysterious amulet.
'Cheyne, I need you to come on out here and get the wall finished. We've got maybe another hour before it gets too hot to work,' called)avin, from outside the tent. 'Might as well do what we can. When word gets around about the incident, we want to have used our time well.'
Cheyne found that his mouth was suddenly very dry, and it had nothing to do with the desert heat. 'Coming, Javin,' was all he could manage. His head swam with possibilities. He stuffed the totem into his pack, collected his gear and a water jug. He washed his face in the basin by the door, by long habit, avoiding the mirror that hung over it.
As the sun climbed to its searing zenith, Cheyne trudged to the north wall, finding, thankfully, a waning sliver of shade from the larger fallen stones to stand in as he drew. The time passed and he hardly thought of the stones he sketched, the shape of the totem's last glyph still burned upon his mind's eye.
By the last stroke of his ochre crayon, the shade had completely disappeared. Cheyne packed up and walked back to the cluster of tents, mulling over his next move. The amulet around his neck seemed heavier than ever before, and he felt it thump against his chest in time with every step.
The main tent was empty; Javin had not returned from the vault. But it wouldn't be long-not even Javin could stand to work in this heat. He thought to check the shed, hoping to take Javin's horse, but then remembered it had been commandeered to transport the dead man. Cheyne laid his drawings neatly on the table, refilled the water skin, pulled on clean robes, traded his hat for a native style kaffiyeh, and walked out onto the rough road toward Sumifa.
2
More than seventeen centuries old itself, the 'new,' shining city of Sumifa lay in a wide, flat valley between the eastern desert near the Fallajian territories and the western erg, which merged with the scrubland controlled by the fractious Wyrvil ore kingdoms in the west. The Nantas River, a slow-moving ribbon of silt-laden water, turned the valley green during the winter months, but even that dried up during the summers.
Since it was the month of Sul, the Nantas had reappeared, and Cheyne chose a path alongside it where he would be a little cooler from the constant breeze across the water. A herd of sheep bound for a drink passed him on the other side, the shepherds in their brilliant red-and-purple robes waving at him in succession as they prodded their thirsty sheep toward the water. Chameleons the colors of the blue-gray rocks sunned themselves in droves, bobbing their heads and racing instantly for cover when he strode by them. A lone skiff floated downstream, a red-haired Neffian slave at the tiller, another dragging a net full of shiners into the boat. Cicadas harped, their songs rising and falling in rhythm with the waves of hot wind coming in off the erg. Within the hour, nearly hypnotized by the heat and the low, flat countryside, Cheyne found himself at the majestic, golden Lion Gate bridge, the main entrance to Sumifa, capital city of Almaaz, oldest settlement in the west, the only part of the continent known to have escaped most of the flooding of the Great Thaw after the Wandering.
Architecturally, nothing much had changed in the years since Sumifa's population had moved from the basalt-and-limerock foundations that Cheyne and Javin were excavating to this huge, walled fortress town. Like the ruins at the dig, only on a far larger scale, the town was laid out in irregular concentric circles, each one with a gate of its own for better protection from attack. The gates were staggered inside the city, no two aligned, so that to walk into Sumifa was something like walking into a high, stout maze. In the records of the chaos that had followed the Artifice Wars, scribes wrote that these walls had preserved the city from siege by raiders and the fiery assaults of thirst-crazed military tribes wandering the dunes in search of their lost leaders. However, modern-day Sumifa made use of its fortifications in a way not evidenced at the old ruin. Between the poor and the merchant classes, and again between the merchants and the wealthy Fascini, stood the ten-foot-thick, twenty-
