foot-tall basalt walls, each a solid, grim reminder of the even more invincible, unseen divisions in the city.
The smell of roasting meats mixed with the strong odor of shirrir spice pulled at him, but Cheyne ignored his sudden, clawing hunger and passed over the sluggish Nantas and on through the outer part of town quickly and warily, keeping the totem firmly in his hand and his hand hidden in his robes.
Though the dig had opened a month before, this was Cheyne's first time in Sumifa alone. Always before, since Javin would not tear himself away from the site for a moment, Muni had accompanied Cheyne, and they had come for supplies or tools, or to bring a few small finds in to help appease the Fascini. They were in and out within a couple of hours, then back to work. But Cheyne took his time today. Things looked different somehow, a little more interesting. He remembered to keep to the middle of the wide, elevated road that twisted through the Barca, avoiding the pickpockets and the potholes, but kept a sharp eye out for the elf he was searching for.
As he came to the next gate, a half a mile into the city, one of the Fascini's royal purple sedan chairs, carried on four sides by ochre-painted Neffian slaves, suddenly veered, nearly pushing him off the highway.
'Hey!' Cheyne shouted as he fell roughly against a retaining wall, forgetting he had neither rank nor position in ancestor-worshiping Sumifa.
He fumbled the totem, but caught it just as a sharp reply came from inside the sedan and the slaves abruptly halted, all of them staring at him openly, their mouths agape. A pale, bejeweled hand snaked out of the purple embroidered curtain-a bit threadbare, Cheyne noticed from his new proximity-and twitched it aside. From the way the man sat so close to the side, Cheyne had the vague impression that there were two people in the chair.
'You dare to occupy the road when I have need of it? Doulos, ask this slave just why he is loose and who he belongs to. Demand of him his name.'
The words could have been carved in ice, despite the searing heat. Cheyne grimaced at the irony. He had sought the answer to that very question all his life, and now it was the very reason he had defied Javin and come into town.
Still unable to see who had spoken to him, Cheyne dusted his hands off, picked up his pack, and walked closer to the chair. Before the nearest Neffian could repeat his master's question, or warn the young man with his eyes, Cheyne pushed back the curtain a little farther and received a sharp whack on the hand from the occupant's riding crop.
'Don't touch that, you renegade slave! I asked you a question. Who are you, and how dare you block the way of my runners? or place your unworthy hand upon my carriage! Do you not perceive who I am? Speak my words, Doulos,' he ordered the Neffian, who began to repeat it all again, hysterics included.
Cheyne stood back, patiently listening and rubbing his smarting fingers, but thinking only about what he had seen of the people in the sedan. The woman was veiled, but the man was gaunt, black haired, green eyed, ashen skinned, and sported a thin mustache, twisted into a sneer. Though this was Cheyne's first actual contact with the Fascini, he had no trouble recognizing all the marks of Sumifa's leisure-loving, sickness-ridden upper crust.
But who was the woman? She wore no purple and no matron's veil. He knew that, on rare occasions, Fascini took wives from the richest families of the Mercanto, or from unprovable, if questionable, nobility in distant cities, but [avin had said that if you weren't bom into the caste, you could never really belong, and the Fascini liked it that way. Fewer people, more wealth. Especially since the western caravans had stopped. Goods were ever more expensive and harder to come by. Of course, that also meant greater profit. For some.
The patient Neffian had finished and stood waiting for Cheyne to answer.
'I'm not a slave. I'm from the… east,' Cheyne answered cautiously, remembering the problem out at the site. 'I didn't see your chair in time. But your runners nearly ran me over.'
'Oh, for Nin's sake, address the right-hand man, you fool. You can never talk directly to me. The east. The east. Where they have no culture, no appreciation for time-honored traditions. Where your persons of rank freely mingle with commoners, where slaves whose ancestors lived in actual caves deign to talk to royalty. Really, you foreign people should not be let inside Sumifan gates until you know how to behave. You have humiliated me. Do you know I could have you flayed in the Four Most Awful Fashions for what you just did? As it is, I am in far better humor than usual. I will have you buried alive, instead,' said the Fascini, his voice rising with impatience.
While the Neffian took a deep breath and began to repeat his master's words again, Cheyne shook his head, perplexed as to which was his most grievous sin: being in the way to be run over, or telling the Fascini about it. He settled on the latter, but none too surely. The Neffian shrugged his shoulders, a look of concern replacing his careful blankness. Cheyne decided at that point that the Fascini was serious about the burying alive part. Cheyne was about to leap the guard rail and try to disappear into the Barca when he heard his reprieve.
'Maceo, he could not have known he spoke to the royal heir of Sumifa. You have just been announced as king this afternoon. He has done nothing to warrant death.' A small voice, raw with strain, pleaded with the Fascini.
Maceo shot the curtain across its rod, leaving Cheyne straining to hear the fervent conversation within. The Neffian stared ahead again, unblinking until he and the others simultaneously lifted the chair, as if they had heard an order Cheyne could not. But Maceo had the last word.
'Nameless idiot! Unknown fool! Today the woman saves your worthless life. When I am installed as king, if you dare to tread these streets, you shall pay for this insult,' the Fascini shouted as the chair swerved onto the thoroughfare, a red ribbon falling from the woman's side of the chair.
The next set of gates loomed just before him and Cheyne slowly walked toward them, soon losing sight of the sedan as the Neffians rounded a curve in the highway, then turned off abruptly, heading, strangely, Cheyne thought, toward the worst part of the Barca.
Despite the crowd that had gathered to witness his very public dressing down, all Cheyne could think of was the weeping woman.
Cheyne bent and picked up the red ribbon before a passing wagon ground it into the cobbles. It smelled of rich myrrh and bergamot, dark, strong scents both. He put it in his pack and passed through the gates, wondering what the face behind the veil looked like.
'I told you, I don't know, it could be Elclesian or Trufi ganzite. Or it could even come all the way from the Chimes, though I've never seen any of that fabled stone.' The shopkeeper sneered, tired of guessing. 'Looks like any other old totem except for that last mark and the odd cut. Where did you say this came from?' The slouching clockmaker set the totem on his cluttered counter and waited for Cheyne to answer.
'Thanks. Thanks very much for your trouble. It was an outside chance anyway; I know this sort of thing isn't really your business.'
True enough. Cheyne had tried the clockmaker's shop just because it was there. It was the last place he had time for, and it had turned out to be by far the most distasteful.
Cheyne had wandered around the Mercanto for three hours, searching every antique stall and every art dealer's store he could find, and each time he had received a puzzled look or a shrug of the shoulders. As for the elf, his questions had provoked only laughter and the repeated response that no elves had been seen in Sumifa since before the Wandering. Worse, no one seemed to know anything about the last glyph on the totem, or even care, for that matter. Which made it very odd that the disheveled clockmaker continued to stare at Cheyne, his droopy face still lifted in expectation of an answer to his question as two greenbottle flies chased each other above his head.
Cheyne nodded his good-bye, returned the totem to his pack, and made for the door. The sun had moved over the westernmost part of the wall, marking it time for him to get back to the site. Javin would be mad enough already.
'Ah, perhaps I know of someone else who could help you with your dilemma,' the clockmaker wheedled. Cheyne stopped at the door and turned around. 'Her name is Riolla Hifrata. She is a worthy woman, well schooled in the antiquities. Here is her address.'
The shopkeeper fumbled at the sleeve of his grease-spotted caftan and withdrew a small, dirty scrap of parchment with an even dirtier hand. His face unreadable, he slid the gilt-edged fragment toward Cheyne. One of his clocks began to click and bang in the back room, then every other one in the shop chimed in. Thanking the man, Cheyne grabbed the parchment and left the din, his ears ringing.
It seemed that the streets had emptied somewhat while Cheyne had been in the shop. Only one shabbily dressed vagrant hunched in the shade of a market stall, a nearly empty bottle in hand and humming to himself, completely unremarkable except for a truly enormous nose protruding from under the folds of his hood. Cheyne
