fresh, dried blood. Cheyne carefully examined the sand around the stain, but found no disturbance. Muni stood exactly where he had first touched down, holding a lantern as Cheyne went over the room. Following the dim glow of the lamp, Cheyne sketched a window and a wide doorway, but they were packed with sand. The whole room, thought Cheyne, had likely been filled with it. A dark scar ran along the walls about head level, where the wooden frame of a roof had been. That structure had perhaps fallen into this story, a possibility that would explain the several roof tiles scattered on the floor. Dust became visible in the air as Muni moved the lantern around, swirling in thick currents and eddies with Cheyne's movements, but otherwise the place looked completely undisturbed.
Muni pointed to one corner of the room, where a three-foot-wide hole had been hacked in the wall, probably centuries ago. Looters had obviously excavated the room long before them, taking everything of value, but at least removing most of the sand as well. No footprints marred its smooth surface. Cheyne resisted his first urge to explore the hole and where it could possibly lead, instead placing his measuring stick down by the wall and then drawing the shape of it to scale. He touched the stone, its coolness soothing his sunburned hand.
'Marble,' he muttered. 'Always eleven hagon degrees cooler than the room temperature.' The wall was smooth and polished, hardly snowing its great age at all. One large crack, directly over the hole, ran from ceiling to sand, but the other large slabs still stood straight and square.
'Workmanship of the highest order,' Cheyne said softly. 'It must have taken some doing to break through that.'
Not given to idle chatter, Muni only nodded. He held the lantern out toward the broken wall until Cheyne had drawn a texture sample and gotten a quick sketch of the details of a collapsed set of marble shelves.
After a long look around the room, Cheyne decided they could move on to the tunnel. As Muni knelt beside it, something bright caught Cheyne's eye and he held up his hand.
'Muni-look. Broken glass. Looks like it was a mirror.'
Muni waved the lantern over the fragments again, and Cheyne set down his stick, drew them, and then picked up one of the longer pieces. Its silvering had gone black long ago, but the front of the glass was uniform in thickness and had few scratches. Fine work, again. Cheyne started to place the jagged glass in his pack when Muni touched his arm.
'Let me have a look at the edge. I think I saw something else.'
Cheyne turned the fragment over and, sure enough, a dark brown substance filled some of the hairline cracks in the glass. When he touched the edges, the powder flaked away and fell to the ground.
'More blood?' Muni queried.
'If it is, it didn't come from our unfortunate fellow above. Look at the texture of the dust. The particles are far too fine to be only a day old,' said Cheyne. He wrapped the glass in a clean cloth and put it in the pack.
'Let's see where this passage leads,' he continued, bending into the dark hole.
'Your father…' Muni began, caution in his voice.
From the time Javin had taken Cheyne on his first dig, more than ten years ago, Muni had watched the odd, pensive child, a gifted artist even then, grow into one of the best young diggers he had known. Javin had insisted, partly because of the way he had found the boy-a subject favin never discussed-and partly because they traveled to any number of less than safe places, that Cheyne leam the ten Argivan open-handed fighting forms and also to use a blade. lavin's care had made Cheyne deadly accurate with a dagger and better than most with a sword. Nonetheless, when things got dangerous, Muni tended to forget that Cheyne was grown up.
Cheyne let out a deep sigh, reminding him of that fact, and stirring several hundred years worth of dust into a small cloud, causing Muni to sneeze, which caused more dust, which caused more sneezing.
'My father is up there. We are down here. We have to do this,' said Cheyne, laughing. 'Are you afraid, Muni?' he teased.
Muni lowered his head and narrowed his leonine eyes at the young man, covertly moving his unoccupied hand to his sash, making sure of his dagger. 'As you wish, Cheyne.'
Cheyne bent again to the opening, this time dropping all the way to his knees as Muni passed him the lantern. Cheyne startled a bit as several hand-sized black scorpions instantly raised their claws and arched their tails.
'Vermin.' Muni sniffed in distaste. 'You are going in there?'
Cheyne gritted his teeth, held the lantern out as far as he could, sending the scorpions skittering for deeper cover, and then drew it close again, motioning to Muni to back away.
'No. I'm not going in. There is no need. See for yourself.'
Muni cocked a dark eyebrow at him, took the lantern, and looked into the crevice. Five feet into the wall, the opening was blocked with sand. A great knot of cobwebs crisscrossed the end of the short tunnel, their silken strands completely intact. The vermin had had the tunnel to themselves for centuries.
'Most adored Schreefa, jewel of the desert, luminous beacon of mercy, they have found Kalkuk the shopkeeper… ah, very, very dead, in a sealed vault out at the ruin. I thought you would wish to know.' The dark- robed assassin bowed deeply to his employer.
'Well. That's too very, very bad.' Riolla Hifrata mulled the words around in her mouth as if they tasted of poison.
Damn this jewel! she thought, rubbing the black pearl between her fingers. Why can't I get it to work right anymore? Well, at least now I know where I sent the old boy. But maybe this is all right anyway… if those diggers are blamed for his death, perhaps the Fascini will shut them down. And the Raptor will then find better humor and stop charging me so much. Ever since they've been at the ruin, he's been ten times the beast he usually is.
Riolla sighed and dismissed the assassin, who rose gratefully, having begun to feel the intricate, linked weave of the rug digging into his knee. As he backed out of the room, she trudged up the stairs to the top floor of her shop, thinking about her last attempt to work the pearl's magic
'Og, you old fool, however did you do it? How could you make the stones sing for you?' she muttered, reaching the landing.
She entered her bedchamber, drew the shades against the morning sun, and lay down on the gold- embroidered coverlet. Riolla's head had started pounding the moment she had tried to use the pearl to transport old Katkuk's body the night before. It had been years since she had dared to attempt the stone, but alone and desperate, the Raptor's increasing demand for payments upon her, she had been forced to 'collect' on Kalkuk. And Riolla knew, despite the fact that she was Mercanto Schreefa, that the Raptor would collect on her without a second thought if she were late with her protection payment.
It had been such a shame, really. Kalkuk was her best supplier; the man had come up with things none of the others could ever equal in value. She had never discovered his source, either. This time, though, poor old Kalkuk had missed his promised delivery-some kind of antique music box he had rambled on about, saving that it had been in his family for generations beyond counting, that it was so old that it might even have belonged to the Collector himself. Of course, of course; everyone in debt has such treasures. Riolla had smirked at him, marked his name on her list as delinquent, and gone on to other business. But when the Raptor had sent a summons for her to appear within three days, with double her usual payment, she had gone to Kalkuk's shop by herself, pressed him for the artifact, and he had threatened her with some old totem he had snatched from his shelf.
You shouldn't have done that, Kalkuk, / had to kill you then. She picked up a pumice stone and filed a snag on one of her long, sharp nails. Word gets around if the Schreefa gets soft. Things just don't work right then.
She sighed. Her head seemed to split with dark imaginings and the smell of dead seaweed filled her nostrils. She took a cup of tea to her lips, swallowing a tiny sip of the spiced brew. But it tasted of decay, just as had her breakfast, just as had her dinner the night before. Og had warned her about the pearl. Of all the stones in his ring, it was both the easiest to use and the most difficult to direct. The other times she had risked it had never been this bad.
Why hadn't the song done its job? She had sung it just as Og had taught her. She had meant to place the body in the middle of the Mercanto's sundial, before the scowling face of Nin, where it would have served as warning to the other businessmen and women who paid Riolla for her protection. Especially all those who had been just a little late. How had the body wound up out in the desert? Inside some old building? She hadn't even known there were old buildings out there. Imagine that, the ancient city of Sum if a was real.
Riolla paused, the stone in her hand growing strangely warm. She smiled a little. Then a little more. For if the ancient city were real, then why not the Clock itself? Maybe the treasure the silly Barcans were always looking
