“We’ll be there in a moment.” Griffin pointed directly ahead. “That’s the museum across the street.”
They paused at the curb for a red light. Cassie studied their destination—a massive concrete affair with angled corners and overhanging exposed steel beams surrounding a central glass-clad atrium. The patch of grass and small shrubs bordering the structure did nothing to soften its antiseptic appearance.
It occurred to the pythia that the design seemed consistent with the city’s architecture as a whole. The impression she’d formed of Shenyang was of a bustling megalopolis complete with steel and glass skyscrapers, expressways, traffic lights, and eight million people going about their daily routines in the same way as any urban American. The street signs even bore English captions below the Chinese characters. Cassie thought wistfully of rickshaws and junks—those picture postcard symbols of the colorful Far East, but none were to be found hereabouts. Griffin had already told her that Shenyang was China’s industrial capital. It had been Chairman Mao’s model city of the future, complete with futuristic problems like smog thanks to its steel mills and coal-burning stoves. For decades, the air quality had been so bad that residents sometimes needed to wear face masks. Recognizing the necessity to go green, Shenyang had cleaned up its act about five years earlier by relocating its heavy industry to the outskirts and planting numerous parks within the city limits.
The light changed at last, and the duo hurried across the street and through the doors of the museum.
“Ah, there he is.” The scrivener rushed eagerly toward an elderly man standing in the middle of the entrance hall.
Considering his wizened appearance and the grey streaks in his thinning hair, the trove keeper appeared to be in his late-sixties. The man advanced a few paces to clasp the scrivener’s outstretched hand. Griffin seemed to tower over him, emphasizing the disparity in their heights. Cassie judged their guide to be no more than five-foot four.
“Zhang Jun, it’s good to see you again.” Griffin pumped his hand enthusiastically. “It’s been a long time since you attended a meeting of the Concordance.”
In a barely discernible accent, the old man joked, “It’s a long trip to Chicago. I would need a good reason to fly that far.” He enunciated every word precisely as if he’d taken time to consider the meaning of each. Giving Cassie a welcoming smile, he reached forward to take her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet the new pythia at last.”
“Considering the miles I’ve logged since I started this job, I think the new has worn off,” Cassie demurred. “It’s very nice to meet you too, Mr. Jun.”
In a low voice, Griffin said, “Jun is his first name. In this part of the world, surnames precede given names.”
“Oh...” Cassie flushed at the realization of her gaffe.
The trove keeper waved his hand dismissively. “Please, call me Jun. It’s what my friends call me, and I’d like us to be friends.” His eyes twinkled warmly behind horn-rimmed glasses.
“Absolutely.” Cassie bobbed her head in agreement, relieved that he wasn’t offended.
“Allow me to introduce my granddaughter, Zhang Rou.” The trove keeper turned from side to side as if he’d lost something. “Where did she go?”
A teenage girl hovered behind him. She was about Cassie’s height with straight black hair cut into a short bob. Her jacket collar was zipped up so high that it covered her mouth. She darted an apprehensive glance at the two newcomers.
Jun reached for the girl’s arm and guided her forward. “Rou is a tyro at the Hongshan trove, but her parents urged me to bring her on this field trip. They have great hopes she will follow in their footsteps someday and become a scout for the Arkana.”
Zhang Rou blinked at the visitors. She reminded Cassie of a turtle ready to pull its head inside its shell at the first sign of trouble.
“Do you speak English?” Cassie asked cautiously.
The girl remained silent.
Zhang Jun smiled pointedly at his granddaughter. “She speaks English much better than she thinks she does. I keep telling her she is too self-conscious about her accent.”
“Don’t worry about that,” the pythia reassured her. “Whether your accent is good or bad at least you can speak a second language. I can’t speak Mandarin at all.” She held out her hand to Rou. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
Rou stepped forward unwillingly. A muffled “Hello” emerged from her collar as she shook hands with Cassie and Griffin in turn. Apparently uncomfortable as the focus of everyone’s attention, she immediately slipped back behind her grandfather.
Cassie deliberately shifted her attention away to ease Rou’s discomfort. Her eyes swept the interior of the museum. “I expected we would meet you at a dig site,” she remarked to Jun. “Not in the middle of a museum.”
“Oh, there’s nothing much to see at the site these days,” Jun countered. “It’s a three-hour drive to Chaoyang and another hour to the site, but digging has been suspended for a while. All the artifacts that have been found to-date are housed right here in this museum. Before the Iron Age and the Bronze Age, China had something called the ‘Jade Age.’ You’ll soon see why.” He motioned them toward an exhibit room on the first floor. The English lettering below the Chinese characters announced that they were entering the “Dawn of Chinese Culture” gallery.
Once they all filed into the exhibit, Jun explained, “Everything you see here originated with the Hongshan Culture. The artifacts have been found at numerous dig sites clustered around Chifeng and Chaoyang. The Hongshan were neolithic agriculturalists who thrived between 4700 and 2900 BCE. They fabricated stone tools and plows and lived in simple villages, but their ceremonial sites were much more elaborate. The largest temple complex we’ve discovered is called Niuheliang. It’s fifty square kilometers around.”
“What’s that in miles?” Cassie murmured to Griffin.
“About nineteen,” he whispered back helpfully.
Jun was still talking. “Excavations there have uncovered pottery, statues, jade carvings,
