Teri McLaren
"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